How would you design nomadic Civilizations?

[Boris Gudenuf]

I think the key is to have some lesser city-like element to represent the non-urban populations, because is not just for hunter-gatherers, agrarian villages and pastorial camps were the core of what in game are "barbarians" and even most of CIVs playables were not urban at 4000BC.

Pastorial Camps were the more nomadic with regular migrations, but many Agrarian Villages also had massive migrations when some mix of natural and human presure forced them, a lot of civs on game would fit in these options.

Exactly. We need some kind of 'settlement' to represent both the earliest fixed human groups - originally gathered around really good food sources like fish and waterfowl-filled lakes and marshes and river bottoms, and later the smaller towns or Frontier Settlements that grabbed territory. Basically, 'semi-urban' concentrations that may or may not develop into true Cities later.

IF the game models any period before 4000 BCE, which I think is nearly a necessity to include Hunter-Gatherer Start, then there will automatically be some very serious early Climactic Events that can 'force' migration: the Lake Ojibwey drought in the Middle East, the drying up of the Sahara, the rising sea levels as the last of the glacial ice melted, etc. I've posted before that the early game could be designed to provide a series of really important decisions for the gamer: when or whether to settle down, how much to gamble on very early City Start, etc.

 

[Zaarin]

For me, the game doesn't need to simulate a new Earth with all the knowledge of geography.

Which is good, because you'd need to borrow a few supercomputers from NASA to do so. Sadly, climate modeling takes extraordinary processing power; the best a game can hope to do is fake it by using some overly broad generalizations.

I would like to see more granular and more dynamic terrain, however.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Which is good, because you'd need to borrow a few supercomputers from NASA to do so. Sadly, climate modeling takes extraordinary processing power; the best a game can hope to do is fake it by using some overly broad generalizations.

I would like to see more granular and more dynamic terrain, however.

Given that I've lived in five different climates in the USA alone and in every one of them the TV 'meteorologists' claimed that the weather peculiarities of the local area made computer weather forecasting extra difficult, I'd say, yes, climate and weather are very difficult to model - unless you're a woolly caterpiller, who seem to produce coats as heavy as required by the coming winter, no matter what the weather computers say. Unfortunately, trying to hook woolly caterpillers into your mainframe is liable to make your system buggy . . .

Seriously, though, there are broad trends in climate that could be introduced into the game. Has anybody else noticed that on standard settings a pangaea continent in Humankind is always dry or desert in the middle? Basic global wind currents and their effects on continental configurations can be modeled (there was a Civ 5 Mod that did just that, I believe) to give something resembling the kind of 'granularity' in climate (with 1 year minimum turns, 'weather' doesn't really apply to Civ).

As for the terrain, we just need to find a balance point between Humankind and Civ VI, with the clarity of the latter and the variety of the former, particularly with regard to terrain elevations and their effects on the biome.

 

[Zaarin]

As for the terrain, we just need to find a balance point between Humankind and Civ VI, with the clarity of the latter and the variety of the former, particularly with regard to terrain elevations and their effects on the biome.

Amen to this. Humankind is beautiful to look at, but I couldn't tell you what any of the terrain does.

 

[Leucarum]

Beyond the terrain I found districts and units really indistinct in humankind. It made me really appreciate the cartoony style of Civ6 and how identifiable everything is at a glance.

As for nomadic civs... Should firaxis put them in civ at all? They would be so asymmetric it seems like it would create more problems than they would be worth?

 

[Zaarin]

As for nomadic civs... Should firaxis put them in civ at all? They would be so asymmetric it seems like it would create more problems than they would be worth?

I feel like we're always going to have a few of them--Huns and Shoshone in Civ5, Scythians and Cree in Civ6, Mongols perennially--so having a better way to represent them than "normal civs with good cavalry" would be nice.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Beyond the terrain I found districts and units really indistinct in humankind. It made me really appreciate the cartoony style of Civ6 and how identifiable everything is at a glance.

As for nomadic civs... Should firaxis put them in civ at all? They would be so asymmetric it seems like it would create more problems than they would be worth?

Very Good Question: virtually none of the pastoral/nomadic Civs exist any longer in recognizable form, and none of them lasted into the Industrial Era before being exterminated or absorbed by 'settled' Civs.

On the other hand, by that criteria we should not include any of the Native American groups or most of the African Civs either.

