Power plants and strategical resources

[Lorizael]

So do you need one source of uranium for your nukes, one for your nuclear plants, and one to trade and bring in the money? That would be cool!

I don't think it would add to much complexity to the game if you had to maintain a supply of coal for the power plants, or uranium for the nuclear plants. It would also be quite challenging.

And anyway, if you lose your coal because someone took it, just take it RIGHT BACK!!! Along with a few cities and several thousand people. If you lose your resources because of depletion, then you need to trade more!

No one said the game was supposed to be easy. That would be no fun...

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Lorizael
So do you need one source of uranium for your nukes, one for your nuclear plants, and one to trade and bring in the money? That would be cool!

I think you only need one source for all producion, and any extra source can be used to trade with or as a backup if one would run out.

I don't think it would add to much complexity to the game if you had to maintain a supply of coal for the power plants, or uranium for the nuclear plants. It would also be quite challenging.

Yes, for buildings it make sense, but not for units. If you build a nuke you don't need to refill it with new uranium. Okay, you would need fuel for your units, but it can be counted in the production and supply cost. Unless there are alternative fuels to discover you should always be able to use the units. (Not saying that you said the opposite)

And anyway, if you lose your coal because someone took it, just take it RIGHT BACK!!! Along with a few cities and several thousand people. If you lose your resources because of depletion, then you need to trade more!

Yes, you could stay without that extra production from the power plants a few turns.

No one said the game was supposed to be easy. That would be no fun...

This is something they could apply for harder difficulty levels.

[Lorizael]

Oh yah, obviously once a unit is built, it won't need anymore of the resource, but improvements should need a steady supply. Guess I didn't make that clear. I hope that you need one for each use...

Actually, if you've got a unit of horsemen for a thousand years, wouldn't the horses umm, die? But no, too much and anyway, they would just reproduce and make more. (That must be what all the men do on their thousand year voyages around the world in triremes... )

[Mars]

Originally posted by Lorizael
I hope that you need one for each use...

i beleive you do. Question: Do you need for each unit? For intstnace if you build 5 nukes a turn would you need 5 uranium or just one source.

Actually, if you've got a unit of horsemen for a thousand years, wouldn't the horses umm, die? But no, too much and anyway, they would just reproduce and make more. (That must be what all the men do on their thousand year voyages around the world in triremes... )

Hahaha. i guess that's the only way they could stay around for those thousands of years.
Haha.

[Mars]

If your planes run out of fuel at a certain distance, why wouldn't your tanks and naval ships. I realize that they didn't put it in for complexity sake but if planes should have a max fuel limit you would think so would tanks and ships and stuff. (great now i'm ranting )

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Mars


i beleive you do. Question: Do you need for each unit? For intstnace if you build 5 nukes a turn would you need 5 uranium or just one source.

No I don't think so. Not if every Musketmen you have needs a source of saltpeter. That would be too much.

[The Templar]

I like the idea of requiring resources to make power plant type improvements work. Imagine that you build a power plant, your oil supplier embargos you. Now your paying upkeep on a non-functioning plant. That would be a pleasant change from power plants that work without needing a fuel. My only worry would be putting to much of a strain on the AI with respect to resource management. Anyone who has played Space Empires 4 knows what I mean . . .

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by The Templar
I like the idea of requiring resources to make power plant type improvements work. Imagine that you build a power plant, your oil supplier embargos you. Now your paying upkeep on a non-functioning plant. That would be a pleasant change from power plants that work without needing a fuel. My only worry would be putting to much of a strain on the AI with respect to resource management. Anyone who has played Space Empires 4 knows what I mean . . .

Never played (or heard) of Space Empire 4. Up until recently I had a computer that barely ran Civ II. So what was the problem there?

