A Comprehensive Guide to beating HUMANKIND on Humankind Difficulty

[dyhwang2]

Hello everyone, I've made a guide based on my experiences completing Humankind on its highest difficulty setting. It is pretty in depth and goes through the eras step by step. It is located here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2589034832

I'm hoping that I can spark some discussion with it and hopefully help those who are achievement hunting for the two that require Humankind Difficulty to achieve.

[jonnin]

This is really good. A few alternate ideas...

A 'new world' map setting (2+ continents and one of them untouched) is almost an ensured victory. The human can make claiming it a priority, and get the entire thing to yourself; the easy way is to grab the norse (who's district is also very good, adding a second harbor). Speaking of harbors, the food from them is nuts... so having a bit of ocean gives this secondary lift, and the ocean 'goody' tiles are also hot stuff. So there are 3 good reasons to have some ocean activity in a game... and the AI largely ignores the ocean for a long, long time.

It is worth a bit of gold to lock your neighbor into non-aggression if you are not planning to ransack outposts and eat into their lands. They have to think it over for a long time to break it, and it buys you time.

hunting elephant early on for the extra influence is very worth doing; it seems like you marginalize hunting a bit (?). They provide a lot of food too. You do need a 3 man stack to fight them, but 10 of them is 200 food and 200 influence. I tend to split into singles and auto pilot them, with just 1 stack under human control for hunting animals exclusively.

[dyhwang2]

I agree that the raw amount of resources from hunting down elephants is quite good, the issue is that the opportunity cost of having 3 armies not scouting/backtracking for (at minimum)2+ turns is really bad when establishing early trade is such a core part of this guide's strategy. I think if establishing trade/scouting were not such a big issue, it would be worth it, which would probably be the case for small continent/island maps.

I've tried several games with the New World map setting, thematically I think it's awesome, and gives players a back up plan if they happen to be losing/boxed in. However, if the player is winning, I find that influence/city cap tend to be the actual limiting factors on expansion rather than unclaimed land, especially when you unlock ships that can reliably cross deep waters(Carrack, Early Modern I think)

I think your points on the ocean goodies/ports is a good one. If I end up making another guide using another strategy that doesn't use pangea/high land % maps I'll be sure to include it in the tips. It's just you don't always get a port early enough on huge pangea to be apply it.

[jonnin]

that is a drawback, that the norse is almost required if you want to play in the ocean. But they are a solid culture. The full strat for the new world win would include persia too, for the extra cities. Claim out your cap, turtle up and out generate everyone to the finish line works. But it may not be the most exciting strategy.