evonannoredars
King
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2024
- Messages
- 627
Just read the chapter about the Scythians in The Other Ancient Civilisations and now I've got a civ concept that I need to get out my head before I can sleep - this won't be a fully-fleshed out concept as usual because I also don't have several hours to spend researching. Instead, I'm going to run through my thought process about how a semi-nomadic civ might work. I haven't sought out and read anyone else's ideas, so if I'm basically repeating what someone else has already come up with then oops!
Why Semi-Nomadic/Scythia?
It would be pretty hard to make any progress with any legacy path if you were nomadic the entire age. A moveable cities sort of nomadicness would be really tricky to implement, so it makes more sense imo to start off truly nomadic with no settlements, then eventually settle down. The Scythians did the same, and their militaristic nature is ideal for the gameplay this would require.
Life as Nomads
Starting off nomadic naturally means no founder unit. Instead, I propose Scythia starts off with several horse archer units - fast to explore plenty and find goody huts, strong so that you're not at risk of dying early on.
Similar to the Maori in civ 6, you'd recieve a continuous yield income prior to settling. I propose this comes directly from the units, and decreases per settlement so the ability eventually vanishes once you've transitioned to a fully sedentary lifestle.
Crucially, one of these yields would be influence. City-states will be highly important in the early game, providing troops to levy (upgradable into horse archers if cavalry or ranged units) and cities to eventually incorporate.
When to Settle
Or rather, capture. Unless you choose to incorporate a city-state, the first settlement (automatically converted to your capital) would need to be captured off an enemy. I don't think there should be a game-enforced time when you need to settle, either by locking the ability to capture/incorporate a city behind the civs culture tree or forcing you to settle beyond a certain point (although there would need to be some special case for if the player enters exploration with zero cities).
I therefore suggest, along with the diminishing bonus yields per settlement, there should be extra rewards for pillaging that are enhanced prior to settling, possibly including a third option for when you capture a city that allows you to immediately return it for a large sum of gold in exchange. A ransom deal of sorts. It therefore becomes a question of how long you want to keep building up your treasury for before you eventually settle down to be able to spend all that gold.
Catching Up After Settling
Even with a lot of gold, settling too late could leave you far behind. To introduce further strategy than just 'get lots of gold then stop being nomadic', the nomadic phase should involve sowing the seeds for your sedentary phase.
The Scythians waited 40 days (iirc) before burying their dead - to reference this tradition, a kurgan unique improvement could be granted per every horse archer that has previously died. Rather than costing gold or production to place, they are placed instantly so long as you have some remaining. Since they would be lost when being overbuilt, their boost in the early sedentary phase might be lost over time too.
There is also a risk you might miss out on all the good settlement spots. You could capture cities there, but if you've left it too late, there's a good chance the enemy would be far too powerful by now. Therefore a way to 'reserve' spots would be handy - fortified horse archers prevent settlement in adjacent tiles perhaps? Although the AI would need to be clever enough to wage war on you if you start blanketing the continent with them.
Conclusion
I think a semi-nomadic antiquity age civ would be incredibly interesting, but would need to be designed well to allow the player to keep up somewhat prior to capturing that first settlement and catch up afterward. I believe this outlined approach would be pretty easy to implement - I can't really think of a way to make a truly whole-age-nomadic civ to work in a simple way. One that has a much longer nomadic period than the normal first five turns where you debate where to place your settler followed by a more gradual transition into a sedentary civilisation would be more interesting to play as too imo.
But ofc I'm curious what other people think too so lmk! I might go over this again, refine it (this was written in one go with only half an hour of thinking beforehand at most) and provide a fully detailed concept, but that's for another time.
Why Semi-Nomadic/Scythia?
It would be pretty hard to make any progress with any legacy path if you were nomadic the entire age. A moveable cities sort of nomadicness would be really tricky to implement, so it makes more sense imo to start off truly nomadic with no settlements, then eventually settle down. The Scythians did the same, and their militaristic nature is ideal for the gameplay this would require.
Life as Nomads
Starting off nomadic naturally means no founder unit. Instead, I propose Scythia starts off with several horse archer units - fast to explore plenty and find goody huts, strong so that you're not at risk of dying early on.
Similar to the Maori in civ 6, you'd recieve a continuous yield income prior to settling. I propose this comes directly from the units, and decreases per settlement so the ability eventually vanishes once you've transitioned to a fully sedentary lifestle.
Crucially, one of these yields would be influence. City-states will be highly important in the early game, providing troops to levy (upgradable into horse archers if cavalry or ranged units) and cities to eventually incorporate.
When to Settle
Or rather, capture. Unless you choose to incorporate a city-state, the first settlement (automatically converted to your capital) would need to be captured off an enemy. I don't think there should be a game-enforced time when you need to settle, either by locking the ability to capture/incorporate a city behind the civs culture tree or forcing you to settle beyond a certain point (although there would need to be some special case for if the player enters exploration with zero cities).
I therefore suggest, along with the diminishing bonus yields per settlement, there should be extra rewards for pillaging that are enhanced prior to settling, possibly including a third option for when you capture a city that allows you to immediately return it for a large sum of gold in exchange. A ransom deal of sorts. It therefore becomes a question of how long you want to keep building up your treasury for before you eventually settle down to be able to spend all that gold.
Catching Up After Settling
Even with a lot of gold, settling too late could leave you far behind. To introduce further strategy than just 'get lots of gold then stop being nomadic', the nomadic phase should involve sowing the seeds for your sedentary phase.
The Scythians waited 40 days (iirc) before burying their dead - to reference this tradition, a kurgan unique improvement could be granted per every horse archer that has previously died. Rather than costing gold or production to place, they are placed instantly so long as you have some remaining. Since they would be lost when being overbuilt, their boost in the early sedentary phase might be lost over time too.
There is also a risk you might miss out on all the good settlement spots. You could capture cities there, but if you've left it too late, there's a good chance the enemy would be far too powerful by now. Therefore a way to 'reserve' spots would be handy - fortified horse archers prevent settlement in adjacent tiles perhaps? Although the AI would need to be clever enough to wage war on you if you start blanketing the continent with them.
Conclusion
I think a semi-nomadic antiquity age civ would be incredibly interesting, but would need to be designed well to allow the player to keep up somewhat prior to capturing that first settlement and catch up afterward. I believe this outlined approach would be pretty easy to implement - I can't really think of a way to make a truly whole-age-nomadic civ to work in a simple way. One that has a much longer nomadic period than the normal first five turns where you debate where to place your settler followed by a more gradual transition into a sedentary civilisation would be more interesting to play as too imo.
But ofc I'm curious what other people think too so lmk! I might go over this again, refine it (this was written in one go with only half an hour of thinking beforehand at most) and provide a fully detailed concept, but that's for another time.
