Nomads: new mechanics and attributes

[Krieger-FS]

Following Leoreth suggestion, I’d like to start this thread so we can discuss new mechanics for nomadic civilizations/peoples, so we can represent them more properly, historically accurately and uniquely in relation to the more urban/sedentary civs. As stated before, this is an old question debated within the larger Civ community, since the core gameplay of the series is around settling and managing cities to ensure the growth of your empire.


So to start this discussion, I’d like to point some random ideas about the nomads. Few of them were suggested/discussed in the forums before and others are my own ramblings on the issue. I think that a good starting point is to note some desirable and historically accurate aspects from nomadic peoples:

• Cities: Obviously, growing and managing cities should play a lesser part in nomadic gameplay. Ideally, I think that nomadic cities should be few and small sized, though they could have a larger city radius/cultural borders, since they would represent mostly semi-permanent villages/tribes that “control” large and sparsely populated areas. Also, perhaps the nomadic cities could have less options of buildings available.

• Improvements and resources: The nomadic gameplay also must affect how improvements works. We could argue that pasture improvements/resources should be more valuable for nomads while farms, mines and cottages yield less or, even better, could not be built without certain specific circumstances. Also, empty flat tiles can have more value for them because would represent grazing/hunting land. Commerce and trade routes could be a minor part in generating wealth (gold) for them, while pillaging/tributes/sacking should yield more.

• Units: There are many aspects to discuss about their armies, but to sum up, in general cavalry units could be stronger (more experienced) or/and cheaper to produce while having a reduced cost of maintenance.

• Stability: Nomadic empires tend to be quite unstable, often dividing in several new polities after the death of their leader. Considering RFC mechanics, this aspect could be represented with some maluses that make their empires less stable after some time. An idea is that after some time, they receive negative modifiers to their stability. So, let’s say, every 25 turns they lose some stability; initially these hits can be manageable, but as long the game goes, it will be more difficult to maintain the empire united. On the other hand, respawns should be fairly common, representing both the difficulties that settled peoples had in controlling nomadic areas and how new leaders could arise and reunite the tribes for another round of conquest and pillaging.

So, tossing some ideas around the points made above:

• Nomadic territorial domains could be represented with the mechanics of native civs from Civ 4 Colonization. For those who do not remember (and to be honest it has been some time since I last played the game), in short the native territory is invisible to other players and their cities are razed upon conquest leaving a captured unit to the conqueror. Please note that I do not know if it is feasible to transfer this mechanic to Civ 4 proper.

• Another idea is to create a new civic category to represent them. So we could have a “nomad” civic (with all the bonuses related and the new mechanics), a “urban/sedentary” one (whose gameplay would be roughly the same that we have now) and perhaps even a “semi-nomad/sedentary”, which would include a middle ground between nomadic and regular gameplay, representing the sedentarization process that some of the civs historically did (i.e., the Turks in Middle East, Mongols [Yuan] and Manchu [Qing] in China, etc). In general, the nomadic civic would be powerful early in the game, but it would become less so after some time (likely around renaissance) giving the mediocre nomadic tech rate and science output, and the increasing productivity/growth of (regular) cities. The transition from nomad to sedentary could have some specific requirements and may be even a possible interesting UHV for some civs.

• Severely reduce food yields to cities (to ensure that they stay small) but allow them to have a larger cultural radius. In this sense, perhaps the culture cost to cover a tile could be less for them than for the regular civs. Workers could be able to build exclusive nomadic improvements while severely limiting the availability of some regular ones (so, let’s say, farms and mines could only be built to improve a resource). A “camp” improvement could be somewhat similar to the fort but generates culture (to ensure territorial expansion) and automatically produces free units every X turns. A “grazing ground” improvement, buildable only on flat empty tiles, could generate food/production yields on completion for the nearest proper city but is expired/destroyed few turns after.

Anyway, I would like to hear other ideas! Like I said before in the other thread, I honestly don't have anything set in stone here, but I do think a good discussion is the first step to improve our mod portrayal of the nomadic peoples and empires. And who knows, if we better represent them, maybe we could include several new nomadic civs in the future!

