Ressources shoudl be Era-specific

The ressources system should be modified in the following way: there should be more ressources, and all (or most) Strategic ressources shoudl be Era specific, while Luxury ressources should be (most) creatable on the right kind of terrain (more terrain types should also be added).
Meaning: for the luxuries, Wine becomes at some point of the game a ressource anyone can create on Hills, meaning everyone can have wine with the right technology (just as it is in the real world)
And for Strategic ressources, Iron and Horses should no longer be needed after the Ancient Era, Salpeter no longer after the second,.... Not beeing able to build Cavalry because one has no horse tile is just ridiculous, ressources should only be that important for a shorter period of time...

Originally posted by aeldrik
The ressources system should be modified in the following way: there should be more ressources, and all (or most) Strategic ressources shoudl be Era specific, while Luxury ressources should be (most) creatable on the right kind of terrain (more terrain types should also be added).
Meaning: for the luxuries, Wine becomes at some point of the game a ressource anyone can create on Hills, meaning everyone can have wine with the right technology (just as it is in the real world)

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I like the idea of being able to create resources once you have the proper tech, but wine is a bad example. Sure, anyone can grow grapes, but only certain types of soil produce grapes capable of making wine that is actually luxury-status. That's why certain parts of the world are famous for their wines and not others.

And for Strategic ressources, Iron and Horses should no longer be needed after the Ancient Era, Salpeter no longer after the second,.... Not beeing able to build Cavalry because one has no horse tile is just ridiculous, ressources should only be that important for a shorter period of time...

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What confuses me is that they seemed to realize this for saltpeter (Riflemen don't require it because its "common" by then) but not for horses (Cavalry still require horses, even though they've been domesticated for thousands of years and anyone who wants can breed their own). They should be consistant: either the need should disappear sooner (Cavalry don't need horses, since they're "common") or the resource should become creatable (create a horse-farm on a tile in your territory). The former would certainly be simpler and easier than the latter, but either way, not being able to make cavalry for lack of horses is indeed ridiculous.

I thought it ridiculous that I couldn't build RR as I had no iron - in the industrial ages! I have some reservations concerning the luxuries, though. One part of luxuries is that they are given, they can't be made. The luxury-bar represents "artificial" luxuries. I think that what is "ment" by wines and dyes and silks is that they are in abundance somewhere so that the people can use them spontaneously.

And what about gems? Surely the artificial making of gems would come VERY late and they are very costly. Anyway, I think that luxuries should not be created, as it would take away an essential part of the game.

Maybe have asystem like this, but figure a better way to impliment it. Whats the point if you sit on a ton of resources if your enemy can make them anyway.

Yeah, I don't like this idea at all. Better to simply remove all resources and replace them with improvements, since that's essentially all this does.

the point is the ressources are still as Important as they were before the change, but only for a limited Time!!
Say for example you don't have Iron, it means you won't be able to build anything requiring it for the whole game, ridiculous, my systems makes the ones without Iron suffering only as long as they don't have the necessary techs, meaning it takes about 10-15 techs to be able to produce it withtout the ressource tile... that way you could produce Pikeman without having Iron, but only someone with Iron could produce Swordsman....

The part of creating the ressource oneself on the map, allows for an important gameplay aspect, which is that an invading army can occupy the tile and cut off the supply!!

Ah, I see your point now. But I would advice against it. First I thought that why not just take off the requirement of iron from pikemen, as they did with rifleman? But that would indeed drop off a strategical part. But to be honest, how could you cut off all the horses of a modern country, or saltpeter, or even iron? There are simply too many stables around to effectively deal with. I think it's a fine idea, but also that it wouldn't work.

What if you held, say horses, for several hundred years, you could get a message like 'Sir, our people have mastered Animal Husbandry (sp?)' or whatever, essentially meaning you always have horses. The 'tech' wouldn't be in the tree, but would be 'learnt' as you held Horses within your boundaries. This would be more difficult to explain with other resources, but it would allow people to get around this problem, although I don't see why a Civ that has not had Horses in their boundaries should just 'get' them. On the other hand, it would negate a fun new strategy concept that didn't exist in Civ2 and may possibly make the game less fun.

not having to have certain resources takes the strategy out of the game, its frustrating when you dont have one but otherwise everyone would be equal and thats just boring

for civ4 they should just put more resources on the map(or give you the option of adjusting this in the options menu) and the amount of units, or whatever else, you can build depends on how much of these resources you control

Originally posted by SFGiantSLO
not having to have certain resources takes the strategy out of the game, its frustrating when you dont have one but otherwise everyone would be equal and thats just boring

for civ4 they should just put more resources on the map(or give you the option of adjusting this in the options menu) and the amount of units, or whatever else, you can build depends on how much of these resources you control

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Check out my new resource system in this forum, it addresses this problem. Welcome to CFC, by the way!

@AdHHH: I think that whether you have had horses in the past or not, horses would be found in such abundance that they would no longer be needed. Horses are traded around. Even though Finland has never had any horses as "a resource", we do have them a lot now. Same should apply to other old resources, such as iron. Simple trading (that is not connected to civ's) will deal with this effectively. If it is thought this way, you would not need any techs that would allow you to "always have horses".

