Nomads sound like fun, but to me it appears that there are some really tricky aspects. If I understand well, there are currently 2 concepts considered: one (1) where nomadic camps are mainly used in the early game to extend the amount of controlled terrain without building a city, and one (2) where playing with nomadic camps is a long-lasting alternative to the sedentary life style with its cities.
The first (extending terrain without building a city) seriously weakens or even nullifies the effect of one of the really good concepts which was added to the mod relatively recently: the limit on cities by government civic. In the early game this mechanic is a gem in ensuring that civilizations develop at a more equal pace and can cover a roughly equal amount of land. Instead of just production determining the early expansion, tech is dictating the pace too now by gradually allowing more cities as chiefdoms, despotisms and kingdoms become possible. The merit of this mechanism is what it does for the rest of the game: creating balance and an interesting struggle. The perfect game - at least for me, but I imagine it works the same for others - is one in which it's not already clear in the ancient or medieval era who's going to win, but one in which the competition stays interesting until the end. From a meta-game view of things: with many aspects of this mod favouring the advanced/strong already (and thereby increasing the gap between civs instead of making them equal and interesting opponents) it would be a loss if the few balancing mechanics get de-powered. I love newly added things to play with, but balance of power seems to be a key element which ranks higher than having more stuff for the sake of more stuff.
The second (nomad lifestyle being a long-lasting alternative to sedentary lifestyle) raises the problem of having to match nomadic progress with the entire existing tech tree for sedentary civs, to increase their power parallel with sedentary developments like libraries, granaries, everything, to have them remain a reasonable alternative to sedentary lifestyle. Letting them simply build the same buildings defeats the purpose of having nomads, of course. The options seem to do either that or to accept that nomad civs will be fodder-civs which will be destroyed in the course of the game (but no player would probably play them, then). Lastly, walking the middle road by having them convert at some point to sedentary lifestyle raises the problem of their new towns being fresh and empty of buildings (since converting to cities with lots of buildings makes no sense at all) - no competition for the civs with towns which have been building buildings since prehistory.
Of course, one could opt to introduce an enforced nomadic era for all civs, before being able to build a first city. That'd give no balancing problems, but it sounds like a lot of effort and revising the already existing stuff.
(by the way, I don't intend to play Mr. Negative Sucky Asshat Who Doesn't Program But Only Moans. Just really liked the mod you guys make and spent lots of hours already exploring it, finding that one of its Achilles' heels from a meta-game perspective seems to be exactly that - its ability to maintain the balance of powers.Would love to see more mechanisms favouring the weaker civs to keep them active participants with a meaning in the game, to make the mod even more enjoyable. And sorry for the post getting this long
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Sorry about that.