 

[troubleshooting]

Obviously the prime candidate for this would be the Turks, but I could see this also working as a way to implement North American native civs at some point

 

[WhiteEyes]

Improvements and resources: The nomadic gameplay also must affect how improvements works. We could argue that pasture improvements/resources should be more valuable for nomads while farms, mines and cottages yield less or, even better, could not be built without certain specific circumstances. Also, empty flat tiles can have more value for them because would represent grazing/hunting land. Commerce and trade routes could be a minor part in generating wealth (gold) for them, while pillaging/tributes/sacking should yield more.

i think this part already covered by the Elective civic, the problem is Elective mostly aren't favorable compared to Despotism due to lack of production bonus and stability synergy with other civics.
And some nomadic states like Khazar and Volga Bulgar do depend on foreign trade too, in addition to raiding and selling slaves. And they also have relatively large cities for their time.

I don't think they need even less food yield, most of the nomadic territory has a lack of food source already, especially on the new map with the steppe terrain.

By the way, are the Vikings also counted as nomadic civilizations? Sometimes I getting mixed between "nomadic" and "barbaric" definitions.

 

[DC123456789]

By the way, are the Vikings also counted as nomadic civilizations? Sometimes I getting mixed between "nomadic" and "barbaric" definitions.

Definitely not. The Turks and Mongols area really the only two nomadic civs at the moment, the whole idea of nomadic civilizations (at least the one detailed out here) is fairly specific to the Eurasian steppe.

 

[Crimean Lord]

Obviously the prime candidate for this would be the Turks, but I could see this also working as a way to implement North American native civs at some point

100% it will be better than 4-5 Native American Civs which have no chance against Europeans and the Inited States

 

[KeeperOT7Keys]

I think the best already existing mechanic in the game is the corporations mechanic for the nomads:
attracted by certain civics, e.g. electoralism(?) and low rate, and animal resources. Nomads were known to be fierce warriors as well as tax evaders. Most conflicts with empires and nomads were caused by the latter's desire to not give taxes (e.g. ottomans vs. turkmens). And in Civ4 as your empire becomes larger you increase your gold rate, so gameplay wise you will get de-nomadized.
There was also a lot of migration related to the religious causes but it might be hard to implement these, or they can be better represented by civics.
(e.g. Many Qizilbashs migrated to Saffavids from the Otooman Empire because of religious differences, but since we don't have Shia this difference can be represented with the religion civic)

bonuses:
Like in some other mods we can have special buildings granted by these nomads, like a better stable building e.g. ger (ordu-horde makes sense to me).
Maybe a special unit about raiding, like the current Oghuz or an elite unit like Ghulams/Mamelukes.

Cities get (and maybe or )with some resources, obviously from animals. Population or growth make sense too since people are migrating to the city, but it's also counter intuitive since nomads were always less populous. Maybe they can even give some negative growth.

cons:
When leaving a city might spawn a barbarian unit?

***
I wish we could have actual nomadic mechanics like moving cities, but I think they would be very very hard for the AI to handle. All I can imagine is some civs can be more eager to raze and resettle cities (maybe some civs can be awarded with settlers if they raze a city). By the way my suggestions are for the Turkic civs, I think they are actually very different from the Native Americans and representing all at once might be difficult.

 

[need my speed]

Ever thought of using the Camp unit from the Genghis Khan scenario?

 

[Krieger-FS]

First, thanks you all for the feedback! Now, adressing some specific comments:

Obviously the prime candidate for this would be the Turks, but I could see this also working as a way to implement North American native civs at some point

By the way, are the Vikings also counted as nomadic civilizations? Sometimes I getting mixed between "nomadic" and "barbaric" definitions.

Definitely not. The Turks and Mongols area really the only two nomadic civs at the moment, the whole idea of nomadic civilizations (at least the one detailed out here) is fairly specific to the Eurasian steppe.

100% it will be better than 4-5 Native American Civs which have no chance against Europeans and the Inited States

Yeah, the point here is specifically about the nomadic pastoralism, not exactly tribal/"barbaric" ones. As stated, only the Turks and Mongols fit this label right now, but I see a few candidates that likely will be included in the mod that also are under this definition, like the Yuezhi/Kushan Empire, Jurchen/Manchu and, possibly, the Kanem-Bornu in the first part of their game. I'm not sure about North American indigenous peoples because I honestly don't know much about them, but I can see the ones from the Great Plains that devoped a "horse culture" included in our definition.
The semi-nomad category, however, is much more fluid and can include other present civs, like the Arabs, Moors and Mughals (at least for the initial part of their games).

i think this part already covered by the Elective civic, the problem is Elective mostly aren't favorable compared to Despotism due to lack of production bonus and stability synergy with other civics.

