Mining should reveal iron

[Paeanblack]

Late reveals also have some weird effects, since you can build other improvements on that tile first.

I had coal appear under a grassland/forest with a lumbermill
Building a mine would have given me +1 food, -1 hammer on that tile. Yeah...a mine converts hammers to food.

If horses appear on a tile I've already farmed, I'd rather have that than a pasture.

Heh...imagine the frustration if every resource appeared with the tech that let you use them. Iron definitely needs an earlier reveal.

 

[dublos]

<snipage>
Also realismwise it should make more sense.
You found a new metal, however you do not know yet how to properly makes use of it.
Then you research Iron working, and you have figured out how to use the new metal for your purposes.

And if that metal was aluminum instead? Or Uranium?

Mining could reveal the presence of a metal, perhaps making that mine a tiny bit more valuable but that doesn't solve the issue of sparseness of the resource and it doesn't help you at all when the resource is actually on a flat tile rather than a hill tile.

I'm assuming though that the OP actuall wants learning the Mining technology to reveal Iron, not the action of Mining a tile. If the tech reveals it, then you don't actually get to utilize it until Iron Working, thus giving the player an idea where the resource is like animal husbandry reveals horses, but you don't get to use it till you research farther, like Horse Riding tech.

I was originally reading it as Mining, the action, not Mining the technology until I started this reply, so my apologies if you already understood that and I just mis-read your point of view.

 

[winthrowe]

I'm assuming though that the OP actuall wants learning the Mining technology to reveal Iron, not the action of Mining a tile. If the tech reveals it, then you don't actually get to utilize it until Iron Working, thus giving the player an idea where the resource is like animal husbandry reveals horses, but you don't get to use it till you research farther, like Horse Riding tech.

This is what I'd go for.

 

[Fluxx]

And if that metal was aluminum instead? Or Uranium?

I was originally reading it as Mining, the action, not Mining the technology until I started this reply, so my apologies if you already understood that and I just mis-read your point of view.

I did, but no problem

 

[neptune2000]

My last game I was trying a one city challenge and didn't have horses or iron.

I agree that iron should be more plentiful, and capped by quantity per instance as well as an earlier reveal.

"Hey we've just figured out how to make stronger weapons out of a thing called 'Iron'."
"Iron, what's that?"
"Well that's the problem. It's sorta hypothetical. We've never actually seen it. Oh wait, there's some over there!"

 

[Nick Carpathia]

Well, the idea behind it makes sense: Swords weigh 1-2kg, speartips weigh less than that, the rest of the spear literally grows on trees. Hence you only need only a little bit of metal to make a spear, but you need a rich deposit to kit out a bunch of people with swords.

 

[Duo]

My last game I was trying a one city challenge and didn't have horses or iron.

I agree that iron should be more plentiful, and capped by quantity per instance as well as an earlier reveal.

"Hey we've just figured out how to make stronger weapons out of a thing called 'Iron'."
"Iron, what's that?"
"Well that's the problem. It's sorta hypothetical. We've never actually seen it. Oh wait, there's some over there!"

I think the real solution here is to have chemistry as a prereq for iron working...

 

[Soronery]

Closest iron in a non city state (militaristic with 2 whole iron, also pretty far away (20 tiles at least) ) was 15 tiles away in Bismarcks territory. Which was also a 2 iron patch. I really hate this game sometimes.

 

[Celevin]

My vote is to reveal iron with Bronze Working. One tech ahead is enough notice, and you're going to grab Bronze Working for other reasons as well.

I agree that there's way too many horses. I never have had a game where I have anything but 0 or way more than enough, and most of the time it's the latter!

 

[iggymnrr]

I don't think I agree. Resources and unit build capabilities are setup similar to civ iv. It is, perhaps, a sad commentary on the current state of civ v that this thread even exists.

 

[Celevin]

I don't think I agree. Resources and unit build capabilities are setup similar to civ iv. It is, perhaps, a sad commentary on the current state of civ v that this thread even exists.

Well then maybe it was a design error in Civ4 as well?

Right now iron is such a big gamble that most people end up going horseback riding. If you see that you have horses, you're better off going that route and using your science for better infrastructure techs. I only go iron as almost a "last ditch effort for a strong military" in the case that I don't have horses.

Iron is more of a chance, costs more science, and gives actually weaker units.

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

Make mining reveal iron

This. The second part of the argument about iron to horse ratio I'm not as concerned with.

 

[biohazard72]

I agree with OP.

Off-topic but funny: You can build iron units without knowing Iron Working if you trade for the iron. Catapults and Frigates without knowing how to work with iron? WTF?

 

[iggymnrr]

Well then maybe it was a design error in Civ4 as well?

Right now iron is such a big gamble that most people end up going horseback riding. If you see that you have horses, you're better off going that route and using your science for better infrastructure techs. I only go iron as almost a "last ditch effort for a strong military" in the case that I don't have horses.

Iron is more of a chance, costs more science, and gives actually weaker units.

A person can go back to civ 3's BW/IW path too IIRC. Civ 4 introduced copper at BW. Metal is 3-deep in civ v by comparison to either civ 3 or civ 4. Perhaps revealing metal at BW is an idea. Having metal revealed at mining is draconian.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Iron Working was so slow in Civ 4 and the unit it produced was so essentially inferior thereby that people pretty much only went for it if they needed to chop jungle or didn't wind up with copper.

 

[Druin]

I don't think I agree. Resources and unit build capabilities are setup similar to civ iv. It is, perhaps, a sad commentary on the current state of civ v that this thread even exists.

Well, in Civ IV a single iron mine would fuel all 30+ Praets I made.

Furthermore, in Civ IV, when you didn't want to go to war, you could happily wait while you teched to a lib slingshot and made resource-less rifles all day long. In Civ V, at higher difficulties, you WILL get DOW'ed in the first 100 turns and often you will get perma DOW'ed / multi DOW'ed so if you skip military techs you die. That means you need at least one of the two viable military defense strategies, iron or horses. If you don't have iron, you will often have wasted too much time on Ironworking to survive the DOW's.

I could see the argument for this being a game problem and not the fault of Ironworking's mechanics, but I feel this is just how Civ V plays compared to Civ IV and it does call for a earlier reveal of Iron.

 

[Snapp]

This would be a very large buff to the Russia civ early game, I don't know if that would be unbalanced, but I know I would love for it to be like this when I play Russia.

 

[Druin]

This would be a very large buff to the Russia civ early game, I don't know if that would be unbalanced, but I know I would love for it to be like this when I play Russia.

I don't think anyone is afraid of Russia becoming overpowered atm

 

[Snapp]

I don't think anyone is afraid of Russia becoming overpowered atm

Meh, Im a big russia fan. I know its not one of the so called "OP" civs, but I think they have the strongest early game production already if you focus on taking horses. With the addition of early iron you could get some major hammers going very early.

 

[Druin]

Meh, Im a big russia fan. I know its not one of the so called "OP" civs, but I think they have the strongest early game production already if you focus on taking horses. With the addition of early iron you could get some major hammers going very early.

Agreed. But this would just be cool ... anything that makes other civs closer to how fun it is to play China seems like a good plan to me!