Nomads:
Nomads are essentially cousins to the High Men. While we've yet to explore the High Men, both races pride themselves on strong military units and advanced economies at a cost. In the case of the Nomads, it's the absolute lack of food buildings. This is a much more serious problem than it may appear at first; not only do Nomads miss the Granary which provides a huge + 5 population boost for cheap, they also don't get to make their farmers particularly efficient, thanks to both the Farmers' Market and Animists' Guild being missing.
Nomad Swordsmen(and Spearmen, if you ever use them) can launch attacks from bows. This is a decent addition that lets them defend towns better against rampaging monsters or even other armies. However, do note that this attack isn't particularly powerful; they do not make up for the Nomads missing bowmen, atleast not on their own. Horsebowmen essentially combine both Bowmen and Cavalry for the Nomads, being a fast archer unit. They are pretty good at skirmishing, and with enough buffs can claim some lairs; however on the offensive they feel a bit anemic since they only have four ammo. Losing one movement over regular cavalry also makes it harder for them to deal with rough terrain, especially obvious when you try to fight non corporeal or foresting units in thick forests.
Pikemen are essentially a weird take on the Halberdiers. They gain Armor Piercing which lets them deal with high armor targets better, but otherwise their offense isn't that remarkable compared to regular halberdiers. Their extra resistance does let them deal better with resistance checks like Night Stalkers or Cockatrices, but it's not a significant edge.
Nomad Priests sport a lot of resistance thanks to the racial bonus of + 3 resistance, and so are occasionally worth making to thwart curses. Speaking of Priests though, they are souped up Shaman with reasonably good fighting stats. Shaman were never mentioned before this since they were basically unremarkable healer units that died easily in battle and did too low damage, only really being noteworthy for having Healing charges if they survived somehow. Well, that and being able to quickly heal wounded units on the overworld. However, Priests do incur a significant investment cost for all their advantages; not only do you need to build a Parthenon to get them, they also cost 100 gold, which is a bit steep for a unit whose main role is overworld/in combat healing. Shamans by contrast are dirt cheap and so can be built quickly. Oh, and having more Shamans is also better in case you face a crazy Chaos wizard who likes to do nothing better than corrupt all of your lands.
Nomad Magicians are notable for the same reason Nomad Priests are. Otherwise, they are identical to regular Magicians in every way.
Rangers are generally fairly strong ranged attackers with good melee, however their halberdier tier defense and lack of special abilities outside of long range sniping makes them feel rather overpriced at 150 gold. You'll still build them since Horsebowmen only last so long, and the Pathfinding is a good bonus to your armies, assuming they aren't much faster than 3 speed. But you can't help but feel like this unit came a little too late. It definitely doesn't help that counters to arrows are rather frequent the longer the game goes on.
Griffons are fairly straightforward. They are bulky armor piercing heavy hitters that fly, and thanks to their First Strike, they can do that without fear of much retaliation, assuming that you pick the right targets. However thanks to their low figure count, they don't really improve much with buffs or levels, and 4 speed feels a bit slow considering that they are Fantastic Stable units. Oh, and they also cost a ton to make, 180 gold to be exact.
There's a problem with the Nomads' advanced units being so costly. Essentially, since they can't improve their farmers a lot, they are restricted in how many workers they can assign for making units or buildings. While capturing other races definitely helps, the lack of production compared to say Barbarians or even Orcs is very noticeable, and forces them to build Mechanician's Guilds in their main military centres, which isn't ideal since that building also requires investing quite some production through multiple other buildings, to say nothing of the maintenance costs. The Nomads presumably have a gold bonus through roads, despite not being able to link any of their cities, but I've never seen it matter much.
All in all, this makes the Nomad economy deceptively average, which is definitely a shame since with a better economic base, they have real potential to shine. As it stands, they require a lot of outside help, and can still end up with stunted growth. Thankfully, their military units are mostly good enough to still work regardless, but consider conquering them instead of running them directly.
