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| Got your modifiers right here, heh heh heh |
| Quick Info | |
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| Reviewed by: | Mark Goninon |
| Developer: | Amplitude Studios |
| Publisher: | SEGA |
| Release Date: | 17 Aug 2021 |
| Time played: | 19 hours |
I have completed multiple playthroughs of both Humankind and Civ VII but before I get into Civ VII proper, it's probably worth checking out the game that many have said served as Civ VII's inspiration (whether that's actually true or not). So, what is Humankind? Well, in short, it's Amplitude Studios's answer to Civ. But who are Amplitude Studios?
Amplitude Studios is a French development studio founded in 2011 that has been responsible for well received 4X titles such as Endless Space (2012), Endless Legend (2014) and Endless Space 2 (2017). This means, the studio is no stranger to 4X as a genre and in 2021, a couple of years after Civ VI's last expansion pack (5 years after the release of Civ VI vanilla) they decided to try their hand at a direct competitor to Civ: a historical 4X game that allows you to take civilizations from a wandering tribe of nomads to a modern, technologically advanced nation.
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| Narrative events help determine whether your society is more traditional, progressive or somewhere in between |
Lacks Soul
Humankind often takes a cynical, humorous approach to Humanity's achievements, unlike Civ's earnest, almost utopian picture it paints. This is reflected not only during its snarky cutscenes but the fact it takes the sacred formula originally created by Sid Meier and turns it on its head, creating a game that plays quite differently to those familiar with the Civ franchise.
My initial perception of Humankind was not favourable, at least when comparing to the last 4X game I regularly played, Civ VI. Humankind feels like it lacks some of the soul that made Civ great such as theme music for each of the civs or the ability to try your hand as Teddy Roosevelt or Qin Shi Huang. In Humankind the leader you pick is a blank canvas, a mercenary, not associated with any particular civilisation like you would have in Civ VI. And while you can get to pick to play as different civilisations as you progress through the ages, they feel nothing more than a name for a package of modifiers to your civilisation's stats which means each civ doesn't feel terribly unique: it's not like Civ V for example, where playing a civ like Venice required a very different playstyle, one that involved expansion through Merchants of Venice instead of Settlers!
Even building wonders isn't as much fun in Humankind. In Civ, building a wonder is a momentous occasion and usually the wonders provide some unique bonuses. In Humankind, while you do get substantial boosts for building wonders, it doesn't seem as big a deal as it is in Civ: it just results in a slight altering of numbers to help you build up your ever important "Fame" score (more on that later). In Humankind, building the wonder isn't an achievement in itself, but just a means to an end. And while in reality, that's pretty much all the wonders are in Civ, the game does a good job in making them feel more special than they actually are.
On the plus side, you do get the ability to customise the look of your avatar, something you never really got to do in Civ but that's the thing: in Civ you would be role-playing as a great leader from history like Augustus Caesar or Genghis Khan. In Humankind, there's almost no point to having an avatar except to maybe distinguish yourself from other AI players during diplomacy screens.
The customisation of your culture doesn't just stop at how your avatar looks though: during the game you'll come across narrative events and picking certain responses to these events will change your culture. Attributes of your culture are represented on multiple axes and while going towards one end of an axis or another will confer benefits, there will be drawbacks to stability. Taking the middle-road will ensure stability but result in no benefits or drawbacks. I quite like this system as far as being able to customise your society but I suppose it's quite similar to the cards system you use to define your government in Civ VI.
Your Territory? What Do You Mean?
In Humankind, unlike Civ where you could pretty much place cities anywhere, provided they're not too close to former cities, Humankind takes the approach where the world is split up into territories and you can only have one settlement in each. I say "settlement" because your cities start off as outposts, which means you've staked your claim to a territory and can exploit its resources, but not much else. Eventually, you can upgrade these outposts to full blown cities or even have them join existing adjacent cities, meaning the city will basically work as a satellite city to the bigger one, I guess? It's not a bad system per se but definitely makes the likelihood of conflict much more likely as you'll be fighting for a limited number of territories.
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| Battles trigger a separate Battle Management screen to the main screen |
WAR? WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
Combat is more involved than most previous Civ iterations. In Civ you usually attack an enemy, and hope certain modifiers along with RNGesus will bless you with a victory. While there is still some element of that at play in Humankind, sections of the map are cordoned off into theatres of war when you go to battle, giving you the opportunity to choose starting positions for whichever units are involved in the battle and you're even given objectives, such as capturing the enemy encampment. The zooming in for combat reminds me of Call to Power, except in this game it's on steroids. While those who enjoy getting down in the weeds will appreciate this level of detail in battles, I can't say I'm a fan. It takes your focus away from everything else that is going on and I'm sure Sid Meier would disapprove (check out "the Covert Action Rule").