The problem with Elective civic is that it represents essentialy political organization (political power and how leaders are chosen) and not exactly the social organization (how the entire society/culture is organized). Elective also represents the political system of both HRE and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, both which obviosly are not nomadic.

And some nomadic states like Khazar and Volga Bulgar do depend on foreign trade too, in addition to raiding and selling slaves. And they also have relatively large cities for their time.

I don't think they need even less food yield, most of the nomadic territory has a lack of food source already, especially on the new map with the steppe terrain.

Population or growth make sense too since people are migrating to the city, but it's also counter intuitive since nomads were always less populous. Maybe they can even give some negative growth.

The issue with large cities, at least in my view, is that they essentialy represent urban (sedentary) population. I'm not saying that nomads should'n be able grow one or two large cities eventualy, what I'm saying is that cities should be a lesser part of nomadic gameplay since the urban population is always a minority among them.

I think the best already existing mechanic in the game is the corporations mechanic for the nomads:
attracted by certain civics, e.g. electoralism(?) and low rate, and animal resources. Nomads were known to be fierce warriors as well as tax evaders. Most conflicts with empires and nomads were caused by the latter's desire to not give taxes (e.g. ottomans vs. turkmens). And in Civ4 as your empire becomes larger you increase your gold rate, so gameplay wise you will get de-nomadized.
There was also a lot of migration related to the religious causes but it might be hard to implement these, or they can be better represented by civics.
(e.g. Many Qizilbashs migrated to Saffavids from the Otooman Empire because of religious differences, but since we don't have Shia this difference can be represented with the religion civic)

bonuses:
Like in some other mods we can have special buildings granted by these nomads, like a better stable building e.g. ger (ordu-horde makes sense to me).
Maybe a special unit about raiding, like the current Oghuz or an elite unit like Ghulams/Mamelukes.

I'm not sure about using the corporations mechanics, since nomadism represents a larger and pervasive social organization of entire peoples. But I completly agree that they could receive special units/buildings for them in addition to their own UBs and UUs.

I wish we could have actual nomadic mechanics like moving cities, but I think they would be very very hard for the AI to handle. All I can imagine is some civs can be more eager to raze and resettle cities (maybe some civs can be awarded with settlers if they raze a city). By the way my suggestions are for the Turkic civs, I think they are actually very different from the Native Americans and representing all at once might be difficult.

Yeah, I also have some concerns about how AI will handle the new mechanics. That's why doing an open brainstorm session is so important; if we have a clear idea of how the nomads should behave we can look for ways of implement it under the constrains of the game engine.

Ever thought of using the Camp unit from the Genghis Khan scenario?

Yeah, that came to my mind, but honestly it has been so much time since I last played the scenario that I really don't remember much of the specific dynamics of it. But certainly is a good option.

 

[DC123456789]

The issue with large cities, at least in my view, is that they essentialy represent urban (sedentary) population. I'm not saying that nomads should'n be able grow one or two large cities eventualy, what I'm saying is that cities should be a lesser part of nomadic gameplay since the urban population is always a minority among them.

IIRC most nomadic empires usually had a fairly sizeable capital city (e.g. Ordu-Baliq, Karakorum, Sarai Batu, Atli), even if they had few other urban areas otherwise (mostly those conquered/subjugated from settled peoples). So it would probably make sense for nomadic capitals to act more like normal cities, as well as those conquered from other civs.

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, so here is my current take on this topic.

First of all, the question of nomadic civs belongs to a larger complex of civilisations whose society does not mainly revolve around territory and large cities. They would probably share a lot of mechanics with those civs, plus maybe some additional mechanics unique to nomadic civs.

If we look at the civs in game that could be regarded as nomadic, it is currently only the Turks and the Mongols. Other possible candidates have been suggested that are also situated in the Eurasian steppe: Khazars, Kushans, Huns, Scythians, Bulgars. Outside of the Eurasian steppe, American plains Indians could follow the same rules: I could think of the Sioux, Comanche, or Mapuche.

Conversely, the larger group of "tribal" civs would include most American native civs, plus maybe some African native civs or even the Celts. Those cultures are largely sedentary, but without a clear idea of territory or developed urban centers. Of course, the boundaries are also fluid: for example, is it accurate to regard the Mississippian culture as tribal instead of urbanised?

