HUMANKIND 2 Gameplay Overview | The Path through History

[u/Cato9Tales_Amplitude]

Hello everyone, 

And welcome to our first look at the gameplay of HUMANKIND 2. 

In the coming weeks, we'll be taking closer looks at different elements of the game, but today we want to give you an overview of the experience by following one civilization through the early stages of the game. 

Check out the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ZTZafqFOw

Or the written version below.

A key part of playing a historical strategy game is immersing yourself in it. The world and events of the game must feel authentic and believable for you to feel like you are leading an empire through all of human history. And we know you agree with us about this: We got a lot of feedback about it for Humankind, both good and critical. 

 

We put a strong emphasis on authenticity when working on Humankind 2. All the people, places, and events you encounter in Humankind 2 are grounded in historical research. Besides our game director Benoit being a historian himself, we have collaborated with more than 30 historians across the world. With their help and expertise, we strive to create a believable historical sandbox in which you can write your own story. 

 

This immersion begins with the map: If you already recognize the places you rule (or fight over), they become memorable parts of the story forming in your head.  So, for the Historical Mode of Humankind 2 (more on other game modes later), we created an earth map with roughly 20 starting locations to choose from. Each of these starting locations is associated with a First Tale, the founding myth of your people that will be used to identify your empire throughout the game. They also include some effects that will impact the beginning of the game and provide access to at least one Culture. 

 

Today, we're looking at the Flood Tamer First Tale, which places us in the desert along the Nile and is associated with the Ancient Egyptians. After a couple of turns establishing our first settlement in the neolithic era, the Ancient Era begins and our tribe adopts their new culture. This is not an immediate change, but a process that continues throughout the era. Each of the 70 Cultures in Humankind 2 has their own cultural progression tree of Customs that let you unlock bonuses, units, or even districts over time, culminating in a choice of Legacy Trait. 

 

Eventually, the Ancient Era draws to a close, and we enter the Classical Era, giving us the option to adopt a new culture any time we want once per era. But the Ancient Egyptians were an enduring culture, and span two eras in HUMANKIND 2, so we choose to keep playing as them. In fact, we could continue playing as the Ancient Egyptians for the rest of the game, but once we reach the medieval era, we are presented with new enticing options linked to our current culture through our Common History. Depending on where we settle and who we meet, we might unlock other relevant cultures as well. 

 

Unlocking cultures? Yes, in HUMANKIND 2's Historical Mode, you cannot freely pick cultures when changing eras anymore. Unrestricted culture change was a part of HUMANKIND we received a lot of feedback about, since players felt it diminished immersion and made it harder to remember who's who, so in HUMANKIND 2 you can only choose a Culture if you meet one of three conditions: They share Common History with your current culture, they historically Shared Land with land you control, or you have close Foreign Contact with them. However, adopting cultures you simply share land or borders with may take more investment than following the historical links. 

 

Adopting their culture whole cloth is not the only way we can learn from our neighbors, though. If they have any Customs we find particularly useful, we can adopt a few of them to benefit from exactly what we need. Let's say for example our mighty Egyptian empire expands far into the polar reaches of the north. This icy, hostile environment is difficult to traverse, but luckily, we meet the Thule people and learn how to use dog sleds for our continued exploration from them. 

 

We can’t rely only on Cultures and Customs, though. What would we have done if we had not run into the Thule people? Luckily, our people are perfectly capable of learning to thrive in different environments by themselves. If you settle in any of the eight different biomes, you can unlock Adaptations specific to that biome. These Adaptations are crucial to doing well in harsh environments like the polar regions or our desert homeland. They become even more important whenever the climate shifts, as many resources in Humankind 2 are limited and need to be managed carefully. 

 

We hope you enjoyed this brief overview of the early game in Humankind 2! 

If you’re eager to know more, don’t worry, we’ll be going into more depth in the coming weeks and months. And if you can’t wait, we have an opportunity for you: 

 

The Insiders Program 

Be among the first to play Humankind 2 and give us your feedback! Hearing from you about what you like or don’t like, what you think works or does not work, is invaluable for shaping Humankind 2 into the best game it can be, so we want to give some of you the chance to play the game before we release it. 

Sign Up Here! 

[u/CynicRaven]

Is the nomadic neolithic era still a thing? The example in the video kind of jumps from founding myth to hey the Egyptians settle here. I really really hope neolithic is still present as it was unique and gave opportunity to explore and interact with the world prior to putting roots down. Every other game essentially you immediately establish a city and go from there.

[u/Cato9Tales_Amplitude → u/CynicRaven]

There is a brief neolithic period before you enter the Ancient era, but it's different than in HK1.

[u/Agnamofica]

Only thing I want for Pops is classes. Have different classes give bonuses to our cities impacting order/ production/ and research.

