Humankind is a 4X game comparable to the Civilization series. Players lead their civilization across six major eras of human civilization, starting from the nomadic age, directing how the civilization should expand, develop cities, control military and other types of units as they interact with other civilizations on the virtual planet, randomly generated at the start of a new game. A distinguishing feature of Humankind is that within each of the eras, the player selects one of ten civilization types based on historical societies; this selection offers both bonuses and penalties to how the player can build out the civilization. Because a player can select different civilizations as a template to build upon, there exists potentially one million different civilization patterns that a player can ultimately develop.
Building out cities follows a similar model from Amplitude's Endless Legend game. A continent will have multiple territories on it, and the player will only be able to build one city in that territory. Over time, they can expand that city, adding farms and other outlying resources as well as more dense urban areas closer to the city center. This allows the creation of large metropolises within each territory. Players may also need to engage in combat with enemy forces. When this occurs, the game uses a tactical role playing game approach for detailed resolution of these battles, giving the player a chance to take advantage of terrain and special abilities of their units. Within these skirmishes, battles can only last for three combat turns before the game returns to the overworld, such that drawn-out wars can occur across multiple years at the overworld scale.
During the game, the player gains resources for their civilization similar to Endless Legend, which includes food, industry, gold, science, and influence; each of these can be spent to hurry up production, advance technology, or used as trade goods with other cultures. Humankind also adds Fame, related to being the first civilization to discover certain technologies or build world wonders. Fame remains a persistent measure of the civilizations relative success to other civilizations, and can have impacts on later decisions in the game. Unlike games like Civilization where there can be multiple victory conditions, victory in Humankind is based solely on the Fame score after a pre-determined number of turns. Humankind will include certain persons and events based on historical records that the player will interact with.
Building out cities follows a similar model from Amplitude's Endless Legend game. A continent will have multiple territories on it, and the player will only be able to build one city in that territory. Over time, they can expand that city, adding farms and other outlying resources as well as more dense urban areas closer to the city center. This allows the creation of large metropolises within each territory. Players may also need to engage in combat with enemy forces. When this occurs, the game uses a tactical role playing game approach for detailed resolution of these battles, giving the player a chance to take advantage of terrain and special abilities of their units. Within these skirmishes, battles can only last for three combat turns before the game returns to the overworld, such that drawn-out wars can occur across multiple years at the overworld scale.
During the game, the player gains resources for their civilization similar to Endless Legend, which includes food, industry, gold, science, and influence; each of these can be spent to hurry up production, advance technology, or used as trade goods with other cultures. Humankind also adds Fame, related to being the first civilization to discover certain technologies or build world wonders. Fame remains a persistent measure of the civilizations relative success to other civilizations, and can have impacts on later decisions in the game. Unlike games like Civilization where there can be multiple victory conditions, victory in Humankind is based solely on the Fame score after a pre-determined number of turns. Humankind will include certain persons and events based on historical records that the player will interact with.
The game is currently in (OpenDev) Beta on Stadia so there is gameplay. It is expected to release April of next year, have to say this game looks amazing. So much so that is expected to redefine the 4X genre of games going forward. Think the best feature is that battles have different turns thus separating it from the overall game, terrain plays a major part. So you could literally have a major war last a few years rather than several centuries like other games.