The Nomad Question

[Hellenism Salesman]

It seems pretty likely that we’ll be getting the Mongols or a horse raider civ like them in the base game. These civ’s historical ways of life have infamously clashed with Civ’s models of settlement (especially in the trenches of these forums), and for as many sweeping changes as Civ VII aims to make it doesn’t seem like there’s a great accommodation for nomads yet.

So, the nomad question returns for this entry: will pastoralist horse raiders be treated as urban civilizations again, or will they have their own twist in the vein of Humankind’s Hun and Mongol cultures?

Let’s discuss and predict.

 

[CrackerJack45]

I imagine that they'll play the same as other civs like they have in previous titles, just because there's already so much that's new in Civ 7 I can't really believe they'd even have the time to design whole unique gameplay styles for a few specific civs.

While we're on the subject though, I would really like to see the Huns return, probably as an atiquity civ that would evolve into Mongolia in the exploration era. The one big issue with that though is that in 7 all civs have associated wonders and I don't really think there's much to pick from with the Huns (maybe they could get a huge culture reward for razing cities that have wonders in them or something)

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

The twist may come from the City - Town dichotomy. There may be unique attributes that could be assigned to Mongol towns. There might even be a prohibition on making any of them cities (other than your capital).

To be honest, I'm not sure how historical the whole "steppe nomads didn't have cities" thing really was. Maybe it applied in the very early years, but I believe the Mongols did have settlements that functioned like Civ cities, the Huns eventually settled and did, too. The composition of their armies and the way they waged war differed more than their core economic structure, I believe, once they reached the point of controlling territory.

 

[Thormodr]

It's a fair point on towns and cities. It may be an opportunity to differentiate nomadic Civs a little more. Here's hoping.

 

[AriochIV]

I would very much like to see a nomadic model added to the game, but I very much doubt that we will see that in base Civ7.

 

[Thormodr]

I would very much like to see a nomadic model added to the game, but I very much doubt that we will see that in base Civ7.

I agree with you there. Definitely a dlc or expansion target like they did in EU IV.

 

[8housesofelixir]

The twist may come from the City - Town dichotomy. There may be unique attributes that could be assigned to Mongol towns. There might even be a prohibition on making any of them cities (other than your capital).

To be honest, I'm not sure how historical the whole "steppe nomads didn't have cities" thing really was. Maybe it applied in the very early years, but I believe the Mongols did have settlements that functioned like Civ cities, the Huns eventually settled and did, too. The composition of their armies and the way they waged war differed more than their core economic structure, I believe, once they reached the point of controlling territory.

What the Mongols did IRL was a parallel system - they employed different governmental structures onto different existing social-economical-military configurations.

To put it simply, different groups have different roles. If you are a horse nomad, you still live in the yurts, organized in ordus, grazing sheeps, and your obligation to the Khan is to raise a nomadic cavalry. If you are an urban dweller, you still live in houses, organized in neighborhoods, doing service jobs in the city, and your obligation to Khan is to pay taxes. For instance, the Yuan dynasty in China had a special administrative division called 录事司, which only ruled the largest city in a region, and was in charge of registering urban households and collecting taxes.

This is a simplified description, of course, but most of the Mongol regimes and the successor Khanates did follow a similar structure in managing a territorial empire that had both nomadic and settled populations, IIRC both the Khazars and the Golden Horde had a similar system that governed their cities (which participated in Silk Road trades) independently from the ordus, which was why both Khanates were important commercial powerhouses.

And in Civ 7's terms, I guess Towns will play a much more important role in civs such as Mongols.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Besides the City-Town dichotomy, what I like to see that would reflect the actual pastoralist way of life is a Farm-Pasture dichotomy.

In real life, nomadic societies chose pastoralism as a way of living because their lands could not support farms. One cannot do any significant agriculture on the Mongolian Steppes in the 45th parallel north as the climate does not really allow it, only grass can grow there. But you can use grass to feed animals and then eat the livestock. So you have an entire society based on sheep and horse grazing.

Now, when these societies somehow manage to move into or conquer agricultural lands, they will face the issue of exclusive land use. Settled societies perform agriculture, so their land is covered in farms, and produce grains to support the society. Farmlands can be turned into pastures - if you can grow wheat or rice, you can certainly grow grass and raise sheep - but the per acre yield of a pasture is significantly lower than the farms (you may get tons of rice or just hundreds of sheep for the same amount of lands). If nomadic societies want to expand the pastures, they need to remove the farms, and the agriculturalists will starve.

