Idea - Neolithic Era

[AaronTBD]

This would be an era before the Ancient Era this is how I think it might work out


You start at 7000 BC or 15 Turns more on standard speed
Tree Ideas

Tech Tree

Hunting -> Animal Husbandry
Agriculture -> Pottery + Animal Husbandry

Civic Tree

City Development -> Code of Laws
Tradition -> Code of Laws

I could only think of two per tree, but it could have as much as five per tree

New start/strategy: You still have a settler and a warrior, and a scout, but you cant settle a city until City Development. In the mean time try to find a good spot to settle the city. Barbarians still exist but only as a warrior, they can't make more units until a civ reaches city development.

New Wonders: Two new World Wonders appear and one Natural Wonder

Newgrange
Unlocked at Agriculture
Your farms grant +1 Faith
+3 Faith

Jericho
Unlocked at City Development
+25% production in the city when it has no specialty districts
Fresh Water if you are 3 tiles from a water scource.
+3 Production
+1 Faith

Lascaux
Impassible
2 Tiles
+2 Culture +1 Faith
+3 Science after the Industrial Era

Techs and Civics
Agriculture
Grants the farm improvement.
+1 Population to the capital when you founded it.
World Wonder Newgrange is unlocked.

Hunting
Grants the camp improvement (moved from animal husbandry)
+10% production in the city until the Classical Era

City Development
Can make cities.
Slingers are unlocked.
World Wonder Jericho is unlocked.

Tradition
Your first settler has +1 Sight and Can take damage instead of being captured and can defend.
The Monument is unlocked.

When you start a game you have +1 Science and +1 Culture before settling a city or the Ancient Era.

All Techs and civics cost 5 Science or 5 Culture.

Let me know what you think!

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I like the idea. I would propose a slight change though.

Instead of initially acquiring the initial tech and civics through science and culture I would say in order to progress to the next step to settle cities you must acquire enough resources.

I guess the simplest way would be to gather enough food for your settler/people. Early game you could send out your scout to forage for food or use your warriors/slingers to take down animals such as deer or mammoths.

From there you automatically learn both Agriculture and Tradition and then start progressing through the trees normally.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The Humankind game in development does this already. In their 'neolithic start' (undated) you start with a single 'tribe' of hunter-gatherers and wander the map, picking up Food or Science resources from Hot Spots that are sort of like Civ VIs Tribal Villages except that they seem to appear at random every few turns. When you have enough Food accumulated to support enough population, you can settle down and start a City. If you have enough Science points instead, you have the knowledge to start a city. Either way, being able to found a city means you can pick a Faction (Culture/Civ) and start the4 regular Ancient Era.

As excited as I as when I first heard about Humankind's nomadic/neolithic start, I've cooled a bit towards it now, having seen how it's being implemented (at least in the early Pre-Alpha scenarios people have been able to play with). It doesn't address those Civs that remain nomadic/pastoral into the Classical or Medieval Eras (Huns, Scythians, Mongols, etc) nor does it really address how a continuing nomadic group will keep on making Technological advances and building military units. This is a real shame, because those groups were hugely influential right up into the Renaissance Era.

The other problem is that it rather simplifies the Neolithic Era. Roughly 10,000 to 4000 BCE is when a lot of cities got started, and many also disappeared - traumatic time to start a Civ! It is also when most of the early Techs in Civ actually got discovered: Animal Husbandry/Domestication of Cattle, Sheep, Goats, Horses, Water Buffalo, Camels, Agriculture, Irrigation, Archery, Pottery, Weaving, earliest Metal-Working in copper, lead, gold, silver, early Construction in wood and stone (in addition to the 8500 year old Gobekli Tepe monumental stonework, there are stone monuments/constructions all over northern Europe from this period)

The biggest problem with the Neolithic as a 'normal' First Era in the game is that there was very little connection between the 'civilizations' that started in that period and the later Civs that we are familiar with. Just for example, between 7000 and 3300 BCE almost a dozen different culture groups have been identified archeologically in north and central China, all with technologies like agriculture, animal domestication, fishing, and pottery. NONE of them have any known direct connection with the first Chinese Dynasties, the Xia (2070 BCE) or the Shang (1600 - 1040 BCE). That means a Neolithic Start for China is a complete disconnect for everything that comes afterwards, except in basic technologies. The same problem exists in places like France, Germany, Greece, Rome - in which the 'modern' Greeks, Romans, Germans and French hadn't even arrived in the areas until a couple of thousand years or more after the Neolithic.