And I've said this many times during the course of this thread, yes, that would be cool

[The Templar]

Space Empires 4 had mineral, organic, and radioactive resources. Everything required a combination of the three to be built. Unfortunately, the AI had no idea of how to collect these resources. It would build mineral mines on a planet with few minerals but lots of radioactives. That and a couple of other things could easily be optimized by the player, but the AI would fall behind quicker than the CTP2 AI. On the other hand Space Empires 3 had a really good AI but only one resource - called resources. And that AI could maximize with the best of them ...

[Lorizael]

Well, hopefully Civ III's AI will be better that. Most units will require none or one resources. It's when you get to the modern units that the AI will need 2 or 3 resources. We will see.

[Mars]

If power plants required minerals for upkeep then embargos would finally actually do something. (Are Embargos in?)

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Mars
If power plants required minerals for upkeep then embargos would finally actually do something. (Are Embargos in?)

Yah, in the developer's update I believe they said that you could enforce trade embargos as a diplomacy option

[izmircali]

My wish was that a resource tile produce 1 unit of that resource per turn. I.e. you have one coal tile so you get one unit of coal each turn, three tiles of horses and you get three horses a turn.

Then units could cost like 1 horse and 2 iron and 40 production/labor for example. This would have been great because then you could stockpile it (Trade advisor: Sir, we have 40 units of oil in reserve)

Then for example trade 10 units of horses for 100 Gold

and this way feul could be consumable (i.e. a tank requires 1 unit of oil per turn). So you could have a good model of US style excessive oil consumption (trade advisor: our civilization consumes 200 units of oil per turn!)

And also resources would be expendable (i.e. 1 tile of oil has 200 units or trade advisor: Sir our workers have found an oil resource with 100 units!).

A nice touch but not necessary would be the option to create logistic lines (similar to the trade lines in CtP2 but a TOGGLE, for optional complexity)

Of course it looks like none of this is going to happen. I hope someone at FIRAXIS sees this and adds it to the patch/expansion pack.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by izmircali
My wish was that a resource tile produce 1 unit of that resource per turn. I.e. you have one coal tile so you get one unit of coal each turn, three tiles of horses and you get three horses a turn.

Then units could cost like 1 horse and 2 iron and 40 production/labor for example. This would have been great because then you could stockpile it (Trade advisor: Sir, we have 40 units of oil in reserve)

Then for example trade 10 units of horses for 100 Gold

....

Imperialism II contains a lot of these ideas. In fact it goes further and allows resource tiles to increase from 1/turn slowly up to 4/turn production as science and industrialisation develop.

The one thing it demonstrates though is that if you limit resource output per tile you end up needing a LOT of resources.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by izmircali
My wish was that a resource tile produce 1 unit of that resource per turn. I.e. you have one coal tile so you get one unit of coal each turn, three tiles of horses and you get three horses a turn.

Then units could cost like 1 horse and 2 iron and 40 production/labor for example. This would have been great because then you could stockpile it (Trade advisor: Sir, we have 40 units of oil in reserve)

Then for example trade 10 units of horses for 100 Gold

and this way feul could be consumable (i.e. a tank requires 1 unit of oil per turn). So you could have a good model of US style excessive oil consumption (trade advisor: our civilization consumes 200 units of oil per turn!)

And also resources would be expendable (i.e. 1 tile of oil has 200 units or trade advisor: Sir our workers have found an oil resource with 100 units!).

A nice touch but not necessary would be the option to create logistic lines (similar to the trade lines in CtP2 but a TOGGLE, for optional complexity)

Of course it looks like none of this is going to happen. I hope someone at FIRAXIS sees this and adds it to the patch/expansion pack.

Definetely a very cool idea but it would add a little too much complexity to the Civ series I think. They like to keep things abstract and simple. The fact that they have resources is good enough for me.

[Mars]

It would be too annoying in my opinion, though quite realistic, to have a resource as upkeep, its understandable for an improvement, it was annoying for me just to have those food support for the settlers much less require it for units to move

[El hidalgo]

Originally posted by Grumbold
I found CtP's decision to unlink the proximity of water with irrigation and farmland sensible. The maps are just too macro-scale to show all the small rivers

Actually, it depends on the map scale. In the Mediterranean map that came with Civ 2, I believe the Tiber is represented (or in any case the Po is), whereas those rivers don't appear in even the largest world map. So you can make maps as micro-scale as you want. For this reason, among others, I propose keeping the requirement in (not like it makes a difference now).