This created a huge confrontation, and is essential to the nomadic-settled conflicts across history. Even when Kublai Khan conquered the Northern Chinese Plains, then one of the world's most productive regions in terms of agriculture, some Mongolian nobles thought to purge most of the agricultural population there since they wanted to raise horses and sheep instead. (The mass purge did not happen since other ministers went against it, although the Mongols still seized considerable land in Northern China and turned them into imperial pastures. Centuries later, the Qing dynasty did the same. Both created countless land use conflicts down the road.)

If certain mechanics in Civ 7 can create such a Farm-Pasture conflict, then that will be a much deeper dive into the pastoral economy than most of the gaming landscape. (For instance, you can build Pasture anywhere, essentially as a filler for the low-yield tiles to support your early population, but their maximum yield will be much lower than farms. Or having Pastures affect more than one tile, like a National Park or Natural Reserves, to portray the difference in size and density between farms and pastures.)

 

[Krikkit1]

I could see the nomad model being used for some independent peoples.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Besides the City-Town dichotomy, what I like to see that would reflect the actual pastoralist way of life is a Farm-Pasture dichotomy.

In real life, nomadic societies chose pastoralism as a way of living because their lands could not support farms. One cannot do any significant agriculture on the Mongolian Steppes in the 45th parallel north as the climate does not really allow it, only grass can grow there. But you can use grass to feed animals and then eat the livestock. So you have an entire society based on sheep and horse grazing.

Now, when these societies somehow manage to move into or conquer agricultural lands, they will face the issue of exclusive land use. Settled societies perform agriculture, so their land is covered in farms, and produce grains to support the society. Farmlands can be turned into pastures - if you can grow wheat or rice, you can certainly grow grass and raise sheep - but the per acre yield of a pasture is significantly lower than the farms (you may get tons of rice or just hundreds of sheep for the same amount of lands). If nomadic societies want to expand the pastures, they need to remove the farms, and the agriculturalists will starve.

This created a huge confrontation, and is essential to the nomadic-settled conflicts across history. Even when Kublai Khan conquered the Northern Chinese Plains, then one of the world's most productive regions in terms of agriculture, some Mongolian nobles thought to purge most of the agricultural population there since they wanted to raise horses and sheep instead. (The mass purge did not happen since other ministers went against it, although the Mongols still seized considerable land in Northern China and turned them into imperial pastures. Centuries later, the Qing dynasty did the same. Both created countless land use conflicts down the road.)

If certain mechanics in Civ 7 can create such a Farm-Pasture conflict, then that will be a much deeper dive into the pastoral economy than most of the gaming landscape. (For instance, you can build Pasture anywhere, essentially as a filler for the low-yield tiles to support your early population, but their maximum yield will be much lower than farms. Or having Pastures affect more than one tile, like a National Park or Natural Reserves, to portray the difference in size and density between farms and pastures.)

There is a mod for Civ6 that gives a food bonus to any unworked tile adjacent to a pasture.

You lose the bonus if you build an improvement on that tile

This sort of models choosing pastoralism

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The Pastoral Civs and the City State model of political organization, are, IMHO, the two great Unsolved Conundrums of the Civ games. The games have always treated them exactly (or nearly exactly) as the same as Empires or other Civ models, which both neglects their advantages and ignores their uniqueness.

Leaving the City State for a moment, Pastorals were always a mixture of City/Town/Camp, from the archeological and some historical evidence going all the way back to at least the Scythians - who both founded a few of their own cities and dominated virtually every Greek city founded on the north coast of the Black Sea, the Crimea, and the Caucasus - at least 16 such Greek city/colony sites have been identified, compared to only 7 Scythian-founded cities (and one of those actually dates back to the Cimmerians!)

Since the majority of those Greek colonies would be Towns in the Civ VII model, this suggests that the City/Town of Civ VII can be used to model the pastorals. The key is to give them potentially a different Yield Model compated to trhe settled Cities.

