Mods Shoutout

[brunocarvalhopaula]

I decided to give a shoutout to a few of my favourites mods from mod.io, aside from the official one, so if you're looking for some variation on your humankind gameplay, I highly suggest looking into those mods:

THE BIG THREE

Those are IMHO the "must-haves". Albeit they have compatibility patches to be played together, I still feel they add so many changes one should enjoy them on their own. They warrant, IMHO, deep discussion since the changes they bring alter the game so much.

ENC: https://humankind.mod.io/extended-naval-combat . Not much to say about this one. It greatly expands the martial part of the game with new techs, units and modifiers. A great mod overall that deserves it spot at the top of the popularity charts.

Super Pack: https://humankind.mod.io/superpack . This is the best Culture pack in my opinion, not only due to the sheer number of it but also their high quality. Uncle2Fire manages to capture the assimetry that was an Amplitude hallmark better than the official cultures. A great mod if you want to add more cultural variety to your games.

VIP: https://humankind.mod.io/vanilla-improvement-project. A huge overhaul mod that rebalances almost everything in the game, from minor details such as the calendar, to major gameplay aspects such as city cap, ideologies, religion, cultures, repeatables, infrastructure, units, and much more.

BEPINEX SPECIALS

I'm keeping those on a separate category as you may or may not be interested in dll injection and BePinEx mods.

TCL: https://humankind.mod.io/true-culture-location . This is a fantastic mod that adds a lot of customization options to your game. Contrary to what the mod page says, it does not work only with Gedemon's Huge Earth map, and since the 1.0.4.6 update this week it can work with any map, including procedurally generated ones. Key features (that may be enabled and disabled on a per-feature basis) are: 1) Restricted cultural choices based on territories owned; 2) Renaming territories to match real world names; 3) Dynamic city names based on position and culture; 4) Historical district appearance to give more varied city visuals; 5) Possibility to play with up to 16 players; 6) empire decline mechanics where you can lose territory with culture change; 7) possibility to add new players mid-game.

Cognomem: https://humankind.mod.io/cognomen . A cosmetics-only mod that procedurally generates empire names based on Culture, Civics, and Ideologies. Instead of fighting the "Maya", you can encounter the "Maya Dynasty (Huck)" or the "Mayan Kingdom (Huck)". Amplitude is, according to their roadmap, implementing something in this direction in the game, but you can taste it today with this mod.

Free Camera: https://humankind.mod.io/fp-camera-mod-simple . Another cosmetics-only mod, this one allows you to freely control the camera. Humankind does have a few shortcuts in rendering for performance reasons, so this mod can lead to a few funky graphical issues, but 90% of the time you'll be amazed at the great visuals you can have while navigating the camera with free reign. A fantastic way to enjoy one of Humankind strongest suits, its presentation.

OTHER MODS

Those are also fantastic mods that I highly reccomend, but as they are minor mods they can be mixed and matched to taste to customize your experience.

Deepsea: https://humankind.mod.io/deepsea1 . This mod adds a lot of new districts and infrastructure related to water (and even buildable in the water), and even allow for underwater city centers past the mid game. Not compatible with most other mods, but there is a compatibility patch to use it along Extended Naval Combat. It is 100% unbalanced, 100% fun.

Natural Wonder Overhaul: https://humankind.mod.io/overhaul18 . This mod changes the natural wonders bonuses from +5 influence and +10 gold to something unique to each natural wonder. Some are clearly stronger than others and this mod may increase the RNG of the game a bit too much for Multiplayer, but in Single Player this is a nice addition if you love exploring and work with the cards you're dealt with.

10 Star Eras with 2 Star Neolithic: https://humankind.mod.io/10-star-eras-with-2-star-neolithic . This mod increases the era change requirements from 7 stars to 10 stars (and the Neolithic from 1 to 2 stars), making the eras last longer. Use it if you want the game to be more punishing to players behind and force all players to farm a bit more fame each era.

Eventful: https://humankind.mod.io/eventful . Adds 21 new events to the game. While the writing and art isn't as good as the official events, those add a sprinkle more variety to the game and can throw a few curveballs at you. A great mod to add to your normal mod loadout since it is basically extra content.

