Impact of scarce strategic resources

[bogatir]

Hey folks,

Just looking for some general commentary on how strategic resources impact your games when they are extremely scarce.

As an example: In my current game (using a standard size map), there are only two coal tiles on the entire planet. One of them is inside my borders (lucky me) and the other was near enough that I was able to strong-arm my neighbors into giving me the town sitting next to it.

Now I know that new resources can be ‘discovered’ as time passes, but for the time being I’ve got the only civ that’s going to be able to industrialize because I’ve got all the coal. Not that this breaks me up, mind you.

I’m wondering how circumstances like this have affected games you’ve played. Is there any particular resource that you feel breaks the game when it’s too scarce on the map? For instance, if there had been only one source of coal on the map – and it was on another continent – then I’d be pretty cheesed off after playing hours and hours.

Thanks…

[opaque]

I think Rubber is a problem because most industrial units are not available without it. Oil is often very scarce and makes a lot of modern units impossible to build, such as tanks. Oil also runs out very quickly.

[Willem]

Originally posted by opaque
I think Rubber is a problem because most industrial units are not available without it. Oil is often very scarce and makes a lot of modern units impossible to build, such as tanks. Oil also runs out very quickly.

Unless you change the numbers in the Editor. It can be set so that it never runs out if you want to. I think this whole resource thing should be a preference that people can set beforehand. I don't mind having to build a colony half way across the continent, but it bugs me all to hell if there's none there at all, or I have the only one disappear when I just finish getting into production. So I tend to set my Appearance/Disappearance ratios a little higher than usual.

[opaque]

Unless you change the numbers in the Editor. It can be set so that it never runs out if you want to.

I haven't messed about with the editor much but if that is possible i'll probably look into it. Thanks.

[Willem]

Originally posted by opaque


I haven't messed about with the editor much but if that is possible i'll probably look into it. Thanks.

There's a maximum number of 300 for the appearance of a resource. As the help screen mentions, a number of 160 would mean that in an 8 player game, there would be two resources for each player, so 300 would be not quite 4 each. The disappearance of it is based on a probablity for each turn, e.g. a 1 in 1000 chance that it will disappear on each turn, or a 1 in 400 chance etc. If the number is 0, the resource won't disappear at all.

[Arrian]

2 coal on a normal sized map? Wow. What other settings did you use (temp/humidity/age)? I've never seen it be THAT rare.

I have seen maps with no gems. Just curious, because I have seen many posts discussing maps with very little or even no coal, or some other resource, but have never seen it myself (which I'm happy about).

-Arrian

[Willem]

Originally posted by Arrian
2 coal on a normal sized map? Wow. What other settings did you use (temp/humidity/age)? I've never seen it be THAT rare.

I have seen maps with no gems. Just curious, because I have seen many posts discussing maps with very little or even no coal, or some other resource, but have never seen it myself (which I'm happy about).

-Arrian

No, no, if the number is 160, then it's 2 per player for 8 civs, so 16 in total. But Coal has a default number of 120, so that's probably about 12 to 14 resources in total, or something like that. Theoretically.

As for the settings you mention, that's different than the Editor settings. And all the luxury resources have appearance numbers of 0, which means that they're randomly placed. You might have none, you might have a whole bunch.

[Random Passerby]

Luxuries are also different from strategic resources in that they're distributed by continent; on a "continent" map layout, you'll typically see 3 or 4 of the 8 luxuries on the continent(s) of one hemisphere, another 3 or 4 on the continent(s) of the other hemisphere, and then sometimes there'll be a civ or two that started on their own smaller continent that will have one luxury type all their own. Theoretically, some luxuries might be missing because the continent they were picked for was too small or didn't have enough of the right terrain to appear, and since gems are pretty picky as to what terrain they can appear on it stands to reason that they'd be more likely to not show up.

[RickBlaine]

I was playing a game a while back and got steam power, which is a biggie for me since I love RRs.... And was unable to find a single coal deposit on the entire planet (large map, default settings), even after exchanging world maps with all 7 other civs. Well, there were a few black spots midocean, as well as a chunk of a moderate sized island, but even if one or two deposits showed up there, this seemed to be extreme. Time to reload

[Lawrence of Arabia]

For instance, if there had been only one source of coal on the map – and it was on another continent – then I’d be pretty cheesed off after playing hours and hours.

Hmm That happened to me. Huge Map, 10 civs. Ive gotten into the Indsutrial age. I Had 1 Iron, 2 Horses, 1 Saltpeter, and some luxieries. Theres only 2 coal in the whole world, and other civs have them and are using them. So i trade electricity for coal. But then my iron resource disappears. There goes my Frigates. Then the saltpeter disappears. There goes my Cavalry. Then the Aztec dont want to trade anymore, not even Iron. There goes my railroads.

