Stability Management Guide

Learn how to manage stability in Humankind on the highest difficulty. This guide covers AI bonuses, combat strength, and strategies for luxury resources and expansion.

This document is meant to serve as a general guide on beating Humankind on its highest difficulty. I love the Civilization series(really the 4x genre in general), and believe Humankind has the potential to exceed it in the future. I've beaten this game several times on its highest difficulty and wish to share my experiences. At the time this was written, the game has only recently released and is likely subject to much change - updates may invalidate much of what is written here.

Humankind Difficulty and General Strategy

As described here: https://humankind.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty

Though the player suffers no penalty themselves, on the highest difficulty the AI are given the following bonuses:

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

Note that the FIMS bonuses are all flat values that scale with workers. Because these bonuses are flat rather than percentage based, they tend to not scale well. For example, early on in a city with with 9 population with 3 workers, the +9 industry would require potentially 3+ Industry Districts to offset. In contrast, if a late game AI city has 60 population, 15 of which are workers, that would amount to a +45 industry bonus. A +45 industry bonus is easily offset by half of a Strip Mine or a single Jama Masjid. What this means is that the player will be at a severe disadvantage early in the run, and due to the way the FIMS bonuses scale the run should in theory become easier over time.

The combat strength bonus is significant, and comparable to the difference between a given culture's emblematic unit and a normal unit(ie. swordsmen vs Shotelai) and basically impossible to offset during the neolithic/ancient era, and thusly means combat should be avoided during the first two eras. As the game progresses, electing to use the Professional Soldiers Civic and leaning towards the Homeland ideology axis will balance this deficit out.

The effect of the bonus stability is difficult to measure - but it almost certainly scales in such a manner that it decreases as the game progresses and you get access to more sources of stability. The strategy to compensate for this is mostly by trading for luxury resources.

The general strategy is thusly:

1. Do not engage in war early on(until classical at the earliest, usually medieval).
2. Establish trade for luxury resources.
3. Grab Agrarian and Builder cultures early on and scale into late game where AI FIMS bonuses fall off. Scaling is most easily accomplished by building wide rather than tall.
4. Win the game by acquiring as many stars/fame as possible. Please note that because of the way Fame works it is generally not optimal to immediately transcend cultures, as you will likely only earned a fra