Achilles Update

After a couple of weeks in the beta branch, we are ready to release Achilles Update 🎉

The goal of this update is to address some of the frustrations that players encountered and expressed regarding War Support, War Score, and Surrender.

We want to avoid players feeling surprised by a warm ending with little warning and create a clearer connection between demands, occupied territory, and available surrender terms.

Here are some comments from the devs regarding the update:

Let's start with a bit of context on the War System in general before moving to the changes.

When we first starting thinking about armed conflict during the initial development of Humankind, we mostly followed the Clausewitzian saying that held that "War is a continuation of Policy through other means". There were many interactions with what had happened before and during conflict, and a big resolution at the end where one of the sides was forced to surrender. While this approach worked well enough after release, we kept getting feedbacks that said that players were often puzzled as to why a war they were fighting had to end. Often, this boiled down to the War Support system not making enough room to account for all the subtleties of strategic context that may unfold during a war in Humankind. After smaller changes brought during past updates failed to resolve all situations, we decided to make a more drastic modification.

With the update we are separating the 2 aspects, War Support and War Score.

War Support, which used to being considered as your "War HP", is now meant to be your " War Stamina": it measures how long you can fight before the conflict starts taking its toll on your Empire's Population. Now, both sides can keep fighting after reaching a War Support of 0. It is the social consequences of continuing to fight beyond this point that should drive Players to make or accept a surrender proposal.

War Score has also been simplified to be solely related to your Demands and territorial gains during the conflict. Its calculation should be less finicky and more predictable for both sides.

Our hope is that these changes go towards having War outcomes that both sides agree with. At the end, its about giving you more control on the decision.

P.S There's always the option of proposing a White Peace 💡

Patch Notes

[Version Number >> 1.28.4612]

All surrender proposals can be refused now, even if you are at 0 war support

Both parties reaching 0 War Support no longer forces White Peace

While at 0 War Support, empires take a Stability penalty scaling with era and number of turns spent without War Support

While their enemy is ready to surrender (at 0 War Support), empires will take a penalty to their own War Support

Centralized Power unlocks an empire bonus that reduces the impact of lost and destroyed units on war support, so wars can last longer

War Score now only depends on demands and occupied territory, not War Support

You can now always declare surprise wars

(Together We Rule) The Placate action is now forbidden during war

Corrected the buyout formula to avoid inflation

Several new historical personas: Zenobia, Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi, Napoleon, Shaka Zulu, Artemisa, and Alexander The Great.

Then after some feedback we received from the community, we included a couple of extra changes ✨

Added a -10% Food, Industry, Money, and Science War Weariness penalty on all Settlements for

each refused Surrender while at 0 War Support.

Reinstated a one-time +10 War Support bump whenever an opponent that is at 0 War Support refuses a Surrender offer.

Reduced the "My Opponent is at 0 War Support" War support penalty scale to a maximum of -5/turn

Forbidden City Balance to be adjusted with the changes in War Support >> Now provides +25% War Score (instead of -10 War Support required to declare a Surprise War)

With these changes, you can keep fighting even if your enemy or your own people are ready to give up. You may have to deal with a few rebels if you push things too far, though 😉

Also, here is a video (from Amplified 2025) from the Devs talking about the details and explanation regarding the update.

Have a nice day ^-^