A Humankind Guide and Tips for Beginners

Amplitude Studios’ new historical 4x game, Humankind, is all the hype. The new historical focused 4x game completely redefines picking a historical culture and building an empire. If you’re an avid Civilization series fan or if Humankind’s original features inspire your curiosity, then you’ll probably want to give this a try. If that is the case and you want to get ahead of the competition, then this Humankind guide will provide all the tips you need to get you going.

Humankind Tips

Humankind’s Fame System

Unlike Civilization, Humankind has done away with the various victory conditions and merged them into the Fame system. No matter what your play style is in Humankind, you will always earn fame for your actions. Did you manage to conquer an entire empire and turn them into a vassal? Were you the first nation to research and discover writing? Maybe your nation is the best trading nation on the planet? Everything you do in Humankind awards you fame. So if you want to specialize in a certain aspect, you shouldn’t feel punished for it. Everything you do grants you fame, and whoever has the highest amount of fame at the end of the game is the winner.

One of the best ways to get fame throughout the various eras in Humankind is to complete deeds. Deeds are a special in-game achievement that reset in every single game. There’s plenty of deeds to complete, whether by being the first player to circumnavigate the globe, discover a natural wonder, build the first holy site, etc. These provide small boosts to your fame, which can rack up alongside other features in the game.

Another way to farm fame is by unlocking cultural wonders. cultural wonders are specific districts that any empire can compete to unlock. Once your nation hits a threshold with its accumulated influence, you get to choose a cultural wonder. This locks the wonder to your empire, and you can choose another wonder when you finish building it. Whenever your nation fully constructs a cultural wonder, you get 100 fame for the accomplishment. If you consider the 21 wonders in the base game, that’s 2100 potential fame to earn throughout the many eras.

As you play through a save, there is a feature called transcending. Transcending is simply the process of entering a new era of the game without actually choosing another civilization’s culture. You won’t get any emblematic era districts, passives, or units, but you’ll get a 10% bonus to fame. If you feel you’re in a safe spot to farm fame, then it is an option to consider.

 

Stars

Stars are a very important aspect of the game, as it is the resource you need to elevate your civilization to the next stage. As you play the game, you can earn stars for a variety of actions. In the nomadic era, the way you collect stars is by growing, making discoveries or hunting. From the ancient era onwards, you need to collect lots of stars to advance your empire. Once you get all the stars you need, then you can advance to the next era. These stars come from various sources like the agrarian, science, economic, military, expansion, or influence styles of play. However, you can only unlock so many stars for that style of play in each era, meaning that Humankind forces you to adopt other aspects of the game outside of your main focus to avoid falling behind. Stagnant cultures fail, so it’s important to be growing outside of your comfort zones.

While stars are the measurement for advancing an empire into a new era, they also provide fame. Whenever you transfer to a new era, you can no longer collect stars from the previous era. If you manage to be one of the first empires in the game to reach a new era, you can postpone your ascension into a new age and instead collect more stars for fame.

 

Nomadic Tribe Era

Whenever you begin a game, you will start your empire as a nomadic tribe. You’ll be tasked with collecting food to grow your tribe or assimilate other groups of people you come across. Alternatively, you could become master hunters and tame the land or continue to explore the world and discover wonders. Once when your population grows four times, completes five successful hunts, or makes 10 discoveries, you will earn a star.

One strategy that seems worth doing is to remain in the nomad era until you collect a second star. Lots of the discoveries reward you with foraged food, so you’ll make discoveries and grow simultaneously. One tip we highly recommend in our Humankind guide is to set your tribes on auto-explore. It appears the AI seems to know where discoveries are on the map automatically. Moreso, discoveries tend to respawn. There’s potential that the AI can detect the respawns quicker, whereas manual control may otherwise completely miss them. It is safe to say the AI trivializes the search, to your own benefit.

You’ll want to keep going out in the world in search of new discoveries. As mentioned above, you can find discoveries on the world map that grant immediate boosts to science, food, influence, and gold. Also, you can be the first to complete a deed granting that fame boost, such as being the first to discover one of several natural wonder. The easier the difficulty, the more resources you’ll get from foraging. Keep in mind that you can openly skirmish other empires without declaring war on them when you’re exploring no man’s land. If you don’t want to lose any troops to skirmishes, then we recommend checking in on them from time to time and paying attention to where they are auto exploring.

 

Cultures

Cultures are the primary way you evolve your nation, curating and adapting your playstyle when needed. Once when you ascend from the nomadic tribe to the ancient era, you get to choose a culture. Selecting a culture is entirely based on your preference. Did you start the save wanting to play a scientific save? Perhaps you want to play the Babylonians, Greeks and the Umayyads. Did you generate a new world with plenty of islands and continents? Maybe you could play Phoenicians and Norsemen. Fancy building a large empire; you could play the Assyrians, Romans and the United Kingdom. The list goes on.

One of the whole points of the culture system is to adapt your playstyle on the go, so we recommend that you don’t get too attached. Did you initially plan for a martine focused playthrough but find you started near several mountain tiles? Maybe, in that case, you could play as Zhao and get the Confucian School District to benefit from the mountain science. Or you could select Egypt since they like constructing, and mountain tiles provide large production bonuses which benefit from that. There are plenty of what-if moments you come across that could see you adapting your empire to your situation or environment.

If you want to see a full list of Humankind cultures and what they do, check out our guide on it. This Humankind guide could go on forever if we tried to mention various builds and playstyles and how certain cultures fit together. Our culture list provides a lot more depth on each culture and what they offer to the player. That way, you can somewhat pre-plan each era for that perfect build or to see where you could adapt your strategy next.

 

Do you feel you’re ready to take on the game after reading out Humankind guide? Perhaps we missed something, and we need to add a few more humankind tips? Let us know in the comments below.