Resource Revealing Rework for Vox Populi 3.3

V1.0

Vox Populi, as of version 2/27, has 9 resources unlocked by Ancient era technologies by default.

• All the 7 basic (neither luxury nor strategic) resources: cattle, sheep, deer, bison, fish, banana, stone;
• 2 strategic resources: iron, horses.
• All luxuries are visible from the start.

I've never liked this. Why can your ancient people benefit from, say, dyes, perfume and tobacco right away, but not from deer, stone and fish? This is madness!

You can reverse that in the CBO folder's CommunityOptions.sql, making all basic resources visible from the start and all luxuries unlockable by technologies. However, with about 30 different luxuries out there there's no elegant way to make all of them tech-dependent, while keeping the tech tree clean and resource balance sane.

An in-between solution was necessary. The mini-quest of resource unlocking has to make sense, at least one strictly subjective to my taste - resources that are visible right away should be visible because they deserve it, not because they were spawned into one relatively arbitrary category or another (I'm talking about luxury and basic resources). So I had to get rid of the old caste system and develop a new one, while not disrupting the balance or polluting the tech tree. Enter the Spreadsheet:



I had to remove the revealing of brazilwood from the tech tree, as it is largely irrelevant even to Brazil itself. It was clear that with 39 resources and only 19 available unlock slots at least 20 resources must be revealed at start. It was time to decide which ones, and which ones should be unlocked.

I followed these basic rules:

1. Basic food and basic construction materials must be revealed at start, luxurious foods and materials must be discovered later.
2. All resources improved by a certain improvement must be visible by the time you can build the improvement,
3. Iron and horses must stay as they are in VP.

Resources that easily fell under basic food and basic construction materials: cattle, sheep, bison, deer, fish, crabs, bananas, citrus, olives, stone. That's 10, 10 more to go.

Resources that did it with a bit of a stretch: whales, salt, spices, sugar, wine, cocoa, coffee, tea. The last three are particularly sketchy, but I needed more plantation resources and those are the best out of the competition. Anyway, that's another 8, 2 more to go.

I really wanted to throw copper and marble in there and be done with it. After all, those are materials that are likely to be easily discovered, obtained and put to basic use of building and tool construction. However, that would leave mines with 2 unlocked resources (salt, copper) and 3 locked ones (gems, silver, gold; iron not included). For quarries it would be 2 unlocked (stone, marble) and 3 locked ones (lapis lazuli, amber, jade). The locked ones for mines would have to be unlocked at mining (refer to rule number 2), which would leave the locked ones for quarries to be somehow unlocked at animal husbandry and construction, the latter with only 1 available slot. Bottom line: that wouldn't be elegant and would make quarries really weak - after all, they're unlocked much later than mines.

So I had to make an awkward but functional compromise and to the reverse: all the precious gems and metals are visible at start, while marble and copper are unlocked at mining. That would mean starting the game with 4 visible quarry resources and 4 mine resources. Mines are even stronger this way, but at least quarries don't start out gimped. If you really try hard enough, you can even justify the theme of that.

What it all came down to:

• Plantations: 9 resources (60%) visible at start: bananas, spices, sugar, citrus, wine, cocoa, tea, coffee, olives. Tobacco, incense at pottery; cotton, silk at the wheel; perfume, dyes at calendar.
  Kind of follows some sort of thematic progression. When you think of The Wheel, think real life Silk Road. Perfume and dyes seemed to me like the most advanced resources of all, besides, perfume continues the theme of smelly substances, and dyes continue the theme of clothing materials.
• Quarries: 4 resources (80%) visible at start: stone, lapis lazuli, jade, amber. Marble at mining.
• Mines: 4 resources (80%) visible at start: salt, gold, silver, gems visible from start. Copper at mining. Iron unchanged (Bronze Working).
  I'd like to curb the number of the visible resources, but it's awkward to take away gems or precious metals while having amber, lapis lazuli and jade visible at start, and same goes for taking away salt while having sugar, spices, etc visible.
• Camps: 2 resources (40%) revealed at start: bison, deer. Truffles, ivory and furs at trapping.
  The low amount of visible resources is compensated by how fast camps are unlocked and the relatively high value of Trapping technology.
• Pastures: 2 resources (66%) are revealed at start: cattle and sheep. Horses unchanged (Animal Husbandry).
• Fishing boats: 3 resources (60%) are visible at start: fish, crabs, whale. Pearls, coral at fishing.
  Unfortunately, this is the weakest point of the mod, I think. It makes fishing boats weaker than in VP, which isn't the greatest tile improvement to begin with. However, it is also relatively niche by being the only water based improvement, so idk.
• To summarize: a total of 24 resources (62%) are visible at start, 15 are discoverable. Brazilwood removed from the tech tree.

