Seemingly similar at first glance, you might very well wonder what the differences are between Amplitude Studios’ Humankind and Firaxis’ Civilization 6. Both games are ultra sophisticated, time-spanning 4X strategy efforts in which the player takes control of a nation in a bid to advance them to a dominant end. Just what are the differences, both obvious and nuanced, between the two games though? Well, fear not my wannabe global despot, that’s what we’re here for.
History vs Fiction
Pretty much the biggest thing that separates Humankind and Civilization 6 is in the manner in which they deal with the leaders of each culture. Whereas Civilization 6 allows players to choose from more than 20 historical leaders including the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Peter the Great, Humankind takes a completely different approach, allowing players to craft their own leader entirely from scratch using a detailed character creation suite.
Changing Cultures
Arguably one of the other biggest differences between the two games, is how they deal with your choice of civilization (if you’ll excuse the pun). In Civilization 6, the civilization that you choose is the one that you play from beginning to end. In Humankind however, you’re free to change your civilization every time you commence a new era, or, you can quite simply continue with the civilization you started with and merely upgrade the units and infrastructure as you see fit.
Era To Era Progression
Another sizable way in which the two games differ in their approach to 4X strategy is in how each deals with progression. Instead of advancing from one era to the next solely through research, Humankind lets folks build upon their megalomania in a variety of other ways such as expansion of territory, population size and conquest. Quite simply, this means that Humankind rewards the way you play and allows you to progress through each era as a diplomat, military commander or economic savant rather than just an inventor as Civilization 6 presently permits.
War Never Changes… Except It Does
Combat in the Civilization games (and this is also true of the latest game in the series) plays out directly on the world map with single tiled units butting heads against each other until one of them falls over according to strength of the units involved. In Humankind however, combat is instead whisked off to its own special map where multiple units can engage and merge with one another, lending a whole heap of additional tactical possibility to each battle as a result.
Governments, Policies And The Branching Civics System
In Civilization 6 advancing the infrastructure and economic policies of your culture is broadly achieved by setting up a government and then attaching policies to them which align with your goals. In Humankind though, a neat Civics system is employed whereupon as soon as you perform an action a special modifier which compliments that action also unlocks. The kicker though, is that each action usually has two further options which each have very different functions and thus allows you to minutely tailor your civilization even further still.
Seeing It Through To The End
While games of Civilization 6 can very well end a long while before you reach the modern era simply by taking over the map in a much earlier time period, in Humankind every game continues on right to the end where Fame scores are used as a metric to see how effective you were in each era.
