Hello!

I bought Humankind a couple weeks ago and I am absolutely addicted to it now. I love this game. I love the ideas behind it, even if it's still a bit rough around the edges in terms of balancing. It's a great game, I love it. For one thing, the terrain of the game is varied, beautiful, and interesting, thanks to both the game's focus on changing elevations and their impact on battle tactics and its artistic direction in general. Every world I generate feels unique, and the variability in terrain leads to interesting battle strategies.

For all this beauty, however, the terrain feels lacking in a few ways, specifically in regards to diversity. For this reason, I would like to request the addition of:

- Wetlands. Marshes, bogs, and swamps are important parts of our environment's biosphere, and can be excellent sources of food, for example through rice cultivation or cranberry harvests. The great Aztec city of Tenochtitlan was famously built on a swamp, for example, which served as both moat and breadbasket. In addition to their importance in agriculture and biosphere diversity, wetlands also are important militarily, slowing and hindering chariots, cavalry, and tanks. Whether it's the fields of Agincourt or the wetlands of Vietnam, history often changes where earth and water mix.

- Permafrost. Just a frozen marsh that can be unfrozen through pollution-driven climate change, and then starts functioning as wetlands.

- Cactuses in some desert biomes but not others. Just a saguaro or prickly pear here and there or something.

These would really help to show that different parts of the world are, in fact, different, and add to Humankind's existing beauty. There's one other, related thing, though. While it would make perfect sense to see North American or Eurasians hunting mammoths, deer, and bears, not only is having only three animals in the game bizarrely limited, but it also doesn't make much sense for, say, the Egyptians or Nubians to be hunting Mammoths in the Upper Nile. That's why I would like to request the following animals to be included in the game, appearing in the appropriate biomes:

- Elk/Moose

- Antelope

- Bison/Buffalo

- Hippos (aggressive and dangerous!)

- Canidae (aggressive but not super dangerous)

- Tigers (aggressive)

- Alligators/Crocodiles

- Wild Elephants

- Emus

and finally

- Whales (in the ocean, obviously)

I know this game is called and focused on humankind, and that should be the focus, but I think adding a bit more to the world that SHAPES humankind could take this game and make it even more breathtaking than it already is.

Thank you, reader, for your time. I want to make this suggestion as best as I possibly can, so please give any feedback you can think of.

Valmighty wrote:

I like the idea. Elephants & whales should be a resource (ivory & whale oil for commerce) The elephant itself should be a mandatory strategic resource for elephant units. Right now they're overpowered, so it only makes sense if they require strategic resource.

But this is too much for current release, so maybe we'll see this in a DLC/expansion.

Whales are a resource already, ambergris, and there is a city building for whale hunting later in the game. That's enough whale representation.

Elephants should not be a strategic resource. I think it would be poor gameplay to implement a resource so few of the cultures in the game need.

I'm not sure how big of a problem it would be if elephant units required a strategic resource. Horse units already do, you're probably not going to pick a culture specializing in chariots or cavalry if you don't have access to horses after all, so if you don't have elephants you can always just go with a different culture. That said, they probably would work better as a luxury resource on account of their prized ivory, after the hunting phase of the game is over, at least.

As for whales being animals in the ocean I just thought it would be neat to have an animal unit you hunt with boats that you can play Captain Ahab with if you want to. For a large part the oceans of Humankind feel like a place where there just isn't much to do.