Last month, the UK based company, UK Space Agency, announced the creation of the Space Development Unit. The company, UKSA, is a new company, but one that bases itself on the work of the British government’s UK Space Agency, which is run by UKSA. Nature is a wonderful machine, but let’s face it, it’s got some problems. It’s not always efficient at recycling its own resources, especially when you consider that the world’s population is growing rapidly. The UK Space Agency wants to change that. To help them do just that, the UKSA created the UK Space Development Unit. UKSA is already using space technology to monitor the health of crops, monitor fish stocks, monitor the flow of
A term used to describe the exploitation of resources, resources are the things humans can either produce or obtain. When humans are able to produce resources, it is referred to as production, when humans are able to obtain resources, it is referred to as consumption.
Exploiting a resource system for a sport is a chess move. It is a sequence of decisions that start with a simple check of a couple of conditions, and ends with the capture of your opponent’s land piece, which will be forced to do your bidding.
Humankind is a game intended to reward a player who is willing and able to aggressively out-produce their competitors in a glass-half-full environment. Humankind is plain broken in a glass-half-empty environment, and generating resources is so vastly overwhelming that it becomes the One True Strategy.
So, with that in mind, here’s how to get the most out of Humankind’s resource system so you can punch above your weight. I’ve tried this approach on difficulties as high as Nation, but if you’re a stronger 4X player than me, you could definitely push it much farther.
Step 1: Get out of the Neolithic as soon as possible.
The Neolithic period is a bit of a lottery, with resource hunting frequently determining which way you’ll earn that all-important first star and go to the Ancient Age.
You’ll want to get the Egyptians first, before the AI does. It doesn’t matter whether you acquire a population of five tribesmen, kill five animals, or earn 10 scientific points from the “goody huts” hidden beyond the map’s fog of war. Get the Egyptians out of the way first.
Splitting your troops is the ideal method to accomplish this; everytime you acquire a new tribesman, break them off to explore more area in less time.
Step 2: Stay Ahead of the Technology Curve
If you go to the top left corner of the screen and click on your civ’s logo, it will tell you how much culture, money, science, or whatever else is needed to earn a star. Seven stars equal an age progression, regardless of how they were obtained.
The easiest method to do this is to allow your builder advantages drive your output – constructing Emblematic Quarters and surrounding them with Maker’s Quarters has a compounding effect — while leaving food and science production to your city employees.
You should aim for a 50/50 mix of farmers and scientists; you may do this by choosing the “Expert Priority” method from the city screen’s dropdown menu, then adjusting the symbols so that they prioritize in order from left to right:
- Food
- Science
- Industry
- Money
This is how you obtain the best of both worlds while also being able to enhance your city’s infrastructure to boost the productivity of those city dwellers.
Step 3: Make Money and Have Fun with AI
Apart from shared ideologies, military power is the single most important element in deciding whether the AI will play well with your civilization.
They’ll be a lot more open to your trade and alliance proposals if you can wipe the floor with them in a battle – lingering over the opposing civ’s attitude toward you, whether “Hesitant,” “Pleasant,” “Aggressive,” etc. will tell you the variables that play into that.
You may start buying their trade resources after you’ve sufficiently frightened them. Luxuries will boost your stability and capacity to produce “FIMS” (Food/Industry/Money/Science), while strategic resources will help you fulfill the minimal criteria for different infrastructure and military upgrades.
Don’t be stingy; purchase all they have to offer in the following order:
- Luxuries
- Science
- Industrial
- Food
This puts a significant damper on AI aggression: if either side has an active demand, commerce is halted, and the AI won’t make big demands unless they can back them up. That’s why it’s crucial to keep them in control with a monster army you build since you’re playing a heavy industrial strategy.
Conquer the continent you started on. Overseas empires aren’t very dangerous. Potential opponents near to home not only have an easier time in battle, but they are also in your way and should be destroyed as soon as possible.
Step 4: Don’t Overbuild Cities – They Kill
If you’re above the city limit, you’ll face a steep penalty for being under the influence. This entails two things.