I still advocate that the best way to deal with this is simply to remove horses from being a prerequisite to cavalry. If this was done to saltpeter too, however, it would result in cavalry having no resources as a prerequisite... perhaps saltpeter should not be removed, then?

or do like in the real world, and have it so, in the right conditions you can make copies of biological resources, and as we improve in technology we find more sources of the non biological ones.

What if there were a building that needed horses to be built, but after that supplied hoses for the cavalry.

having Buildings as prerequisites for units would be great, but there are other threads on the subject, so I won't discuss it here, even though it would be, IMHO, a working solution...
I am just looking at it in a general way, more than just looking at horses, the actual system, in which they are less ressources than CIVs on the map is just not working, it is just absolutely ridiculous that a CIV cannot build Pikeman or Med Infantry or Knight at any time because it has no iron.... at some point in history Iron is just so common, just as they did for Salpeter, that it should no longer be needed for anything...
can anyone explain the logic between being able to build rifleman without Salpeter (as it has become so common) but still not being able to build Cavalry without Salpeter!! that is what needs to be changed!!!

I would also like for certain resources to show up before the tech that discovers how to use them. Bronze working could reveal sources of iron, horses could be seen always, etc. Just how did we figure out how to use iron if we couldn't even find the stuff?

can anyone explain the logic between being able to build rifleman without Salpeter (as it has become so common) but still not being able to build Cavalry without Salpeter!!

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I guess it has something to do with cavalry and rifleman being of a different era. In techs it is a very small difference, but in idea the it is acceptable. All middle-age-units need saltpeter (frigates and such), but no industrial-age-units. But I agree with you, cavalries should be made without saltpeter, or riflemen should need it.

I think it would be fine if a resource became "obsolete" somewhat like an era after discovery. So horses would be needed to build knights, but not after that, iron was no longer needed after pikemen and knights, saltpeter would still be needed for rifleman (just on making saltpeter more valuable, this is just a suggestion), but not to infantry. This should also go with many of the modern resources: perhaps coal is not needed in modern times as it is common enough? Oil on the other hand should of course not disappear (even though it is found in middle of industrial ages). It should vary between resources, of course.

What this would of course allow is building of cavalries later even though you have not had horses. By simply making some units not dependant on something would in effect prohibit us from building the dependant ones even at later times. Cavalries are effective until tanks, and should be buildable without horses sometime in the early industrial ages!

Originally posted by rcoutme
I would also like for certain resources to show up before the tech that discovers how to use them. Bronze working could reveal sources of iron, horses could be seen always, etc. Just how did we figure out how to use iron if we couldn't even find the stuff?

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This is a mighty good point there. It would also allow us to plan our next settlements according to resources more quickly.

Yep I was thinking of this yesterday.
Take fur - technicly its a luxry resouce but would people want fir coats in 1990? I don't know about you but I think its kind of silly. Then agian expireing resouces would create problems.

@M37: fur coats are still quite wanted and a luxury Item...

I'd say the main change is that Dyes, Incense, Silk, Spices have become common, because they can be produced chemically or naturally in a lot of places through modern technology.-... this change is not reflected in the game, but I'd say it 's not as important as with Strategic ressources,... that's where I think the change is mostly needed...


the Idea of having the ressources appear a few techs earlier is very good, and would be very realistic... I really hope they implement something like that

I'm coming into this rather late, but couldn't there be a technology to create a unit called a "prospector" that would have the ability to "prospect" a tile with a small chance that a necessary resource be discovered there (and if it wasn't, then it could never be found there). Another possibility would be the ability to build deeper or more extensive mines (governed by a tech you'd have to explore to get it) that would allow you to extract the necessary amount of a scarce resource, provided of course, you built enough deep or extensive mines?

I always felt that you should be able to find oil in coastal and sea tiles once you discovered the "offshore platform" technology. Of course, you'd still have to transport an engineer (or other suitable unit) out there by boat to "colonize" it (build the oil-drilling rig).

Some types of resource (wine, for example) might change from a luxury item (over time) to a food resource item. Although, as has been stated above, only the right soil types produce fine wines, I have seen less-fine (but acceptable for the table) wines produced in upstate New York, Texas, and Washington State. The latter was branded as "Fairchild Wine" (after the air base) and had a B-52 on the label. I always thought their slogan should've been "Fairchild wine. Drink this and get bombed!" (Alas, after a brief google, I could not find a picture of the Fairchild label -- I always thought it was hilarious to see it in the Package Store on base).

--SSgtBaloo

Don't like it.

Some of the best games ever are the ones where I'm stuck resourceless, and have to steal or trade for whatever I need. Then you'd need to come up with about 20 more resources that make sence around the units of the time, not an easy task when you can't use horses/iron/coal/rubber/oil.

Having the ability to create luxs out of nothing is almost as bad. Later in the game when Lux prices are actually starting to go up, and you can make some cash with your spares wouldn't be a factor, because every single nation would have all 8.

Then you have to think about the AI: Would it understand that it shouldn't pay for Iron in the Industrial Age? Would it pay for it when it was on it's last tech in the Ancient? And knowing how little of a priority it puts on connecting it's luxs & resources, would it ever bother creating new luxs to help out it's unhappyness?

I'm not a big fan, don't have those luxs/resources you need, either conquere them or trade for them. Devalueing the whole system isn't the answer for not having them.