Sucks

But then again, I had a good first 5600 yrs with my dominance in resources. Of course, since all the nearby civs have impis and Jag Warriors, they dint exactly need thos resources.

[bogatir]

My current game with just 2 coal tiles is a standard map with default settings.

I’ve played a game in which oil was fairly scarce (4 tiles on the map), but I’m especially curious about games folks have played like my current game – an extremely scarce ‘trigger’ resource like coal, oil or rubber. Especially since those resources appear after quite a bit of gameplay, when you’ve established something of a ‘style’ (like culture-building or tech-pushing) for the current game that having to duke it out for resources might seriously mess up.

I’d never seen fewer than 4 tiles of anything until this game. A couple of games back I had to fight a couple of wars (when otherwise I was trying to be all neighborly) to get my hands on oil that the AI wouldn’t part with. But I was in a sort of ‘stomp first, settle later’ mode in that game, so it wasn’t any disruption to my evil plans.

Actually, I’m also going to be interested to see what the AI does if no more coal pops up anytime soon that it can get its hands on. I’m now a one-civ coal ‘cartel’, and it’s unlikely that I’m going to be trading any coal very soon.

Have any of you played games in which you have sole control of a strategic resource like coal or oil?

Interesting stuff.

[Quokka]

In my experience Coal has almost always been the most scarce and the quickest to run out once its tapped. In my current game(Huge, Continents, 12 Civ, Japan) with all land uncovered there are only 5 deposits on the map. I have two already, next to two captured English cities that I thought were horribly placed in the middle of jungle until the coal showed. The Romans have 1 for about 3 more turns until I get. There is one more in no man's land between the Romans and Zulu's and then the Americans have one on their continent. I traded for their coal, got it for Physics, so soon I will be the only one with Coal.
Continental Breakdown:
Large: Japan(Me), England(Dead), Rome(Going), Zululand, Egypt,
Babylon
Medium: Iriquois, Germans, Greeks
Small: China, America
Island: Russia
So you can see that even after the Americans cancel the deal in 20 years they will be the only ones that will have coal and they'll never trade it again. Has taken a lot of the fun out of this game. I won't trade it either not for the trades being offered. The Russians have a Silk monopoly but want Coal, Furs and 51/turn for their damn Silk, so they stick with pushing carts thru the mud, no RR. Same stupid requests from the others. I am at 2000+ points and Egypt is the only other one over 1000 at 1200AD. Where do they get off trying to extort someone at least as twice as strong as them?
I am going to finish it as this is my first try as Japan (they Rock) and want them in my HOF for something.

[pauli]

the strategic resources system just doesn't work for me. i'm thinking about setting it up so nothing requres anything and just letting the strategic resources be bonus resources. ::shrug::

[Willem]

Originally posted by pauli
the strategic resources system just doesn't work for me. i'm thinking about setting it up so nothing requres anything and just letting the strategic resources be bonus resources. ::shrug::

Well I like them, but not necessarily in the way they've done it. If each resource could only supply x number of cities, instead of one supplying your entire empire, then there would be more of them, but you would need to develop more and more sources as your empire grew. So a shortage wouldn't be crippling, as could happen now, and there'd be much more of an opportunity for trade.

[Solomyr]

i hope i don't jinx myself, but i haven't had any of these problems. or at least i haven't noticed them. even in my most recent game (Americans, stand size, 8 civs, regent) i had plenty of resources. of course, i had killed off the persians, japanese and helped wipe out the germans for the gult of resouces i had when the game ended. altough, i must admit, it has seemed like all the other civs would like one of my resources...but they don't seem to like it when i trade them it. in some of my older games, civs didn't accept my offer to trade coal or oil...of course, i had crushed them down to a few cities

anyways, i like the idea of having each source only supply X number of cities...has anyone looked? is this possible?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Solomyr
i hope i don't jinx myself, but i haven't had any of these problems. or at least i haven't noticed them. even in my most recent game (Americans, stand size, 8 civs, regent) i had plenty of resources. of course, i had killed off the persians, japanese and helped wipe out the germans for the gult of resouces i had when the game ended. altough, i must admit, it has seemed like all the other civs would like one of my resources...but they don't seem to like it when i trade them it. in some of my older games, civs didn't accept my offer to trade coal or oil...of course, i had crushed them down to a few cities

anyways, i like the idea of having each source only supply X number of cities...has anyone looked? is this possible?

No, and it's probably not likely to either, at least not in the near future. That will no doubt require a fair amount of rewriting in the code. It seems a much more realistic way of doing it though, at least IMO, and would probably lead to some interesting trade negotiations.

