This is just a game, and not a perfectly realistic oneI was playing yesterday and was building a standard mine on a hill and just wondered 'what exactly are they mining?' It's obviously not stone or marble or any of the other resources available in the game, so what might it be? All I can think of is granite, but how would they be able to do that before even discovering copper or iron to make proper tools? Does anyone else have any ideas about this vitally important piece of game information?
But to answer your question seriously, I've always thought that there are supposedly small amounts of stone, marble and even metals in whatever's mined from "resourceless" hills. In many cases you clearly get access to certain raw materials even though they don't show on the map - the quantity and/or quality is just insufficient to provide the full benefit. There are many grey areas that indicate this. For example, when building The Great Wall you get "double production speed with stone" - which I interpret as "an abundant source of stone", because without any stone at all the Wall simply couldn't have been built. Another example is chopping - the second you invent Bronze Working you can chop forests, even if you don't have access to copper (the same is true for Iron Working and jungle chopping).
Btw, what are they farming from grasslands that don't have either wheat, corn or rice? Grass? For the human population to eat?
Btw, what are they farming from grasslands that don't have either wheat, corn or rice? Grass? For the human population to eat?
Btw, what are they farming from grasslands that don't have either wheat, corn or rice? Grass? For the human population to eat?
Oddly, there are puffs of smoke coming from mines that evoke smelting, even where there are no metals on the tile.
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