Nomadic Civ - How to.

So as I promised Valk on #erebus, I'm posting some ideas for how to go about creating a nomadic civ. Now, before I continue, let me define a nomadic civ: A nomadic civ is one that a city is able to get up and move. The closest that I am aware of to this at the moment is the tears, but they aren't really a true nomadic civ - which city is primary moves, but each individual city, once placed, is stuck there. Here I will be writing down a few ideas for possible ways to create a nomadic civ.

Way 1 - Spell Movement.

This way is probably the easiest to implement. Basically, this is a python spell with two parts. The first part is just a spell that allows the second to be cast by a unit (the unit can be a normal unit, an ICBM style unit, or some unit that is created specifically by this spell). The other thing it does is remember which city cast this spell. The second part is the actual movement spell. What this does is takes the plot that the move-to is on, then goes through and find out everything about the original city and puts it in the new one. Then, once all that is complete, it goes and deletes everything about the old city, removes that city, and removes the ruins (and if possible, suppresses the "city destroyed/new city built" messages, and any changes to the armageddon counter). This method neatly avoids the problem of a civ not having a city for a time, and can be easily modified (new dimensional 3 spell anyone?). However, it doesn't really fit the bill as a "Nomadic" civ... nomads usually have units moving around most of the time.

Way 2 - pack up and leave.

This fits the bill as a nomadic civ - they stay permanent for a while, then pack up their gear and move out. There are a few major problems with this however, and I will try to address them point by point.

The first - as it is now, after you have founded a city, no cities means your dead. There are two possible fixes for this; first, only allow nomad movement of up to all but 1 of your cities, second, modify the DLL for to add the trait "nomadic" (or something similar), that makes it so that this civ is always flagged as "Requires Complete Kills" (or if possible, require there to be settlers/mobile cities, but still be killed if there are no settlers/mobile cities left).

The second problem is how to keep buildings/culture etc. (especially for things like holy cities/wonders). Basically, I see several possible ways to solve this. The first is to create a set of promotions for every building, stackable promotions for things like population/culture, promotions for religions/guilds etc. Its a bunch of work, but it would probably be possible to do this for everything - the problem only comes in for things like the palace and wonders... do those wonders still exist? etc - this could probably be fixed for everything but the palace by making equipment for the wonders, but that would mean that all wonders were movable (not really what we're looking for). The second method would be to take and copy everything into python, then attach this bit of python to the unit, to be placed back into a city when it reforms. The last way would be to use something similar to forts/settlements - its there, taking up space, until a city comes along and plops everything down onto it (and wonders would stay with that "settlement"). I don't like this last method however, as it still requires permanent, unmovable settlements.

I saw some more problems with this, but for some reason they seem to have vanished on me...

Way 3 - mobile buildings.

The best example I have of this is starcraft, the terrans (most of their units can lift up and fly away... slowly), or warcraft, the night elves (some of their buildings can uproot and act as defenders). In this case, there would be the city and units. The city would act mostly like a normal city, but the buildings would be units with a promotion on them. This promotion would then allow them to create a building within the city - basically, use the current mage building mechanics (inspiration/hope etc.) How far you wanted to take this could be entirely up to you - you could have units representing population, bonuses for culture, units for every building, the ability to combine units to allow one unit with many promotions on it, etc. You would however have to use method 1 or 2 to actually get the city to move however. This could work very well with some sort of floating empire, the tears, a plant civ, etc. It also allows the most flexibility for how far you want to take the concept. Do note, I tried to do something similar to this with the amurites last summer (basically, make it so that they summon buildings, not build them), but I didn't like how it played so I didn't release it. This may work much better with other civs, or with new civs though.

Way 4 - Mobile City.