I will start with the tribal civs because what is true for them will also be true for nomadic civs. I think they should have the following properties:

• Territory: as already suggested, their cultural borders should be invisible always passable to sedentary civs. In addition, sedentary civs will always receive cultural control over a tile they can reach, regardless of culture, unless they are at war, in which case cultural control will follow the usual rules. This will produce a situation where tribal civs are susceptible to cultural pressure from sedentary civs that they need to actively resist. Of course, tribal civs still need cultural control over tiles themselves to work them, and tribals can see each others borders and interact via the usual culture rules.
• Improvements: this is tough, because I don't think we want a world where the Americas are full of farms and cottages when the Europeans arrive there. But I also don't want to suggest that Native Americans did not improve their land, not to mention that gameplay would be quite boring at peace when there was nothing to do to with your land. The best solution I can think of is to introduce a new, and more limited set of improvements for tribal civs. One idea I had was improvements that decay after some turns of use (just like cottages grow after some use), so that they need to be continuously replaced. If their workers (or whatever the equivalent name is) are also always consumed on completing the improvement, it would make it very hard to just improve their whole territory, and also represent the migratory nature of those tribes pretty well. Maybe their improvement is just various forms of the tribal village (i.e. tribal farm, tribal camp etc.), I wanted to remove the goody hut aspect of tribal villages in the long term anyway, as it feels largely out of place in the game now (and things like ruins or natural wonders can take that place). I also don't think tribals should be able to chop forests. If those improvements would be destroyed by plague or when not being culturally controlled, we would also get a pretty good representation of the collapse of native American cultural development after European contact.
• Cities: realistically, cities are not the right way to represent an unurbanised culture (obviously). Still, Civ4 is a game of cities, and we cannot change that. Still, all civs that are even in question had some form of fixed settlement. Mississippian cities are fairly indistinguishable from other cities of a similar tech level. Less urbanised cultures still had villages, or even if nomadic, some permanent location that served as a gathering place or site of religious significance. We can use those as stand ins that represent all the tribes present in the surrounding area (just like cities in the game overall represent all people living in their surrounding area). They are still smaller population wise, so it makes sense to limit population growth, for example by requiring a lot more food for each new pop (also, we can adjust the "real population" formula to be more appropriate). As far as buildings go, I think tech is a good enough constraint: such civs will usually be on a primitive tech level and those buildings are all still appropriate. And tribals should not have access to chopping, mines or lumbermills, so they have limited production anyway. Maybe they still also need a bad building cost modifier on top of that.
• Civics: Again, I think tech is a good enough limitation here. Early game civics are generally just as appropriate for tribal as they are for urban civs.

I think with those special rules we already have a lot of ground covered to make tribal civs different from the others in a way that makes them play and act historically appropriate.

Now I've put further thought into what else is required to capture nomadic civs, but after a while I realised something important. Most "nomadic" empires that are actually in consideration for being included in the game, including the two that already exist (Turks and Mongols), had their power bases entirely located within urbanised areas. Turkic and Mongol tribes live in parts of Central Asia that are usually not even immediately within those civs' territory. And even those that are (usually their capital/spawning location) is an insignificant contributor to their power, both in game currently, but also historically. Turkic empires usually only became prominent once they conquered actual cities in the Tarim basin, Transoxiana, and later all the way into Persia. The Mongols would later repeat that, and also add control over China. The power of their empires was rooted in those sedentary cities, not primarily the tribes they originated from.

Still, how were those nomadic empires different from traditional empires?

• Speed of expansion: both Turks and Mongols could reach areas in inland Asia incredibly quickly, which is currently completely impossible. Cavalry armies could move through the steppes incredibly quickly and hit Transoxiana, Central Europe, Russia, and China. I think this is feasible with the new map: my plan is to give (light) cavalry double movement on steppe, just like ships on ocean. Since there is a band on steppe connecting China all the way to Bulgaria, this makes this rate of expansion a lot easier.
• Threat from raids: one of the greatest challenges if you are a sedentary empire that borders the steppes is that you are constantly faced with raids and invasions from its tribes. In comparison, the Mongol Empire presided over what is known as pax mongolica because those tribes were suddenly within the empire. That was a significant threat the Mongols did not have to worry about.
• Civilian to military mobilisation: in horse based, nomadic civilisation it was much easier to mobilise large parts of the population for war. Since the entire population already was constantly on the move, converting a group of pastoralists into an army was not that much of a difference. That is why steppe empires, despite their low population, could field armies that outnumbered societies with much larger populations. This ability should be reflected. But on the flipside, it means that when the entire populace is mobilised for war, there is little economy left on tribal lands.

