Scythia Thread

[Cooleatack]

Based on the portraits, it seems likely that Tomyris will lead a Scythian or Massagetean Civilization.
Tomyris is often accounted for the death of Cyrus the Great and seen as a great leader herself.
Perhaps this will give her a unique leader ability and or agenda that portrays her powerful presence.

The Scythians controlled a vast area spanning from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Eastern Persia.
Since Firaxis wants to have more coverage of the globe,
this seems like a great Civ to cover the often overlooked steppes of Central Asia (With the exception of the Mongols) and Crimea.



They were powerful and feared; fighting against civilizations as far apart as Greece, Egypt, Persia and China.
They preferred mounted warfare, which they excelled in, making a Horse UU almost guaranteed.

They also made a vast trading network connecting China, India, Persia and Greece.
Which will likely give them a trading bonus likely connected to conquest.
Although I would not be surprised if this is saved for an eventual Mongol inclusion to represent the Silk Road.

In addition to their trading prowess, they excelled at metal working, making a distinct style of jewelry.
Their metal working feats lead me to believe that they will get a unique type of forge or workshop type of building
with a bonus to metal or gem luxury resources.



How do you think Scythia will be represented?
What kind of leader will Tomyris be? Which unique abilities do you think they will have?
Or do you think Scythia will not be featured at all? Discuss it below!

 

[Willie5000]

I imagine it'll be a Civ specializing in ranged mounted warfare, like the Mongols and Huns are in Civ V. As for how Tomrys will be represented... I'm not sure.

 

[Zelda1983]

They preferred mounted warfare, which they excelled in, making a Horse UU almost guaranteed.

I think so too.

Tomyris will be a Warriorprincess.

 

[UkrNixon]

I wonder what language will they use for Tomyris. Ossetian?

 

[Bad Wolf]

I always found the Huns kind of awkward, what with their stealing city names, and building cities at all when they were definitely not known for that. I think if they're going the nomadic horse archer route again, the playstyle should be somewhat unique. Maybe like Venice they can't build cities - they have to conquer them. Perhaps they could build "camps" to heal and build military units, instead of proper cities. Functionally, groups like the Huns and the Scythians are represented by the barbarians in game, so the playstyle of such peoples should be somewhat barbarian in nature.

This would of course make starting next to the Scythians absolutely terrifying.

 

[Amrunril]

I always found the Huns kind of awkward, what with their stealing city names, and building cities at all when they were definitely not known for that. I think if they're going the nomadic horse archer route again, the playstyle should be somewhat unique. Maybe like Venice they can't build cities - they have to conquer them. Perhaps they could build "camps" to heal and build military units, instead of proper cities. Functionally, groups like the Huns and the Scythians are represented by the barbarians in game, so the playstyle of such peoples should be somewhat barbarian in nature.

This would of course make starting next to the Scythians absolutely terrifying.

I actually think Civ BERT's moving city mechanic (transferred to land) would be a great starting point for a nomadic civ. It might be a better fit for the Huns or Mongols that Scythia though (I don't know much about Scythia), and it's complicated/out of the box enough (especially now that it would have to interact with districts) that it would probably make more sense in an expansion than in vanilla.

 

[moysturfurmer]

I imagine it'll be a Civ specializing in ranged mounted warfare, like the Mongols and Huns are in Civ V. As for how Tomrys will be represented... I'm not sure.

Yep.

As for Tomyris, could be she'll have an agenda where she haaaaates people who declare war on her allies (/children).

Edit: from the Create your own unique City State! thread: Scythia: Militaristic: Grants control/use of their Scythian Horse Archers (can move after attacking (kinda stealing this from Parthia a little)). Mounted units gain experience 50% faster.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Maybe a female horse archer unit as did not the scythians have women warriors?

 

[Bad Wolf]

"Scythia" never really existed as a political entity, it's a geographic region. The Scythians were people who inhabited that region. They were horse nomads like the Mongols, Parthians, Huns, Turks, Xiongnu, and many others.

The thing that makes the Mongols stand out is that they actually did create an empire and build cities, though they started out like the others as nomadic raiders. A group of Turks famously captured much of the former Byzantine empire and formed the Ottoman empire. And the Parthians conquered and ruled Iran for a while.

The Scythians are an interesting choice in that I believe they were the first group of these Eurasian horse nomads to enter the historical record. They were contemporary with the Assyrians and Babylonians. In fact according to some theories Assyria was so severely weakened in dealing with the Scythians that they became a target for all of their aggrieved neighbours.

