In strategy games like Civilization, placing your next city is always about the numbers. Where can I get the best yields? Which placement will offer the most potential? What's the optimal choice here? These decisions often don't take into account the visual aspect of terrain and instead focus on the underlying coding - if the developer says there's +2 food in them hills, then there is.
Humankind - the recent Civilization challenger from Endless Legend creator Amplitude - subscribes to this, but it also manages to put forward another path: settling somewhere just for the feels.
Humankind is one of the best-looking 4X games you'll ever play. Its verticality and representation of hills and mountains can produce truly striking vistas. We often see it inspire posts like this one, in which players are simply revelling in the beauty of what they've created rather than taking the more clinical route of chasing synergies. While you could do this in any strategy game, it feels more viable in Humankind, and purposefully so.
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