HUMANKIND™: City Guide (Resource Prioritization, Where to Build, Stability and Expanding)

1/ The different resources:

In Humankind you produce different types of resources: Food, Industry, Science, Influence, Money.

– Food allows you to grow your population. The more population you have, the more workers you have that can work in your districts. In addition military units cost population to produce. Therefore food is extremely important for any military endeavor, both defensive and offense.
– Industry allows you to build districts, units and improvements. It is an extremely important resource that will allow your population to be more effective at what they do; produce resources.
– Science allows you to research new technologies. The technologies will allow you to discover new improvements to build as well as new units and new game play mechanics (i.e. more city cap, more laws, etc.).
– Influence allows you to create new cities, build outposts and attach existing outposts to your cities. It is difficult to scale it early game as only a few improvements and unique districts produce influence.
– Money allows you to rush production and pay the upkeep cost of your units. You can also buy luxury and strategic resources from your neighbors.

2/ Basic order of importance

In the early game you can build different districts that improve your output in these types of resources. In addition they unlock slots where your population can work for even more output.
Yet what is the most efficient strategy to outboom your opponents? Here’s a rundown of what I would consider the best prioritization by order of importance:

1/ Influence
Influence is a valuable resource early on as it allows you to expand your borders and build new cities. It is however difficult to scale your production of it as there are very few improvements and district that produce it. Invest in influence quite early without neglecting your other resources.

2/ Industry
As industry allows you to build districts and infrastructure that can and will improve all resources I consider it top priority.

3/ Food
Food is not to be neglected as you need it for more than simply boosting your output. As military units cost pop to produce and as food is needed to have more pop in your cities, you must have a heavily populated city in your empire. This city will allow you to churn out fodder for your military machine both for defense and offense. Also population can be used to slot workers in your city that will boost your resource production. It is usually less effective than districts but it is more versatile as you can instantly switch your production to where it’s needed. I usually aim to always have a food positive balance; meaning my cities will eventually grow their population. Every time you see one of your cities starting to have their population decline then it is time to invest in a new food district.

4/ Science
Science is important to give you more tools to build your cities how you see fit. New technologies will help you discover new improvements, new district types as well as new overall bonuses for your empire. Research centers are not unlocked right off the bat though. Before that you would need population working as scientists in order to boost your research capabilities. I usually invest in a research center when my industry allows me to build a district in less than 4 turns (in Endless mode).

5/ Money

Money is quite limited in terms of use and needs in the early game. Rushing production is too expensive to be relied on consistently and unit upkeep is very cheap early on. It does allow you to buy luxury and strategic resources but beware as your trade routes can be plundered. Only trade with close pacifist neighbors (aka no one in higher difficulties) or if you have a huge cash influx.
I only start investing in money in the medieval era as unit upkeep starts to become hefty.

Your cities can use industry to produce different types of districts, infrastructure, units, projects and repeatables.

Worst: Repeatables

First off repeatables are quite useless. Avoid them. They are expensive and provide only measly, though permanents, benefits. The only time I consider them is when I’m in desperate need of influence (but even then your industry is better spent elsewhere).To give you an example: the feast repeatable will give you 5 food flat while building a district will usually give you 10+ food that will improve with tech. A new pop will give you +6 early game that will scale to more than 10 late game.

Best: Districts

Districts can provide huge benefits to your cities. They give you very good yield depending on the type of district you build.

Second best: Infrastructure

Infrastructure can provide huge boost to your cities that already have a few districts by improving all the tiles worked on by your city. For example Irrigation canals will give you +2 Food to all your tiles that contain a river and are worked on by your city. It can potentially drastically improve your resource output. It is however difficult to know exactly how beneficial one of those infrastructures will be as the game does not tell you how many resources it will give you at the time of construction. You will have to manually calculate it by looking at the topography of your city to see if it’s worth it.

Honorable mention: Luxury and Strategic resources

Strategic resources are resources such as Iron, Horses or Oil. They allow you to build units and infrastructure that require those resources. Their benefits scales as the more of the resource you have the more it will improve your output. One example are Horses in the early game. As soon as you have unlocked domestication you will be able to build Barns. Barns give you a boost to your farmers as well as +5 Food for every source of Horses exploited in your empire or traded with neighbors. It is potentially a very good source of food in the early game.

