Deserts suck.
They provide no usable resources. If you've got a desert in your fat cross, you're probably going to want to get rid of it--using Spring--as quickly as possible. The only reason you'd ever want a desert is if you had a river crossing through it (in which case you'd want to snap it up as quickly as possible).
Unfortunately, deserts without flood plains also suck for Malakim, who are supposed to be the desert-dwelling civilization. Even though they get combat bonuses in deserts, the usefulness of those bonuses are solely determined by the enemy's behavior. Which is to say, although there's a bonus, there's no strategy attached to that bonus.
There area lot of potential solutions. It could be handled like the Lanun--bonuses from their favored terrain--but that both repeats a mechanic and is thematically incoherent besides. It could be handled like the Ancient Forest mechanic--but that's, likewise, incoherent. It could be handled with a special improvement, buildable only by the Malakim--but there wasn't any such thing in the real, medieval world, as a highly developed desert.
So I got to thinking about real desert-dwelling civilizations, and how they handle the same mechanical problems imposed by the simulation. Then I got to thinking about how to make it fun. Here's what I came up with:
(1) Desert cities have to have some compelling reason to be there. There aren't a lot of them. That compelling reason is usually trade. Conversely, that trade sustains the city by bringing in food that isn't otherwise available.
In order to allow Malakim cities of reasonable size, surrounded by desert, one of a couple mechanics could be used. The most obvious one is the Sid's Sushi/Cereal Mills mechanic from BTS. Unfortunately, this requires more than a little micromanagement by the player. Alternatively, you could go one step out in abstraction and cause trade routes themselves to provide food to Malakim cities. This would both reduce the need for player micromanagement and require the player to think harder about his choice of economics.
(2) Desert cities don't require a lot of land. The vast majority of medieval cities had enormous support networks, in terms of farms. Real-world cities in the desert, on the Silk Road, were supported by farms, but those farms were a long way away. Consequently, throughout desert areas of North Africa and the Middle East, nomadic tribes, sharing the same culture as the city people, occupied the same space. Pastoralists weren't competing with agriculturalists for food.
In game terms, at the time of Mohammad, the real-world Mecca wasn't working a lot of tiles in its "fat cross," since they were unproductive. But Meccans weren't the only ones occupying the "fat cross": there were nomads there as well. Later, the Caliphate treated them like a state-within-a-state, signing treaties, making deals to levy troops, and relying on their expertise to make the deserts more navigable.
In game terms, this could be represented by causing desert tiles to produce a nominal amount of 'Nomad Prince' Great People Points. A nomad prince can do a number of things:
(A) Produce a 'nomad camp' building in a city. This causes deserts to produce a nominal amount of commerce (probably two, to trigger the Financial trait if that's the way you want to go) and enables some units down the scout line.
(B) 'Recruit', like a Great Commander, a number of Malakim units.
(C) Attach to a city to provide a bonus to food and gold. Since this modification would cause the Malakim to have more ready access to great people points, this bonus should probably be something like +2 food, +3 commerce, contrasted with the Great Merchant's +1/+8.
Anyway. That's just an idea. I frankly don't even know what in here is doable and what's delusional. What d'you think?
-- ACS
They provide no usable resources. If you've got a desert in your fat cross, you're probably going to want to get rid of it--using Spring--as quickly as possible. The only reason you'd ever want a desert is if you had a river crossing through it (in which case you'd want to snap it up as quickly as possible).
Unfortunately, deserts without flood plains also suck for Malakim, who are supposed to be the desert-dwelling civilization. Even though they get combat bonuses in deserts, the usefulness of those bonuses are solely determined by the enemy's behavior. Which is to say, although there's a bonus, there's no strategy attached to that bonus.
There area lot of potential solutions. It could be handled like the Lanun--bonuses from their favored terrain--but that both repeats a mechanic and is thematically incoherent besides. It could be handled like the Ancient Forest mechanic--but that's, likewise, incoherent. It could be handled with a special improvement, buildable only by the Malakim--but there wasn't any such thing in the real, medieval world, as a highly developed desert.
So I got to thinking about real desert-dwelling civilizations, and how they handle the same mechanical problems imposed by the simulation. Then I got to thinking about how to make it fun. Here's what I came up with:
(1) Desert cities have to have some compelling reason to be there. There aren't a lot of them. That compelling reason is usually trade. Conversely, that trade sustains the city by bringing in food that isn't otherwise available.
In order to allow Malakim cities of reasonable size, surrounded by desert, one of a couple mechanics could be used. The most obvious one is the Sid's Sushi/Cereal Mills mechanic from BTS. Unfortunately, this requires more than a little micromanagement by the player. Alternatively, you could go one step out in abstraction and cause trade routes themselves to provide food to Malakim cities. This would both reduce the need for player micromanagement and require the player to think harder about his choice of economics.
(2) Desert cities don't require a lot of land. The vast majority of medieval cities had enormous support networks, in terms of farms. Real-world cities in the desert, on the Silk Road, were supported by farms, but those farms were a long way away. Consequently, throughout desert areas of North Africa and the Middle East, nomadic tribes, sharing the same culture as the city people, occupied the same space. Pastoralists weren't competing with agriculturalists for food.
In game terms, at the time of Mohammad, the real-world Mecca wasn't working a lot of tiles in its "fat cross," since they were unproductive. But Meccans weren't the only ones occupying the "fat cross": there were nomads there as well. Later, the Caliphate treated them like a state-within-a-state, signing treaties, making deals to levy troops, and relying on their expertise to make the deserts more navigable.
In game terms, this could be represented by causing desert tiles to produce a nominal amount of 'Nomad Prince' Great People Points. A nomad prince can do a number of things:
(A) Produce a 'nomad camp' building in a city. This causes deserts to produce a nominal amount of commerce (probably two, to trigger the Financial trait if that's the way you want to go) and enables some units down the scout line.
(B) 'Recruit', like a Great Commander, a number of Malakim units.
(C) Attach to a city to provide a bonus to food and gold. Since this modification would cause the Malakim to have more ready access to great people points, this bonus should probably be something like +2 food, +3 commerce, contrasted with the Great Merchant's +1/+8.
Anyway. That's just an idea. I frankly don't even know what in here is doable and what's delusional. What d'you think?
-- ACS
on any tile with 1 
or more. 
