Mining should reveal iron

Ok, this is a bit of a rant, and perhaps it should go in general discussion, but one look at that thing notes a total lack of actual discourse about civ.

After my 5th try to play Rome the fun way(Legions); I've come to a realization as to why horsemen are so superior to everything else.

Oddly enough it has nothing to do with any of the other reasons I've seen. I believe that the real advantage is having horses revealed at animal husbandry.

This allows you to settle and improve them to start up those horsemen as soon as Horseback Riding is done. And also (though this never happens because of next point) it allows you to ABORT your plan if no resources are in sight after only a single tech.

Of course the ******** abundance of horses has something to do with that as well (I have had ONE start where my CAPITAL did not have horses, let's compare this to Iron which I've NEVER had, and 1/3 games don't even have on my frakkin' continent, plus for some odd reason I've NEVER seen iron in deposits of more than 2).

I believe having iron revealed at mining would make fifty kinds of sense. It would line up the two tech paths, allowing the exact same kind of preplanning and emergency abort, it makes historical sense, it makes balancing sense, and it would give me a CHANCE of using legions. (Seriously, it's pretty bad when I'm Rome and have to settle the other side of the map to make a paltry two legions, who are barely better than the horsemen I could have had 6 of by that point.)

TL;DR: Make mining reveal iron, and make iron:horses 1:1, or at least 1:2, not 1:10 or whatever it is right now.

I was thinking the same thing, actually. It shouldn't be too hard to implement as a mod, right?

I second this. Going for early swords is way too big a gamble right now.

ditto

I agree as well. This seems like a viable solution.

Swords are built around a different logic, because its tech path gives you a unit to build no matter whether you find a resource in the process or not.
In comparison, if you find no horses with your AH, you might as well abort Horseback riding, because there are no benefits to HBR in that case whatsoever (no units, no circus) and it's almost a dead-end tech.

Animal Husbandry = horses, no unit
Horseback Riding = horseman, circus

Mining
Bronze working = spearmen, barracks
Iron working = iron, swordsmen

fail

seriously

I think there are a few problems, first horsemen are ridiculous in open terrain.
Second there are way too many horses compared to iron. Seriously, I always have at least 4:1 ratio of Horses to Iron (too much iron is also in like the friggin arctic and desert).
Finally this game needs to bring back Copper and have it be revealed earlier. I dont know why theyd remove it when it was a workable alternative if you didnt have iron.

But making iron appear too early is ridiculous, the units are or theoretically should be significantly stronger than non iron units. Also Iron Working is a tech you are going to be needing anyway to tech to bigger and better things while you pointed out you dont have to get horseback riding.

edit: also Rome shouldnt need Iron for Ballistas (find some other way to limit if its that much of a problem)

I agree about the dead end-ness of HBR if there's no horses...

WAIT what the hell are you talking about? 1/3 cities I have end up getting a circus every game ever (works on ivory too don't forget) And I'm NEVER short on horses for horsemen.

Even putting that bit aside the iron line is WORTHLESS. Spearmen, really? I've never built them, the 10 extra hammers just aren't worth it over a warrior. And upgrade cost warrior->sword is same. Their intended use: against horsemen, is failure in the extreme. I never build barracks nor fortress, and from what I've seen no one else does either.

But here's the main thing: The HBR line gives you: reveal horses, a fairly pimp 2-2 or 1-3 tile for sweet early hammers (Best wonderspam I ever had was a three horses start as russia, not even egypt can compete with those raw hammers), ROADS: which power up ICS something fierce, and then horsemen/circus(which you can start building in your second city as you WILL settle it near horses) This is damn powerful and does not come CLOSE to the benefits of the iron line.

I agree that they SHOULD come close, that barracks SHOULD be worth building, but as it is now, it's suboptimal for ALL strategies. Hence why I believe the entire iron line needs a bit of a revamp, starting with putting the iron reveal up front, and personally I think reducing the cost of iron working, and then increasing the amount of iron, and then making the damn military buildings worth something.

The key part that tells you this should be done: if you make these changes, nothing will be overpowered. It won't suddenly make the iron line superior, in fact IMO it will STILL be inferior, if only because of ICS/roads/circus being a damn good start on TOP of your horses. But at least it will be a VIABLE ALTERNATIVE.