The best example that I have of this would be D&D's flying cities, or some kind of treant civ. Basically, in this case there is a "City" unit. This unit then gains promotions according to different aspects of the city (promotions for buildings, promotions for population, etc.), much like the mobile buildings stated above. When the city grows in population, the unit has an auto-acquire promotion that tells it how many population it has, how much culture, etc. When the city builds a building, the unit gets an auto-acquire promotion for that building, and then that city gets a must-maintain building (again, like the mobile buildings above). Wonders and and religions would also have to be promotions on the unit. Then, when you want to move your city, the unit casts a spell that turns all those auto-acquire promotions into unchanging promotions, frees the unit to move, and destroys the city (or turns it into a fort or something - choice is up to the creator). The unit can then move around until it finds another spot, then cast another spell (say, settle), which creates another city (preferably of the name of the unit), and this city would then get the buildings from the unit, and the population from the unit, and the unit would change those promotions from permanent to auto-acquire.

Summary
Basically, unless you go with option 1, to create a nomadic civ you are going to have to spend all the time and effort to create a set of promotions for every building, decide how you want to handle wonders/religions/guilds, and then a little bit of python to allow it. It is work intensive, and will probably have lots of bugs and unforseen consequences, but it is possible.

If you have any ideas or things that I might have missed, please let me know.

-Colin

Reserved

I'm not going to say exactly how we'd use this, or when we'd use this... Keeping it to ourselves for now.

Basic thoughts:

1. We wouldn't be using a mass of promotions; Rather, I'd add a 'onMove' call to units (I'm aware of the standard one, but I refuse to activate it; It would run when ANY unit moves. This one would only run when a specific unit moves, like onDeath) and move the city via that command
2. The city itself would not be packed up (not for this; Doesn't fit)

There is one more problem. Why would you want to move your city?

Real nomads are nomads because they have to. They abuse the land they settle on and move on when it no longer supports them. The moment they figure out sustainable agriculture they abandon their nomadic lifestyle.

In civ you generally settle a city because you want it there. Good tiles remain good after being used for 300 turns. In fact they usually become better as you invest worker-turns in in building improvements and pop-turns in upgrading Cottages et ceterea.

The obvious way to solve that problem is introducing a series of very low yield improvements that upgrade automatically. When they hit some threshold they become high yield and require harvesting to upgrade. After being used for a while, they degrade to the original improvement. The idea is that they are used in a cycle, and a nomadic civ could move their cities to greener pastures when the currently used improvements downgrade. A normal civ could still benefit from the improvement type as a way for a single pop to work two tiles at a lower efficiency.

Of course, the AI would have no idea how to use it, but I think that's a given for any nomadic civ.

To be honest, the only use I have planned for it is not actually nomadic. It is something different, and only falls under this because the cities will move. Or rather, some cities will move.

I know what valk is talking about, and his method is nothing like what I had been thinking of when I came up with these ideas. However, there are a number of decent reasons to have mobile cities.

1. using method 3 or 4, if you really needed the military power, you could mobilize your cities to war as well. I can see several cases where this might be a good idea.

2. GTFO - you are being attacked, with no hope of victory - pick up your city and go elsewhere. Your opponent gets the "victory" of taking that spot... but you didn't really loose anything either.

3. Steal other people's spots. If you have one location with lots of food, and another with other really good resources, but no way to quickly grow it, you can build a city by the food, grow it, then move it over to the new spot.

Now, the methods I described all involve the city itself getting up and moving, and not being a city while moving. His method is to have the city still be a city while moving, which has certain other... issues... It also has other advantages. Until he wishes to state more on his idea however, I am going to keep silent.

-Colin

odalrick said:

There is one more problem. Why would you want to move your city?

Real nomads are nomads because they have to. They abuse the land they settle on and move on when it no longer supports them. The moment they figure out sustainable agriculture they abandon their nomadic lifestyle.

In civ you generally settle a city because you want it there. Good tiles remain good after being used for 300 turns. In fact they usually become better as you invest worker-turns in in building improvements and pop-turns in upgrading Cottages et ceterea.

The obvious way to solve that problem is introducing a series of very low yield improvements that upgrade automatically. When they hit some threshold they become high yield and require harvesting to upgrade. After being used for a while, they degrade to the original improvement. The idea is that they are used in a cycle, and a nomadic civ could move their cities to greener pastures when the currently used improvements downgrade. A normal civ could still benefit from the improvement type as a way for a single pop to work two tiles at a lower efficiency.

Of course, the AI would have no idea how to use it, but I think that's a given for any nomadic civ.

Click to expand...

