New Civ-specific ability: shepherd

[Elda king]

The shepherds are an very important part of story, like in mongolia and middle-east. A shepherd country must produce at least one food in any terrain (even mountains and deserts, where it is a very important way of survive). Any other sugestion?

[Maquiladora]

[Addled Platypus]

maybe as a tile improvement?

place the sheppard on a hill, +food

what would this add to the grand scheme of game play?

Taxi drivers are important im most major sities. I would not want them in game play.

[Boris Godunov]

As a civ trait it's rather silly (of course, I don't know if they're retaining civ traits in Civ4 anyway). It wouldn't make much sense once you got into the Industrial age. Agriculture and industry have effectively marginalized shepherding in today's world.

I think the agricultural trait is enough.

[alms66]

Agricultural trait = bonus food

Agriculture = "herding" + "farming"

Shepherding = herding


Yep, I'd say it's been covered.

[Boris Godunov]

How about a New Zealand civ with the trait "Sheep ********." The civ would get an extra happy face in every city that had a sheep resource tile in its borders.

[FrostyBoy]

Ahem.

Australia has 200+ million sheep and only about 20 million people.

NZ has 20+ million sheep and about 4 million people.

[Elda king]

The shepherd countries have an big importance in history; some races stablished farms to get food, and some races continue to be semi-nomadic, getting food by keep animals. They moved with the sheeps (and other animals) to get new pastures for them, and them come back when the grass grow again. Some cultures like the hebrews, the tibetans and the mongols/ tartarians were shepherd countries. The shepherds were the first to tame horses and use the iron. They continued attacked the peaceful farming villages, making them have at least a few soldiers to defend from them. If agricultural means shepherds and farmers, it would be better divide it into these two.
But maybe each civ specific ability should have bonus of a few resources, like farmers-> bonus to wheat, shepherds-> bonus to cattle and seafaring-> bonus to fish.

[Elda king]

Oh, I forgot: yes, at Industrial age it makes not much sense, but until there you probably will irrigate most deserts. And there are still people that are shepherd- like on the middle east.

[Nikolai]

Elda: I guess you posted while still being in April 1st(here you posted half an hour too late)?

[Max Sinister]

I once thought about being able to have two kinds of agriculture in Civ, intensive (more food, but also more pollution and destruction of fertile soil) and extensive (i.e. herding)

[TechWins]

Originally posted by Platypus Rex
maybe as a tile improvement?

place the sheppard on a hill, +food

what would this add to the grand scheme of game play?

Taxi drivers are important im most major sities. I would not want them in game play.

The worker could be consumed by creating a shepherd on a tile to give it the +1 food bonus. I suppose that would be the only allowed terrain bonus for that tile, so that way every tile wouldn't have a shepherd on it. The shepherd would be used in rare circumstances where a city is covered by mountains and hills and needs a higher food production. Other than, I don't think there is any good implementation of the idea.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Sn00py
Ahem.

Australia has 200+ million sheep and only about 20 million people.

NZ has 20+ million sheep and about 4 million people.

Notwithstanding source checking, that doesn't really dispel the myth you know.....

Anyway, the Falklands is the daddy for sheep jokes: 600,000 sheep and 3,000 people.

[realpolitic]

Originally posted by Max Sinister
I once thought about being able to have two kinds of agriculture in Civ, intensive (more food, but also more pollution and destruction of fertile soil) and extensive (i.e. herding)

I've thought of that, too. The Dustbowl happened because a tractor was so much more efficient than an ox.

If we use a PV system we could use a system like this:

Early Farm = +1 food 200 Pv No ecorisk
Agrocultural Revolution = +2 food 500Pv Very Low Eco risk
Industrial (and factory farms) +3 food 700 PV Very High eco risk
Space Age Farms +4 food 1200 PV (satelites are expensive) Moderate eco risk (satelilites spot problems early)

[TechWins]

Originally posted by realpolitic


I've thought of that, too. The Dustbowl happened because a tractor was so much more efficient than an ox.

If we use a PV system we could use a system like this:

Early Farm = +1 food 200 Pv No ecorisk
Agrocultural Revolution = +2 food 500Pv Very Low Eco risk
Industrial (and factory farms) +3 food 700 PV Very High eco risk
Space Age Farms +4 food 1200 PV (satelites are expensive) Moderate eco risk (satelilites spot problems early)

Sounds like tooooooooooo much micromanagement to me and not any additional gameplay depth.