Nomads are essentially cousins to the High Men. While we've yet to explore the High Men, both races pride themselves on strong military units and advanced economies at a cost. In the case of the Nomads, it's the absolute lack of food buildings. This is a much more serious problem than it may appear at first; not only do Nomads miss the Granary which provides a huge + 5 population boost for cheap, they also don't get to make their farmers particularly efficient, thanks to both the Farmers' Market and Animists' Guild being missing.
Nomad Swordsmen(and Spearmen, if you ever use them) can launch attacks from bows. This is a decent addition that lets them defend towns better against rampaging monsters or even other armies. However, do note that this attack isn't particularly powerful; they do not make up for the Nomads missing bowmen, atleast not on their own. Horsebowmen essentially combine both Bowmen and Cavalry for the Nomads, being a fast archer unit. They are pretty good at skirmishing, and with enough buffs can claim some lairs; however on the offensive they feel a bit anemic since they only have four ammo. Losing one movement over regular cavalry also makes it harder for them to deal with rough terrain, especially obvious when you try to fight non corporeal or foresting units in thick forests.
Pikemen are essentially a weird take on the Halberdiers. They gain Armor Piercing which lets them deal with high armor targets better, but otherwise their offense isn't that remarkable compared to regular halberdiers. Their extra resistance does let them deal better with resistance checks like Night Stalkers or Cockatrices, but it's not a significant edge.
Nomad Priests sport a lot of resistance thanks to the racial bonus of + 3 resistance, and so are occasionally worth making to thwart curses. Speaking of Priests though, they are souped up Shaman with reasonably good fighting stats. Shaman were never mentioned before this since they were basically unremarkable healer units that died easily in battle and did too low damage, only really being noteworthy for having Healing charges if they survived somehow. Well, that and being able to quickly heal wounded units on the overworld. However, Priests do incur a significant investment cost for all their advantages; not only do you need to build a Parthenon to get them, they also cost 100 gold, which is a bit steep for a unit whose main role is overworld/in combat healing. Shamans by contrast are dirt cheap and so can be built quickly. Oh, and having more Shamans is also better in case you face a crazy Chaos wizard who likes to do nothing better than corrupt all of your lands.
Nomad Magicians are notable for the same reason Nomad Priests are. Otherwise, they are identical to regular Magicians in every way.
Rangers are generally fairly strong ranged attackers with good melee, however their halberdier tier defense and lack of special abilities outside of long range sniping makes them feel rather overpriced at 150 gold. You'll still build them since Horsebowmen only last so long, and the Pathfinding is a good bonus to your armies, assuming they aren't much faster than 3 speed. But you can't help but feel like this unit came a little too late. It definitely doesn't help that counters to arrows are rather frequent the longer the game goes on.
Griffons are fairly straightforward. They are bulky armor piercing heavy hitters that fly, and thanks to their First Strike, they can do that without fear of much retaliation, assuming that you pick the right targets. However thanks to their low figure count, they don't really improve much with buffs or levels, and 4 speed feels a bit slow considering that they are Fantastic Stable units. Oh, and they also cost a ton to make, 180 gold to be exact.
There's a problem with the Nomads' advanced units being so costly. Essentially, since they can't improve their farmers a lot, they are restricted in how many workers they can assign for making units or buildings. While capturing other races definitely helps, the lack of production compared to say Barbarians or even Orcs is very noticeable, and forces them to build Mechanician's Guilds in their main military centres, which isn't ideal since that building also requires investing quite some production through multiple other buildings, to say nothing of the maintenance costs. The Nomads presumably have a gold bonus through roads, despite not being able to link any of their cities, but I've never seen it matter much.
All in all, this makes the Nomad economy deceptively average, which is definitely a shame since with a better economic base, they have real potential to shine. As it stands, they require a lot of outside help, and can still end up with stunted growth. Thankfully, their military units are mostly good enough to still work regardless, but consider conquering them instead of running them directly.