[Dinkeldog]

I've noticed also that coal is frequently the most scarce resource for me. Aluminum, oil, and uranium all seem to be everywhere by comparison.

The cost that the AI charges for its resources seem to increase as my power increases. It's kind of like the AI wants me to share my wealth with them. How I deal with it now is that I don't try to lump together trades. I don't offer fur, coal, Military Tradition and gold/turn for one of their resources. Instead, I offer them furs and get what I can for it. Then I offer them coal (assuming I've decided they deserve coal). Then I offer Military Tradition. Then I offer them my map as a gift. If any of those aren't getting me anything significant, I give them as gifts to improve their opinion of me. Then I look at what they want for their luxury. It's generally toned down a bit. If they still want something stupid, I'll give them gold + gold/turn. If they won't settle for that, I do without for a few turns and come back later.

I've tried flipping the order as well. First I'll give them some huge amount of gold/turn for their item and then sell them my resources/tech piecemeal and get my gold/turn back. It doesn't seem to work quite as well as the first option, though.

[bogatir]

I don’t have a problem with the implementation of strategic resources. The system seems to do pretty much what it’s intended to do – force interaction between the various civs for very important resources. If the scarcity (or location) of a particular resource screws up my grand plan, well, so be it. A game that simply turned into a sprint down the technology tree would be boring. Strategic resources throw a wrench in the gears every now and then, which IMHO is a good thing.

Could there be a better implementation of strategic resources? Maybe, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t given it as much thought as the guys at Firaxis did. Besides, the idea of changing Civ3 game mechanics to enhance ‘realism’ doesn’t float very far. I mean, heck, early in the game it takes your little band of warriors 50 years just to march to the next city. By the 17th century, your army covers the same ground in 5 years that Marlborough covered in 5 weeks. The Romans took a few years, not a century, to build the Coliseum, etc.

There are complex game models at work in Civ3 to be sure, but resource/luxury implementation isn’t one of them. The system as is does what it’s designed to do, I think, in that it drives trade and conflict.

By the way, in my current game (which triggered my curiosity to begin with), I’ve discovered a third coal tile. It’s sitting UNDER a Russian city that just flipped to join my culturally superior Aztec Democratic Warm-Fuzzydom.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen the AI build a city on top of a critical resource – long before that resource appears on the map. Do you guys think it’s just blind, doo-dah luck – or does the AI cheat on this one?

Cheers.

[Willem]

Originally posted by bogatir
There are complex game models at work in Civ3 to be sure, but resource/luxury implementation isn’t one of them. The system as is does what it’s designed to do, I think, in that it drives trade and conflict.

But the trade aspect could have had a lot more to it. As it stands now, once I've found my source of Iron, it pretty much loses it's trading value, especially if the other civ has one as well. Done in a more realistic way, I might have to continually negotiate for a particular commodity in order run my empire at full capacity.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen the AI build a city on top of a critical resource – long before that resource appears on the map. Do you guys think it’s just blind, doo-dah luck – or does the AI cheat on this one?

There seems to be a lot of circumstantial evidence that points in that direction, that's for sure. No hard evidence that I know of yet though.

[Quokka]

In answer to Willem's to idea of a resource supplying x cities I had this idea about the handling of resources.


Resources
Have the resources graded by size of the deposit and type of deposit. Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge for sizes and Alluvial and Subterranean for type.
Sizes last for certain amounts of time.
Tiny 0-20 turns
Small 25-50 turns
Medium 60-100 turns
Large 120-150 turns
Huge 180-250 turns
Then you would have a rough idea of how long they are going to last. It would also make the trading more real. If you only have 2 tiny sources of Iron are you going to hook them both up and trade one or hold it in reserve? Iron, Coal, Oil, Aluminium, Saltpeter and Uranium should be covered this way. Horses are self replenishing and so is Rubber if it remains forested. If you cut down the forest the resource should disappear, until the discovery of Synthetic Fibers, which should give Rubber and Oil as untradeable resources, only usable by your Civ. You could however trade the natural resource after this if there is any left.
Alluvial deposits are those on the surface and would be those that you can see when the required tech is discovered. They would be limited to Medium size and below.
After discovering Electronics assaying techniques are improved and Subterranean deposits become visible and can be of any size.
Iron, Coal, Oil, Aluminium and Uranium would have both types of deposits.
Luxury Resources that are contaminated by Nuclear Pollution should be destroyed. Even after the workers clean it up would you buy wine from there?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Quokka

Sizes last for certain amounts of time.
Tiny 0-20 turns
Small 25-50 turns
Medium 60-100 turns
Large 120-150 turns
Huge 180-250 turns
Then you would have a rough idea of how long they are going to last.

