Brain Storming: Nomads

[Dom Pedro II]

I'm interested in the possibility of adding the ability to live a nomadic lifestyle for certain civilizations (Mongols included) but I'm not really sure how this should be implemented... Basically, I'm opening the floor to discussion... any ideas are welcome.

Doesn't have to be permanent (since industrialization will basically force anyone to eventually settle down), but that would at least allow some civs to be strong and contending with others in the early game with few (if any) cities.

Post any ideas you have no matter how wild and how much recoding might be necessary... I'm all ears.

 

[hetairoi22]

A possibility might be to add an additonal Settler-unit to the game, which becomes available later in the game, and make the already-existing Settler unavailable to certain nomadic civs. Then they would have to make due with a single city until the tech allowing the later Settler was discovered.

In addition you might give the nomadic civs a boost to unit-production (can you even do any of this? I haven't got the game yet, sadly) or something else.

 

[Roma Victa]

This would be an interesting way to play. Sort of a moving one city Civ versus the stationary Civs. You could possibly have very cheap to build Civ-specific settlers and limit that Civ to one city only until reaching a certain tech level. Give them something at that point that switches them to normal settlers and more cities available.

They would need a production boost to stay competitive until that point. Maybe make the city disband after a certain amount of time so the production boost can't be exploited by remaining stationary?

 

[snarko]

The problem as I see it is that maps are too small. Still, I want nomads too and I've thought of a way to do it that I might or might not use in the future:

The nomadic civilizations can build cities just like anyone else. However, they have limitations in what buildings. Also they can abandon a city and get a settler like unit that contain the entire population of the city.

To get them to move around they use up the land. Initially they have a bonus in yields compared to other civilizations but as time goes by they get less and less out of the squares. Eventually they get nothing and have to move on (but ideally you'll want to move on before this happends).

Ofcourse, balancing it would be very hard and require alot of testing.

 

[Mr. Will]

I am actually considering creating a nomads mod...
And I do have some wild ideas.

The basic unit of this nomadic society would be a "tribe" unit.
Basically, imagine a moving city unit that functions as the center of one specific subset of nomad. One nomad civilization would contain as many as of these as it can support.
This tribe would have a population like a city, but it otherwise functions completely differently. (It should be noted that it is a LIMITED population, and once a tribe gets to a certain size it splits in half, therefore giveing you 2 tribes to work with.)

Every turn, you pick a new spot to camp your tribe. The movement points should be at least 2. (Everything is moved using some sort of pack animal.)

You cannot produce anything in said camp unless you fortify, I guess a better term would be to dig in or settle for a short period of time. During this time you could produce units. For the sake of practicality, research will go on whether you are camped or not. (But probably more slowly.) During this camp your population will forage for food and give a modest food boost.

One of the main units of this civilization would be a hunter.
Strength 1
MP 2
+400 or 300% v Animals
Killing an animal would give this hunter a certain amount of food. Which it would transport to its tribe in return for population growth.

That is how your tribes grow.

As for production, I would consider building units out of this food supply also, instead of a population point. (Early game, little units that actually need "production") Much faster than regular building, however.

These nomads would also have basic military units as the other civilizations have. Possibye with added promotions (living a harder life, slightly stronger or faster, more durable, unsettled terrain bonuses.)

An extensive nomadic tribe with lots of hunter-gatherers could produce military units at a faster rate than stationary societies and pose a valid threat. Just like RL.

However, as the game goes on, a nomadic lifestyle becomes a dissadvantage.
Slower tech, outdated military units, no building advantages.
Eventually, if you reached a certain tech level your tribe could settle a permanent settlement.

It is also practical to not that other gathering units wold be necessary, like a forager or herder.

Anyway. These nomads could squat in an area with lots of good resources and then you'd have to declare treaties with them in order to get at the goods. (Tribes would have a small border extending from them, but no culture associated. Easy to culture flip if they camp too long nearby.)

Any ideas in there sound good at all or am I crazy?

 

[snarko]

Perhaps it would be an idea to have all civilizations start out nomadic and you can choose when to settle down? I haven't thought much about that, but you could start out with reasons to stay nomadic and the more techs you get the more reason to settle down.

 

[Karhgath]

Here are some suggestions. Some are not compatible, some are.

