Ethnies and population

[BuchiTaton]

This is as much a product of a specific screw-up in the Resource system in Civ VI as it is the general Resource system: Nitrates or Niter should never have been a 'natural' Resource, because less than a century after gunpowder became a general requirement for early Bombards and hand guns, Nitraries were established - Nitre Factories, in effect - to artificially produce as much of the stuff as the prevailing governments needed. After the end of the 14th century (1390 - 1400 CE) nobody had to rely on any 'natural' deposits of niter or nitrates for their supplies. In that 10 year period the average price of gunpowder fell from 41 florins to 16 florins per hundredweight as the artificially-produced supplies increased faster than the requirements. When demand ballooned in the late 19th century, Chemical Engineering (the Haber Process, among other techniques) allowed the necessary materials to be produced as needed in virtually any quantity.

I agree about Niter not being a "must" for gunpowder units, but like said before I think is OK to still have it as a natural resource. After all natural sources like Guano was a significative resource in the 19th century, used for millennia as fertilizer in the Andes it could had been even more significative if it had been popularized in the rest of the world earlier.
For me Niter/Guano as a resource that provide food yield bonus and a modest discount for gunpowder units would be justified for a game like CIV.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I agree about Niter not being a "must" for gunpowder units, but like said before I think is OK to still have it as a natural resource. After all natural sources like Guano was a significative resource in the 19th century, used for millennia as fertilizer in the Andes it could had been even more significative if it had been popularized in the rest of the world earlier.
For me Niter/Guano as a resource that provide food yield bonus and a modest discount for gunpowder units would be justified for a game like CIV.

My objection is that Nitre or Nitrates is the most ephemeral Resource in the game. For gunpowder, within a century (about 5 turns in game-time) it was supplimented and then replaced by Nitraries manufacturing the stuff to order - an Improvement, not a Resource.
The Quano deposits found by von Humboldt were important for fertilizer in the last half of the nineteenth century and the first decade or so of the twentieth (about 12 turns) but were then replaced by artificial Nitrates produced by the Haber and later chemical engineering processors - a Factory product, not a Resource.

The only way I think would make sense to have it on the game would be to introduce a new 'class' of resources:

Rare Resources

These would be special Resources, like a single Quano Deposit, a single deposit of Iron Ore with Vanadium impurities that can make Steel very early, a deposit of Kaolin Clay that produces Porcelain also very early, a single place that has Giant Redwood (Western red Cedar) trees that provide massive timbers for ocean-going dug-out canoes and Monumental Construction, etc. On most maps there might be only one each of these, and on small maps maybe not all of them. They are all useful for only a short time in the game before being reπlaced by more 'normal' Resources or manufactured alternatives.

 

[BuchiTaton]

My objection is that Nitre or Nitrates is the most ephemeral Resource in the game. For gunpowder, within a century (about 5 turns in game-time) it was supplimented and then replaced by Nitraries manufacturing the stuff to order - an Improvement, not a Resource.
The Quano deposits found by von Humboldt were important for fertilizer in the last half of the nineteenth century and the first decade or so of the twentieth (about 12 turns) but were then replaced by artificial Nitrates produced by the Haber and later chemical engineering processors - a Factory product, not a Resource.

The only way I think would make sense to have it on the game would be to introduce a new 'class' of resources:

Rare Resources

These would be special Resources, like a single Quano Deposit, a single deposit of Iron Ore with Vanadium impurities that can make Steel very early, a deposit of Kaolin Clay that produces Porcelain also very early, a single place that has Giant Redwood (Western red Cedar) trees that provide massive timbers for ocean-going dug-out canoes and Monumental Construction, etc. On most maps there might be only one each of these, and on small maps maybe not all of them. They are all useful for only a short time in the game before being reπlaced by more 'normal' Resources or manufactured alternatives.

I am 100% for resources that we can see as "rare" having just one, two or tree copies in the whole map (of course depending of the size of the map). They would be kind of like natural wonders providing some usefull bonus that could be traded. Also I want to have the chance to replace natural occurring resources with synthetic industrial alternatives. BUT I am not sure of see them as short time alternatives, that is why I pointed how Guano was very usefull for Andine cultures for millennia and it could had been of global significance for a longer time if their effectiveness have been known earlier and/or the Haber process would have developed later. I mean we are expecting some alt-history in CIV, dont we?

