Nomadic Civilizations

[Nuo]

This is something I have been wanting to see in Civilization for a long time. Based on some of the interesting ideas that are being floated in this forum (like weather), perhaps this sort of mod could be done in slic. If it's impossible, I hope someone will tell me right away.

The idea is basically to have a civilization that never needs to build cities and can stay nomadic perhaps throughout the entire game.

There are historical precidents for successful nomadic empires, the Mongols being the best known.

The best way I can think to implement this would be to create a nomad "unit" that is able to build other units. It would need to have a couple other features of cities, such as the ability to collect and store resources from surrounding map squares.

Perhaps it could also have an attack similar to the slaver, except that it could steal the contents of the granary and add them to it's own.

A nomadic civilization would never have borders or be able to build wonders or city/tile improvements, but then I'm thinking it would be intended mosly for the barbarians or other NPC civs. Perhaps when any civilization captured the last city of another civilization, there would be a % chance that the citizens of the conquered civ would "take to the hills" and become nomads.

Seaborne nomads (pirates) could be a lot of fun, too.


So what do you think, sirs? Is it doable? I'm still new to slic and I don't know what's possible and what's not.

[Locutus]

Well, I'm not sure. Something like this will in some form probably be possible but it won't be easy to do and sure as hell involve a lot of work. The amount of code you'll need is so large it'll probably slow the game down, so you'd need to keep an eye on that.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Nomad civs was a large topic of discussion back when we started posting suggestions of Civ III last year. I still think it's a good idea, and not just for Barbarians. Taking a starting date of 4000 BC, most of the civilizations on the map would be Nomadic: about the only cities anywhere in the world are Hacilar, Mohenjo-Daro and Jericho!
My suggestions regarding Nomadic civs:
The basic unit is the Tribe. This would be like a settler in that it can move (very slowly) and has a certain inherent defense factor. It would be like a city in that it can gather resources from the surrounding teritory and store them. It would also be like a city in that it can build new units and Improvements, but only a very few Improvements could be added to it:
Caravanserai - equivalent of a Bazaar
Shaman's Wagon - equivalent of a Shrine
Chief's Horde - equivalent of a Granary

This would require some pretty good slic recoding, because as I understand it characteristics are unique to each type of effect: city characteristics diff from unit, from Tile Imp, etc. The Nomad unit would have to combine city and unit characteristics, and not being a programmer I'm not at all certain how easy or impossible this might turn out to be.
The Nomad civ would have no capital, but also no max limit on Tribes, since by nature they spread out a lot. I'd also like to see a couple of Nomad (or Barbarian) only units: Horse Archer and Swordsman, representing the classic Nomadic mounted archer and the maniac Gallic, Germanic, Scandinavian barbarian foot warrior of the early centuries AD.
I do not think that nomad civs are viable in the middle to late game, because settled cities get too much of a boost from advanced tile improvements and, especially, industrialization. Before gunpowder, though, nomad units (warrior, archer, horse archer, swordsman,spearman, knight, etc) could all be automatically Veterans (warlike lifestyle) and they could be a real threat to settled civs nearby - as they were historically.
Last point. At will, a Nomad Tribe can "settle down" and form a regular stationary city. All the nomadic civs did this eventually - even the Mongols. When it does this, the Nomadic Civ becomes a regular civ, loses the auto Veterans but gains all the regular city improvements and buildings.

[Hannibal Ad Portas]

interisting idea,

A easy way to simulate this for a player civ is to edit the unit database to allow a Nomad/settler to
settle at say size4, remember to change max disband siz
to one above the size you asign,give the nomad increased mobilty/vision range ,create government for Nomadics that emphasizes the attributes you want to reflect in your mod, thus you can have a roving unit that settles for a time, researches/builds units and moves on.i would suggest you restrict most of its units to the gov you assign to the nomads to maximise the differtness of this civ,hope this of some use.

[Immortal Wombat]

In the unit database, there is a UNIT_CITY, however it appears to do nothing. I tried changing its sprite to the nomad sprite, and giving it some movement points, but the sprite is actually the werewolf from the samurai scenario, and the city wont move. The city looks just the same as before because of course it uses the city sprites as defined in cityid.txt

I was wondering though if you could make the city look like a nomad by altering its sprites and adding it as a new style that only the nomadic civs used.

[Hannibal Ad Portas]

Sorry poor choice of words

What i had in mind was to copy and past the settler in units, creating a new settler unit rename it as nomad with its new abilitys.

[Hannibal Ad Portas]

Some more thoughts
It will need low combat stats or it will show up as a barbarian unit,their could be 2 or more sizes of its settle size depending on techs researched to relect a tribal group growing to a horde, obviosly it will have to settle to build a new settler that has this new larger settle size,when it settles it will have massive distance from capital penaltys so make it like an aircraft carrier with horse archers as its enablers for its active defense,allow horse archers to bombard to reflect their hit and run tactics, and their harrasing of enemys as they approach,as turn sequence works this will be quite a bonus,and or a really cheap building to lower crime and raise happiness or give massive martial law effects in gov settings,will look at this thouroghly over the weekend.