After thinking about the last two points, I think that most of its properties are already reflected within the current Turkic UP. I conceived of it from a similar motivation, although from a gameplay point of view. It didn't make sense that the Turkic civ should have to deal with barbarians spawning at its borders, because those barbarians are the Turkic tribes of the steppes. I think this mechanic could be generalised to all nomadic civs: the barbarians spawning on the land represent the most nomadic members of their society. They can be leveraged into war if you are at war, and otherwise they will not attack you because you are a fellow nomadic civilisation. It could be refined somewhat of course (better requirements than just war/peace), but in general this mechanic captures the dynamic quite well. And instead the Turks could get a different unique power.

I don't know if this is sufficient if we start considering civilisations that did not really conquer and incorporate much sedentary territory. I am thinking of the Huns and Scythians, or on the other side of the Atlantic about the Sioux and Mapuche. Another system I have considered is that nomadic cities do not have traditional population growth at all. Instead, when they accumulate enough food for growth, a light cavalry unit appears in the city. As long as the unit remains in the city, it receives +1 pop to work a tile. If the unit leaves the city, it loses -1 pop. This represents how the population of a city isn't really tied to that particular location and can be moved somewhere else, or quickly be mobilised for war. I'm sure there are balance issues with this that need to be addressed, but overall I think it's an interesting concept.


The last and so far unsolved question for me is, how can these different mechanics for sedentary, tribal and nomadic civs interact? From the Turkic and Mongol examples it is clear that this isn't a civ wide attribute, and that they can conquer cities from sedentary civs that should continue to follow sedentary rules, instead of suddenly becoming nomadic (as that isn't what happened). So, is it a city based property? If so, how does that affect special rules not specifically tied to cities, like improvements on tiles or cultural control over tiles? Can a tribal/nomadic city become sedentary over time, and if so what are the conditions for that?

 

[troubleshooting]

Ever thought of using the Camp unit from the Genghis Khan scenario?

I was thinking this too actually. Maybe change the unit spawn mechanic to be more diverse and random?

 

[FraggleJock]

Could a mechanic of pasture resources moving to appropriate tiles further from the working city centre when worked/improved by nomads help encourage a more transient gameplay

brainstorming a little more, how about normal incomes be non existant in culturally dominant cities and science culture etc consume population(not necessarily only home culture) while improvements can be consumed to generate food to grow the population to fuel the nomal economic

 

[LikeNothing]

Another system I have considered is that nomadic cities do not have traditional population growth at all. Instead, when they accumulate enough food for growth, a light cavalry unit appears in the city. As long as the unit remains in the city, it receives +1 pop to work a tile. If the unit leaves the city, it loses -1 pop. This represents how the population of a city isn't really tied to that particular location and can be moved somewhere else, or quickly be mobilised for war. I'm sure there are balance issues with this that need to be addressed, but overall I think it's an interesting concept.

I love this idea! To expand upon it a little bit:

• Units work tiles: Nomads can always work tiles they have units on, unless the tiles have Sedentary Improvements (like Farms) in which case Culture control is required to work the tile.
  • No need to limit to Light Cavalry here, as they are already the best for this purpose because of their mobility, and because of further bonuses to them that Nomads will receive.
  • Nomads should have reduced unit maintenance costs.
• Viking-like loot bonus: Nomads can always loot tile Improvements they have units on, regardless of Culture or war status.
  • Possibly with a loot yield bonus like the Viking UP.
  • Instead of ship-sinking bonus, perhaps a bonus for defeating enemy units on land.
    • This would give Nomads some incentive to attack Barbarian units. Their infighting was pretty common and extensive, after all.
  • The Viking UP will still be unique since they are otherwise Sedentary and have excellent tech, etc.
• Orghuz-like border incursions: Nomad units can enter foreign culture tiles without Open Borders agreements, but suffer a movement speed penalty.
  • Such a penalty would negate/reduce the speed bonus of Light Cavalry.
  • This penalty would be amplified by the Great Wall.
• Mongol-like raze freedom: Nomads should suffer little to no Stability penalty for razing cities.
  • They should also be allowed to raze their own cities (perhaps with a little bit of penalty there).
  • Razing their own cities would produce Light Cavalry units.

