I think there should be some late technology (Composites?) which enables
you to synthesize coal or oil if you build the proper facility in at least one of
your cities. I realize dedicated warmongers wouldn't like that because it would make wars a little less likely to happen in certain situations, but it would be both realistic and nice for builders. You could bide your time or trade for the needed resource until you can synthesize it - which, as I said, should need a building to do so, not be automatic once you have made the relevant discovery.

Also, units that use these synthesized materials should probably also be a little more costly, to incorporate the difficulty and cost of manufacture. I've been thinking of something along these lines for a while. :)

This is something the modders can tackle in C&C ;).

this may or may not be relevent to ur thread but i think there should be more differences in what u choose to power ur factories with. Coal ,water, & nuclear should have more pro's and con's. Also should be able to pursue alternatives such as hydrogen. And to add to sythesizing, units produced using these new materials should have benefits.

synthetic oil is realistic?????

Add in a bunch of clones of the weaker units called "Alternative Energy X" that cost 2 to 3 times as much, need higher technology to build, but don't have the same requirements. Each should upgrade to the normal X units.

eeeeeh

synthesising oil id say no. BUT one should be able to search for alternative fuels.

now that is realistic.

the problem with the civ tech tree is that it runs out.

synthetic oil is realistic?????

Yes. It is possible to extract it from coal or bituminous shale. And coal can of course be manufactured from peat, not to mention charcoal. There is also brown coal (derived from decaying peat), which exists naturally though it is inferior to black coal. For that matter, during the Second Woprld War the Germans managed to produce a synthetic rubber called buna from coal.

Well, those germans still needed real oil, and suffered for the lack of it.

My problem is instead that the normal random map generators place far too many of each resource on the map (if you stick with the recommended number of civs for the size, i.e. 7 for Std). It basically is too easy finding at least one oil, and there are more oils than civs.

In a game where you start out with 18 civs, and every single one survives into the modern age (rather unlikely) I can see how the current distribution creates lots of shortfalls, but I would like an option to drastically reduce the number of resources for the common game.