[Nuo]

quote: Originally posted by Diodorus Sicilus on 02-23-2001 11:28 AM Last point. At will, a Nomad Tribe can "settle down" and form a regular stationary city. All the nomadic civs did this eventually - even the Mongols. When it does this, the Nomadic Civ becomes a regular civ, loses the auto Veterans but gains all the regular city improvements and buildings.

Also at will, the nomad "city" should be able to pack up at a moment's notice and high tail it to the highlands.

This is one of the reasons the Mongols/Jurchens/Manchus/etc. gave the Chinese so much trouble -- whenever China tried to do any "preventative maintenance" against the barbarians, they could almost never find them, much less a city to sack.

For that reason I think if they must be slow-moving, they should at least be stealth units.

Also, if we were creative I'm sure we could come up with some creative nomads for the later game. Pirates, gypsies, deadheads, whatever.

[Nuo]

quote: Originally posted by Hannibal Ad Portas on 02-23-2001 03:04 PM Some more thoughts It will need low combat stats or it will show up as a barbarian unit,...

Actually, I think it would be perfect if it showed up as a barbarian unit.

[Nuo]

Would it be possible to have the civ start normally with one city, but then set the civ with, say, a "nomad" flag. The flag would make it so that that civ is not allowed to build settlers, only nomads. Then make it so that the nomad units periodically spawn other nomads automatically.

Perhaps all civs couls start this way until some critical advance was reached or wonder was built . I'd say the advance of "settled agriculture" is at least as significant in human history as that goofy Libertarian "zero-crime bill".

[WesW]

I think a lot of this could be done without slic, but I don't really see the point in it. The Nomads were nomadic primarily because of the need to find fresh grassland for their animal herds. This does not play into a Ctp game, where there are no seasons.
In the game, you would scout out the region you started out in, then pick the best city sites and settle down to play a regular game. To move to a worse location would be bad strategy.

[Hannibal Ad Portas]

ok
In in a normal game i see little use for this unit , but this is what i tried with a highly mobile settler,if you had a historcal scn set 200bc-200ad on omnigods china map,already with Chou,chin,Shang and Han civs set up with citys cropland garrision untits etc you as the player of the nomadic Hsiung Nu with a couple of this mobile settlers would be on the edges of the map. If your turn sequence ran winter/spring/summer/summer/autumn/ you could have some slc to have a -to poulation growth or city size on winter turns, so nomads pack up in autumn, move in winter, move and settle in spring, thus making it benificial to be on the move when the civilsed citys are having a hard time of it.As you have a custom map you can create several good areas for settlment that you migrate between,however if your city disbands and moves of, and its already targeted by a stack, will it clear its goal if city has disbanded?.All of this envolve lots of work to simulate something that happens in the normal game quite quikly and simply.Also i see no way of getting the ai to use such a unit.You are always way behind in research and its hard to produce sufficient units while trying to keep in caracter as a nomad that said its half wall entertaing to do.

spennick@aol.com

[Immortal Wombat]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 02-23-2001 11:45 PM I think a lot of this could be done without slic, but I don't really see the point in it. The Nomads were nomadic primarily because of the need to find fresh grassland for their animal herds. This does not play into a Ctp game, where there are no seasons. In the game, you would scout out the region you started out in, then pick the best city sites and settle down to play a regular game. To move to a worse location would be bad strategy.

I agree, civilisations were almost by definition not nomads because they had cities, however what it would be cool to try and do is to create moving cities, so that a nomadic tribe could build up their forces or nomad units until they have enough resources to take over another civ/settle down across the world and make a widespread civilisation. It would certainly help spread the cities out - a necessity for the science victory.


[This message has been edited by Immortal Wombat (edited February 26, 2001).]

[Nuo]

I was browsing through the Units.txt file, and lo and behold there is a city unit: Unit #13. Here is a short list of the flags that make it different from other units:

MaxMovePoints 0 // Naturally...

HasPopAndCanBuild // I haven't fiddled with this yet, but it seems like this is the flag that a nomad unit would need.

CantBuild // Meaning, I imagine, that it can't be built.
CityGrowthCoefficient 1 // Anyone played with this?
NoIndex //
GLHidden
NeedsNoSupport


I'm a little nervous to try to change these, but I'll give it a shot anyway. When I'm done I'll make a full report.

[Dale]

quote: CityGrowthCoefficient 1 // Anyone played with this?

This one's an easy question. I played round with it and changed it to 5. Guess what my cities did? They went from size 1 to 6, then 11, then 16, then ........ You get the drift.

------------------
Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."