Limited Resources

Caesar Salad · November 14, 2003, 10:53

I play only at the second lowest level and mostly as Rome. For the four Conquests games played I rarely find iron and other civs on my continent also seem not to have this resource. I have adjusted (younger) the age of the earth to encourage more resources but do not see a difference

Am I confused?

Great game

Brundlefly · November 14, 2003, 11:33

If you keep generating random maps, you are bound to find one that puts you near iron eventually. I find it a challenge when I don't have resources like this near me. The challenge is to find out which one of your neighbors has it and then either trade with them (they'll probably want too much) or attack them and seize the resource yourself.

Stuie · November 14, 2003, 11:40

In my current game the nearest iron to my capital is 22 tiles away on a hill in the middle of tundra. The nearest horse is 36 tiles away, deep in Aztec territory. It's the first game of Civ3 I've ever played in which I was forced to trade for horses.

I find the limited resources make the game so much more enjoyable. It really pushes you decision making to a new level when deciding on trade vs. conquest, and timing of conquests given limited resources and possibly inferior units. Fun, fun, fun!!!!

Shogun Gunner · November 14, 2003, 11:42

Interesting... I had not noticed if an "younger" earth yields more iron. Even the "older" earth has mountains and hills, so I would suspect the same distribution occurs despite the age of the earth.

I agree with Feephi, probability being what it is, you will get placed near iron soon enough...then you can post a thread that says that you don't ever get dyes or rubber

Cookie Monster · November 14, 2003, 11:58

Wow I was just going to make a thread covering this very topic.

Well in my two games with C3C so far I have experienced limited resources. Both games were/are played at monarch, standard continents, middle aged earth.

It really is hard to get your hands on iron, coal, and saltpeter is what I'm finding. I've never made it out of the industrial age because I get toasted by the ai due to a lack of critical resources. In essence my pikeman have to defend against ai cavalry charges. You can see it gets pretty messy. The funny thing is in my first game I had a huge military and I was 2nd in landmass. I got my butt handed to me by the ai because I lacked both iron and saltpeter. I was importing iron from the persians but they joined in a trade embargo against me a few turns after the babs ( my biggest threat on the continent) declared war on me.

My second game, currently running btw, has iron and saltpeter in my lands but no coal.

Catt · November 14, 2003, 16:40

Current game is standard map, 8 opponents, all random -- it looks to be 3 billion, arid, cold, continents or archipelago maximum land. My REXing was just okay - playing as Byzantines so no trait-based food bonuses, and the terrain is poor -- lots and lots of hills and mountains, some desert (a few flood plains) and a bit of grassland. I also secured a small plot of marsh and a medium-sized jungle. I also 3 distinct luxuries, one a sole source. Haven't fought much at all - only defensive wars so no expansion.

I'm into the early industrial age and the victory screen shows that I control 11% of the world (5th place, and just below the "fair" distribution among 8 civs), including terrain types of of all sorts. I found horses pretty close to my capitol. Other than that, no iron, no saltpeter, no coal. The sole supply of iron on the entire landmass (shared by 3 civs) is 28 tiles from my start!

Edit: And no rubber!
Edit: And no oil! (though within reach of a city after an additional cultural expansion).
Edit: And no uranium!

I am personally enjoying the resource scarcity, but I don't have enough experience to opine on its effects on AI civs. I am curious though whether it was intended or not -- I recall in PTW or perhaps vanilla that if appearence ratios of bonus resources were increased, that luxury and strategic resources were fewer and farther inbewteen. Do we think the new scarcity is intentional or a result of the newly added sugar, tobacco, and the oasis?

Catt

lonechicken · November 14, 2003, 16:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Stuie
In my current game the nearest iron to my capital is 22 tiles away on a hill in the middle of tundra. The nearest horse is 36 tiles away, deep in Aztec territory. It's the first game of Civ3 I've ever played in which I was forced to trade for horses.

I wish there's a way to "grow horses" as a city improvement or like irrigation. Sort of like, once you trade for horses or connect a road up to horses, you can start breeding them... even if the trade agreement ends.

Which brings me to a silly question. Is there a setting somewhere that can change the need for connecting a resource to your road and/or allow having resources two tiles from a city to be useable without a road? I'm thinking this in terms of oil, since it'd be nice to add coastal waters to one of the places that oil can be found and used.

Stuie · November 14, 2003, 16:49

Quote:

Originally posted by lonechicken
Which brings me to a silly question. Is there a setting somewhere that can change the need for connecting a resource to your road and/or allow having resources two tiles from a city to be useable without a road? I'm thinking this in terms of oil, since it'd be nice to add coastal waters to one of the places that oil can be found and used.

Not silly at all.

How does the "must be in city radius flag" work (the one used for Iron Works and Temple of Zeus) ?? Do the resources actually need to be connected, or just in the city radius? That flag might be useful depending on what you have in mind.

lonechicken · November 14, 2003, 17:35

Quote:

Originally posted by Stuie
Not silly at all.

How does the "must be in city radius flag" work (the one used for Iron Works and Temple of Zeus) ?? Do the resources actually need to be connected, or just in the city radius? That flag might be useful depending on what you have in mind.

I'm just thinking. If oil was set to appear on coastal waters in the .bic file, it can only be used to add shields (or gold, I think). Since you can't connect a road up to it on the coast, it can't be used for building oil based units.

I just have a hard time most games trying to trade for oil or fight someone for it, if I don't have any. Because, chances are the nation that has the oil has better units.

Traelin · November 14, 2003, 18:13

Quote:

Originally posted by Feephi
If you keep generating random maps, you are bound to find one that puts you near iron eventually. I find it a challenge when I don't have resources like this near me. The challenge is to find out which one of your neighbors has it and then either trade with them (they'll probably want too much) or attack them and seize the resource yourself.

OK so I'm not on crack when I saw that Iron was in much more limited quantity than in PTW. Fortunately for me I have 5 Iron, and two of the three next biggest empires have 0.

planetfall · November 14, 2003, 18:30

This is not at all surprising. PTW had limited resources and "usually" forced you to battle or trade for excess cash to get strategic resouces. When adding more resource types to the game, I would expect them to reduce the availability of other resources. Have only played scenarios, so can't comment on epic game.

-- PF

The Kaiser · November 14, 2003, 19:30

I suppose the thinking behind a more resource limited map is that its now a little easier to fight even with fewer resources. Given that we now have Guerrila's and TOW Infantry, the later half of the game is no longer such a walkover to the resource rich Civ's.

Theseus · November 15, 2003, 16:25

I think we are going to be seeing a LOT more KAIs due to this.