Possibly, Pastoral Civ founds only Towns ('Camps' or 'Sarais') but these can Build Units of several kinds and receive 'Tribute' (Gold) from either Cities or Towns Not founded by the pastoral Civ. In addition, Pastoral-founded Towns might have a much wider range of Influence over the surrounded territory, reflecting the fact that their populations ranged over much wider areas with their herds/flocks.

Virtually all the pastoral groups should also have access to Unique military units: the Horse Archer of various types, and the Mounted Lancer up to and including the armored Cataphractii. A full-fledged Empire of multiple Cities could still raise and maintain larger armies, but Pastoral armies would be extremely fast-moving and dangerous. ("Automatic" Army Commanders might be another 'perk' of pastoral Civs)

The other characteristic of pastoral 'Civs' is the wide area they covered, represented by the wider range around their Towns/Camps, and the wide Trade networks they managed - clear across central Asia, and in the Americas, clear across the Great Plains from the Mississippi to (modern) New Mexico and from south of the Rio Grande to Canada. Some kind of Trade/Trade Route bonus in length and return would be very appropriate, and especially, if it is not an attribute of regular Trade, the ability to receive Resources from one trade partner and trade them on to another: the central Asian pastorals were the engine that powered the Silk Road commerce in luxury goods clear accross the continent, after all.

 

[Naokaukodem]

(especially in the trenches of these forums)

To be fair the nomad/hunter-gatherers part was already treated in Civ in the early game by putting an incentive on pastures, camps and things like that. You may have noticed that an unimproved grassland give +2 food usually too. (more for forests in Civ6) "Bonus" resources more generally are what is supposed to represent this way of life IMO. There is also the "barbarians" and the "tribal villages" (aka "goody huts", not sure where I saw this term employed first). So a city, however settled ingame, may still reprensent some form of back and forth in a limited area, which becomes wider by using scouts and settling new territories.

Now, it's not to say that any particular accent have been put on these, and I just wish it to be done the way in the idea in my signature.

As for Civ7, I think it's too late for this. Maybe someone, one day, somewhere, will be interested in those times like I am and make a mod or something. (I'm still dreaming of an "editor" a la Starcraft that has much power, but that's a dream as it would only basically make the devs' job, as to modern programming, no, no)

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Would help if the horse resource was't bound to specific immoble spots on the map? That would kind of defeat the whole real life point of horses, after all . . .

 

[Zaarin]

Would help if the horse resource was't bound to specific immoble spots on the map? That would kind of defeat the whole real life point of horses, after all . . .

I kind of interpret Cows, Horses, Wheat, Rice, etc. on the map to mean "good pasturage" or "good fields" given all of these are very mobile and very adaptable resources. The hitch is that pasturage that is good for cows is equally good for horses (sheep/goats can live on sparser land, which makes their presence on the map even harder to parse). I also interpret Wheat as "Grains" (e.g., wheat, barley, millet, etc.). I'm kind of okay with Rice being separated out since the growing conditions for rice are very different. Still, the overall "resource on the map" system for agricultural resources is...weird. It's the kind of thing you can't think too much about or it breaks.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I kind of interpret Cows, Horses, Wheat, Rice, etc. on the map to mean "good pasturage" or "good fields" given all of these are very mobile and very adaptable resources. The hitch is that pasturage that is good for cows is equally good for horses (sheep/goats can live on sparser land, which makes their presence on the map even harder to parse). I also interpret Wheat as "Grains" (e.g., wheat, barley, millet, etc.). I'm kind of okay with Rice being separated out since the growing conditions for rice are very different. Still, the overall "resource on the map" system for agricultural resources is...weird. It's the kind of thing you can't think too much about or it breaks.

I have long been in favor of 'mobile resources' simply because it makes no sense for 'Wheat" (which I agree, represents all the grass grains like millet, barley, wheat, oats, etc - I've even advocated the use of the fine old term "Korn" which refers to all of these) to be Fixed in Place from 4000 BCE on. Animals are even more of a massive Resource Disconnect, since cattle and horses both were actually very limited in their map imprint in 4000 BCE: realistically, there were 'horses' only in a swath across Central Asia, and no other Civ start would have them: not India, Europe, China, the Middle East nor Africa, and cattle (domesticated) were originally only in India (Indus Valley) and spread from there.

Of course, a system of Mobile Resources could potentially handicap the majority of starting Civs, so I recognize that it ain't going to happen. Still, Civ VII's making Resources not a requirement for building is a Good Step: it makes it potentially possible to 'Mobilize' Resources without crippling those who start in, say, northern Europe with neither horses nor cattle . . .