I hope that certain wonders are linked to at least terrain requirements. I mean come one, how can you build the Hoover Dam if you're not near a river? Or the Lighthouse if you're not near the sea? Ridiculous.

[The Templar]

how can you build the Hoover Dam if you're not near a river? Or the Lighthouse if you're not near the sea? Ridiculous.

I suppose you could build it - it just wouldn't do anything.

[El hidalgo]

Originally posted by The Templar


I suppose you could build it - it just wouldn't do anything.

Good point! I like that -- you can build it but you don't get any advantages from it. I proprose that that be the rule.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Faboba
To require resources in the upkeep of buildings is fairly ludicrous consider in a war - you lose your city which you generate all your uranium in - all your power plants are destroyed - it's insane.

No one said the buildings would be destroyed just stop functioning. There is a difference. If your source of coal were removed I don't see how a regular power plant would work anyhow, since they need coal to run, not when built.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by El hidalgo
Actually, it depends on the map scale. In the Mediterranean map that came with Civ 2, I believe the Tiber is represented (or in any case the Po is), whereas those rivers don't appear in even the largest world map. So you can make maps as micro-scale as you want. For this reason, among others, I propose keeping the requirement in (not like it makes a difference now).

I hope that certain wonders are linked to at least terrain requirements. I mean come one, how can you build the Hoover Dam if you're not near a river? Or the Lighthouse if you're not near the sea? Ridiculous.

In the standard Civ game you generate a whole world. It would be nice if the rules made some sense on that basis. In CtP you could not irrigate desert even if it was next to the sea or a river until you had discovered certain advanced tech. More sensible than proximity to one arbitrary river allocated to your entire continent IMO.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
CTP 1 and 2 were NOT developed by the Firaxis team and will not be a source of ideas or code.

Hmm, think so? Then where did the idea of resources to use and trade come in from? The idea of armies?

Some ideas might have come from the devlopers sure, but you can't see a game, notice a feature that would improve your own game and then claim you never got any outside ideas.

It's absurb to say they didn't get *any* ideas from the CtP series.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by cassembler
Ok, let's assume that the resource system is the simplest we've mentioned- if you have access to A horse, then you can switch or initiate the construction of horsemen in any city that has access to it.

So, if you're crankin' out horsemen, and your horsey supply fizzles, then can you just keep makin' horsemen if you don't switch production to something else?

???

Hopefully some dude pops up and says, "Hey punk, you no make no more horsemen."

I would think the build queue would either delete the horseman it was building and then go to the next item, or send a pop-up window and have you change production to something else like what happens if someone beats you to a wonder you're building.

[El hidalgo]

Originally posted by Grumbold


In the standard Civ game you generate a whole world. It would be nice if the rules made some sense on that basis. In CtP you could not irrigate desert even if it was next to the sea or a river until you had discovered certain advanced tech. More sensible than proximity to one arbitrary river allocated to your entire continent IMO.

Well, if it's a completely fictional (i.e. randomly generated) map, then there is no basis for assuming there are lots of tiny rivers too small to represent on the map. Maybe there are no such rivers, maybe there are. Impossible to say since there is no micro-scale representation of the same world to compare it to, let alone anything in the real world. And I don't know what sort of advanced tech you would need to irrigate a desert; the most ancient civs of the world did it (Mesopotamia, Indus, Egypt).

I prefer the requirement of proximity to rivers to irrigate for reasons both of historical accuracy (major civs did develop on these major rivers, not on the many minor rivers not represented in civ earth maps) and for reasons of gameplay -- it makes rivers more vital, more of a strategic resource, like resources in civ 3. It's desirable to control rivers because of their great benefit just as it's desirable to control oil because of its great benefit. And that just adds interest to the game, IMO.