 

[Veras]

I'll repeat here my posts about Scythia colors made on the leaders portraits thread:

For a while, I had quite given up on this thread, but I think the topic of the yellow/blue colors are worthy of a comeback, so let's bring this back for a moment.

So France has officially her old Civ V colors and Sweden doesn't fit on the alphabetical board. Other than the unknown civs, I stand with Art Grin, who suggested a few pages ago that those must be the colors of Scythia because of the colors of Kazachstan. If we look closely to the region once habited by the scythians, not only Kazachstan and Ukraine bears the blue and yellow colors, but also south Russian places such as

Republic of Kalmykia:

Spoiler :

Rostov Oblast:

Spoiler :

The city of Volvograd:

Spoiler :

Other cities and oblasts in the region have the blue and yellow as well, but isolated or combined with other colors.

One may argue that those are not quite the same tone of the collors spotted on the video, but we've seen some color swaps before, like the white eagle for Austria and black eagle for Poland in civ 5.

Going backwards, the colors reappears on the Crimean Khanate:

Spoiler :

The Kazakh Khanate:

Spoiler :

The Nogai Horde:

Spoiler :

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions

 

[jsciv69]

Seems like Scythia and Tomyris in particular would make exciting allies. No doubt Cleopatra would warm up to them given their likely militarist style. With some of these new personalities Civ VI becomes more and more exciting to play. I'm sure for some October 21 can't come soon enough.

 

[Loaf Warden]

Overall I think "cannot found cities" is a poor mechanic in a game series which has always been primarily about founding cities. I felt it was an unnecessary restriction on Venice (and one which served to give the misleading impression that the Most Serene Republic was merely a city-state and didn't warrant inclusion as a civ). And when the Huns were first announced, and it was speculated that they wouldn't be able to found cities but would get major bonuses for capturing them, I thought it was an interesting idea though not a great one. It probably would have at least been more interesting than the nonsensical mechanic of stealing city names, but in the end I don't think they should design civs such that they are unable to even participate in the core mechanic of the game.

What I think would be interesting to see for civs which were historically nomadic (such as the Scythians, the Mongols, and the Huns if they ever come back) would be the ability, mentioned earlier, to pick up and move a city. That seems unlikely given the way cities have been unstacked this time around, but I think with the right restrictions it could still work. For example, once you've built a district, the city can no longer be moved. There would have to be strong enough incentives to move cities in the first place that would compensate them for being unable to put districts in cities they intend to move, and ensure that ignoring the nomad mechanic and just building regular cities isn't always obviously the optimal strategy. But it should still be possible for them to found new cities and place districts to make them regular cities; historically the Scythians and Huns didn't become city-builders, but the Mongols eventually did, and the Scythians and Huns could have if the historical circumstances had been different. Moveable cities and bonuses for not having districts could be a neat way to model nomadism and give some different flavor for certain civs, but those civs should not be forbidden from playing the game the normal way if there is reason for them to want to.

 

[dagriggstar]

I play on a (currently private) mod where I redesigned the Huns so their cities cannot yield any science. They can only get tech through the defeating "more advanced units" (So kill an Archer get Archery, kill a comp bow get construction) and taking cities (the old Assyrian UA). They can still get science through trade routes but that is obviously negligible...
The impact is that obviously you need to be at war with other civs for practically the entire game. Quite a few buildings (libraries most obviously) become pointless or significantly less appealing. So you more have "population centres" rather than cities. Not building buildings sort of gives you the feel of being nomadic, for me anyway.

A trading bonus relating to conquest......how can that even work ? If you're at war with someone, you can't exactly trade with them. Unless you have something like if you have a currently active trade route with a civ you can build their UU's but that seems a bit tricky to balance (Also arguably would be better for the Mongols anyway)

Considering the leader choice, I wouldn't be surprised if we got something very similar to the Shoshone UA from 5 (Cities have additional territory when founded and enemy units take a small amount of damage when inside your territory for example).

 

[Ikael]

I suppouse that the design will probably be along these lines:

Tomyris Unique Ability: She who hunts Kings
Your units have a 25% chance of killing enemy generals when attacking a unit with generals embedded in them. Gain great person points when killing enemy generals or taking enemy cities (popullation-dependant: the bigger the city, the bigger the glory!)


Scytians Unique Ability: First to iron
Gain knowledge of iron working upon the killing of 5 enemy units (barbarians doesn't count, though). Your iron resources can sustain more units and will help all your mounted units to recover HP faster

Unique Unit: Scytian chariot archer
Regain HP and an extra attack after killing enemy units

In short: Rush! kill! Maim! Destroy! Repeat!