Hugo Rune:
You're definitely right: It's a lot easier to read this way

Synopsis: The nomad tribe unit represents a Tribal Group with many of the characteristics of a city plus the ability to move. It can have multiple population points, gathers food&shields&trade and can build some "tribe improvements" & slightly superior horse-based units, but has no military value on its own. Potential growth problems are countered by scaling down their ability to reproduce and the risc to lose permanent unhappy (rioting) nomad tribe units spontaneously to the barbarians...

Description: As first part of the "sweep of time" trilogy, civilizations could start a bit earlier without the knowledge of agriculture, as nomadic civs: tribes of hunter/gatherers. (The traditional start with the advances "settling", irrigation, mining and road building should be included as one of the accelerated startup options). The nomad-tribe-based civs have advantages in the beginning; once their city-based opponents get gunpowder, they start to seriously hurt. By then, though, most of them will (to survive) have conquered a few enemy cities and settled down, as they did historically.
This proposal (V990909) for an implementation of nomadic civilizations is based on one new special unit, the NOMAD TRIBE UNIT (all other units remaining the same). When a game starts from the very beginning (8000BC?), every civ gets one weak nomad tribe unit (0a, 1d, 1m, 1h, 1f) with 1 population point. Nomad tribe units can have multiple pop. points (limited by happiness) and are generated by splitting 1 unit into 2 units and removed by founding a city with them or adding to a city their population point{s} (like settlers). While exploring the environs they live off the land and have no home city, i.e. need never food or shield support.

Like a WALKING CITY a nomad tribe unit gathers food&shields&trade from the tile it is currently on (occasionally preventing a local city to use this tile). It must move every turn or will get no resources (e.g. fortified in emergency). The first/only population point of the nomad tribe unit reaps all food&shields&trade points from the occupied tile according to the current government type -- Nothing is subtracted as maintenance for the unit itself! Further pop. points reap additionally (shields+1 & trade+1) per pop. point, but no food from the occupied tile. Thereafter this tile is exhausted for "pop. points"-number of turns (yield=0), symbolized by a pollution-like icon. So the multiple nomad tribe units leave temporary traces behind them, happy hunting -- this also prevents them from occupying the same (special resource or own improved) tiles "too soon" again (for example on automated patrol routes).
Every nomad tribe unit has a name (reference for the supported units), a short list of TRIBE IMPROVEMENTS and a food & production box, which are displayed, when it becomes the active unit. Nomad tribe units can't improve terrain with roads, irrigation, mines etc. and cannot produce wonders; they can produce units and some mobile(!) equivalents to city improvements:
Chieftain's Hut - requires warrior code, equiv. to Palace
Sacred Grove - requires ceremonial burial, equiv. to Temple
Shaman's Hut - requires map making, equiv. to Library
Bazaar - requires currency, equiv. to Market Place
Wagon Burgh - requires wheel, equiv. to City Walls, but not as strong.
When a nomad tribe unit founds a city, the tribe improvements are changed into their city equivalents(??).

Nomad tribe units may gain advances through the collection of TRADE POINTS, just like regular cities. Every civ gets 1 tradepoint per turn for free (to lessen the advantage for starting with the nomad tribe unit near river tiles). Once the "settling" advance is acquired, they may found cities.

With the appropriate civilization advance a nomad tribe unit can build the tribe improvements mentioned above and units (warriors, horsemen, settlers, diplomats etc.) by emptying a full PRODUCTION BOX. 1 military unit per population point of the nomad tribe unit is free of support in despotism (&monarchy?). Further units are supported from the nomad tribe unit's production box with 1 shield per turn (or 1 food, if the prod. box is empty (and disbanded, if the food box is empty too)). Settlers need 1 shield & 1 food support.
The MILITARY UNITS produced by a nomad tribe unit are some of the regular types, except higher Morale/Experience than ordinary units and mounted types have slightly better mobility. The units it can produce should be limited to infantry and mounted, so no vehicles. Maybe they could not build units requiring beyond a certain Production cost, which would be a quick way to prohibit them from building things they never built, like Musketeers, Catapults, Cannon, etc?