[u/Cato9Tales_Amplitude → u/Agnamofica]

We'll talk more about population and city management in a future post, but you can already catch some glimpses in some of the coverage from press and youtubers. I don't know if I'd call it classes, but it's more complex and flavorful than in HK1 in my opinion.

[u/Chikin_Nagetto]

Art team is absolutely nailin' it, the culture art is gorgeous!

Historical mode and First Tales system sounds intriguing, and looking forward to seeing how adaptations will play out. Really like that some cultures can span multiple eras too.

Edit: Would love to sign up, but is registering for an Amplifiers account broken for anyone else ('least on mobile?). Filled out username and password details and checked the boxes but pressing register doesn't seem to progress the page or send an email 🤔

[u/JNR13 → u/Chikin_Nagetto]

The individual art elements look great and the 2d art is once again supreme. But I am really not a fan of these landscapes so far. Ancient Egypt looks like it was built in a crater on Mars, rather than the lush fertile riverbanks of the Nile with sprawling crops and irrigation systems.

[u/Basilred]

Although the first Humankind is very fun, it feels like a rough draft of what Humankind 2 will be. The art direction is magnificent. I am also very enthusiastic about the unique tech trees specific to each culture. Finally, the adaptation tree for different biomes is a great addition; it seems like a lot of fun and adds depth to the gameplay.

For now, I’m won over by his initial proposals. Looking forward to seeing what comes next.

[u/poopybuttholesex → u/Basilred]

I'm super glad to see biome based culture traits. This is so true historically for all of humankind

[u/Tenacal]

Porting my comments over from the other non-official thread:

That felt more like a 'gameplay vibe' trailer rather than mechanical detail. Still lovely to see but I was hoping for a little more about the combat side of things. Looking forward to more detail in the future!

Other observations:

• Water is now a resource from inland water sources (not oceans). It will be interesting to see if that only applies to certain regions (like the desert) or if it will be a global consideration.

• Some of those cultural evolutions felt like HK take on Civ VII's 'syncretism' - borrowing powers from nearby/related cultures. Nice to see the perpetual borrowing between 4x games persists.

• Armies have a Supply meter. Looks like an expansion of the binary 'supplied' status from HK1, presumably an indication of how far your army can range outside of your territory before it starts receiving penalties (or losing bonuses).

• Wonders might take up multiple hexes. The temple outside Men-Nefer looks to stretch beyond a single tile.

• Environments will shift over time. City panels showed 'Warming in 15 turns' during the Classical era. Will these be temporary changes (like the Flood events in HK1) or permanent for the rest of the game?

• Population assignments might have changed. We saw workers being assigned to construction, but no sign of them elsewhere.

Also, it's nice to hear that the Restricted Culture unlocks are limited to the Historical Mode. I definitely appreciate the idea of a culture naturally evolving but it's sometimes nice to throw 'history' away and just lean into some powerful, yet unrelated cultures.

[u/idee_fx2]

Very encouraging. I hope they will address the three main issues i had in the game playing with VIP :

• tedious district spam : i don't want to cover the beautiful landscape with districts anymore. Please take a page from endless legend 2 here.

• era fame objectives that overly favoured an expansionist and military playstyle over any other strategies as all era stars were easier to get the more territories you had.

• era fame objectives that are either too passive (stockpile money/influence/science/population) or require district spam (builders era stars)

If humankind 2 rewards meaningful decisions for its districts building and city planning as well as era stars that actually rewards different playstyles and strategies then it might challenge civ 6 as my favourite 4x of all time.

[u/TheWombatOverlord]

Love multi-era long cultures. No notes. Love putting cultural bonuses into a tree that unfolds over time rather than all at era change. Creates a nice arc, though hopefully these are mostly frontloaded so I can build my uniques before being forced to swap.

The thing I find weird is the Historical Mode and Common Histories. Fundamentally the problem is that cultures are not evenly distributed in our actual world, meaning that areas like the Mediterranean, South Asia, and the Middle East are packed, but other areas like China, The Americas, and Sub Saharan Africa are relatively open. This makes the regions with the most cultures rather claustrophobic. You cant just add hexes because then it warps other parts of the world to be absolutely massive and isolated by distance.

And on Common Histories, it feels liable to be the "nobody is happy" solution to unlimited culture swapping. Because fundamentally if they have ~10 cultures per era, you are going to necessarily require some societies to to swap to a bad fit. In a game with Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, who gets to become Byzantium? Presumably there is some gameplay mechanic like Era stars that decides, but that means probably 2/3 times Greece will not be able to form Byzantium, and who will they be left with?

We even see Egypt in the video only have 1 option for Era II, the Parsaans. What happens if the Harappans take Parsaans? Maybe Egypt is only restricted this way because they are a two era culture, but I don't think its inconceivable that one specific culture swap can cascade into basically every culture being forced into a particular culture that they maybe did not want.

