Humankind has a lot more than units and cities. There is a whole load of diplomatic situations and negotiation in this game as well.

When dealing with treaties or threats, players will be taken to the Diplomacy Screen. That’s when the player gets to see other people’s avatars and their own throughout a game of Humankind.

Besides representing the leader of an Empire, and therefore the player, avatars have a customizable AI that can be shared with your friends.

When you open the game, your character (or avatar) will be automatically randomly generated. But what if you want to change how you look?

Maybe you got tired of looking at your avatar, or perhaps you didn’t pay attention to its creation, and now you want to change it.

Whatever the reason, here’s how to edit your appearance in Humankind.

Changing Your Avatar

Getting to the screen where you can edit your appearance in Humankind is pretty simple. From the main menu, click on My Profile. Doing so will take you to another screen with four different options on the left. Click on Avatar.

Once you do it, you will get a brief text with an explanation of how your avatar is what other Empires see when they are interacting with you. Below that, you will find all the cosmetic options.

There are many avatars presets in the game — each with its own unique appearance and behavior. You should see their faces right in the middle of the screen.

Avatar Presets 1

Players can just click on one of those to change their appearance. But if that is not enough, there are plenty of options above the profile images of each preset to edit the avatar.

There are many options to tweak and adjust an avatar’s appearance. Players can change the avatar’s face, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, skin, hair, and even the color of their costumes.

Please note that the costume that an avatar is wearing during a game is defined by their culture and era, which is why you can’t change anything about an avatar’s costume besides its color.

AI Persona

The AI Persona dictates the behavior of your avatar, and therefore of your Empire when you shared your avatar with someone as a preset adversary.

This section allows you to choose your avatar’s archetypes, strengths, and biases.

Archetypes make you choose between extreme or moderate behavior. For instance, the Leadership archetype has players deciding if their Empire leader will be cruel, benevolent, or something in between.

There are ten different archetypes, and they’re all set to the default behavior, but players can change up to three of them in order to give the avatar a characteristic behavior.

AI Persona

Besides the archetype, the AI Persona also has its own strengths. They are bonuses that the avatar is given that provide a competitive edge in certain situations.

For instance, the Warlord strength gives your Empire +1 Combat Strength to Emblematic Units while Scientist provides a bonus of +1 Science on Research Quarter.

Finally, choose the biases of your avatar. That will influence the AI’s decision-making. There are ten different options to pick from, and they work as an adjective to your Empire’s leader.

For instance, Avengers retaliate until the aggressor is exterminated, Pilgrims space out their Outposts, Rushers attack others on sight, and Hired Swords value the recruitment of mercenaries instead of using their own population for war.

Does the Avatar Change Affect an Ongoing Game?

Changing your avatar will immediately change the appearance of your current empire leader in any ongoing game. Besides, when you change your culture, the avatar immediately changes their outfit as well.

Other than cosmetic changes, adjusting your appearance will not affect any of the gameplay of ongoing games that were playing out before you decided to make the change.

Final Thoughts

Avatars are just a visual representation of the player, and they are there just as one more nice element to the game. However, they will make no difference in the achievements of your Empire unless you’re using them for the AI.

Knowing how to capture a city and how to win a game of Humankind is probably more important than customizing an Empire leader. Either way, now you know how to edit your appearance in Humankind and where to set your avatar’s AI. Now go ahead and leave your mark on the world.