It would be cool if there was actually a civ for that gets a boon for each improvement, but has a chance that the land below becomes worse (grassland --> plains --> desert) as it does not care for the consequences of its exploitation of nature.

readercolin said:

Way 2 - pack up and leave.

This fits the bill as a nomadic civ - they stay permanent for a while, then pack up their gear and move out. There are a few major problems with this however, and I will try to address them point by point.

Click to expand...

This method is actually easier to impliment than it sounds without any horribly complicated code. In fact, it can be done with mostly XML work and a few changes to some python. The basic idea is that you make settlers into something like national units (limited to total number of cities - 1) and when built they receive promotions based on the size of the city, culture level of the city (including foreign culture) and the buildings that the city has. Then, when they found a city you evaluate their promotions and apply those effect to the new city. If you care about keeping the city name the same that can be handled by transfering the name to and from the settler unit itself.

The problem here is that a large number of possible buildings really bloats your promotions file so the ideal solution is to design a civ to be nomadic from the ground up and make them more reliant on improvements and a few buildings than the traditional design of tons of buildings and a few improvements. Things like a holy city wouldn't make sense to move so you can add exclusions to when the settler can be built to prevent abnormal things from happening like moving the great lighthouse to a city with no coastal access. Of course, since a nomadic civ should play very differently than the others preventing them from building the normal wonders or founding religions wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. And combining some of the original buildings into more thematic versions could give the civ a unique flavor while reducing the number of building you'd need to track and move in the first place. For an example they could build a 'Cerimonial Hut' in place of a monument, pagan temple and elder council.

readercolin said:

Summary
Basically, unless you go with option 1, to create a nomadic civ you are going to have to spend all the time and effort to create a set of promotions for every building, decide how you want to handle wonders/religions/guilds, and then a little bit of python to allow it. It is work intensive, and will probably have lots of bugs and unforseen consequences, but it is possible.

Click to expand...

It's tedius work indeed, or it can be without proper planning, but the implimentation itself isn't really that hard, especially compared to what has been done already.

The only true hurdle is getting the AI to understand when to build settlers for a civ like this. Again, creative use of the canBuild() method can help, but it's not going to be easy

odalrick said:

There is one more problem. Why would you want to move your city?

Real nomads are nomads because they have to. They abuse the land they settle on and move on when it no longer supports them. The moment they figure out sustainable agriculture they abandon their nomadic lifestyle.

Click to expand...

In RifE this should be obvious.

You simply degrade the terrain using the existing 'climate' system to the point where it would eventually become worthless, then you know it's time to pack up and move. If you also limit their total number of cities making each city extremely important you'd have plenty of reason to keep moving to greener pastures. Since the terrain will naturally revent to normal over time once your culture no longer influences that plot you can come back, eventually, as long as nobody else settled in while you were gone.

I had a work concept in base Civ4 for nomadic civs a while ago, unfortunately I didn't have things like RifE's climates and I never could get the AI to make intelligent choices on when to move. I used a chance to permanently change a worked tile into wasteland, but since that would eventually destroy the world I needed a way to change them back which effectively negated the need to move away if you were patient.

Imuratep said:

It would be cool if there was actually a civ for that gets a boon for each improvement, but has a chance that the land below becomes worse (grassland --> plains --> desert) as it does not care for the consequences of its exploitation of nature.

Click to expand...

Seven05 said:

In RifE this should be obvious.

You simply degrade the terrain using the existing 'climate' system to the point where it would eventually become worthless, then you know it's time to pack up and move. If you also limit their total number of cities making each city extremely important you'd have plenty of reason to keep moving to greener pastures. Since the terrain will naturally revent to normal over time once your culture no longer influences that plot you can come back, eventually, as long as nobody else settled in while you were gone.

Click to expand...

The problem is that terraforming is really easy. It wouldn't force a nomadic civ to move, it would force them to micromanage a horde of Adepts.

Not if they don't get access to those spells.

Yeah, it requires a civ made with it in mind, obviously just taking one of the existing civs using all of the existing mechanics would be a nightmare.

