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I tried Nomad mode for the first time this morning, and I think it will appeal to all the TBS fans more than the default Small City startup. Instead of starting with a small city, 3 farms, 2 woodcutters, a scout, and a library, you start with 3 citizens and that's it. No city, no scout, no library, no nothing. Since you have no city you have no territory, thus you can't build anything except for a city at first. But right away you're faced with a strategic decision - put all 3 citizens on the city construction, or send one or two out to explore and look for ruins? And you have another decision - where to put that first city. Your 3 citizens might be able to see a forest or a mountain, or they might not. Should they walk around a little first, or start building right away? Obviously these decisions are almost identical to the decisions you make in the first few turns of a Civ game.
Once the city is built, you can use your starting resources to pump out a few citizens and get some farms and a woodcutter camp going. But you have to build a library before you can get any research going. One you have the library, the order of research is critical as always. In the demo, I had pretty much gotten into a habit of science first, then civic to build a second city, then commerce. Military was the lowest priority, and I might even age advance or research a second science before the first military. But in Nomad military suddenly became a high priority, because you really want to build a barracks so that you can get a scout out there. Being the first one to get a scout out picking up ruins bonuses can be a big advantage.
Anyway, all this early game strategy is not present in the small city start. I'm not saying Nomad is better, but I suspect it will have more appeal to Civ fans who are used to starting with just a settler. It is a little boring for the first 30 or so seconds because there is literally nothing else to do while you wait for your first city to be built (unless you decide to use one of your first 3 citizens for exploring). But after that it's a lot of critical decisions in a row.
Once the city is built, you can use your starting resources to pump out a few citizens and get some farms and a woodcutter camp going. But you have to build a library before you can get any research going. One you have the library, the order of research is critical as always. In the demo, I had pretty much gotten into a habit of science first, then civic to build a second city, then commerce. Military was the lowest priority, and I might even age advance or research a second science before the first military. But in Nomad military suddenly became a high priority, because you really want to build a barracks so that you can get a scout out there. Being the first one to get a scout out picking up ruins bonuses can be a big advantage.
Anyway, all this early game strategy is not present in the small city start. I'm not saying Nomad is better, but I suspect it will have more appeal to Civ fans who are used to starting with just a settler. It is a little boring for the first 30 or so seconds because there is literally nothing else to do while you wait for your first city to be built (unless you decide to use one of your first 3 citizens for exploring). But after that it's a lot of critical decisions in a row.
, but its fun to have a change every once and a whiel
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