1) Nomad unit. Act as a mobile city. Can choose to 'Settled' on a tile, or 'Unsettle' and move to another tile. When settled, it works all 8 tiles around it at 50%(total divided by 2) and the tile where it is settled at 100%. Since you cannot build tile improvements, it acts as a poor size 5 city. The output is put into a global 'pool'.
OR
2) Each units acts as a small city. At the end of turn, each units are consider to work the tile under it since each units are hunting for the tribe. The output is put into a global 'pool'.
3) The global 'pool' is where all food/hammer/commerce ends up. Well, actually, you can never harvest commerce from a tile.
4) Some promotions could give harvesting bonus to units, like Hunter which gives + food/hammer on some resources(deer, cow) or gatherer which gives + food on certain tiles. Actually, a promotion could be needed for the unit to even start harvesting, which would give you a choice: harvest promotion or combat promotion.
5) You have a chieftain unit that acts as the 'capital'. Each units are spawned at the chieftain's location. It has only one queue for units. The chieftain gets some bonus stats or bonus promotions. When it dies, the next unit with the most XP become the next chieftain, but it 'costs' 5-10 xp. If no units have 5-10+ xp, you are eliminated.
6) If you go with 1), food in the pool would go toward building a Nomad unit, the hammers for other unit production. Each successive nomad are harder to build, similar to city growth.
7) If you go with 2), food + hammer goes toward unit production.
8) The chieftain acts as a barrack. Each units spawned at the chieftain starts with the chieftain's XP / 2. So if the Chieftain has 10 xp, each new units starts with 5 xp. It could also be a promotion: Chieftain 1(auto, 15% xp), Chieftain 2 (25% xp), Chieftain 3 (33% hp), Chieftain 4(50%)
9) Upgrading units cost money and can be done at the chieftain's location, or maybe on an appropriate ressource? (Horseman -> Horse Archer requires an horse resource)
10) You cannot build an economy or research techs.
11) You can Pillage or Raze cities. If you pillage, you get tons of money and a chance to 'steal' a tech like in older civ games. You cannot attack the city again for a number of turns. If you raze, you only get some money but the city is destroyed. Pillaging is the only way to get tech and money, beside 'demanding' cash and techs from another leader. You can never control a city.
12) The cash you hoarded could give you bonus, so the more you hoard the better you become, could increase the max number of units you can have or something.
13) Playing a 'trading' nomad could work, if you allow commerce to be gathered. You could put less emphasive on offensive units and build some kinds of economy by trading resources and such. It would probably need another hybrid system, the one above is more suited for warmongering.

That's enough for now... I probably can think about trading nomads next.

 

[Karhgath]

I like Mr. Will idea combined with Snarko.

A tribe has a 'size'. Starts at size 1. When it reaches 8 it splits, 2 size 4 tribes. Citizens 'eats' much less food than normal.

When you settle, you start working on the tiles. You cannot build tile improvements and your city radius is only 1 tile (so 8 tiles + the one under the city). However, for each turn you work on a tile, it gets a 10% chance to deplete, for example. So after 10 turns, most tiles will be depleted. Anyone else building a real city there would get a depleted tile too, it could become a negative resources like a fallout. Could be 'cleared' later on with techs by workers.

Each settled tribe could have a cultural border related to their size, which would be pretty large, to have space to move to. If not, you'll end up having no where to go real fast, unless you have no borders and can settle on square if you are at war with the civ or something, without altering their borrder... open border would be problematic, since you deplete the tiles and would prevent your friend cities to work on tiles, so you could only settle on free tiles and enemy tiles. A pacific nomadic civ would be a rarity, as you'll have to declare war some day to be able to settle on fresh tiles

When you unsettle, you start losing population each turn, so if you stay unsettled for too long, you could reduce your size considerably.

Nomadic Lifestyle could become a new civic. It would give cool bonus compared to sedentary civs(faster unit production maybe, population eats less, bonus promotions, etc.), but would limit growth in the end, including techs and all. When you become sedentary all your settled tribes are converted to cities and unsettled tribes are settled in place and converted to city. If you want to switch from sedentary to nomadic, I dunno if it's possible. If it is, you would lose all building and such... it could be realistic, but in the game, with civs expanding their borders over and over, you would have nowhere to settle on so I think the switch to sedentary would be permanent.

Each civ could start as nomadic. Agriculture and other 'sedentary techs' could be moved later on the tech tree. Until then, nomadic needs to be stronger than sedentary, but with agriculture, and subsequent 'sedentary techs', staying nomadic would become less and less interesting, unless the are you start in isn't good for agriculture.

Sedentary techs really needs to be all on an optional tech path. Nomadic civs could advance (up to a point, probably industrialization) the tech tree without needing to discover sedentary techs.

You'd probably have to change city growth too, since right now, you don't need to irrigate/build farms on every tiles to grow like in previous games, often I have a couple of high food resource and the rest of the tiles are not farms, which would reduce the impact of agriculture. Then again, the fact that you cannot build any tile improvement would be a pretty strong case toward sedentary lifestyle alone...

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Hmm... all of these ideas seem like something of a micromanagement nightmare.. not to mention that they all seem to clearly leave nomadic civilizations at a disadvantage ultimately, and there's still issues like technology research, cultural borders and access to resources that need to be addressed. I'm going to leave the notion of a nomadic civ be and if someone should implement a mod with nomadic civs, I'll see how well it works before deciding on whether or not to include it in my mod... thanks for your suggestions.

And ultimately, the situation will have to end up being like the Mongols: build up militarily so that you can conquer sedentary societies and then have THEM become the foundation for a real empire.