I can actually see someone like say, the Austrin, or the Chislev, being modified rather easily to fit the bill for a nomadic civ. Again, there would need to be some changes (some rather significant) to how they work, but it is possible to modify an existing civ to fit the bill. The tears are actually a pretty good example of one way to do a nomadic civ - the only problem with them is that they can't actually move their cities, instead, the cities get less important after a while, and eventually implode.

And you are right - if you go about it, designing a civ specifically to be nomadic, a lot of the tedious XML work could be cut out. But using one of the methods that I described instead of the one that Valk is thinking of would probably make it a lot easier for an AI to understand, at least, for use as a primary city.

-Colin

readercolin said:

So as I promised Valk on #erebus, I'm posting some ideas for how to go about creating a nomadic civ. Now, before I continue, let me define a nomadic civ: A nomadic civ is one that a city is able to get up and move. The closest that I am aware of to this at the moment is the tears, but they aren't really a true nomadic civ - which city is primary moves, but each individual city, once placed, is stuck there.

Click to expand...

Concerning Tears, they are now nomadics in a sense that they do NOT have any cities, but still can research and produce units. So it is indeed different from your idea.

One does wonder though where/how will they move? With the barbs/animals the way they are (Inb4 animals being changed) or even if their changed you'd still have the issue of other factions just settlling the empty space? How would you get around that issue?

For Austrin I think they could build heavily on airships as they revere Tali. If you create an early airship unit (that can not enter ocean tiles, but still can enter coastal tiles) this could be quite useful with a nomadic mechanic. What would be cooler than flying cities that consist in a number of airships gathered together. It would also deliver a good explanation how buildings are moved: They are anyway built on airships and thus can leave the city without having to destroy the buildings. On the downside you have to build airships to have houses, but it has to have some disadvantages to be flexible.

Rasta69 said:

One does wonder though where/how will they move? With the barbs/animals the way they are (Inb4 animals being changed) or even if their changed you'd still have the issue of other factions just settlling the empty space? How would you get around that issue?

Click to expand...

A big army?

Doesn't Rise of Mankind have abandon city / demolish building options? I.e. kind of like razing one of your own cities? Listed as a feature, will have to refresh myself on how it plays.

Simpler idea though might just be toying with Kuriotate mechanics, you know how you can promote a settlement to a city, hey, maybe you could demote a city to a settlement. Basically choose what the "hubs" of your empire will be, everything else is just cultural placeholders / resource claimers, read as small enclaves of your citizens, with their little garrisons and whatnot. Maybe they'll rise to prominence again if their great lord and master wills it (i.e., promote back to city), maybe not!

It might be more important to abandon cities if resources were at risk of depletion (hey, my sheep vanished!), but that's not currently in any FFH mod I know, unless it's like the "Ikol want pigs, give pigs back!" event. I think ROM: A New Dawn does either talk about or implement some kind of resources petering out mechanic. Again, if you ran out of Mithril near one of your FFH cities which you settled on ice just to claim it, sure, might be a good reason to pack up and find a better use for your people!

To me it begs the question why bother with cities? have it purely based on units & forts, using arcane units to produce science. Literally sculpting an army out of the land for an army(So definitely not humans, or well the main military aren't humans). Use of slaves aswell (maybe give them a couple HN slaver type units?) Then use the slaves to sacrifice straight into units, or science(appease a God with their souls for knowledge) or set them to some task to gain GPP.

My simple little brainstorm, I just dislike the idea of nomads having cities

Grimz101 said:

To me it begs the question why bother with cities? have it purely based on units & forts, using arcane units to produce science. Literally sculpting an army out of the land for an army(So definitely not humans, or well the main military aren't humans). Use of slaves aswell (maybe give them a couple HN slaver type units?) Then use the slaves to sacrifice straight into units, or science(appease a God with their souls for knowledge) or set them to some task to gain GPP.

My simple little brainstorm, I just dislike the idea of nomads having cities

Click to expand...

Which is why the one use I have in mind for this isn't nomadic, and has sedentary cities as well as the moving ones.

It would make more sense if I explained, but I won't do that; Nothing beyond a concept at the moment.

Is this possibly for the Bezeri?

By the way, I like that idea about sculpting the land to make units for a civ. Hmm... posibly a golem civ, or something else...