I was wondering how the developers will tackle city building in Ancient Arabia (As I presume it will be an option in the future). As farming isn’t really viable in the desert, would there be a kind of different system where the city would rely on caravan trading and the raiding of rival tribes for the betterment of your own?
I’m a 4th Generation of settled Bedouin, my great grandfather finally settled in the old port town of Kuwait in the early 1900s. It will be interesting how the developers can tackle city building in the deserts of Arabia.
It’s an interesting topic and period to cover if the game goes into later epochs of time.
Anthrapologogly speaking the majority of the trading towns had forms of subsistent farming and cattle hearding. Bedouin nomads relied on trade because of their mobility on the outskirts of habitable City states. There where few tribes that relied heavily on raiding, as the cycle of conflict would eventually destabilise trade and agriculture.
I’d still like to see it though. Would make a great gameplay expansion.
Personally I’m not versed in the area of the world.
However, from what I remember from other parts with less than ideal farming conditions, a setlement in this situation would rely on fishing (if coastal) and/or a pastoral life style with lifestock herding and hunting as a basis of living.
I don’t remember seeing this anywhere, but will there be a stage in the game modeling the prevalence of pastoral societies before the advent of farming?
I think the social & political conditions could be quite similar to anything set in ancient Mesopotamia (I’m thinking about the Amurrite era, around 20th-16th centuries B.C., with the most famous name of this period being Hammu-rabi of Babylon).
In this period, the kings were both chiefs of nomad tribes and settled kings of the major towns in their tribal area, e.g. Zimrî-li’m was both a member of the Sim’al confederacy and the king of Mari (this same town around currently famous Abu Kamal and Dêr ez-Zôr), whose archives found in his palace left around 33,000 cuneiform tablets. Other kings of the time, like the kings of Eshnunna, where of the other confederacy, the Bene Yamina.
Probably with the Mesopotamian DLC it would be possible to have a slightly geographical setting, with one major oasis per local map and trade routes between the various maps for the neighboring towns? If this is the lone difference needed to have both fluvial valleys of Mesopotamia & Egypt and desert areas like Sahara or Arabia, it would be minimal pain for a real flavor gain, while covering some places like e.g. Palmyra/Tadmor, or Sîwah Oasis in Egypt and most oasis from the Arabian Peninsula.