More to the point, the pastoral groups were among the main actors in the establishment of trade across Eurasia for at least 2000 years, and disseminated cultural, religious, and technological influences across the trade routes as well as goods - and also plagues, but Civ seems to be trying to leave those out of at least the regular game. They also provided not only opposition, but specialized mercenaries (horse archers, mounted lancers), desired resources and lucrative markets for the regular Civilizations.

So, yes, they need to be in the game.

The argument for making them Civilizations lies in the structure of the Civ games: you cannot play as a City State or a Barbarian 'tribe' and never have been able to except in Mods. IF anyone is going to be able to play the Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Jurchen, Comanche, Lakota, etc, etc, then those pastorals have to be somehow turned into Civs for the game. As we have seen in several iterations of Civ, making a pastoral into a citified regular Civ does not model them well, which is what prompts this and numerous other Threads on the forums over the years.

Nomadic/Pastoral Civs aren't the only problem in 4x Historicals: City State polities are also poorly represented in Civ's One City-Building Monolithic Civ Fits All model, and some other way is needed to show their peculiar strengths and weaknesses in game-terms, and, like the now-gone pastorals, make them viable to play in the game.

 

[Leucarum]

Very Good Question: virtually none of the pastoral/nomadic Civs exist any longer in recognizable form, and none of them lasted into the Industrial Era before being exterminated or absorbed by 'settled' Civs.

I guess I was thinking more from a game mechanics standpoint than an historical view as I definitely agree that civs like the mongols, huns etc... warrant inclusion. How much should we make game mechanics bend to fit a different model of society?

Beyond that though, you do touch on another point - that a lot of civs fit this mould. With Civ moving in the direction of making each civ as unique as possible that kind of turns the question into needing multiple ways to represent a pastoralist civ.

I guess my reflex is just to make them civs which go wide a bit more and tend to end up with smaller cities, since there's plenty of mechanical scope to do that. Though I get that this doesn't really make them feel as distinct as their history might warrant.

If firaxis take inspiration from some of the mods which expand on districts though I could see that being a good source of mechanics to represent more sparse population centres spread out over your empire...

 

[BuchiTaton]

Civs like Mongolia are way easier to fit the common design than something like Comanche. Ones like Mongolia, Huna, Khitan or Uygur were pastorial but conquered settled nations, had significative stratification and centralization, build their own capital cities to manage those empires and were ahead in some militar techs.
The Comanche could have been a significative power that expanden on central North America and capitalized their militar power, but who is the Comanche Emperor? Where is the Comanche Imperial Capital? Where are the Comanche court, their bureaucrats, academics and invited theologians?

At some point Persia or India were also pastorial nomads, Huna, Turks and Mongols used new or conquered cities, but Cree or Shoshone never had something like those empires.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I guess I was thinking more from a game mechanics standpoint than an historical view as I definitely agree that civs like the mongols, huns etc... warrant inclusion. How much should we make game mechanics bend to fit a different model of society?

I mean Firaxis already bended the rules to allow the Maori to start in the ocean and not being able to settle on turn 1, so I think it's possible that a nomadic steppe civ might get a similar treatment in Civ 7.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Civs like Mongolia are way easier to fit the common design than something like Comanche. Ones like Mongolia, Huna, Khitan or Uygur were pastorial but conquered settled nations, had significative stratification and centralization, build their own capital cities to manage those empires and were ahead in some militar techs.
The Comanche could have been a significative power that expanden on central North America and capitalized their militar power, but who is the Comanche Emperor? Where is the Comanche Imperial Capital? Where are the Comanche court, their bureaucrats, academics and invited theologians?

At some point Persia or India were also pastorial nomads, Huna, Turks and Mongols used new or conquered cities, but Cree or Shoshone never had something like those empires.

Not only Persia and the Indian, but also the Ottoman Turks, Arabs and Nubians all started as pastoral nomads. For that mater, go far enough back, and All the "iIndo-Europeans" (Yamnaya) started as pastoral nomads, including Greeks and Romans (several times removed)

Neither the Comanche nor the Lakota had a chance to conquer any cities, but intriguingly, although both cultures traditionally had a 'consensus' form of government, under the constant pressure from the USA and other Europeans, they were moving towards a more centralized form of leadership. Individuals like Quanah Parker, Red Cloud, and Sitting Bull were all given (and were rather eagerly taking) more general control and authority than any individual had had among them before, and we can project that quite likely, given another century of existence, something very similar to a single warchief/military-based Leader style of government might have emerged in both groups - dare I say, not too different from a Dark Age Anglo-Saxon, Celtic or Norse Chieftain/"King" or even a Dark Age Greek (900 BCE, not 900 CE) Basileus

Of course, they didn't get another century, but the differences between Mongols, Huns, Scythians, and Comanche and Lakota are, I suspect, of degree rather than kind, and had Europeans arrived at the Missouri watershed with bows and arrows and spears rather than rifles, then today the site of Rapid City, South Dakota, in the Black Hills, might be called Paha Sapa and include the Council House of the Lakota Confederation . . .