When its FOOD BOX becomes full, 1 nomad tribe unit may split in 2 new, independend nomad tribe units with their own, empty (and scaled up) food boxes, dividing the content of the old unit's production box into their own, independend production boxes as well as dividing supported units of the old unit between the 2 new units; tribe improvements remain together at 1 (the bigger) new unit.
Alternatively to the split the nomad tribe unit may accumulate, i.e. clear & scale up its full food box and increase the pop. points by one.
To provide one mechanism towards building cities (and to escape the general "exponential growth" problem!), the food box is enlarged on every split or accumulation (e.g. 10, 10, 20, 30, 50 etc. food). This numbers should play-balance a variety of starting strategies between the following extremes:
(mongolian) EXPANSIONIST, explore continent for goodie huts & weak civs, develop asap horseback riding, wheel etc., conquer cities and/or plunder their irrigated & mined tiles with swarms of simple nomad tribe units. {Overrun your inert enemies behind their fences while your own population base is highly flexible: suitable distributed moving targets between nowhere and everywhere. Hurry up, your advantage is diminishing, conquer enough cities with your superior horseXXXX units before your wild & free life is finally doomed by the advance of gunpowder...}
(chinese) PERFECTIONIST, explore neighbourhood for a good city location, develop asap the advance "settling", build city, irrigation, granary, phalanx etc. {Improve your cities & agriculture, dig in and build up city walls, defend tenacious every of your precious improvements. Grow fast, grow faster than you lose power to your nasty enemies in the dark ages. And hold on tight, your time will come, to throw them back and finally destroy them and prosper peacefully...}
As long as nomad tribe units want to grow, they would avoid desert, glacier & mountain (0 food) and prefer grassland, special resources & irrigated tiles (2+ food), mainly mixed with forest & plains (1 food), and so gaining approx. 1.5 food per turn (net).
{With the FOODBOX-SIZES 10, 10, 20, 30, 50, 80, 130.. & approx. 1.5 food per turn gathered by a nomad tribe unit, it would need 7, 7, 13, 20, 33, 53, 87.. turns to fill them. I.e. during the first 7, 13, 27, 47, 80, 133, 220.. turns there would be max. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64.. nomad tribe units (of course if not accumulated or killed or used for cities).}

Another mechanism towards building cities and balance between the splitting or accumulating of nomad tribe units is provided by UNHAPPINESS (riot factor): Unhappiness/Inefficiency from distance translates into rebellion after a time unless serious steps are taken to avoid it. Own rioting (redhead) nomad tribe units on the circumference of the empire turn into barbarian (redshield) nomad tribe units after a couple of turns (10?, fix or with increasing 'chance' to happen?) and split off from its civ.
{Early-game BARBARIANS should have more options than just attack anything that moves: provide trading partners, info about other civs they contact, middle-men for tech transfers. Variety in Barbarians comes both from giving them a range of attitudes and mentioned interactions, but also some diplomatic exchange as well: You can buy off barbarians into not attacking you, joining you, attacking someone else, etc. Trading a lot with them would make them like you more (or, occasionally, lust after what you've got and raid you if you don't keep some military force around. And they should rely a lot on the way nomadic civs worked, by raids or hiring themselves out as mercenaries or try to join your empire but settling in the borders... There should be different barbarian tribes, but barbarians of the same tribe should land near each other. If barbarians stay too long without being attacked, then they should found their own cities and become a small city-state. Finally the threat to civs also change over time and/or technology: barbarians to peasant rebellions to religious fanatics and terrorists.}

Goodie huts can result in a nomad tribe unit.

Questions:
Nomad tribe units are really weak and probably can't survive a battle (they can fortify, but that would prevent them from gathering food). Should zones of control apply to them?

I think cities should also be able to produce nomad tribe units (kind of supply crawlers). When such a unit is created in a city, the number of citizens is reduced by 1. So in later stages of the game the nomad tribe unit can be used to migrate pop. points between cities. Number of shields required to produce a nomad tribe unit?20? How about the initial foodbox-size of the nomad tribe unit?80?

Should there be a (variable, dependent on number of turns or advances?) latency time for a nomad tribe unit between the build-command (b-key) and the actual foundation of the city (for play balance, e.g. to increase or decrease 'migration' in modern times)? 5-10 turns?

Taking the resources from a tile improvement is just 'living off the land'. If a nomad tribe unit destroys a (foreign) improvement (pillage it), should it get a one-time bonus depending on the improvement? How big should this bonus be?
On the other hand, they might get peaceful bonuses in diffusing Tech and in Trade, because they tend to contact a lot of Civilizations informally in their wandering. Each time a nomad tribe unit trades with a city, it increases the chance of gaining a technological advance, as does wandering through a populated area. How can this be modelled in more detail and terms of game effect?

If Firaxis decides to use floating or hovering cities (like a certain game which is (c) ), they should be nomad tribes. e.g., after you discover hovercraft or plastic (to make a bubble of air under each building), etc, your nomad tribes can float, and after you discover antigravity field or orbital spaceflight or whatever, your nomad tribes can "fly", etc...

Also, after horseback riding is discovered, a nomad tribes unit could move 2 squares per turn, after motor vehicles, it might move 3 squares per turn, etc...

Well? What do you think?

How about:

1) When you create a new game, have the option to choose between both useless civs (no difference), and different civs (those with "personalities").

2) For useless civs, have all the ones that that other game (CtP) has (if you want I can post them all later).

2) For different civs, Sid should choose some of the most significant nations (around 20 would be nice), and also have some others, like the NATURALISTS, COMMUNISTS, SCIENTISTS, TRADERS, FIGHTERS, PACIFIST EXPANDERS, FUNDAMENTALISTS, etc... (those aren't names, just types of civs).

3) Of course, you can't have both types in one game, it's have to be one or the other.

4) There should definately be a button to launch the integrated civ creator in both types of games (to create different civs, you should be given x points, and each advantage costs a certain amount of points, while each disadvantage will give you bonus points, like in RPGs)

That's enough for now, please tell me what you think.