The First World War was the first industrial war. For the first time, such new weapons as a tank, a machine gun, an airplane, a submarine, and chemical weapons were widely used.

Chemical weapons are absent in 4X strategies such as Civilization 5 and Civilization 6.

At first I wanted to suggest the idea of adding chemical weapons to Humankind. To do this, I decided to watch a few lectures on YouTube and read a few articles. But unexpectedly for me I came to other conclusions and suggestions.

Chemical weapons of the First World War were used either in gas-balloon batteries or as shells with a chemical warhead (25-33% of World War I shells had a chemical warhead). And if the gas-balloon battery could have some unique gameplay, the gas shells were used from conventional guns.

Therefore, it occurred to me that units can receive a choice of several different properties when creating.

Units after the construction of the armory can get level 3 veterans and it is logical that the next buildings will give some other improvement, otherwise they will be useless.

(Perhaps such a system has already been created - we have not seen the last 2 Eras).

And for artillery can be the following list of properties:

1) chemical shells (greater damage to units in defense)

2) concrete-breaking shells (greater damage to units in the fortification)

3) sub-caliber shells (greater damage to tanks)

Such a system would show the differences between the military doctrines of different countries (or the difference between the infantry of the First and Second World Wars, which were armed almost identically).

What are your thoughts?

When declaring a war, there was a little option in Diplomacy screen. I don't remember it's correct name, but according to in-game tooltips, it enabled Players to deploy WMD in the war. So in addition to nuclear weapons,there might be other types of weapons in Humankind.

I’d personally be all for having it in the game.  It’s a dark chapter of human history, but it is a part of our history.

I think one of the reasons most games don’t feature chemical warfare is because The First World War, while being arguably the most influential war on modern culture, was such a small period of history, and is in my experience, one of the least talked about wars, sometimes even being called the forgotten war, at least here in the United States.

I’m trying to think of a way to implement it into the game, I think that if it were to come into the game, chemical weapons would probably be similar to how nukes are used in Civ, something you build in a city and then can launch from ranged units, such as, artillery, or flying units such as balloons or planes.  I even remember reading about; the French (I believe) using crossbows to deploy gas grenades, in one of the major battles.  Maybe they could do a fair amount of damage, possibly even to multiple units, across say a 2 tile radius.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how modern warfare is handled in Humankind.  As warfare changed dramatically from being one, or a handful, of major battles determining who would win and gain land, to modern wars of attrition, such as The battles of Verdun, and Passchendaele, where both sides suddenly have millions and millions of men to throw at battles, and infrastructure such as trains to get them there almost immediately.

Edit:

I’ve been thinking about your post, and I like your idea of military buildings allowing you to specialize units (I’m all for more player agency).  I think it would be a great way to implement things such as this into the game.