So resources like Guano (Niter) would not be "a must" or "game changing" ones, but still are usefull as the game develops for the players that get them.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I am 100% for resources that we can see as "rare" having just one, two or tree copies in the whole map (of course depending of the size of the map). They would be kind of like natural wonders providing some usefull bonus that could be traded. Also I want to have the chance to replace natural occurring resources with synthetic industrial alternatives. BUT I am not sure of see them as short time alternatives, that is why I pointed how Guano was very usefull for Andine cultures for millennia and it could had been of global significance for a longer time if their effectiveness have been known earlier and/or the Haber process would have developed later. I mean we are expecting some alt-history in CIV, dont we?

So resources like Guano (Niter) would not be "a must" or "game changing" ones, but still are usefull as the game develops for the players that get them.

Short time or ephemeral in the sense of quickly replaced by manufactured alternatives, not that the Resource would disappear from the map randomly

And the idea of a Resource being superceded by a manufactured/artificial alternative should really be more general: natural Resource Dyes replaced by Chemical Factory products, Stone or Marble Resources replaced by Concrete fabrication - you could certainly keep using the 'natural' substances, but those amounts would be limited by number of deposits and building late game Skyscrapers, factory complexes, airports, etc would require amounts far in excess of most natural formations - as in the modern world, where the amount of steel going into construction amounts to thousands of tons, or more than the entire ancient or classical worlds could acquire out of the ground.

In a well-designed and balanced 4X game, by the time you are building your Late Game 30-population cities there shouldn't be enough natural Resources easily available to do everything without substituting manufactured alternatives - including luxuries, strategic or construction materials: the modern world is built out of concrete, steel, plastics, with nat ural Stone or Marble reserved almost exclusively for ceremonial, prestige, government or monumental structures.

 

[AffineConstant]

Short time or ephemeral in the sense of quickly replaced by manufactured alternatives, not that the Resource would disappear from the map randomly

And the idea of a Resource being superceded by a manufactured/artificial alternative should really be more general: natural Resource Dyes replaced by Chemical Factory products, Stone or Marble Resources replaced by Concrete fabrication - you could certainly keep using the 'natural' substances, but those amounts would be limited by number of deposits and building late game Skyscrapers, factory complexes, airports, etc would require amounts far in excess of most natural formations - as in the modern world, where the amount of steel going into construction amounts to thousands of tons, or more than the entire ancient or classical worlds could acquire out of the ground.

In a well-designed and balanced 4X game, by the time you are building your Late Game 30-population cities there shouldn't be enough natural Resources easily available to do everything without substituting manufactured alternatives - including luxuries, strategic or construction materials: the modern world is built out of concrete, steel, plastics, with nat ural Stone or Marble reserved almost exclusively for ceremonial, prestige, government or monumental structures.

Marble doesn't go out of style though, still valuable to this day. "Stone" is just generic, quarries exist to this day and are still valuable. Considering what it takes to actually get a resource (put a city close enough to it, expand all the way to that tile, possibly build an improvement there) "temporary" resources would have to be both super, super valuable. Still maybe it's an interesting idea gameplay wise.

Resource creation and distribution in late game could definitely be more interesting.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Yep, Im 100% for synthetic version of natural resources like niter, rubber, dyes, etc. It will help a lot to change the ballance of power in-game like historically did. So to clarify resources like natural Niter (Guano) would be usefull for many turns like it was for Andine cultures, not being limited to the historical period of global exportation, then later when the synthetic version is avaible in factories basically every civ could get it and then the couple of natural occurrences would be less relevant.

 

[BuchiTaton]

One of the reason I would like to have Workshops and Factories as different things (not fixed in the same district) is that despite both would produce manufactured goods. Factories could be centered around the idea of massive production that overshadow traditional Workshops, but at the last era some Policy could be about promotion of Handicrafts that provide a huge boost to culture/tourism from the goods generated by the Workshops (textiles, ceramics, jewelry, etc.)
By the way going back to the original topic of Ethncities, the unique Traditions that can be obtained from specific heritages could refer to particular artisanal crafts.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

There is a mod that does exactly that that I play with

Which mod?