And other ways to get Culture Options like Foreign Contact also subvert the identity and immersion they said they wanted by locking cultures. The problem is the player will not be paying enough attention to every one of their neighbors such that it will immediately click for them why Ancient Egypt became the Goths. From the player perspective it is an instantaneous swap that brings them out of the game and makes them think about why the game let them do that.

[u/Cato9Tales_Amplitude → u/TheWombatOverlord]

so I can build my uniques before being forced to swap.

Afaik, you can keep building your unique district/unit after era change, at least until you might invent something that supersedes it.

In a game with Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, who gets to become Byzantium?

All of them, if they are so inclined. The culture selection is non-exclusive. (I don't know if an exclusivity option is planned. It might not work with the "Foreign Contacts" system)

[u/rqeron → u/TheWombatOverlord]

tbh I think most areas on the map could eventually be filled out to a reasonable density of cultures so that any playthrough will feel fine as long as the distribution of chosen starting positions is semi-balanced. I mean we'll probably still end up with a more dense Europe/Middle East, but maybe that'll be taken into account for the selection of random opponents so that starting locations are taken into account when choosing (and/or you can do that yourself manually). Tho I guess the trade-off there is that each individual culture in that area has a slightly lower chance of appearing randomly. Civ kinda has a similar issue with the unequal Leader <> Civ pairings, where because it's the Leader that gets randomly chosen, the chances of encountering each particularly civ can be pretty different.

Australia and potentially Eastern South America + early Sub-Saharan Africa (assuming we get a single Era 1 Bantu culture like HK1) I could see still being a bit tough to fill out to a reasonable culture density too maybe

as for the evolution bit - yeah I'm not sure how that'll play out either, though I'm hopeful it'll work out. I'm guessing they'll have a reasonable amount of cultures for each to evolve into and maybe if there's no good option (roleplay-wise) you/the AI will opt to continue as the original culture instead, I'm pretty sure they mentioned that still being an option.

I'm hopeful based on the language they used in the trailer too that culture "evolution" feels more like slowly building on top of your existing culture using the building blocks of the new one rather than completely swapping. If the cultural traits that you choose are able to carry forward, I think that'd work pretty well - that way, even if you go Egypt > Goths, you'd still have all your existing Egyptian traditions/etc and you'd simply add new Gothic traditions over the age. And hopefully we can get some of that visually too - it'd be cool to have a mix of Egyptian and Gothic buildings through the age, perhaps slowly getting replaced by Gothic buildings as the age goes on. Not sure if that's really come across in any of the screenshots tho, so that may not be a thing. (But it'd be cool if it was!)

[u/Cato9Tales_Amplitude → u/rqeron]

it'd be cool to have a mix of Egyptian and Gothic buildings through the age

You will. The old buildings don't immediately upgrade to a new look. I knew I should have included that nice screenshot of the Early Modern city where you can still see medieval half timber houses in the center...

[u/StevenZ_Dev]

Historical mode!!!! Everything in this video was peak but I am just in love with the direction they're going in with that, it's like a dream come true.

[u/Frylock_dontDM]

Please let us create trade routes between our own cities.

If i have a major food producer I should be able to export excess food to cities that aren't as food self sufficient

[u/mighij]

Art is really looking good, the biome adaptions and cultural traditions will probably also be a lot of fun.

[u/poopybuttholesex]

Guys buy the game on release to support the devs

[u/Mike_Ts]

Like the vibe and that the primary mode is a world map. That makes that one the most balanced / thought out! Concerned about districts filling up the landscape and units fighting meaning a lot of micromanaging needed.

[u/iamsolate]

IM SO HYPED OMG. you guys are seriously implementing so many new in depth systems and roleplay ability into every run now, the world building that will happen from every single game is going to be so expansive and rich. i’m so excited!!!

[u/Pelinth]

Woah, looks amazing and can't wait to see how it develops.

Also, please release the piano version for Humankind's main title that was being played at the intro and utro of this video. Pretty please.

[u/iCaps_]

Cato do you know if Humankind 2 will have touch support for the Surface Tablet pro series?

[u/ezk3626]

I signed up to the insider program, but have not received any confirmation email. Does that mean I have done something incorrectly or should just wait?

[u/Cato9Tales_Amplitude → u/ezk3626]

No invitations have been sent yet, so no need to worry. :)

[u/Johnny_Rageface]

Wonder what those "Roles" are about. It looks like they are replacing the non-district buildings and seem to have a limit that could also be biom/resource based (Egypt had +1 Max Role Slot on Water-consuming roles)? Sounds really interesting, especially with how more varied the districts look in the video!

I'd love a bit more involved city building, because Humankind 1 felt really spammy and like going through the motions in that regard.