Settling cities on resources itself

Mesix said:

I think you might be missing the point of the resource tiles. You can put a farm anywhere, and you get more food from the tile than if it didn't have a farm. Putting a farm down represents the ability of humans to plant crops as you point out. With new technologies (e.g. irrigation, fertilizer) the yield from farms increases. What the resources on the map represent are areas where food grows better naturally. Think of a Wheat tile on the map as being the game representation of soil in Iowa. You can take the grains from Iowa and replant them anywhere, but they won't necessarily grow as well.

The game is an extrapolation and resources are one example. They are not meant to be literally the only place where you can grow wheat nor is wheat meant to be the only staple grain to feed your population. That said, it would be nice to see geographically diverse grains like corn and rice like Civ 4 had.

On the topic of depleting strategic resource, this sounds like a great idea. Strategic resources could be more abundant on the map, but used up as the game progresses to become more scarce. That would allow early use by most civs on the map, but pressure them into wars over resources as cities grow and available resources shrink.

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I see what you're saying, but horses/Cows/Sheep/Etc. pick up and move around just fine. That's kind of the point of mankind using them.

Otherwise there would be no horses in North America and no Plains Indian culture as we know it now.

But still, yeah, it's an approximation.

TheKingOfBigOz said:

I'm sorry, but it makes no sense really even in real life to settle a city directly ON TOP of a resource. I don't see Cattle in the city, but on the outskirts.

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Makes more sense when you consider that a city "square" is probably hundreds of miles.

Tavenier said:

Resource depletion can be done very easy. Building a swordsman uses an iron resource. If that unit gets killed that iron is used up and you lose one iron. Recycling in the ancient world wasn't as good as nowadays so it's really kind of silly that a swordsman in the field keeps using up one iron resource and it is magically available again when that swordsman dies in a foreign field.

You only have to keep track by what resource on the map that swordsman is build.

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Again, resources are an extrapolation. In this case, the limited amount of iron represents the limited amount of units that you can supply with equipment requiring iron. It is not so much about whether or not recycling methods are viable or that the iron becomes magically available when a unit dies. The unit represents a military force of several hundred (or even thousand) troops of that type. If you have one mine to supply military units, there is a limitation to how many military units you can supply. Over time they need new equipment, fresh troops, etc. The game mechanic to limit the number of units in the field requiring a particular resource is an approximation of this.

Depleting resources would be something different. If you have an oil well capable of supplying 5 oil, it would deplete over time becoming 4, 3, 2, 1, and eventually be completely used up. This would require you to acquire more strategic resources as you use up the ones you have. These resources would likely come from other countries, preferably ones that have not already depleted their resources.

Depletion would happen in Civ3, if i'm not mistaken, and was a MAJOR annoyance. Sometimes at random your only available strategic resource would simply "deplete" and disappear from your map, only to reappear someplace else in the world.

I think the resource system right now works really well, to be frank. Could be tweaked to include certain effects though (like using one extra iron on a unit in order to upgrade it's powers or whatever, or one extra horse as cost for a knight to give it +1 movement), but as it stands i find the strategic and lux resource management in Civ 5 to be the best so far in the series.

Strategic resources already are depletable...

Has no-one heard of recycling? Once you've got all 4 iron from the ground you can equip four swordsmen. If one of those swordsmen units dies, you can collect up their armour and weapons, melt them down and refashion them into something else, still for 4 iron.

Oil is more of a stretch... But i'm sure you could draw some logic from it.

Its not impossible to have farms inside a city. Not to mention the idea of wheat just...magically being THERE is very strange. You can plant wheat in plenty of places. You can't do that in the game, nor can you move your cows elsewhere.

Mechncally speaking, it just makes no sense to be penalized because you can't enchance a resource when your city is on it.

True_Candyman said:

Strategic resources already are depletable...

Has no-one heard of recycling? Once you've got all 4 iron from the ground you can equip four swordsmen. If one of those swordsmen units dies, you can collect up their armour and weapons, melt them down and refashion them into something else, still for 4 iron.

Oil is more of a stretch... But i'm sure you could draw some logic from it.

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Not exactly.

Your iron mines are so productive. If you have a very iron rich area, the amount of ore from the mine will be higher.

Your swordsmen are training and fighting, causing wear, your smiths repairing weapons and armor, new weapons and armor are being made to replace old ones, weapons and armor are lost or misplaced, etc.

When a unit of swordsmen die, any survivors are likely fleeing. If anyone would get iron, it would be the enemy who could loot the bodies. However, due to the above, the amount of iron gained would be unusable to support a whole unit for any period of time.

Oil works much the same way, you might have more or less productive wells, but oil gained from those wells supply your units depending on combustion. If a unit is destroyed, that oil you have been getting and using on that unit is available for another unit.

It's worth noting that there always seems to be excess (for instance, your people likely have cars, even if you are at 0 oil), and some units obviously take advantage of that. Mech infantry obviously require oil for instance. Pikemen certainly use iron for their pikes, and knights have armor that uses iron. Coal is almost certainly used by your people for steel well before you research industrialization, and after, many of the units that require oil would also be using your iron and coal, as well, though one would hope your nuclear sub breaks less often in 2 years than armor from your swordsmen in 20, thus not requiring iron as a resource, just using the extra.