The heart and soul of Humankind’s gameplay centers around the concept of evolving cultures throughout any given game where players change cultures to best suit the constantly developing strategic landscape. Each of the 60 cultures modeled in-game have their own unique features, units, and districts, which can be overwhelming to new players due to the sheer number of combinations.
However, the developers at Amplitude Studios grouped all cultures into seven distinct categories that represent the specific culture’s specialty. To ease players into this fresh system, we’ve composed a guide going over the major features of these groups, called affinities.
Here are the seven main cultural affinities in Humankind:
– Aesthete
– Agrarian
– Builder
– Expansionist
– Merchant
– Militarist
– Scientist
And here’s everything you need to know about cultural affinities in Humankind.
Aesthete
The Aesthete affinity group sees cultures specializing in influence, be it pure influence income or efficient use of stockpiled influence. Cultures in this group gain two abilities: Cultural Blitz, which pressures a targeted territory into the empire’s sphere of influence, refunding some influence in the process; and Grace, which normalizes all ideological differences between the empire in question, its neighbors, and any independent peoples, making diplomatic deals easier.
Aesthete cultures are quite interesting in that they may seem like the stereotypical diplomatic faction, but considering this group’s propensity to higher influence generation means they can place more outposts down quickly, and then attach them to any nearby cities. Additionally, Aesthete cultures typically have special emblematic districts that only give them extra influence income, but also some extra income for another resource, giving them plenty of flexibility in strategic decision-making.
In essence, this culture group can play tall or wide and can be surprisingly expansionist and cause ideological problems for other empires that have worse influence generation.
Agrarian
The Agrarian culture group loves its food and does everything to help with population growth, which can make wide cities absolute economic powerhouses. The two central abilities of Agrarian cultures are Land of Plenty, allowing the empire to spend influence to steal population from a nearby territory, and Community, which sees every new gained population increase a city’s stability rating by a small margin.
Cultures assigned to this group are generally straightforward in their playstyle and are masters of exploiting fertile land to ensure that their cities can maintain large populations and still keep growing. More population available per city means there are more productive workers to assign to resource generating jobs and also more population that can be converted into military units.
Take care as a city grows in population to fully utilize its productive potential, as it’s vital to ensure there’s enough space and job slots to employ the populace.
Builder
Where Agrarians focused on food, Builder cultures do the same, but for production and everything industry-related. The two main Builder abilities are Land Raiser, where a city can convert all food, money, and science into production for several turns, and Pride, which gives the city a small stability boost every time a new district is constructed.
Cultures a part of this group rely on their buildings and infrastructure projects to increase their city resource income and make each single unit of population perform more efficiently, since the way geography works in Humankind can create situations where industry heavy terrain may not necessarily provide much food. With high production ratings, Builder culture cities can develop rapidly, respond to changing circumstances flexibly, and expand across the land steadily.
The Builder culture group may struggle early on as they need time to set up their districts and utilize the terrain to their advantage, but once they get the industry ball rolling, there’s little that can be done to stop them.
Expansionist
Expansionist cultures, in a way, are the more militarized and war-oriented cousins of the Aesthetes. They benefit from the following abilities: Under One Banner, allowing the empire to spend money and command an army to annex an unowned outpost or administrative center, and Ambition, letting armies cross opposing city borders without having to declare war.
The Expansionist culture group usually has a mix of benefits to both units and influence generation, without necessarily specializing in one or the other. What this allows these cultures to do is to effectively protect their claimed territories, but also move quickly across the map and acquire more land while threatening and bullying less militarily-oriented cultures.
Going for an Expansionist culture might be useful if players feel like their current land is subpar in terms of resources and there are potential threats nearby that may block access to better land.
Merchant
Merchants are the ultimate money makers and will have features that improve their own money gain or allow them to apply it more efficiently. Their special abilities are: Power Investor, spend influence to place a resource extractor on owned territory or for other empires leading to improved relations, and Mediation, which lets other cultures repurchase resources that a Merchant culture itself bought through trade.
This cultural affinity has some similarities to the Builders’ speed of city project completion in that Merchants earn enough money to buyout construction projects to finish them immediately, essentially speeding up city development. Unlike industry, though, money also has diplomatic uses and lets Merchant cultures recruit mercenaries from independent settlements, bribe said settlements, or purchase vital resources from other empires.
Merchants definitely want to maintain amicable relations with nearby empires and factions to earn more money and, in turn, speed up their own development.
Militarist
Militarists are the more combat-oriented brothers of the Expansionist culture group. Their strategic special abilities are Iron Resources, letting a city raise an army of city militia based on population availability, and Vigilance, which gives Militarists a general bonus to their War Support rating, which is used to determine success and overall dominance in a war.
You might think that Militarists are simply dumb, brutish factions that want to constantly fight wars, and they can certainly play that role, but in a way they are far more calculated and defensive in nature. They definitely want to fight, but the success of Militarists isn’t necessarily predicated on conquest and taking over territory, as they don’t necessarily have the same influence gain as Aesthetes or even Expansionists.
Ultimately, it’s important to be wary of Militarists and their movements, but players can leverage their inherent threatening posture to maximize their economic and diplomatic gains.
Scientist
Scientist cultures care less for the petty whims of the Militarists and look to the future and overall social and technological improvement to get ahead. Their cultural abilities are Collective Minds, which converts a city’s food, industry, and money into science to speed up research, and Foresight, permitting the research of technologies beyond the empire’s current era (normally cultures have to advance from one era to another research technologies of that era).
Science-affiliated cultures’ main goal is to gain an advantage over other empires through research of technology that could give them an economic or military edge. Kind of like Builders, Scientists require some time to get set up and get their speedy research going and leave all other empires Stone Age.
This group does need to play a careful balancing act of prioritizing long-term benefits from research versus the practical turn-to-turn needs that may drain resources away from technological discovery.
Humankind does a brilliant job of modelling the interaction between geography, empire proximity, and cultural features. The evolving cultures system opens many strategic and tactical possibilities for players to carefully ponder over as they progress through time. The trick for players is to use their knowledge of their culture’s affinity to find the right path to become the most famous empire in human history.
Humankind is available on PC and Stadia.
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