Resources and Resource Spawns

Leoreth · May 8, 2023

I am posting this to share the current state of work on resources and resource spawns on the new map.

This is a full report of the total number of resources, including spawns, grouped by region and by resource:

Spoiler :

I will also upload screenshots of the map with resource spawn locations marked in the following posts. Note that a marker in brackets signifies a resource disappearance. This display is not fully accurate because it does not capture when multiple changes happen on the same tile (e.g. both feature and resource changes) but overall it captures the majority of the changes.

If you are interested, please give it a review and comment on any inaccuracies or things that are missing.

Leoreth · May 8, 2023

Spoiler :

Leoreth · May 8, 2023

Spoiler :

Leoreth · May 8, 2023

Spoiler :

Leoreth · May 8, 2023

Spoiler :

Publicola · May 8, 2023

Can I suggest that you add a (Silk 1150) resource spawn in Calabria, to indicate the point when Byzantine dominance of the European silk market started to fade, between the Second Crusade and the Fourth Crusade? There doesn't look to be enough room in Sicily proper, but the Normans introduced silk farming to southern Italy as well.

I'm seeing a lot of (Rubber 1900) resource spawns in Africa? I'm forgetting - when does rubber get revealed as a resource? I feel like a) whichever tech it is, is late enough in the tech tree and b) the placement of rubber in jungle tiles makes it difficult enough to extract, that the rubber should just be present in the base map rather than treated as a spawn.

BigSchwartzzz · May 9, 2023

What an absolutely bonkers amount of work. I'm equally impressed and terrified. Great job Leoreth. You should be extremely proud!

need my speed · May 9, 2023

Leoreth said:
Aluminum

I know you can do better than this, Leoreth.

Leoreth · May 9, 2023

Publicola said:
Can I suggest that you add a (Silk 1150) resource spawn in Calabria, to indicate the point when Byzantine dominance of the European silk market started to fade, between the Second Crusade and the Fourth Crusade? There doesn't look to be enough room in Sicily proper, but the Normans introduced silk farming to southern Italy as well.

Yeah, I don't think neither Sicily nor southern Italy have the space for this - to be honest, I was already split on whether to include Byzantine silk production at all. One resource is enough for them, I think.

Publicola said:
I'm seeing a lot of (Rubber 1900) resource spawns in Africa? I'm forgetting - when does rubber get revealed as a resource? I feel like a) whichever tech it is, is late enough in the tech tree and b) the placement of rubber in jungle tiles makes it difficult enough to extract, that the rubber should just be present in the base map rather than treated as a spawn.

Many of these details for the new resources are not yet determined (for example, they are not associated with any buildings yet either). I was operating under the assumption that rubber would get revealed in the late game for a while - the rubber resources in Africa originally just existed on the map at game start. However, that does not really work because rubber is also in Mesoamerica because we want its civilizations to use it, so it cannot be revealed with a later technology. In that context the discovery of Congo rubber vines as a source of rubber in the lategame is best represented as a resource spawn.

BigSchwartzzz said:
What an absolutely bonkers amount of work. I'm equally impressed and terrified. Great job Leoreth. You should be extremely proud!

Yeah, it's crazy. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find detailed information about a specific crop online that isn't just "what is the output of this crop in 2010-2020 by country?". As soon as you want to know which region of a country produces these crops, or even worse when they historically started, it becomes a lot more difficult.

But I also had a lot of community contributions to work off of, so that helped.

need my speed said:
I know you can do better than this, Leoreth.

Both the list and the map screenshots are automatically generated, so this is using the name of the resource in the game.

BigSchwartzzz · May 9, 2023

Now that the work is done it's a shame for me to show you this for the US.

Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

Under industries and transportation. I'm not sure if it'll change anything but it is a cool resource none the less.

Leoreth · May 9, 2023

BigSchwartzzz said:
Now that the work is done it's a shame for me to show you this for the US.

Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

Under industries and transportation. I'm not sure if it'll change anything but it is a cool resource none the less.

Oh yeah this is amazing. I will definitely use this to shuffle some resource locations around.