Some separate ideas on Nomad's transition to Sedentary civs:

• Sedentary population limit: If a Nomad's cities population reaches a certain limit, the transition process automatically begins.
  • This population limit could be different for different Nomad civs. The Mongols should probably have the highest limit.
  • In order to make this more transparent to the player, perhaps an event/popup to the player when the population limit reaches 90%, so that the player can reduce population if desired.
• Effects during transition: As the transition process begins:
  • Most, if not all, tech speed penalties of Nomads are removed.
  • Most, if not all, nomad special abilities and penalties (Units work tiles, city population penalties) removed.
  • Other than the largest/capital city, far away cities become Barbarian or Independent regardless of Stability.
  • A Stability penalty (or bonus? depending on balance) for a number of turns.
• End of transition: The transition ends when certain Techs are researched and/or Civics adopted.
  • Upon which, the civ becomes a fully Sedentary civ, with Sedentary rather than Nomad mechanics.
    • Again, Vikings get to have unique Nomad-like UP while being Sedentary.
  • All sustained transitional effects are removed.
  • Perhaps a short (depending on balance) Golden Age begins.

 

[LikeNothing]

Re: the Turkic UP, it's difficult to think of a new one that is significant and fitting enough, since the proposed general Nomad mechanics (including the currently existing Turkic UP) already captures most significant Turkic features, and the Turks themselves have been a very expansive and constantly evolving group.

So I tried to come up with something that is fun and flavorful instead.

The Power of Orda: Every time you acquire (through production, or razing your own cities) or defeat a Light Cavalry unit (including by defeating Barbarians), a new Barbarian Light Cavalry unit (could be the same type, could be weaker) appears nearby in the direction further away from your Capital.

This represents how the Turks were seldom a completely unified and coordinated group, and they were constantly assimilating other nomadic peoples - even more so than other Nomadic civs. As a player, you would be controlling the dominant Turkic group, rather than all the Turks.

I think this would work very well with the AI, and in the player's hands will have hilarious (but hopefully not too OP) results, similar to the Mongol UP.

 

[Enyavar]

Wow! I didn't see the thread before.

I could imagine that these nomadic civs use essentially the same mechanics (BFCs and working tiles), but a different (leaner) tech tree where they slowly improve on their interactions with the world, much like the sedentary civs.

Here's my spontaneaous idea when I read Leoreth's original post: My idea is one of "camps", where each camp symbolizes a unit. A camp can be mobilized/encamped twice as a free action (so in one turn, a unit may mobilize, move, and then camp in a different spot).

For my idea, I'm working with regular units from the game that could be replaced with specific ones depending on the civ. I'm also pretty free by using the concept of "culture" as a way of keeping track of nomads.

The settler may camp on any spot and establish a full 20-tile BFC for the "main camp". (There are no cultural boundaries.) A main camp with a population of 1 may work its own tile, and then another right next to it, just like any other city. Other nomadic units may camp in the BFC, thus increase the city population by 1 each, thus allowing additional worked tiles. Encampments of units (combat units as well as workers) provide a slight improvement-bonus for the tile they are encamped on (details below). However, when a combat nomadic unit is encamped on a tile, it builds up 2 culture on that land. As soon as a tile has a total of 10 nomadic culture, it can no longer be used as an encampment, and the camp automatically turns back into the original unit (mobilization as a free action). Every turn that a tile is not in use as encampment, 1 nomadic culture is removed from the tile again, which means that after 10 turns of regeneration, a tile may be used as encampment again. Civilian nomadic units (settlers, workers, shamans, spies) are building up their culture more slowly: only 1 culture per turn, so their camps would last longer.

So here we go:

• Settlers provide the infrastructure of the main camp, and give +2 food and +2 commerce on the spot. (dependant on tech level? start low for nomadic Celts, but high for Mongols?)
  
• Spearmen/Archers/Skirmishers are hunter/fisher guys. Camping in any land spot gives that spot +1 food.
  • +1 additional food next to a river or coast, for Spearmen (so yes, desert coast tile gives 2 food for a while)
    