 

[Marla_Singer]

Short time or ephemeral in the sense of quickly replaced by manufactured alternatives, not that the Resource would disappear from the map randomly

And the idea of a Resource being superceded by a manufactured/artificial alternative should really be more general: natural Resource Dyes replaced by Chemical Factory products, Stone or Marble Resources replaced by Concrete fabrication - you could certainly keep using the 'natural' substances, but those amounts would be limited by number of deposits and building late game Skyscrapers, factory complexes, airports, etc would require amounts far in excess of most natural formations - as in the modern world, where the amount of steel going into construction amounts to thousands of tons, or more than the entire ancient or classical worlds could acquire out of the ground.

In a well-designed and balanced 4X game, by the time you are building your Late Game 30-population cities there shouldn't be enough natural Resources easily available to do everything without substituting manufactured alternatives - including luxuries, strategic or construction materials: the modern world is built out of concrete, steel, plastics, with nat ural Stone or Marble reserved almost exclusively for ceremonial, prestige, government or monumental structures.

Beyond the question of substitutions, what is lacking in Civilization are transformed goods in general (I haven't played much Civ6, but to my knowledge this hasn't changed).

That's one of the aspect in which I consider Colonization to be more interesting than Civ in the way it does things. In that game, miners extract iron ore, that is transformed by blacksmith into tools, which are later transformed into guns by a gunsmith. Those guns than could equip military units. Very certainly that population-focused way to do thing can't be applied to Civilization, but you could still make appear transformed goods into the game through buildings: for instance, building an arsenal would change iron ore into guns, and guns would be required to build riflemen.

 

[aieeegrunt]

This is as much a product of a specific screw-up in the Resource system in Civ VI as it is the general Resource system: Nitrates or Niter should never have been a 'natural' Resource, because less than a century after gunpowder became a general requirement for early Bombards and hand guns, Nitraries were established - Nitre Factories, in effect - to artificially produce as much of the stuff as the prevailing governments needed. After the end of the 14th century (1390 - 1400 CE) nobody had to rely on any 'natural' deposits of niter or nitrates for their supplies. In that 10 year period the average price of gunpowder fell from 41 florins to 16 florins per hundredweight as the artificially-produced supplies increased faster than the requirements. When demand ballooned in the late 19th century, Chemical Engineering (the Haber Process, among other techniques) allowed the necessary materials to be produced as needed in virtually any quantity.

This is a phenomenon known as Resource Substitution and if you look at the history of Engineering it’s more the rule than the exception.

As stupid as nitre in Civ is as you rightly point out, Iron is even dumber. What you need to make iron/early steel (I’ll lump these together for simplicity) for swords and spears is basically the most conmon element in the earth’s crust, charcoal, and the know how.

Of those three the know how part was by far the most important.

I agree about Niter not being a "must" for gunpowder units, but like said before I think is OK to still have it as a natural resource. After all natural sources like Guano was a significative resource in the 19th century, used for millennia as fertilizer in the Andes it could had been even more significative if it had been popularized in the rest of the world earlier.
For me Niter/Guano as a resource that provide food yield bonus and a modest discount for gunpowder units would be justified for a game like CIV.

Treat them all as bonus resources.

Which mod?

Here are all of my resource system improvements

EPS tweaks for unit resources

Steam Workshop::EpsTweak for Unit Resources

steamcommunity.com

Stone Rocks

Steam Workshop::Stone rocks!

steamcommunity.com

Open Ranges

Steam Workshop::Open Ranges

steamcommunity.com

Prehistoric Hunting

Steam Workshop::Prehistoric Hunting - Scout Camps

steamcommunity.com

Bonus Resource Improvements

Steam Workshop::Bonus Resource Improvements

steamcommunity.com

Earlier Lumber Mills

Steam Workshop::Earlier Lumber Mills

steamcommunity.com

Better Resource Yields

Steam Workshop::Better Resource Yields

steamcommunity.com

Resource Requirements Rebalanced

Steam Workshop::[GS] Resource Requirements Rebalanced

steamcommunity.com