As it stands ROME DOES BETTER WITH HORSEMEN. This is what alerted me to this in the first place.

P.S. As tone is misread in 139% of cases when reading something on the internet. This was all written in a humorous manner not really meant to attack anyone.

dkrussian said:

As it stands ROME DOES BETTER WITH HORSEMEN. This is what alerted me to this in the first place.

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Germanicus just whispered to me that you fail.

While being handed a situation in which I have a choice between 4 horsemen and 4 legions I would take the 4 legions. I challenge anyone to manage getting 4 legions before you can build 4 horsemen, though.

Granted you can do a warrior rush and then upgrade them, saving on build times immensely, but even accounting for this, it takes way too damn long to get to iron working, and you have a very good chance of finding no or at most 2 iron, that is what really makes me fume. Putting in all that effort into impending awesomeness only to get: NOTHING.

I ran into this problem recently .. and I had to trade for iron in order to capture more.

There's little point to resource restrictions on units if the resources are abundant. I'd lower the amount of available horsies on the map, not raise the amount of iron.

Bandobras Took said:

There's little point to resource restrictions on units if the resources are abundant. I'd lower the amount of available horsies on the map, not raise the amount of iron.

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Personally, I think they need to lower the raw number of horses, but perhaps more frequent small patches of two or even one rather then the large 4 and 6 resource tiles, for iron, maybe lowering the total as well, plus revealed at mining. This would keep the resource limits more interesting, requiring trade or expansion, while minimizing the chance that you can't get any strategic resources.

Bibor said:

Swords are built around a different logic, because its tech path gives you a unit to build no matter whether you find a resource in the process or not.

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Are you talking about Spearmen? That's really no compensation at all if you teched the expensive Iron Working and got nothing.

Yeah, this would go a long way towards balancing Swords vs. Horses. Not far enough, of course, but a long way still.

I agree about the dead end-ness of HBR if there's no horses...

WAIT what the hell are you talking about? 1/3 cities I have end up getting a circus every game ever (works on ivory too don't forget) And I'm NEVER short on horses for horsemen.

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Yeah, and why would it ever matter if HBR was a dead end? You're not going to be researching it early on unless the Horsemen (and to a lesser extent circusses) make it worthwhile. Since you can check the availability of Horses @ Anibal Husbandry, there is never any uncertainty involved in the decision.

winthrowe said:

Personally, I think they need to lower the raw number of horses, but perhaps more frequent small patches of two or even one rather then the large 4 and 6 resource tiles, for iron, maybe lowering the total as well, plus revealed at mining. This would keep the resource limits more interesting, requiring trade or expansion, while minimizing the chance that you can't get any strategic resources.

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This.

I like being limited to a finite number of units that is ABOVE ZERO by strategic resources. I don't like being limited to zero for some and infinite for others.

I also 100% agree about revealing Iron earlier, mining or bronze would be okay, both are cheap techs I take early in most games anyways. Mining would be much more convenient because, like AH it's a worker tech not a military tech.

Druin said:

I like being limited to a finite number of units that is ABOVE ZERO by strategic resources. I don't like being limited to zero for some and infinite for others.

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yes, neither zero or effectively infinite is all that interesting.

I also 100% agree about revealing Iron earlier, mining or bronze would be okay, both are cheap techs I take early in most games anyways. Mining would be much more convenient because, like AH it's a worker tech not a military tech.

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Part of the reason I like mining, is that it mirrors the horse progression: reveal, filler/delay, use.

i agree, but i still think horses would be overpowered. i guess this might make swords an easier transition if your opponents start to get pikes, but that's still pretty easy to circumvent even with horses. although perhaps if there were two different easy ways to rush the AI early, it would show that neither tactic is to blame as much as the AI's complete inability to deal with rushes...

Duo said:

if there were two different easy ways to rush the AI early, it would show that neither tactic is to blame as much as the AI's complete inability to deal with rushes...

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I think it's this. not that horses are so broken overpowered ( although I will admit being somewhat OP), it's the Combat AI that's broken underpowered. Fix that, and problems go away. If AI doesn't improve, there needs to be some invasive XML changes made so it's not fighting blind with both hands tied behind it's back, just blind.

I definitely agree with the OP.

Mining should allow the revelation of iron. Strategicwise it makes much more sense, because of aforementioned reason.
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.