In this guide I’ll explain how to render a neighbouring city defenseless, where it can be taken with any unit, using the Greener Pastures affinity action in Humankind. We’ll first discuss how a city is defended in Humankind, then we’ll discuss the Greener Pastures ability and then we’ll look at how it can be used to take over an enemy city without a struggle.

First, let’s look at how a city is defended in Humankind. In Humankind, a city is defended by its population. A city with 0 population has no defensive strength, unless an army is within its reinforcement zone, and any military unit will instantly take over the city.

Next, let’s discuss the Greener Pastures affinity action of Agrarian cultures. The Greener Pastures affinity action lets you take population from nearby cities into your own city by spending influence. It will usually target foreign cities, but may also take population from your own nearby cities. You can see where the population come from by hovering over the affinity action.

Finally, let’s discuss how you can use this to take out foreign cities. You can use the greener pastures affinity ability to take over all of the population from a nearby city that is low on population. You can then walk in, for example, a nearby scout unit and instantly gain the city. This works best against independent cities with low population, but might also come in handy in a war where reducing the population of a city you want to take over reduces the number of units you will have to deal with.

So, in summary, use the greener pastures ability to take over population from nearby foreign cities and then you can simply walk into the city with any military unit to take it over if the affinity action resulted in emptying out the city to 0 population.