HUMANKIND – Combat Explained

Tips and Explanation for Combat

Everyone can move around in combat, if you have somewhere to go, and that is partly tied to how you set them up in the deployment part.

Some stuff on setting up:

• Try to take high ground, as it gives a bonus.
• Surround any ‘archer’ types with melee heavier units so they are safer
• Spears on the sides, warriors in the middle of a line/V shape with the archers behind/inside those.
• The archer, spears should have a space to retreat into. You want to retreat 3/4 dead units and replace with full health ones as the fight continues.
• Avoid fighting in weird terrain like single tile path through a mountain or 2 tile islands etc until you learn enough about these. Most such fights will not go well, unless you are actively trying to exploit the terrain (inferior troops or numbers).

There are 3 commands for a unit:

• Attack, crossed swords x
• Move, an arrow ->
• And defend, a J looking symbol

I prefer to have all my units defend the first round except the archer, who will fire if they can. Let the enemy come to you and take heavy damage doing it. Between high ground and defend action, you will have an advantage. However they won’t leave fortifications if you are assaulting a city. For that you need some other strategy, either superior numbers, lots of ranged units and lots of defense for them, better units than the target, or siege engines, or something like these ideas.

What the AI is doing: The AI prioritizes killing ranged units if it can get to them, and it will hit the same unit with several attacks to kill 1 guy rather than spread damage around. Other than this, it mostly is moving around to get better position (high ground, and I think rivers matter too) or to attack you.