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I mean Firaxis already bended the rules to allow the Maori to start in the ocean and not being able to settle on turn 1, so I think it's possible that a nomadic steppe civ might get a similar treatment in Civ 7.

This is exactly what I was hoping for when the Maori came out. I said at the time and have repeated it since that the Maori Model was a good starting point for a land-based 'nomadic' Civ and I hope very much that they explore the possibilities for Civ VII. But I also hope they include the possibility of such a civ getting some real Power without needing to settle down and build its own cities: historically, the pastorals conquered their first cities or so dominated them that they were able to extract as tribute whatever they wanted out of them - see the relationship between the Greek colonial cities on the Ukrainian/southern Russian Black Sea coast and the Scythians for a good example.

 

[Leucarum]

I mean Firaxis already bended the rules to allow the Maori to start in the ocean and not being able to settle on turn 1, so I think it's possible that a nomadic steppe civ might get a similar treatment in Civ 7.

How many times can something like that be done before it stops being interesting though? I'd say exactly once... It would fit a lot of civs but it was also what made the Maori novel and unique.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

How many times can something like that be done before it stops being interesting though? I'd say exactly once... It would fit a lot of civs but it was also what made the Maori novel and unique.

How many times can all Civilizations be represented by plunking down a City immediately in 4000 BCE? As always, the interest is in the details and variations - like the Maori's Unique Unit, Unique District, Unique starting Tech, and Unique relationship with sea resources.

 

[Leucarum]

How many times can all Civilizations be represented by plunking down a City immediately in 4000 BCE? As always, the interest is in the details and variations - like the Maori's Unique Unit, Unique District, Unique starting Tech, and Unique relationship with sea resources.

One of the two modes needs to be default... And it's pretty chear which mechanic has inertia in the civ series. I would guess also that if you asked 100 people what the defining characteristic of the Maori in civ6 is, their ocean start would be the top answer by a long margin.

In balance, before humankind I would have been tentatively in favour of a nomadic start being default for all civs. But it didn't work out so well there, and I'm not sure I've seen good arguments for how to make it fun and balanced in a future civ.... I don't hate the idea, but I think there are much more important areas firaxis could focus on rather than trying to represent this piece of historical accuracy.

 

[Naokaukodem]

and I'm not sure I've seen good arguments for how to make it fun and balanced in a future civ.

Didn't you see my topic on Civ7 ?

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civilization-vii-later-or-other-project.649104/

 

[Leucarum]

Didn't you see my topic on Civ7 ?

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civilization-vii-later-or-other-project.649104/

I wasn't trying to single anyone out with that statement, sorry if it felt like that.

I suppose adding a corollary that "I haven't seen a good suggestion, which doesn't fundamentally change Civ into a different game" would be more fair. Spreading pops over the map would make it into more like a paradox game, where it totally makes sense that pastoralists can be represented distinctly. I play and enjoy paradox games, but it's good that both civ and their offerings are distinct IMO.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Spreading pops over the map would make it into more like a paradox game

Well, I never played a Paradox game, so I can't know... but my idea is very Civ-ish IMO, where you harverst yields the same old way, having units to move on the map, etc.
I should definitely try Parodox games though.

 

[BuchiTaton]

- dare I say, not too different from a Dark Age Anglo-Saxon, Celtic or Norse Chieftain/"King" or even a Dark Age Greek (900 BCE, not 900 CE) Basileus

Exactly, that is why I would have no real problem IF all these CIVs that were mainly groups of chieftains just partially and temporarily confederated and living most on villages instead of proper cities are remplaced by a more deep, flavored, significative and usefull system of "barbarians".

 

[Birch617]

I don't believe the Muisca are nomadic?

Exactly, they weren't nomadic, a lot of cities from my region in Colombia were Muisca towns, now renamed with a spanish pronunciation of the original name, Bacata turned into Bogotá, Hunza into Funza and Suamox into Sogamoso