Humankind Diplomacy Guide

A Comprehensive Guide to Diplomacy and Conflict of War: Claims, Requirements, Battle Score, Absorption and Total Destruction of Empires

From the very beginning of the passage of Humankind, you are engaged in expanding territories. Gradual expansion will lead to conflicts with neighboring states. As soon as all other options for development are exhausted, the Antique era will not leave you a choice – you will have to move on to military operations. In this guide, we tackle the core issues of diplomacy and military support, claims, claims, and military counting.

Claims, claims and war bill

Certain actions of a particular Humankind empire can generate grievances or complaints. Here are some examples:

• Attacking units of another faction outside of their home domain.
• Illegal border crossing while the agreement on “Closed Borders” is in force.
• Transforming the population of an empire using a sphere of influence or ideology.
• Change of religion of the population.
• Population change through religion or belief.
• The choice of civil society “Religious Tolerance – Hostility” and the clash with empires, where a different state religion is professed.
• Refusal from commercial transactions and contracts.
• Violation of previously concluded contracts.
• Using outposts to capture territories that are close to the borders of another empire.
• War with someone else’s ally or the conclusion of an alliance with the enemy of an empire.

All of the grievances and grievances listed above last for 10 turns after they are presented to you, and each turn they generate military support points. You can also insist on your claims to translate them into claims. Satisfying the requirements will lead to the corresponding result. For example, it can be a breakdown of the union, monetary compensation, abandonment of a city or an outpost, a change of religion or ideology. If the demand is rejected, then the one who insisted on them will receive additional military support. Essentially, military support is how you relate to another state. And if the level of military support is increased to the desired value, you can proceed to military operations.

By default, the value of military support is 50. Meanwhile, militaristic cultures have a certain bonus in the form of +30. Bonuses can also be obtained through the Forbidden City cultural wonder. We talked about both in separate guides .

If you accept the Religious Principle of Giving Up Luxury, you will receive bonus military support every time you make a claim and while it is active. Meanwhile, the religious principle of “Support the Faithful” adds a little more military support in case of rejection of demands or violation of a treaty / agreement.

If both you and your opponent have active demands, you can move on to reducing tensions and returning a relative truce or declaring war:

• An unexpected warrequires only 50 units of military support and can be started at any time. But in this case, you will receive a traitor badge. You will lose military support every turn, and other empires will mistrust you. Moreover, your opponents will receive a bonus to the military score whenever your armies are defeated.
• Formal warfarerequires 80 units of military support. Militarist factions receive this value by default through the culture bonus. Thus, in other cases, you need to wait a bit for the claims and requirements to take effect in order to overcome the required military support threshold.

Wins and score boost

Combat Scoring is a special mechanic that will be familiar to many fans of Paradox Interactive games. And in Humankind, it is used to increase your rating while you are in the war. Here are some examples of increasing your combat score:

• Winning battles and killing enemy units.
• Looting outposts, cities, districts and places of resource extraction.
• The retreat of the enemy troops.
• The religious principle of “Tithe of the rich” and winning the battle or encouraging the enemy to retreat.
• The presence of the civil principle “Conquered empires are anti-imperialists” and victory in a battle or encouragement to retreat armies that chose imperialism.
• The presence of the civil principle “Conquered empires – imperialists” and victory in battles.
• The choice of Russian culture in the Industrial era and the seizure of cities.

Of course, you will lose Combat Score whenever these actions are taken against you.

Forced surrender: destruction of the enemy or vassalization

As soon as the opponent’s military support drops to zero, you will be forced to start negotiating a truce. Even if you do not have time to capture the remaining territories! Negotiations cannot be avoided or evaded. On the negotiation panel, you will see the current balance of the combat account. Think of these glasses as money for which you can buy certain truce terms. That is, their own rewards for winning the war. This can be the occupation of certain territories, monetary compensation, and so on. If you had active demands that led to the escalation of the conflict, then they will automatically be included in the truce conditions and the opponent will not be able to cancel them.

Each territory will receive its own value. Thus, the battle score is unlikely to be enough to swallow an entire empire in one war. Most likely, you will have to take part in several conflicts before you are able to destroy a faction or make an opponent your vassal.

You will have several options:

1. Destruction of the empire. In order to erase an opponent from the face of the Earth, you must destroy all his units and make sure that the faction has no cities or outposts left. Cities and outposts must either belong to you, or be plundered and destroyed, that is, completely erased from the tile.
2. Vassalization. This is an expensive process and for larger empires you may need 300+ Combat Score. Surely you will have to fight several wars in order to reduce the opponent’s territory and thereby reduce the cost of his vassalization. If you can do it, you will become the overlord of this nation. And every turn you will receive a lot of gold from her.

That is, during a military conflict, you will quickly reduce military support from 100 to 0 and begin negotiations on an armistice, than you will have time to bring the combat score to 300-400 units.

After the end of the armistice negotiations, military support will be reset to 0. Both you and your opponent’s. It will gradually rise to the default level (50), but you can also use new complaints and requirements to speed up the process for future wars. You can loot outposts and cities after they have been transferred to you under the terms of peace negotiations. This is necessary in several cases: for example, if you do not want to exceed the city limit. After studying the research “Military architecture” it will be possible to unite cities, but the process will be very expensive.