Tonlo's Religion Gameplay Extended: https://humankind.mod.io/religiousgameplay . A big slew of changes all related to religion, including units, techs, civics, tenets, and more. This puts religion on the forefront of the game making you interact a lot more with it and giving huge bonuses and penalties. A must have if you want to experience what can be built upon the religious foundation the base game presents.

Community Progressive Difficulty: https://humankind.mod.io/community-progressive-difficulty. A mod that overhauls AI bonuses to give a more dynamic experience. In general, the AI will get more bonuses as the game goes on, but it'll benefit the fame leaders less than the underdogs. Also makes the game way harder on HK and Civ diff.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Lastly, I want to shout out creators that didn't fit in the previous categories but are also very worth to take a look:

Duskendawne: https://mod.io/members/duskendawne . Duskendawne is a prolific modder, a great artist, a fantastic person, and a witch to boot! She released high quality cultures with custom art that are very interesting. Besides the culture mods, her Heroes and Legends series is very fun, as it bring "hero" units into the game.

BigPharma: https://mod.io/members/bigpharma2 . Another great culture modder, BigPharma may have a smaller roster of cultures, but they're all top notch. All his cultures have clear themes and some even boast custom art. Check his cultures out for more variety in the game.

Baroque Linguist: https://mod.io/members/baroquelinguist. Our last culture modder featured in this section has fewer cultures than the above two, but is more experimental with another types of mod. I would like to highlight his Avatar:The Last Airbender series, which bring cultures and modifiers based on the animated series into the game, to be played with or without the custom AtLAb map.

FIMS Overhaul: https://humankind.mod.io/fimsoverhaul . Shakee is an inspiration to us all and one of the modders with the deepest understanding of the game mechanics. His mods are very experimental and carry deep insights, even if aren't the most refined. Out of all his mods, I highly reccomend FIMS Overhaul as it completely changes the game's resource generation mechanic, putting a bigger emphasis on population. Its really impressive what Shakee can do with the humankind mod tools and I'm sure I'm not the only modder who has learned a lot from him.

[Dorok]

Well, that's cool for other players, but one detail, 10 Star Eras with 2 Star Neolithic is totally pointless with last game versions for the 10 stars eras. And I have some doubts that the mods balances are fine with last game versions if they haven't been updated and re balanced.

For me the best mod (but tried very few) from far is Humankind Personas:
https://gc2021.com/showthread.php?tid=53

It allows create yourself your personas, it's a total must have in my opinion, replacing a feature missing in the game but that should exists.

And second best mod for me is Humankind Teams:
https://gc2021.com/showthread.php?tid=43

It's more a mod for coop that allows play in teams. But I quote it as a fun way to get a new play mode in SP. There's many cool variations to try, but I don't know if it suits well last game versions, I used it many time in SP, but not with last game versions.

Ok as I didn't tried many mods yet, argue it's a best of is a bit exaggerated but it's 2 mods that added a lot to my plays, I can't say that for a few other mods I tried.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by brunocarvalhopaula:

Community Progressive Difficulty: https://humankind.mod.io/community-progressive-difficulty. A mod that overhauls AI bonuses to give a more dynamic experience. In general, the AI will get more bonuses as the game goes on, but it'll benefit the fame leaders less than the underdogs. Also makes the game way harder on HK and Civ diff.

Well, no it doesn't make the game harder with last game versions, a bit easier in fact, but it removes in very first parts particularly Neolithic some annoying AI bonuses like Power +2 that can screw up some starts.

But it has a big problem with last game versions, it disable totally pollution, or at least it removes entirely the pollution bar at top left hence you also lost the global pollution information. I won too fast when I tried it to know if also pollution effects are removed.

EDIT:
The pollution bug should be fixed, because it doesn't matter it's a little bit easier at last difficulty than the game with no mod, the changes in first parts are quite a plus.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by brunocarvalhopaula:

ENC: https://humankind.mod.io/extended-naval-combat . Not much to say about this one. It greatly expands the martial part of the game with new techs, units and modifiers. A great mod overall that deserves it spot at the top of the popularity charts.

Quickly browsed it, it's a huge change, I'll try this one at next play. :-)

One detail caught my eyes and chocked me a bit, it's the very high pollution decrease of weapon resource, it's a very powerful feature and not even have to bother with pollution seems not right.

That said I play with an AI mostly constantly picking Soviet and loving weapons resources to excess, have weapons unleashed could create a serious problem to solve.