Nah, then there'd be no element of surprise. It adds a bit of excitement if your only source of Iron just suddenly disappears, especially if you are in the middle of a war.

[bogatir]

In order to model strategic resources at a greater detail level, you’re looking at adding a lot more complexity to the system. A game mechanic that allows a resource to supply ‘x’ cities isn’t any less abstract than the current system.

To support a 'detailed' model, the game would have to specifically quantify the resource (not necessarily to the player, mind you), and then expend that resource at an item-by-item rate for the production of your strategic assets. Why should I exhaust a strategic source of aluminum (or whatever) when I’m not building anything that needs it? This approach considers that strategic resource tiles represent resources in ‘strategic’ quantities – simple consumer use of the same resource as technology advances is always assumed to be below the ‘simulation horizon’. ("Hey, how come the Aztecs have aluminum beer cans and all we have are these clay pots?!!")

A game that goes that far is a different game altogether. There is an element of economic bean-counting in Civ3, but that’s not the essence of the game. As they stand, strategic resources are aimed at giving you a simple problem – say, you need oil – and letting you devise the complex solution (or build a lot of cavalry and go stomp the guy who has the oil).

Cheers.

[Quokka]

Willem:
Very true it is surprising but I bet thats not the word you use when it actually happens. I wouldn't want to be given the exact size that would be too predictable, but even ancient cultures knew when they found alot or a little of the resource. There should be some size determination. One gold nugget doesn't make a Gold Rush but you have found gold. Besides if its your only source of Iron you are going to have it hooked up and be using it anyway, and it may still run out in the middle of the war. It would get around the random factor now. I really hate the random numbers in this game. As it is if the resource does deplete then its possible to reload and the chances are that it won't deplete. If the deposit size was determined when it was discovered then the usage would determine the length of time before it depleted and there could be no reloading to get around it.

Bogatir:
I don't think it would complicate the resource model too much. If you traded the resource then the usage rate would be the same as you were building with it. I think that the usage of the resource when not actually building any unit requiring it could be covered under R&D or training or maintenance or a number of ideas down that path. All of these use strategic quantities equal to or greater than the actual build cost.

[Willem]

Originally posted by bogatir
As they stand, strategic resources are aimed at giving you a simple problem – say, you need oil – and letting you devise the complex solution (or build a lot of cavalry and go stomp the guy who has the oil).

Well that's sort of my point, with the the current system the solution is not all that complex. This "one resource fits all" approach narrows the opportunities for wheeling and dealing that the game is trying to introduce. Granted that an item by item accounting of the supply would be far to cumbersome to be workable, but on the other hand a single resource for an entire empire strikes me as extremely simplistic. After all, to a large extent our world civilization has always been constrained by the dual limitations of supply and demand. It would seem reasonable to me that a game simulating historical evolution would do the same.

[bogatir]

No argument there. The resource mechanic is really simple. The trick is that anything much more complicated wouldn’t be a tweak, it would be a new game -- because one game mechanic can't be altered without impacting a lot of other systems.

The entire resource/luxury set of mechanics would have to be redesigned – after all, if I’m going to design more complexity into the resource system, then I’ve got to figure that none of my target audience is going to be very happy with the luxury system either. Luxuries like wines or furs showing up in only one ‘cluster’ of tiles is an all too frequent occurrence, and doesn’t even vaguely approach reality. But the mechanic serves its purpose in the game nonetheless.

A lot of Civ3’s mechanics are, like resources, pretty basic in nature. It’s their interaction with other mechanics that drive the game. For instance, I read in another thread someone lamenting that the global warming mechanic didn’t take into account how much jungle had been cleared, or how many forest tiles had been cleared/planted. Good heavens. Global warming is designed as a control against sloppiness in industrialization and population management. It’s not a planetary-scale ecological subsystem designed to boost membership in Greenpeace.

Individual game mechanics can only accomplish so much before they begin to become a distraction (to those of us with short attention spans, at least ) . For me, the fun of facing scarce resources is scheming (pretty quickly) to get what I need, not figuring out whether I need 5 tons or 7 tons of chromium to produce the stainless steel for my new battleship.

No doubt, a little more differentiation or diversification in the current resource system would increase opportunities for and complexity of civ interactions. But the same thing can be said about many of the game’s mechanics. Staying on the ‘simple’ end of the design spectrum, I suppose, makes 6050 years pass a little more quickly.

Cheers.

