Mod project: Nomadism civic

[Optimizer]

I am making a simple, XML-only mod which introduces nomadic civilizations to the game.

Background
Pastoral or migrating civilizations like the Goths, the Huns and the Mongols have had a great impact on history. I want to try to implement them in Civ 4 with a civic. The desired gameplay effect is a civilization that can spread fast and have a superior army, but lag behind in population growth and infrastructure. Hopefully, a winning strategy with Nomadism would be completely different from other civics, but still compatible with the AI.

I also want to make the mod as simple as possible, so that other players can understand and develop it.

New Civic: Nomadism (replaces Vassalage)
* Tech: Animal Husbandry
* Upkeep: None
* +2 unit experience
* Build military units with food
* -1 food for Farm, Windmill, Watermill
* -1 production for Mine, Workshop
* -1 commerce for Cottage - Town
* Can build Migrant without Bank

New Unit: Migrant
* Cost: 100
* Tech: None
* Can found cities
* Builds 50% faster with Horse, Cow, Pig & Sheep (cumulative, so a city with all the resources will build it 3 times as fast)
* Builds with food
* Requires Bank
* Combat: 4
* Cannot attack
* Medic I and March promotions

Comment: The Migrant would be the standard Settler for nomadic civilizations, and for all civilizations as soon as they have started building Banks. Parts of the world which have not been colonized until then, will be filled quickly. I also ponder giving the Migrant other roles - as a combat unit, or being able to do trade mission in foreign cities (as the Great Merchant).

Thoughts?

 

[zulu9812]

This is a kick-ass idea: something that I've always thought has been lacking from Civ games. I've never like the way that all civs follow the same model of development.

Some thoughts:

* Migrants should be buildable instead of Settlers, and should be more expensive

* Nomadic civs should have a higher cap on free military units

OR (and this is a better idea, but harder to impliment)

Nomadic civs should get gold for every unit (excluding animals) that they kill - this would encourage civs with this civic to move about in order to find enemies to fight.

* Restricting the Migrant to that civic (and removing the Bank prereq since it would be unnecessary) is a better way of doing things. Would require some SDK work.

* Rather than reducing yields from improvements, reduce yields from tiles such as grass, plains, floodplains, etc. This will mean that civs in predominantly arctic or desert terrain will be more likely to choose this civic (since they would be unaffected by this penalty).

 

[dh_epic]

A civic is probably the wrong way to go. Nomadism is older than Civilization itself. Most nomads didn't even know how to build anything, and thus create a permanant settlement or city.

I think it's a good idea. But you might want to get more creative with the implementation.

 

[Optimizer]

There are several kind of nomadism. This kind of nomadism would represent livestock-herders, not hunter-gatherers. These appeared around 6000 BC and dominated central Eurasia until the 15th century.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomad

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

It's a nice idea. What I'm thinking of would definately need SDK work, but here's my thoughts:
The nomad can found cities, however, these cities can at first only build basic improvements - eg instead of a wall for protection, they build a fence, which gives some basic protection, but not much. They can, however, disband the city and rebuild it elsewhere, keeping the same population points (or maybe lose 1 or 2 population points). There will be a building - let's say "town centre" - available to them - if they build it, it'll allow the city to build the more permanent fixtures, but will take away the facility to move the inhabitants to a new location.

 

[Optimizer]

My mod will be XML only, I try to KISS.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

It would be really interesting to add the camp unit from warlords into this idea. Of course balancing the camp unit so it can work with vanilla games.

 

[Eusebius]

I have also been giving some thought to a nomadic civic and was thinking of going into pre-history, with everyone starting nomadic and then recieving 'Despotism' (and the ability to build a palace) with 'Masonry'.

I was thinking that nomadic cities could simply build a fake building called "Pull up stakes" and convert the city into settlers (maybe population divided by 2). Then the nomads could go form a lot of other small cities.

Eusebius

 

[Optimizer]

Here it is! I have changed the name of the "super-settler" unit to "Pioneer".