Strategic resources and spawning

Question

King
Joined
Mar 12, 2008
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950
Is it just me or do they usually spawn in very odd placements?

Oddly enough, i am never short on oil or aluminium...but ive noticed that coal, iron and uranium can get very rare. Sometimes horses too (entire continent with no horses, playing as a civ with a mounted UU...). Ive seen whole continents without coal and low amounts of iron.

Uranium seems to be the rarest...after researching satellites, i found out in my last game that the entire map had only one size 4 uranium deposit.

Edit Also i thought starts were supposed to be geared towards your civ?

>start as russia, starting location is a desert without any strategic resources within 3 tiles of my first city

And

>start as spain
>no natural wonders nearby
>can't be the first to find any because i am surrounded by jungle, forest and hills/mountains on a tiny island
 
Okay this is ridiculous now, i just started a game on the earth map and the whole europe and african continents have NO COAL. And only one aluminium deposit in the middle of nowhere.

Edit : I noticed there are several different resource options in the advanced setup screen when you start a game. Any idea what those do? And what does "world age" do?
 
Strategic Balance is your best bet for a more balanced resource placement.

Otherwise it's very random.

World age affects terrain. 5 billion years is lots of flat land, 3 billion is lots of hills, 4 is the average one.
Or do i have that backwards? Forgot, sorry.
 
Lately I've been playing mostly warmonger games so resources are essential and therefore a focus of interest. All observations are based on std sized maps mainly continents.

Horses are very common and usually at vicinity of capital and if not some local CS always has at least 4 them - not much of an issue even with a civ that has horse UU.
Iron seems to be lost somewhere - very rare. There might be a ironless continents and the CSs do not necessarily have iron. Lately I've given up the hope of finding iron so I postpone teching the iron working regardless of the civ I'm playing. Where iron is found there tends to be a lot of it which seems odd from game experience's pov. The rarity is ok but I'd like to have it a bit more common with wider spread and make it a requirement for cannons to compensate this.

Coal is usually somewhat evenly spread and not much of an issue.
Oil is easy to find but occasionally hard to get or it requires side stepping to refrigeration. CSs will have oil and they get it connected way faster than before even without paying.
Alumin(i)um is pretty much like in vanilla - not necessarily handed out to you but accessible by the time it's actually needed.
Uranium has so far been irrelevant since games tend to end before it's needed.

G
 
Lately I've been playing mostly warmonger games so resources are essential and therefore a focus of interest. All observations are based on std sized maps mainly continents.

Horses are very common and usually at vicinity of capital and if not some local CS always has at least 4 them - not much of an issue even with a civ that has horse UU.
Iron seems to be lost somewhere - very rare. There might be a ironless continents and the CSs do not necessarily have iron. Lately I've given up the hope of finding iron so I postpone teching the iron working regardless of the civ I'm playing. Where iron is found there tends to be a lot of it which seems odd from game experience's pov. The rarity is ok but I'd like to have it a bit more common with wider spread and make it a requirement for cannons to compensate this.

Coal is usually somewhat evenly spread and not much of an issue.
Oil is easy to find but occasionally hard to get or it requires side stepping to refrigeration. CSs will have oil and they get it connected way faster than before even without paying.
Alumin(i)um is pretty much like in vanilla - not necessarily handed out to you but accessible by the time it's actually needed.
Uranium has so far been irrelevant since games tend to end before it's needed.

G

I've noticed that horses are very common. Coal is extremely uncommon. In one game that I had 15+ cities there was only one coal deposit. Oil is also very rare, but I've noticed that it sometimes "clumps" in desert areas (I've also found that coal sometimes clumps with two coal deposits within 5 hexes of each other). I've also seen uranium clump in this way too on one occasion.

I think it's good that the game makes these things rare and clumps them, so that it makes the trade screen more useful.

These comments are for huge map, default settings, 12 civs and raging barbarians.
 
Personally I think it's great for the game that late-game resources can be very rare, and also are often found in places you won't normally have settled, like deserts, tundra or snow.

Having to decide whether to fight a war for a strategic resource adds a great element of strategy to the late game (in stark contrast to the early to mid game, where since iron was made much less important in G&K, strategic resources barely figure in your thoughts most games), and modern-era wars for oil give a nice element of realism too...

Having resources in remote locations makes GGs more interesting: quite often now I find myself saving up some GGs in case I need to chain a few citadels to quickly claim some oil or uranium that's a bit outside my territory, and it's again a strategically interesting thing to be forced to decide whether to plant a citadel during a mid-game war for an immediate tactical advantage, or save the GG in case he proves a life-saver later on.
 
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