What it looks like:

I hope you try it out and enjoy!

What it looks like:

View attachment 503432 View attachment 503433

Three new techs in column 0 of the Ancient Era:

• Spirituality. Unlocks tobacco, incense, wine, pearls, coral.
  All of these can provide faith either via monopolies or improvement yields (coral). This implies possible planning in advance of the religion game and, therefore, can bear significant influence on decision making. It's crucial to know when you've been dealt those resources early.
• Acclimatization. Unlocks cocoa, citrus, sugar, spices, gems
  All of these have a tendency to spawn in terrain that makes them extremely hard to improve, e.g. jungle gems, forest cocoa, citrus, spices, marsh sugar. That's why they can be discovered as early.
  
• Luxuries. Unlocks marble, stone, ivory, silk, dyes.
  These also potentially bear influence on the decision making of early game, since ivory unlocks the war elephant and both marble and stone boost wonder production. Silk and dyes are distinct enough from the plantation resources mentioned above because these have a larger tendency toward forests than toward jungles. That means they're potentially much harder to improve, so the tech compensates with easier to improve resources.
  • Important: all of the resources mentioned have the potential of providing their yields from very early on, while other resources are unlocked later by technologies with opportunity costs. That's why those that are relatively easy to improve (tobacco, incense, wine, pearls, coral, marble, stone, ivory) all have the base yield of 1 gold. I find this the most 'neutral' yield early on. They still all regain their original (as in Vox Populi) yields when improved (most of them) or improved and buffed by respective buildings (incense and marble). Hard to improve resources (cocoa, citrus, sugar, spices, silk, dyes) are unchanged .

First column of Ancient Era

• Trapping. Unlocks deer, bison, fur, truffles.
  Unfortunately, this hides the Camp improvement from the tech button.
  
• Agronomy (old Agriculture). Unlocks tea, coffee, olives, perfume, cotton.
  Since this tech does nothing other than this, I think it's fair that all these resources spawn on featureless terrain, which means they're relatively easier to improve. That probably won't make it even compare with other techs, but I didn't want to change balance too much.
• Organization (old Wheel). Unlocks jade, amber, lapis lazuli.
  Why the name change? I wanted to go for the theme of these resources being used as attributes of power/wealth, hence social organization. It also sits somewhat okay in my head with the theme of councils, which are also unlocked by this tech.
  • Again, sorry for the naming and the icon, and the Civilopedia.
• Animal Husbandry. Unlocks cattle and sheep (default VP behavior).
• Mining. Unlocks copper, silver, gold, salt.
  Unfortunately, this hides the Mine improvement from the tech button.

Second column of Ancient Era

• Fishing. Unlocks fish, crab, whales.
  Fish is a pretty common resource, so the late unlock shouldn't be a huge balance issue. The other two could be, idk. Fishing boats improve pearls and corals, which both come very early, so that should offset it a little.
• Calendar. Unlocks bananas.
  Again, a common resource, and there exactly one free spot here, it's like it was made for the bananas.

Gandhi

• Receives Spirituality, Acclimatization and Luxuries at the start.
  I feel this is necessary not to restrict his free pantheon too much, so that there are still a few options of resource based pantheons for him.