A high city boundary is preferable to a low one, with the exception of selecting the Maya over the Achaemenid Persians in the Classical Age, when productivity trumps city boundaries and all else. There’s a civic that grants “+1 City Cap,” and whenever you get the opportunity to study a tech that raises the cap, do so.
Second, you’ll want to connect your outposts, and the ideal way to do so is to divide the surrounding hinterlands as equally as possible between your parent cities, then spread out where you construct your marvels and holy sites so that those attached outposts don’t cause stability issues.
As an aside, there’s a civic that allows you to connect and merge outposts and cities using money rather than influence. Choose that option because…
Step 5: Create Marvels
When you use production to construct influence-producing buildings in cities, you get access to marvels quicker, allowing you to claim them first.
Because you can’t claim another marvel until you’ve completed the one you’ve already claimed, directing a large amount of industrial capacity toward such wonders as soon as feasible speeds up the process.
It also guarantees that the cities donating their industry are not so engrossed in marvel building that they are unable to generate goods such as food, research, or military forces.
The more marvels you construct, the more renown you get (which is necessary to win the game) and the more advantages you receive from those wonders in general. The Eiffel Tower, in particular, gives a boost to industry in every city. Which is as intimidating as it sounds.
Step 6: Moving Towards the Endgame
Each of the first five stages will earn you as many stars as possible in as few rounds as possible, bringing you into the Contemporary Era as quickly as possible. However, in the last period, you’ll defy the odds and choose the Swedes.
Their Emblematic Quarter is extremely powerful. It provides +3 Science to every district in the province in which it’s constructed, regardless of what that district produces, and it also boosts any Research Quarters that surround it.
Furthermore, possessing the city specialty “Scientist” enables you to convert all of your city’s industry and money into science.
The game finishes when any side learns all of the game’s technologies, and the late-game techs come with a huge quantity of fame, making it easy to win even if you’re behind in Fame late on.
Because you’ve spent the past five Ages honing your Industry, you’ll end up with a huge quantity of Science, so much so that you’ll be unlocking two or three (or more!) technologies at a time.
Sidebar: Industry’s Dreadful Victory
With the industrial approach, there’s another, more bleak method to win the game: if any civ decides to make the world uninhabitable by creating huge amounts of pollution, the game will not penalize you for being a Captain Planet villain.
In that case, choosing the last Industry culture, the Australians, and constructing their smoke-belching mines while also improving the infrastructure to make your Maker’s Quarters pump out pollutants would strangle the earth to death. It will also reward you for establishing a high level of renown early on in the game.
Step 10: All well, but what if you lose against the best Civs?
You’ll sometimes face an AI opponent that is trying to spoil your day, and they’ll take the Egyptians first out of the Neolithic.
You’ll be tempted to reload Humankind and start from the beginning, and I won’t be the one to tell you no.
However, if you want to win even if you don’t receive the industrial cultures benefit, the best thing you can do is construct Maker’s Quarters aggressively until your stability goes below the 30% level that causes a mutiny.
You’ll want to acquire the capacity to spend money to finish buildings and really hit hard on everything that develops your economy since you won’t have those huge built-in production benefits until you’re able to star-rush ahead of whomever beat you to the Egyptians.
Purchasing production is much less efficient than creating it, but if the ultimate result is that you earn those stars and reclaim the lead, then do whatever it takes to get there.
If you know you’ll lose to the Egyptians in the Neolithic, make sure you don’t age up until you have 10 Science, then choose the “Wattle and Daub” perk to gain a +1 to industry for each citizen you have. It’s preferable than nothing.
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Every game will eventually have the One Stat to Rule Them All, no matter how hard it attempts to balance conflicting interests and allow for various playstyles. And in the rock-paper-scissors world of Humankind, that statistic is industrial production, the Seinfeldian notion that “nothing beats rock.”
You’ll be able to acquire an advantage over the rest of humanity if you understand how to control the Humankind resource system.