In fact, there are multiple ways that Humankind makes warfare more involved and even more realistic but at the expense of fun. Going into this game with a Civ mindset towards warfare is a recipe for disaster since the game isn't about achieving certain objectives (e.g. vanquishing your enemy or capturing cities) but ensuring you have enough war support. On the surface, this isn't a bad idea and fits in with the idea of war weariness that you would normally experience in a Civ game. However, if you're not careful about the status of your war support you could potentially be bankrupted and trapped in a downward spiral that's impossible to recover from.
I managed to lose two games of Humankind thanks to dwindling war support. The first time I lost the game automatically forced me to concede defeat and agree to all demands made by the victor. They asked for 2,000 gold in war reparations that would bankrupt my empire and cause instability. It was bad enough that I was broke but having rebellions starting all over the place meant there was no way I was going to recover from the situation. Another time I was given the option to be a vassal state but this isn't much of a step up from the bankruptcy scenario. Even outside of war you can demand reparations for grievances committed by other civs, such as attacks in your territory, but somehow, you can't ask for grievances when your units are bombed by aircraft? Again, maybe this is the game trying to be realistic or send a political message about airstrikes on targets in sovereign territory. It's not fun though.
While we're still on the topic of realism, unlike Civ where you can just use gold to quickly purchase units, you also require population in Humankind if you want to build military units. This definitely favours nations that can build up a large population meaning they can totally overrun smaller nations, even if that nation has better technology (no point having technology if there is nobody there to use it). If a city centre is invaded you are at least given the option to field conscripts but they're not that great in a fight and again, you lose city population when they are raised. What I'm trying to say is that if you become the underdog in anyway in Humankind, I actually think it's more difficult to catch up than Civ.
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| Faaaaaaaaame |
FAME! I'M GONNA LIVE FOREVER!
As mentioned before, if you go into this game playing it like Civ, you're setting yourself up for failure. In Civ, playing a civ that has bonuses which set you up for a particular victory and making a bee-line towards it is generally the way to go. In Humankind, being a Jack of All Trades is instead the goal: your goal is to be the number one player on the high score list. Sure, in Civ you're able to achieve a so-called "Score Victory" but this is usually a consolation prize after failing to achieve a Scientific Victory or a Domination Victory. In Humankind you can even achieve a Scientific Victory yet still lose the game if you don't have enough "Fame" points by the end.
And speaking of end of the game, you're going to be waiting a long time for the game to end if you're not setup properly to generate those "Fame" points. On the easiest difficulty, I managed to play a game into the 2100s and nobody had discovered gunpowder yet! You can potentially play games that take 20 hours to complete and almost reach the 31st century! And going through these turns can be very boring. You'll spend a lot of time just closing starvation notifications or potential grievances. You seem to receive a lot more notifications about diplomacy in this game than Civ which on one hand, should be lauded as its more advanced but on the other hand, it can be terribly annoying, and more of a curse than a blessing. What's worse is that sometimes you can stockpile a lot of points in something, such as influence but are unable to use it on anything; it's possible to get into a situation where you're struggling as a civ, but are unable to invest influence points into unlocking social policies, setting up outposts or upgrading cities.
Civ seems to be a game that is all about the micromanagement whereas Humankind leans more towards macromanagement, and I've seen something like this emulated before in Master of Orion 3: the experiment didn't end well and I can't say I'm a fan of Humankind's direction either.
Buggy
The game is generally well polished but it does have some annoying bugs, like one I encountered with respect to Cultural Osmosis. Notifications continued to pop up every couple of turns but then stopped after a while and when that occurred, I couldn't see what was going on anymore unless I went into the Civics screen and back out to the Map Screen, to basically perform a manual reset to see what was going on. Oh, and if you don't address it, you can't progress your turn, so you don't even have a choice to ignore it.
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Humankind is a tough sell for fans of Civ as where Civ does micro, Humankind does macro, where Civ celebrates humanity's achievements, Humankind is cynical and downplays them, and where Civ streamlines war, Humankind makes it more realistic but changes the focus onto securing war support. The game does look pretty, offers lots of customisation options for your leader and civ, and some of its gameplay design choices seem more mature and realistic than Civ, but it ultimately lacks any soul and isn't really much fun. |
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Special thanks to my mother in-law and her partner for gifting this game as a 2022 birthday present!
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