Era-Specific Build Orders

Learn how to optimize your city development and military strategy across different eras in Humankind. This guide focuses on build orders for early, mid, and late game.

This guide is intended to provide a general strategy for playing Humankind on its highest difficulty. The information presented here is based on the game's state at the time of writing and may be subject to change with future updates.

Humankind Difficulty and General Strategy

On the highest difficulty, AI players receive significant bonuses:

• +3 Food per Farmer
• +3 Industry per Worker
• +3 Money per Trader
• +3 Science per Researcher
• +60 Stability
• +2 Combat Strength on all Units

These flat FIMS bonuses are most impactful early on and become less significant as the game progresses and cities grow. The combat strength bonus is substantial in the early eras, making early warfare inadvisable. The stability bonus also scales down in effectiveness over time.

General Strategy:

1. Avoid early warfare; postpone conflict until at least the Classical or Medieval era.
2. Prioritize establishing trade routes for luxury resources.
3. Select Agrarian and Builder cultures early to facilitate growth, and focus on expanding wide rather than tall to scale effectively into the late game.
4. Aim to accumulate as many stars/fame as possible. It is generally not optimal to transcend cultures immediately, as this can limit fame acquisition.