Luxury resources are resources such as Sage, Silver or Ebony. They provide a boost to one of your basic resources output to ALL of your cities as well as a stability boost. It is quite valuable as it scales, can be bought by your neighbors (without you losing access to it, win/win) and boost all your cities.

Those two can be built in only 1 or 2 turns or early and can be quite valuable to have.

– What about units?

1- What is Stability?

Stability is a measure of how supportive your cities are of your rule. It is measured from 0 to 100%.
It is important to regulate your stability and keep it high in order to benefit from it.

Here’s a rundown of the different stages of stability and how they can affect your city:

0% and below: Your city will revolt. Armies will spawn and if they take your city it will secede from your empire.

0-30%: Construction in this city will be impossible except for districts and infrastructure that would add stability.

30-90%: Neutral stability. You can use the city as needed.

90-100%: Good stability. Positive events are more likely.

100%+: It is possible to have more than 100% stability as a buffer of sort but your city will still display 100% and you won’t have any added benefits.

2- Stability and Events

You might have noticed that your cities get events from time to time that allow you to make certain choices. Some of these events are positive while others are negative. These events are tied to your stability. The less stable your cities are, the more likely you are to encounter a negative event and the other way around also holds true.
Note however that, even at max stability, negative events can still happen, they just have a lower chance to pop.

3- What affects Stability?

Most districts you build will give you a penalty to your stability (usually -10%). Therefore the more you city grows, the less stable it will become. Attaching outposts will also negatively impact your stability.
On the other hand some districts and infrastructure allow you improve the stability such as the Garrison (District) or Public Fountains (Infrastructure).
Furthermore, units garrisoning in your Main Plaza (the center of your cities) will have a positive effect of +5 stability per unit that can be improved by some infrastructure.
Moreover, events can also have a positive or negative effect on your cities. Some events can reduce it by up to 50% while other can improve it by 20%.
Finally some cultures have a temporary stability boost when you build certain districts. Ancient Egyptians for example have a +10 stability temporary boost when they build a Maker’s District which temporarily offsets the -10% stability debuff from build this district. It allows you to take measure before stability becomes too bad.

4- When to deal with Stability?

I always aim to have my stability as high as possible, therefore 100% is my mark for when I stop building Stability related stuff. Sometimes however, events dictate your strategy. For instance, it might be better to quickly build a unit to defend your city that will soon be attacked.

At the beginning of the game you don’t have a lot to help you deal with stability and therefore you should be careful when building new districts. Garrisons however are unlocked quite early and can frankly be a life saver in this area. Public Fountains and other types of hygiene infrastructure are also a good thing as it will boost by 15 or 20% your stability. It is only in the late classical era/early medieval era that you unlock the Commons Quarters that can boost your stability depending on the number of districts surrounding it.

5- Strategy

I build districts as I need and when I see my stability starting to go down then I invest by order of priority in new units, stability infrastructure, commons quarters (if unlocked) and finally garrisons.
In some rare cases, I would build a garrison first to defend a strategic choke point against an aggressive neighbor.

1- Humble Beginnings

Everything starts at the Neolithic Age. During this era you have to grow your tribe as much as possible. Here’s a basic rundown of what I do:
– Chase down any and all curiosities of food and science.
– Every time I got an event for the first 10 turns or so I choose to spawn a new unit.
– Split your units to cover more ground.
– Once you reach 5-6 units (depending on the ground you covered) let them grow in size. Never let them reach 4 units though.
– Hunt Deers every time you see them as long as you have one unit full health. Always manual fights and simply defend and let the deer kill itself. If you manage to get the high ground then attack.
– You can kill Mammoths with 2 units. Same strategy as for the Deers. It’s better to hunt them with 3 units and avoid choke points where you can’t surround it.

2- Choosing a good territory

As soon as you have a good size in the Neolithic era (around 10-15 units) then you can think about capturing some outposts.
Usually territories come in different flavor: those with luxury and/or strategic resources and those without.
Usually if there isn’t any strategic or luxury resources then you can find a good spot with a bit more yields. I aim to settle in those spots as long as there are neighboring territories that have strategic and luxury resources and that I can grab easily when in the Ancient Era.
If you manage to find a territory with a Natural wonder then outpost it asap. It will give you more influence early on and you will need it. It might not be the territory you choose as your first city though.

In the end, my goal is to find a territory with a yield over 20 (Industry+Food) to be my first city. If I can find one above 30 then it’s better (but it’s not always possible).

3- What are the uses of an outpost

Extending your city cap