Since we are near the release of CIV 7, I’d like to repost an idea that I posted 5 years ago.

It has always bothered me that the starting point for every civilization in the game is an agricultural society with big cities settled near a river. While large scale agriculture was the cornerstone of many ancient civilizations, your Egypts, Chinas, Indias, Mesopotamias … etc. Many human civilizations developed utilizing other methods of maintaining food supply, specifically nomadic civlizations that relied on herding and moving from one place to another, such as the Arabs, the Turks, the Mongols… etc. As well as maritime civilizations that developed around fishing villages and developed great advancements in sailing technology early on such as the various Polynesian and South-East Asian cultures.

In this regard I wish to see this reflected in the categorization of civilizations in the next game. Civilizations can start as one of 3 types:

1- Agricultural: Gets the bonuses that we currently have:

• Starts with the Agriculture technology.
• Gains bonus housing from settling near rivers.
• Has the ability to build monuments from the start of the game.

2- Nomadic:

• Starts with the Animal Husbandry technology.

• No bonus housing from settling near rivers until an Aqueduct is built. Instead, gets bonus housing from settling near Horses, Sheep and Camels.

• Can not build monuments or defensive buildings until they research Construction.

• Can move their cities after construction until they construct the first defensive building. How this works is similar to Endless Legends: the city builds a project that takes ~8 turns to complete, after completing the project the city with all its buildings and districts turns into a Settler-like unit, once you move to another location you unpack the settler placing the city center then the districts one by one.

• May be the moving city can keep utilizing the terrain, grow in population and train units while moving? While obviously not able to build any districts and buildings.

3- Maritime:

• Starts with the Fishing technology.
• No bonus housing from settling near rivers until an Aqueduct is built. Instead, gets bonus housing from settling on the coast.
• Units can embark from the start of the game.
• Bonus production from Fishing boats and districts are built 25% faster on the coast.

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These bonuses are just an example. A system like this can capture the diversity in the core of different human civilizations, while making early game decisions much more varied based on the type of civilizations you are playing. A Nomadic civilization for example can move their capital to settle near that Natural Wonder that you discovered later, however by having no defensive buildings, the only way to escape danger is to pack your city and move, similar to how many of the Turkic tribes responded to the Mongol invasion in the Middle Ages, in real life.

I think this will also aid in varying the first 100 turns of every game, instead of going through the same motions every game, in a static “build order”.