SammyKhalifa
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2003
- Messages
- 6,308
I think you might be missing the point of the resource tiles. You can put a farm anywhere, and you get more food from the tile than if it didn't have a farm. Putting a farm down represents the ability of humans to plant crops as you point out. With new technologies (e.g. irrigation, fertilizer) the yield from farms increases. What the resources on the map represent are areas where food grows better naturally. Think of a Wheat tile on the map as being the game representation of soil in Iowa. You can take the grains from Iowa and replant them anywhere, but they won't necessarily grow as well.
The game is an extrapolation and resources are one example. They are not meant to be literally the only place where you can grow wheat nor is wheat meant to be the only staple grain to feed your population. That said, it would be nice to see geographically diverse grains like corn and rice like Civ 4 had.
On the topic of depleting strategic resource, this sounds like a great idea. Strategic resources could be more abundant on the map, but used up as the game progresses to become more scarce. That would allow early use by most civs on the map, but pressure them into wars over resources as cities grow and available resources shrink.
I see what you're saying, but horses/Cows/Sheep/Etc. pick up and move around just fine. That's kind of the point of mankind using them.
Otherwise there would be no horses in North America and no Plains Indian culture as we know it now.
But still, yeah, it's an approximation.