[Willem]

Originally posted by bogatir
No argument there. The resource mechanic is really simple. The trick is that anything much more complicated wouldn’t be a tweak, it would be a new game -- because one game mechanic can't be altered without impacting a lot of other systems.

The entire resource/luxury set of mechanics would have to be redesigned – after all, if I’m going to design more complexity into the resource system, then I’ve got to figure that none of my target audience is going to be very happy with the luxury system either. Luxuries like wines or furs showing up in only one ‘cluster’ of tiles is an all too frequent occurrence, and doesn’t even vaguely approach reality. But the mechanic serves its purpose in the game nonetheless.

A lot of Civ3’s mechanics are, like resources, pretty basic in nature. It’s their interaction with other mechanics that drive the game. For instance, I read in another thread someone lamenting that the global warming mechanic didn’t take into account how much jungle had been cleared, or how many forest tiles had been cleared/planted. Good heavens. Global warming is designed as a control against sloppiness in industrialization and population management. It’s not a planetary-scale ecological subsystem designed to boost membership in Greenpeace.

Individual game mechanics can only accomplish so much before they begin to become a distraction (to those of us with short attention spans, at least ) . For me, the fun of facing scarce resources is scheming (pretty quickly) to get what I need, not figuring out whether I need 5 tons or 7 tons of chromium to produce the stainless steel for my new battleship.

No doubt, a little more differentiation or diversification in the current resource system would increase opportunities for and complexity of civ interactions. But the same thing can be said about many of the game’s mechanics. Staying on the ‘simple’ end of the design spectrum, I suppose, makes 6050 years pass a little more quickly.

Cheers.

Yes I understand what you're saying, and I realize that there won't be any major changes made in the resource system. And I don't mind it as it is frankly, I think it's an improvement overall. It adds a dynamic that for the most part I enjoy. However it can also be very discouraging when your empire's fortunes rests on a single resource that is virtually impossible to obtain at times. There have been a few games when I've ended up with a large continent almost devoid of valuable resources and I felt that my only recourse was to start a new game and hope for better luck next time. If the concept would have been handled differently however, I could have avoided the frustration of spending a fair chunk of time on a dead end game.

[bogatir]

That’s the ticket. One of the things I was curious about in starting this thread was whether or not players get into a situation of very scarce resouces that causes a game to go ‘dead-end’.

In my two-coal game, I prepared the turn before finishing research on Steam Power to start building my rail net. I had workers lined up all across the Aztec Republic, ready to lay down the iron rails. Then, research finished, I was ready to build. But my workers didn’t give me the ‘Build Railroad’ option.

Since a bunch of my early territory was bisected by a big mountain range, I felt sure I would have at least one coal tile pop up on my already-considerable road net. But I checked a city screen and, nope, no coal in the strategic resources list. So I started looking around the map for coal.

And at first, I didn’t find any. That was a moment of "did I just waste a bunch of time?" panic. I eventually found the two coal tiles, both cleverly disguised in jungle terrain (which makes that little black coal blob very hard to spot for us old guys). But for a while, I was really starting to get aggravated about playing for hours and then not being able to industrialize.

As another example from my two-coal game, the AI’s Chinese civ covers an entire small continent, separated from all of the other civs which share a much bigger continent. There are no horses or coal on their continent, and by the time they achieved a sea-faring capability, the rest of the world was pretty much settled. They have a fairly big empire, but they’re a non-factor because they were strategic resource starved for two thirds of the game.

Cheers.

[opaque]

One of the things I was curious about in starting this thread was whether or not players get into a situation of very scarce resouces that causes a game to go ‘dead-end’.

I have yet to play a game with very scarce resources and although I can see why people would complain about it, I would find it quite an intense challenge to fight for the resources. This is probably the reason I don't find the more random combat results a problem and I have never reloaded after getting a bad starting position or a bad goody hut result. I like this challenge in games like Civ 3.

[Willem]

Originally posted by bogatir
That’s the ticket. One of the things I was curious about in starting this thread was whether or not players get into a situation of very scarce resouces that causes a game to go ‘dead-end’.

I guess it's a question of how much patience the player has when it comes to this sort of situation. At the moment I don't have very much. In fact I have little patience for a lousy start of any kind. If I play a few turns only to discover that my position sucks, I just start a new game. I scrap more games than I actually play, so I find it rather annoying when I finally end up with a good map, only to find that there's no resources in the area. Maybe if I had continued I would have had a resource pop up in my territory, or made friendly with some other civ for it, but I just haven't had the patience to wait it out. I want my Iron and I want it NOW! I don't mind sending some Worker half way across the continent, and having to defend it against all odds, as long as I have some source in my area.

[opaque]

Willem, have you tried setting all your resources to maximum appearance on the map?