Is Rubber too important?

[JAWiseman]

It seems to me that Rubber is the most important resource of the game, as no civ can build land units past rifleman and infantry without it. In far too many games (I play mostly Monarch on small maps) I am able to send a troop (4-6) of Infantry into the enemy (or enemies) territory, pillage the 2-4 rubber I do not "own", and sit on it until I have slaughtered all oppostion (or end of the game sometimes.

Once the enemy civ runs out of Infantry and Tanks becuase they have no rubber, they start churning out riflemen and cavalry to attempt to cope with my Infantry and Tanks, and Tanks cut through those forces like a hot knife through butter. It seems like Rubber is too important and/or the AI is not good enough to 1) assemble even a small force to remove me from the rubber and then 2) send out workers to rebuild the connection.

It seems far too easy to mop up oppsing civs with this stategy.

In addition, if you do this inbetween Infantry and Tanks (or before the enemy has Tanks) they are done for as they do not have a very good way of removing your fortified Infantry without heavy losses.

On a similar note, it seems like Tanks are the most unbalanced unit in the game. To go from a 6/3/3 unit to the 16/8/2 Tank as the next offensive unit in development seems steep. The ability to launch that offense twice against an enemy seems unbalancing. I believe the introduction of the Tank to your civs development is one of the most important stages in the game (hence my avatar).

What is really too bad about the whole thing is that the AI seems oblivious to the power of Tanks and/or how to use them once they have them.

Does anyone agree/disagree?

 

[JAWiseman]

Whoops, I meant riflemen and Cavalry in the beginning of my first post above.

 

[MadScot]

I'm tempted to agree.

It seems to me that the infantry/tank/artillery time frame is where the AI 'loses the plot'.

This seems to be because:

1. The production rate leaps with RR etc. The AI is never that good at managing what to build, now the human advantage there is stronger.

2. The AI is pretty clueless about indirect fire, but arty really shows that weakness, and the human can grind away at the strongest AI position with more or less guaranteed success. Even against a stronger AI I can usually turn an AI city into an alternate reality Verdun and grind the AI to dust with arty. Even if I never take THAT city, it draws in all their forces usually, or so it seems.

3. The blitz ability of tanks means that the war moves faster; the AI is using the same logic to fight the war as on earlier techs. While the "no units within 3 = no threat" logic works fine at earlier techs, with fast capable attackers and RR to shift the point of attack at will, the AI simply can no longer cope. It gets even worse with MA, but by then it's usually all over bar the screaming.

 

[RX2000]

Heh thats what people said when World War I started. They were expecting it to be like wars in the 1800s, but machine guns and the introduction of the tank changed things real quick.

 

[Angmar]

Oil is key, rubber is nice.

 

[kmad]

I liked the early tanks, getting stuck in muddy ditches and suffocating their drivers ^_^

 

[RX2000]

Yea and the early German one that took 14 people to operate.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by Angmar
Oil is key, rubber is nice.

What about iron? It is far too rare in the game, unless you take the time to edit. If you are near a civ that can build swordsmen (or legionarries or immortals), and you have no iron, you are in deep trouble.

 

[MadScot]

Zouave - true. Plus when you reckon it's a prereq for railroads too...

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Zouave
What about iron?

If you don't have Iron, build Horsemen and take it.

 

[Angmar]

I do agree that Iron is an absolute key in the first 2 eras. If I go to war during these times it is usually because of iron. Either I need it or those persians cant have it. Oil is king in the last two, however rubber always good.

Iron and Oil are the two resources that I will do whatever I can to ensure that I have as many sources of them as possible. I will gladly invade someone their iron or their oil. Rubber on the other hand I will ensure is one of the first targets of my bombers ( after oil of course

Cheers,

 

[neoruski]

I have to disagree with your choices on resources, I my strat is Total Nuclear War. So Uranium and aluminum are key. Yes I do use rubber and oil for modern armors and transports, but nothin is better then to sit back and watch the mushroom clouds.

 

[ThePrankMonkey]

i find rubber to be the key in the modern age. without it the best a civ can do is make a naval fleet and an air fleet. sure they can air raid you like gangbusters but as we know bombers arent all that effective and if your cities are producing enough shields you can rebuild whatever they destroy in a short amount of time. all you need are fighters and jets and that problem is pretty much solved leaving you with a pest of a naval fleet performing hit and runs on your coastal cities (THIS is where the coastal fortress comes into play).

literally i crippled all the civs in one game because i took control of all the rubber. noone could stand up to me and i wiped them out one at a time.

unlike iron or oil, rubber doesnt move so once you have it its yours guaranteed until someone else knocks you off your highhorse (doesnt happen in my games, i am slow and methodical in my conquests). he who controls the rubber controls how war is waged.

 

[Allemand]

In any given game, you can come up short on any strategic resource. I've only had one game where rubber was hard to get, usually it's oil that comes up short. Horses and iron are usually plentiful, although I sometimes have to search hard for iron. Coal has been difficult to find in a few games. The game is always over before uranium is needed.

 

[darious001]

Draft. You get a modern unit still, without the strategic resources. Just need those pop points to kill off.

 

[MadScot]

Perhaps one solution for those who feel any given resource is too important is to create the option of ersatz units.

That way you could have alternate units which do not require that resource, but are more expensive, and/or require another resource, and/or are not so effective.

I would be tempted to keep some unit types as requiring a key resource - I can't think of an easy substitute for horses, for example. But if you think of the resources as representing "plentiful" sources rather than the sole sources of the resource, then you can rationalise allowing some builds without the key resource.

I would be tempted, for example, to allow some kind of infantry-alternative which did not need rubber, but perhaps was available slightly later (to represent the need to develop replacement materials), was more expensive - maybe 20-25% more? - and was not quite so effective - say 5.9.1?

You could also have some (not ALL) of the oil-dependent units have a more expensive coal-based version. That would represent some kind of coal-to-oil technology - just like the Germans tried in WW2. After all, they used a lot of synthetic strategic materials, so there is precedent.

This would somewhat complicate the upgrade paths - I'm not sure how the system would cope with a later unit which was actually a downgrade, not an upgrade. If you could have a many-to-one relationship in the path then it could be done, but I think it is one-to-one right now, at least.

 

[Sim_One]

Originally posted by darious001
Draft. You get a modern unit still, without the strategic resources. Just need those pop points to kill off.

Not true. You still need rubber to draft infantry, or rubber and oil to draft mech infantry.

 

[MTheil3508]

Originally posted by MadScot

I would be tempted, for example, to allow some kind of infantry-alternative which did not need rubber, but perhaps was available slightly later (to represent the need to develop replacement materials), was more expensive - maybe 20-25% more? - and was not quite so effective - say 5.9.1?

In PTW, the alternate unit to infantry are Guerllias. 6/6/1 90

They don't require any resources and are available at the same time.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Iron and coal is all I ever really want, so I can get railroads. Artillery (lots of them) and cavalry (Ok, having saltpeter helps) are enough to take any AI city.

 

[MTheil3508]

Don't forget horses.