  • +1 additional food inside a forest, for Archers.
  • +1 additional food in open land, for Scouts/Skirmishers
• Axemen are woodchopper types. Camping them in any forested spot delivers +2 hammers
• Horsemen are herder guys. Their camps give a tile +1 food in grassland/plains/steppe environments; and another +2 food when it is flat land
• Camelmen are similar herder/trader types. Their camps always give +1 food, another +1 food in hill terrain, and +2 commerce in desert/semi-desert
• Swordsmen are mercenaries, used to secure the land. Their camps provide +1 commerce, and other units can travel through those spots with double speed (Like a hill allows for units with Guerilla II, or like a forest allows for units with Woodsmen II)
• Slaves captured by nomadic civs are worked to death in hill areas (--> mine camps)
• Workers are multitaskers that can farm for food, craft for hammers or trade for commerce in their camps (prereq technology may be required), and they also only build up 1 culture from the land. Their downside is of course that they are of no use in combat, unlike all the other units.
• Shamans are a specific thing for nomadic cultures, but are civilian units just like workers. Their camps produce a high amount of currency (for the purpose of wealth/science production), and they have no combat value.

When the main camp mobilizes, all camps in its area mobilize as well. The main camp may store food/hammers when they mobilize, and access it again when they camp down at a different spot. A main camp may only produce units (including new settlers), and all these units need to be bought (once per turn, at most) from stored hammers, food and wealth.

One main camp can only support 3*era side camps: That means that the Mittani civ in the ancient era may have only three side camps at any time; Gauls or Germanic main camps in the classical era may have up to six side camps; but Mongols in the medieval era may have nine side camps. Garrisoned units in a main camp may take the function of buildings... for example give XP to new units, since there are no Barracks or Stables?

Since Nomadic civs don't care about cultural borders, they may peacefully enter other lands without contracts and peacefully set up camps at any spot they migrate to (except for cities, which they may not enter). The temporarily used spots of those nomadic camps are unusable for the sedentary civilizations that are used to own the land (period!), and all existing improvements stack with the benefits of nomadic camps (which means nomadic civs will try to hog improved lands from other civs: the classical "barbarian" conflict). There may be no nomadic encampments within a sedentary civ they are at war with however: So the sedentary civilizations may want to declare war on the nomads to remove the interlopers from their lands... or it has to endure them.

Nomadic civs may become sedentary at one point? Possibly the way how Berber tribes become Moors? Arabian tribes become Arabia? Mongols become the Ilkhanate? Turk tribes become Ottomans? Median tribes become Persians? Um, I think at some point my imagination has gone waaay to wild here.

 

[johnfloyd27]

Haven’t read the whole thread, so unsure if this has been suggested, but how about limiting Nomads to one city? They can build a single settler and whenever they settle that settler, the old city vanishes and the new city is created with all the buildings of the old one.

You know. Nomadic-like.

Not sure if that’s possible within the constraints of the engine, but would be cool. You could give nomadic civs migratory goals - like create a Huns Civ that starts in the Steppe, must move its capital to Hungary, and then (UHV3) move its capital to the ruins of Rome.

or goths who start in Eastern Europe and must move their capital to France, then Spain, then North Africa.

Mongol victory can require never moving Karakoram.

Whenever a nomadic tribe captures a settled country’s capital (or maybe any city), it can get the choice of converting to a settled civilization - kind of like how one branch of the mongols became a Chinese dynasty, or the goths when they captured Carthage from Rome.

it would also be good for Nomad civs to have an option of taking cash from a city on conquest without capturing or destroying it.

while nomadic, the single city capitals should start with barracks and stables to encourage cavalry and rep how strong those society’s cavalry reputations were.

optional - don’t allow them to build workers. Give them a special wonder that gives big yield bonuses to tiles so they can work them and give productive without the improvements. (Or just make it so they have to move their nomadic capitals to places with tiles someone else developed to get those benefits)

 

[Dracosolon]

Doing some thread necromancy here...

IMHO, the key problem to solve here is that, while nomads are mostly defined by not doing (or not doing much ) of the classic Civilization things like developing cities, building permanent improvements, etc... it is still necessary to keep a broad ranges of options available. Civilization is a game about choices on multiple levels (city development, research, etc.) and keeping most of the strategic choices already present in the game will keep things interesting for the player. The alternative is removing most choices (no buildings and no improvements, for examples) and coming up with a tons of new mechanics to compensate the loss of complexity.

So, here's my tentative suggestion:

* Nomad (and maybe Semi-Nomad) is a status condition for some civs, susceptible to be lost as the game advances, either to represent historical sedentarization or simply a "what if?" alternate history, if the civ manages to survive that long. The simplest trigger condition could just be reaching a new era, thought it could also be "controlling a city of X population for Y turns" (homegrown or through conquest), if that's not too gameable, "have X population", etc. I'm thinking it probably shouldn't be a Civic, since it would mess up the currently very clean paneling. The transition from Nomad to Sedentary should also likely be advantageous/inevitable in the long run (though that's getting into the dicey territory of cultural assumptions here) but also represents a significant trade-off in the time period where it starts being a possibility.

