Fans of Civilization, Celebrate! Humankind is Looking Good

I love Civilization. More than 20 years ago, with a certain degree of shyness, I would ask my grandfather to let me play the first installment on his computer during family meetings. I played the second entry for years with my friends – usually, in our favorite, WW2 scenario. It's not surprising that I adore Civilaztion 6. It's one of my favorite games, even, and I regularly go back to it.

And so, I was absolutely stoked to see a growing fad for Civilization clones. Sure, there's no shortage of 4X strategies (exploration, expansion, exploitation, extermination), but they usually use science-fiction, or even fantasy as setting. When it comes to a realistic, historical setting, Sid Meier's series hasn't really had much competition – but that's bound to change. Right now, you can play an early version of Old World (available only on Epic Store, so it's easy to miss), and next year, Humankind will be released. I played a few hours of Humankind recently, and while there's still a lot of work to get done, I have a good feeling about it. Because it won't just be a clone of Civilization.

IS IT GOING TO BE OKAY?

Of course, it's difficult to say much today about whether Humankind will be a success or not. The game from the French Amplitude studio is still far from finished, not to mention that getting to know any complex strategy requires a lot of time – after seeing what's what, I'm not surprised they'd decided to postpone the release.

Civilisation must look good…

PROS:

1. beautiful graphics;
2. a lot of freshness, it's not just a clone of Civilization;
3. trying to show history with more realism;
4. a few references to games from Paradox Studios;

CONS:

1. I'm not a huge fan of the extensive, turn-based battles;
2. ...but it's just a demo, so there's probably nothing to worry about yet.

...and even though looks aren't everything, Humankind looks like a million dollars. Beautiful and great cities, fantastic graphics, atmospheric music. It doesn't take a PC-games specialist to know that Steam is full of banal and crappy games. There's so many of them it's easy to get lost. Humankind is a visibly high-budget game. That's nice news, especially for those who don't like indie games.

But let's start with the basics. Humankind that may resemble the Civilization series at first, or even second glance. We build cities, pyramids or factories, fend off invasions, with the gameplay spanning the entire story of mankind. We start at the very origins, and follow the next stages of the development of our civilization. Despite appearances, however, the game from Amplitude is not a clone of Sid Meier's series – the closer I looked, the longer I played, the more differences I saw.

Civilization must have high replayability…

...and Humankind looks promising in this respect. I really like the general idea that we don't choose a particular civilization, culture or nation at the beginning. It's a classic approach in Civilisation, and the new pretender to the strategic throne offers something different, seemingly a lot more interesting. We start as a tribe of hunter-gatherers and freely explore on the map for the first rounds, gathering resources – again, unlike in Civ, you don't start the game by establishing the first city right away. The game considers the entire period before humans settled down to cultivate land and engage in horticulture. We can chose from 10 cultures of the given era. There's six eras in total, and in every case, we assume a slightly different identity. Each of them, of course, offers different bonuses, some of which stay with us until the end of the game.

CIVILIZATIONS

The demo offered only a few cultures. We could play as the Egyptians, whose specialty is building; the Babylonians, who have the highest intellect and are great with science, and the Mycenaeans (the same civilization as in Trojan War: Troy) are specialists in warfare. The next era (unplayable in the demo), brings Romans, Goths and Huns.

The creators boast that we potentially have a million different combinations of different cultures, which of course sounds cool as a slogan, and probably won't be that amazing in practice, but I still appreciate such capabilities. First, there's not many Romans in modern era – it's sort of fun in Civilization, but a more realistic approach shouldn't go amiss. Secondly, it will enrich the mechanics (although I'm a little concerned about the balance), and introduce a role-playing dimension.

Paradoxical fashion

There are a few things in the gaming industry that we can always be sure of. There will be a new Call of Duty in the autumn, Ubisoft's next big game will be heavy on micropayments, and fresh ideas will instantly find imitators. Take Slay the Spire, for instance – this original card rogue-like was released in full version only a year ago, and today, we can play more or less similar clones (Monster Slayers or Monster Train). It's all the more surprising that it took so long for creators of these strategy games to use the great ideas from Swedish studio Paradox. It changes with this game.

In Humankind, we have to make difficult decisions reminiscent of Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings. For example, after a big battle in our city, many crippled soldiers may appear. It will be up to us whether we greet them with ovations (celebrations and additional bonuses for several tours) or try to use them for different work, reducing the cost of producing some units.

It may not be the same calibre of decision as in CK, which I wrote about in the preview of the third part, but I'm glad that even these "hard" 4X strategies lean a little towards role-playing. When I played Stellaris, a huge part of the fun for me was actually getting the feel of the civilization, experience its ups and downs. Then, there were the stories generated by the game. I don't think Humankind achieves this kind of potential yet, but as I mentioned – it's only an early version of the game, so who knows, maybe at the premiere we will get a strategy that not only plays brilliantly, but also generates interesting stories?

But these aren't the only Swedish influences that are easy to spot in Humankind. In the game, we will have to constantly consider the stability of our civilization. The solution is similar to Europa Universalis, and it means that if the development of your civ is too fast, it may bring about more troubles than profits.

A civilization must have an identity…

...and Humankind is not a simple clone of Civilization. Have I told you about it? I've mentioned Swedish influences before, but there's more to unpack. Take combat, for example, which resembles the solutions known from Endless Legend. When our army, usually composed of several units, attacks the enemy, a small arena will be set on the strategic map, and we will be able to deploy our troops and face the enemy in turns. Interestingly, larger battles can take more than one turn of global gameplay – which nicely underlines their monumental significance. I always felt strategy games don't clearly show that many wars were ended by merely one or two major battles – although Humankid isn't going to change that, it attributes more significance to battles that take more than a single turn, and I loved that.

However, after considering the details, I have to say the combat wasn't really to my liking. The idea itself is cool, but implementation was limping – the clashes were not clear and too slow, but, again, I understand that we only saw an early version of it. . I am convinced that the creators are well aware that battles need improvements.

City development, on the other hand, is quite interesting in Humankind, and it's quite distinct from Civilization. First of all, the boundaries of the settlements are really large. At first, it was hard for me to get used to the idea that I could build upgrades (of mines, for example) so far from the centre – for someone raised on Civ, it was quite surprising. But it's a step in the right direction – after Civilization 6 introduced districts, the creators of Humankind also draw attention to the fact that ancient cities were often tantamount to nations, and their influence could be felt far beyond the city walls.

As you can see from these few examples, the creators of Humankind decided to make the game a little more realistic than Civilization. It won't be possible to lead a civilization as Ghandi and nuke your enemies, or defeat the Romans with a Polish empire – at least I can't see that happening. Will this approach work? It's hard to judge right now because on the one hand, it sets the game apart from its competitors, but on the other, it may lack its own identity – after all, realism itself is not an advantage of the game in and of itself.

Historic sandbox

Good times to be a player Maybe we're even facing over-abundance. I still haven't had the time to play Old World, and it's just one of the dozens of games I've installed over the last months and haven't even launched. That's why I'm still not sure if Humankind will ultimately be a truly riveting experience for me in 2021. It's too early to make such judgments.

During the presentation of the game, Amplitude staff emphasized that their goal is to create tools that players will be able to use creatively. First of all, our most important task will be to collect points of fame – our civilization will be able to do great things, as well as inflict evil. Wage war or achieve progress through science. Build a home, or burn the cities of your enemies. One way or another, the world will remember. The question today is: will the players still remember Humankind a year or two after the release? I certainly hope so.