Steb · May 9, 2023

California is getting positively hit with resources in 1850! It makes sense, but it might be a bit much?

I'd suggest making the two Californian gold resources available from the start. I assume they spawn in 1850 to represent the gold rush, but first, the discoveries that led to the gold rush happened a bit earlier, in 1842; and second, I see no particular reason why it couldn't have started even earlier. If the Spanish had put more effort in colonizing California in the 1700s, they might well have exploited the gold. And then the 1850 spawns could be interpreted as the development of Californian agriculture rather than just "hey let's shower California with resources!"

For consistency, I'd also make the other two golds that spawn in 1850, in the Amazon and the Great Plains, also there from the start, as well as the silver in Cascadia. (The list also identifies a silver as spawning in Aridoamerica, but I don't see it on the screenshot; there are already two silvers in Mexico right now.) This would make, I think, all mineral resources be on the map from the start except for a few irons that spawn later for clear gameplay reasons. More elegant, IMO.

Leoreth · May 9, 2023

I agree that it's a bit too much all at once, but I think the game should emulate that nobody did settle these regions until the historical gold rush happened. Player (and AI) actions are driven in a bit of a reverse way than resources are historically developed. In actual history resources are discovered/introduced when people begin settling an area but from a game perspective an area only gets settled when there are valuable resources in the area.

You could open up that argument about basically any resource spawn in the game - cash crop X only exists in location Y because that's when people settled there so it should actually appear earlier because what if someone settles there earlier.

Steb · May 9, 2023

Leoreth said:
I agree that it's a bit too much all at once, but I think the game should emulate that nobody did settle these regions until the historical gold rush happened. Player (and AI) actions are driven in a bit of a reverse way than resources are historically developed. In actual history resources are discovered/introduced when people begin settling an area but from a game perspective an area only gets settled when there are valuable resources in the area.

You could open up that argument about basically any resource spawn in the game - cash crop X only exists in location Y because that's when people settled there so it should actually appear earlier because what if someone settles there earlier.

I get those arguments, but there's still a fundamental difference between a crop/animal for which some date must be picked — so, might as well pick an approximation of the date the crop/animal historically arrived — and a mineral resource for which the actual date is "geological time" and any historical date is an artificial construct. It seems to me that the spawn of multiple food resources in California in 1850 is sufficient to represent the development of the region in the late 19th century and incentivize players to settle it if they didn't already, and it seems valid to me that e.g. Spain could settle it in the 18th century to get a gold resource. I also doubt that California would be settled ahistorically early in most games even if the gold is there.

BigSchwartzzz · May 9, 2023

Leoreth said:
I agree that it's a bit too much all at once, but I think the game should emulate that nobody did settle these regions until the historical gold rush happened. Player (and AI) actions are driven in a bit of a reverse way than resources are historically developed. In actual history resources are discovered/introduced when people begin settling an area but from a game perspective an area only gets settled when there are valuable resources in the area.

You could open up that argument about basically any resource spawn in the game - cash crop X only exists in location Y because that's when people settled there so it should actually appear earlier because what if someone settles there earlier.

The way it is makes sense. San Diego, LA, and San Fran were all things even before the gold rush. So a small population at first as a 1-3 makes sense. This map is so big that it'll be a while before workers make there way there even if it gets settled early. Most workers will probably be west coast grown and the one reliant on a pioneer so it's not like it'll be a quick mining operation. Overall, I predict US expansion to be pretty historical the way you have it.

borhap88 · May 24, 2023

I'd like to propose a rice resource spawning in Piedmont (Italy) in the 19th century. I recall that this spawn is scripted in the current versione of the mod, in order to represent the most important rice cultivated area in Italy (50% of national production is here, page 6 from this report) and, consequently, in Europe (50% of continental production is here, page 1 of this report); nevertheless, it could boost a rising northern city unifying the rest of the Peninsula.

Spoiler Rice in Piedmont :

I'd also like to remember my other proposal about Oranges in Sicily instead of Olives from here

Publicola · May 24, 2023

borhap88 said:
I'd also like to remember my other proposal about Oranges in Sicily instead of Olives from here

Perhaps the tile could start with olives in classical (Greek/Roman) times, then get an Orange spawn after ...1500 AD or so (not really sure about the year; I'd need to do more research).