* Nomad civs have a few cities because those are too core to the gameplay, but there are few, ideally distant from each other (maintenance malus to number of cities but not from distance to Palace?), and slow to develop. Some buildings are restricted, but not all. The lack of productive tiles and the necessity to keep producing units will make sure not too many buildings are completed. Since territorial expansion is one of the most Civ-compatible achievement available to nomad cultures, they should have other means of expanding their borders.

* Military units provide a way of simulating the sparse but wide Nomad occupation of their territory, and provide strategic interaction with the map for the player in a way that's IMHO less tedious than rebuilding temporary improvements. The following mechanic will involve them.

* Normal land improvements cannot be built, either because Workers can't or because Workers are replaced by some Nomad unit (that would sacrifice itself to build improvments? not sure). Instead, they can build the following two:

** Nomad Camp/Nomad Village/some alternative name:
- Can be built on Pasture ressources, Deer, maybe a few others (Bison?). Has comparable tile yield to its Camp/Pasture counterparts.
- Is linked to the nearest city, to which the resource is added to the trade network even without a road. The city receives a small / bonus from the resources it has access to. Never more than one city can be linked to the same Camp and benefit from its / bonus ( and work normally, unless we want to limit population given the huge amount of resources Nomad civs should get).
- Can be built outside borders, and slowly expands its borders like a city, albeit not as fast.
- Requires at least one garrisoned military Unit to be built. If the tile stops being occupied by a unit from a Nomad civ, it's destroyed. More units means faster expansion.
- When a city builds Military units, linked Nomad Camps have a chance to spawn additional units of the same type. This could be random odds, a -style gauge that fills up every time a Unit is built, or just "each time X number of units is built". The key is that the player should have input on what kind of units are built, so if they build Horsemen it should spawn Horsemen, if they've build a mix of Horsemen and Archer this should affect the odds, etc. The odds of spawning are independent for each Camp, so expanding across more Camps is better.

** Nomad Cache/Nomad Post/alternative:
- Needs borders, and doesn't expands them.
- Keeps the "linked to city" and "needs garrisoned Units" mechanisms.
- Can be built on any land resources, but doesn't provide anywhere near the same tile yields as its counterparts. However, it does give the / bonus to the linked city.
- Doesn't spawn Units.

The goal here is for the player to expand and invest in their territories in a different ways from their sedentary counterparts. Expanding across Camps should be the primary mean of growth. I'm not sure how to treat improvements from conquered territories, though I think Nomads should have a bonus to Pillage.

* In addition to providing space for Nomad Caches, borders help with defense. Whenever a enemy unit moves inside your borders (not by turn, but by tile, to ensure fast units are equally affected), they have a small chance to be converted to your civ. This could concern only Barbarians (the relation between them and Nomads having been discussed in this thread) and against other civs, deserters/sedentary people "going native", etc. This should give Nomads a slight edge against their more technologically advanced counterparts, and give them an incentive to maintain control (my model doesn't include the "Nomad borders are ignored by other civs" proposed in this thread, as I feel the regular mechanics would provide an emergent source of tensions with other civs - willing to change my mind though).

* Military Units are built with , the same as the Tributaries Civic (maybe the two bonuses combined could provide an additional boost for Nomads with that Civic?), to get around mediocre , put a further obstacle to growth and encourage the player to produce them instead of buildings.

* Possible additional bonus: Nomads could maybe receive a flat +1 bonus to movement, to simulate their mobility and compensate for their inability to build roads. Nomad cities don't need roads for their trade network either.

So that's my proposal. The way I see it, the player can choose to not expand and just garrison Units inside the city's fat cross for the sake of trying to play Sedentary-like, expand wide with a lots of vulnerable Camps with few Units (as military upkeep will quickly start being a problem), expand "tall" with a couple of solidly defended camps, or try to take over a Sedentary civ's city to rush to Sedentary status condition. The focus should be on careful territorial expansion in earlier era, and cultural and militaristic resistance in later ones (with a few civs like the Mongols having more direct conquest involved).

 

[Gen1_]

Yeah, it's really a great thread. A pity no one is replying on it anymore.