{ The List } - Nomads and Chiefdoms

[LzPrst]

I like it. but what about this change, each nomadic settler acts as a cityworker and you can stack them for increased production. that would make it easier since a settler with 3 population points would be confusing. Instead, just have 3 settlers walking together, producing together and feeding eachother. Then you just cap the number of nomadic settlers you can have in one square. If there are 4 nomadic settlers in an area and they reach the max food no new settler is made until the group splits. nomads wont grow over a certain point.
historially the mongols were nomads and they wooped sedentary far more advanced civilizations' butts bigtime.
I assume nomads wouldnt need to support their units since they are hunter/gatherers...
this would be good for the warmongers as they could stay nomadic in nomansland a long time and then suddenly explode and conquer enemy cities with their vast, but horse-smelling troops
How would that be handled? if a nomadic civ took over a city would they automatically become sedentary or would they be forced to raze the city? I dont like any of those options
a nomad on a banana should gain free techs and units every turn

[Krum]

What about semi-settled peoples? It shouldn't be and binary thing, rather a continuum.

[Lord_Davinator]

we are all nomads... are any of you a fruit?

[GePap]

My ideas on this are in my population proposal.

Nomadism should be a possible choice- it should not be a different type of civ, but a choice a civ could make.

[Heresson]

Big
for nomads.
It's silly to have to have cities where nomads were wandering.
(wondering? hm...). Like in my scenario under construction in civ2, I had to make some cities that didn't exist at the time, to make proper civs enough strong.
And still it is not correct. You could not defeat nomads by just taking some city. Nomadic tribes were much harder to handle.
Anyway - yay for nomads.

[dannubis]

perhaps a civ can become sedentary only after a certain amount of settlers have been generated ?

for instance : egypt starting on floodplains can become sedentary much earlier than the celts who inhabit forrested areas.

the advantages of sedentary civs are clear : more population, culture, building of improvements

but which advantages can be given to the nomad civilizations ?

[Heresson]

Faster and stronger units, in general.
A nomadic civ could settler - or conquer a sedentary civ.

[realpolitic]

Some fascinating ideas here. My concern is that if the settler age isn't available at the beginning if there is too big a variance on the discovery of settler technology, it could be a game breaker.

[Shogun Gunner]

Nomadic civs could "convert" into a permanent civ - especially when confronting the issues Joncha suggested.

A nomadic settler, could have many of the same properties a city has, but when the conversion to permanent civ takes place, the city gets planted permanently at that location. As available land were to decrease this could be an easy decision for the nomadic civ as they are being pressed on all sides.

[Mark_Everson]

I'd like to see pastoralists (nomads) since it would give another big strategic possibility to the player. And as has been noted, some of the most important civs in pre-modern history were in that mold: Mongols, Huns, etc.

There are a lot of good ideas here. On the transition to a "normal" civ. . . Certainly one of the best ways historically for a nomad civ to convert to a sedentary one is to conquer somebody else's. Once you start taking over cities as a nomad you'd have to decide whether to go the settled route or stay nomadic. You could spin off conquered cities as a "protectorate" if you wanted to stay nomad. And for the big strategic choice -- If you wait too long to settle, and there are gunpowder empires around you, Bang, you're dead!

[Urban Ranger]

Nomads are groups of people who don't have argiculture. Thus, they should only be a lead into the formal time frame. Normads don't have much culture or civilization to speak of, because they spend all their time looking after the herds and moving around.

Without argiculture they could never grow big.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Without argiculture they could never grow big.

Hi UR:

Maybe I don't understand your point, but it seems quite clear. I beg to differ. Paraphrasing you.. .

The Mongols couldn't grow "big" b/c they didn't have agriculture? Ask about 100M Chinese from a ways back. Sure pastoralists are a bit parasitic on settled civs with respect to many technologies, but they can play an important part up to the dawn of the modern age (say 1500 or so). Now whether this belongs in the civilization game is certainly anyone's guess, but I think pastoralist civilizations certainly pass the historical relevance test.

-Mark

[Kuciwalker]

The Mongols never existed, remember?

[Whoha]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb

I can understand the fish, game and whales. But haven't seen tropical fruit trees get up and walk somewhere except in the LotR movie.

"it could grip it by the haft!"

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
The Mongols couldn't grow "big" b/c they didn't have agriculture? Ask about 100M Chinese from a ways back.

They certainly weren't big in terms of population.

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Sure pastoralists are a bit parasitic on settled civs with respect to many technologies, but they can play an important part up to the dawn of the modern age (say 1500 or so).

Certainly, they could have major impacts on world history, as, well, the world history shows.