 

[AaronTBD]

The Humankind game in development does this already. In their 'neolithic start' (undated) you start with a single 'tribe' of hunter-gatherers and wander the map, picking up Food or Science resources from Hot Spots that are sort of like Civ VIs Tribal Villages except that they seem to appear at random every few turns. When you have enough Food accumulated to support enough population, you can settle down and start a City. If you have enough Science points instead, you have the knowledge to start a city. Either way, being able to found a city means you can pick a Faction (Culture/Civ) and start the4 regular Ancient Era.

As excited as I as when I first heard about Humankind's nomadic/neolithic start, I've cooled a bit towards it now, having seen how it's being implemented (at least in the early Pre-Alpha scenarios people have been able to play with). It doesn't address those Civs that remain nomadic/pastoral into the Classical or Medieval Eras (Huns, Scythians, Mongols, etc) nor does it really address how a continuing nomadic group will keep on making Technological advances and building military units. This is a real shame, because those groups were hugely influential right up into the Renaissance Era.

The other problem is that it rather simplifies the Neolithic Era. Roughly 10,000 to 4000 BCE is when a lot of cities got started, and many also disappeared - traumatic time to start a Civ! It is also when most of the early Techs in Civ actually got discovered: Animal Husbandry/Domestication of Cattle, Sheep, Goats, Horses, Water Buffalo, Camels, Agriculture, Irrigation, Archery, Pottery, Weaving, earliest Metal-Working in copper, lead, gold, silver, early Construction in wood and stone (in addition to the 8500 year old Gobekli Tepe monumental stonework, there are stone monuments/constructions all over northern Europe from this period)

The biggest problem with the Neolithic as a 'normal' First Era in the game is that there was very little connection between the 'civilizations' that started in that period and the later Civs that we are familiar with. Just for example, between 7000 and 3300 BCE almost a dozen different culture groups have been identified archeologically in north and central China, all with technologies like agriculture, animal domestication, fishing, and pottery. NONE of them have any known direct connection with the first Chinese Dynasties, the Xia (2070 BCE) or the Shang (1600 - 1040 BCE). That means a Neolithic Start for China is a complete disconnect for everything that comes afterwards, except in basic technologies. The same problem exists in places like France, Germany, Greece, Rome - in which the 'modern' Greeks, Romans, Germans and French hadn't even arrived in the areas until a couple of thousand years or more after the Neolithic.

Dang... I forgot about Humankind. I guess that would be like copying them.
The part of the comment about how the people in the civilization change, doesn't the Ancient Era have the same problem?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Dang... I forgot about Humankind. I guess that would be like copying them.
The part of the comment about how the people in the civilization change, doesn't the Ancient Era have the same problem?

The problem between the Ancient and Classical Eras is not of the same magnitude as the Neolithic to Later problem in lack of connection. The Ancient to Classical problem is that many of the Classical Civs were migrants into the areas they inhabited later. Prime examples are the Greeks, Romans, and 'Indians' who all originated in the Central Asian/Ukrainian steppes and migrated into Greece, Italy and northern India between about 2000 - 1500 BCE. But, for example, the incoming Greeks later called the original inhabitants of Greece the Pelasgians, and they took over many of their original cities without even changing the names (Athens, for example, is not a Greek name: there was a settlement by that name on that site long before they arrived). Likewise, while there is no connection or continuity between the Neolithic sites in China, there is a continuity in city names and sites from the first Dynasty (Xia) on through the Eras.

 

[Galvatron]

As excited as I as when I first heard about Humankind's nomadic/neolithic start, I've cooled a bit towards it now, having seen how it's being implemented (at least in the early Pre-Alpha scenarios people have been able to play with). It doesn't address those Civs that remain nomadic/pastoral into the Classical or Medieval Eras (Huns, Scythians, Mongols, etc) nor does it really address how a continuing nomadic group will keep on making Technological advances and building military units. This is a real shame, because those groups were hugely influential right up into the Renaissance Era.

I wad thinking about that too, but I think they're right to leave it out for now. I think that pastorialists deserve an expansion or at least part of one... maybe including migrations too.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Humankind fail miserably at implementing the great thaw of the ice age and the sea surge. I see the potential with the multiple height in the map but that's it.
A good start would be 20.000 bc, when half of the world was covered in huge ice sheets, and early tribes would survive on coast and low coastal land masses, now submerged.
Also Neanderthal, Devisonian, Sapiens, Hobbits, and who knows, probably some scattered giants here and there. Not anywhere in sight.
Megalithic structures was a thing as were giant tree totems of shamanic culture. Navigation was there long before the thaw probably also.
A big part of the fun in a super early start would be scouting around.
I'd like the idea of moving, nomadic cities, that could later address the huge influence nomadic tribes had untill gunpowder hit them hard, as Godenuf points.