 

[dagriggstar]

For some reason I saw the Egyptian unique civilian unit (Tjaty) and thought to myself that those abilities could be used to create a nomadic faction. Like make it a ger unique civilian unit and give them a bunch of abilities that activate on different terrains.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I kind of interpret Cows, Horses, Wheat, Rice, etc. on the map to mean "good pasturage" or "good fields" given all of these are very mobile and very adaptable resources. The hitch is that pasturage that is good for cows is equally good for horses (sheep/goats can live on sparser land, which makes their presence on the map even harder to parse). I also interpret Wheat as "Grains" (e.g., wheat, barley, millet, etc.). I'm kind of okay with Rice being separated out since the growing conditions for rice are very different. Still, the overall "resource on the map" system for agricultural resources is...weird. It's the kind of thing you can't think too much about or it breaks.

I have long been in favor of 'mobile resources' simply because it makes no sense for 'Wheat" (which I agree, represents all the grass grains like millet, barley, wheat, oats, etc - I've even advocated the use of the fine old term "Korn" which refers to all of these) to be Fixed in Place from 4000 BCE on. Animals are even more of a massive Resource Disconnect, since cattle and horses both were actually very limited in their map imprint in 4000 BCE: realistically, there were 'horses' only in a swath across Central Asia, and no other Civ start would have them: not India, Europe, China, the Middle East nor Africa, and cattle (domesticated) were originally only in India (Indus Valley) and spread from there.

Of course, a system of Mobile Resources could potentially handicap the majority of starting Civs, so I recognize that it ain't going to happen. Still, Civ VII's making Resources not a requirement for building is a Good Step: it makes it potentially possible to 'Mobilize' Resources without crippling those who start in, say, northern Europe with neither hoses nor cattle . . .

I tried a mod that allowed you to “plant” resources in appropriate hexes if you had one to start with as your seed/breeding stock

It quickly broke the game, so ya the Civ bonus resource model doesn’t work well at all

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I tried a mod that allowed you to “plant” resources in appropriate hexes if you had one to start with as your seed/breeding stock

It quickly broke the game, so ya the Civ bonus resource model doesn’t work well at all

Yeah, I played around with that Mod, too, with much the same results.

I suspect to make it work at all the requirements for 'planting' Resources in new tiles would have to be very stringent as to terrain type and possibly include Tech requirements as well.

And then you have to wonder, if it requires that much work, why bother?

I think coming at it from the other direction as Civ VII does, making Resources not a hard and fast Requirement for things, may do a much better job of reducing the potentially game-breaking nature of resources that we had before.

We shall see . . .

 

[Ornen]

I have long been in favor of 'mobile resources' simply because it makes no sense for 'Wheat" (which I agree, represents all the grass grains like millet, barley, wheat, oats, etc - I've even advocated the use of the fine old term "Korn" which refers to all of these) to be Fixed in Place from 4000 BCE on. Animals are even more of a massive Resource Disconnect, since cattle and horses both were actually very limited in their map imprint in 4000 BCE: realistically, there were 'horses' only in a swath across Central Asia, and no other Civ start would have them: not India, Europe, China, the Middle East nor Africa, and cattle (domesticated) were originally only in India (Indus Valley) and spread from there.

Of course, a system of Mobile Resources could potentially handicap the majority of starting Civs, so I recognize that it ain't going to happen. Still, Civ VII's making Resources not a requirement for building is a Good Step: it makes it potentially possible to 'Mobilize' Resources without crippling those who start in, say, northern Europe with neither hoses nor cattle . . .

"horses can't move" is one of my biggest little pet peeves in Civ 6. but they've already talked about switching up resources between eras in Civ 7, so I'm getting my hopes up (probably to be let down) that they'll have some way to approximate the Columbian Exchange (and other movements of resources)

 

[Zaarin]

"horses can't move" is one of my biggest little pet peeves in Civ 6. but they've already talked about switching up resources between eras in Civ 7, so I'm getting my hopes up (probably to be let down) that they'll have some way to approximate the Columbian Exchange (and other movements of resources)

Not fun for the new continent players... "A ship appears on the horizon. 90% of your population is dead."