Steb · May 24, 2023

If lemons (which is a variation of the citrus resource) were an actual luxury item in ancient Rome, it seems appropriate and cool to have one available from ancient times, though.

Cacaso · Jul 2, 2023

In this link below, I found a list with locations that produce Amber, as this new resource has only 11 copies in the Bigmap, and it was very spread out across the map, so I think it will be relatively rare for any CIV to have more of a copy of the resource and can offer it for trade (currently I think only CIVpoland will have excess resources available), so maybe we could add more of that resource to the map.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_amber

in addition to the locations already shown on the map such as: Baltic Sea, Dominican Republic, Canada, Myanmar (Indochina). Perhaps you could add in locations such as:

- Sakhalin Island - Would give CIVrussia a use in settling this distant island and could be picked up by Asian civilizations
- Charentese amber/ Oise amber/Spanish amber - If CIVfrance/CIVspain is running low on resources, maybe you could add amber to one of these locations. (maybe it could just be one of those)
- Ethiopian amber - It would be an interesting location, being in Africa it would be accessible to several European civilizations that wanted to colonize the area.
-Fushun amber / Kuji amber - It would be an amber to be made available to Asian civs. (maybe it could just be one of those)
-Jordanian amber/Lebanese amber - a possible location if you find it interesting to add the amber resource in this area of the Middle East
- Mexican amber - Another possible location to diversify the application of the amber resource in the bigmap.
-Sumatran amber - Another possible location to diversify the application of the amber resource on the bigmap.
- Sri Lankan amber - found in sea coast in a very small quantity (this one I'm not sure if it would be interesting to add in this area)

And these were the locations I found when I researched this resource, as amber is a resource that can be found on the coast, I think its placement could be applied to other locations on the map so that more CIVs can have more than 1 resource and then they can accept exchange, because now with jewelry building resources like (gems, pearls, jade and amber) have become much more attractive, and although gems and pearls are abundant and well distributed, in the case of amber I think that only 11 resources are little. so Leoreth, if you find it useful, maybe you can use this information to eventually add more amber resources to the bigmap.

stormogulen · Aug 30, 2023

It looks really amazing. Some small thoughts:

-The Persian ivory should expire, right?

-New Zealand seemed quite food-rich even before the (very expected) sheep spawns were announced. In reality it has a small population and little arable land. Maybe some other food source could be prioritized away.

-The silver in Afghanistan and Transoxania could expire around 1000 AD or slightly later representing the drying-up of the massive Samanid silver mines which supplied much of the silver found for example in Viking hoards.

-Maybe there could be a potato spawn in 1800 somewhere around Belarus/Northwest Ukraine. They grow and eat massive amounts of it there.

-I believe some banana species are native to Australia, but common cultivated bananas were introduced to it by Chinese immigrants around 1850 and started to be cultivated in Queensland around 1880. Also, while the current placement is fine, the original area of cultivation as well as the most important center today (~90% of current production according to a source I saw) is near Innisfail/Tully further north (slightly south of Cairns). So it would make sense to place it where it can support e.g. Cairns or Townsville.

-To support Brisbane the current banana could be replaced by a cow spawn representing cattle farming in Darling Downs and South West Queensland. While of course less historically important than wool, beef and dairy are major exports of Australia (which was for example in 2020 the second largest beef exporter after Brazil). And Queensland is the most important cattle farming region of Australia.

-Australia should probably get a wheat either in the southeast or the southwest (the picture in the spoiler below might help a little). Australia is a major producer/exporter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat#Geographical_variation).

Spoiler Australian wheat :

Resources and Resource Spawns

Blue Period

Blue Period

Blue Period

Blue Period

Blue Period

King

Chieftain

Rex Omnium Imperarium

Blue Period

Chieftain

Blue Period

Emperor

Blue Period

Emperor

Chieftain

Prince

King

Emperor

Warlord

Chieftain

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