Balanced ideas to solve the problem of resources?

[Claxnasty]

I was thinking about resources on the train the other day looking at sheep as I was going by, thinking about how all these Eurasian animals and crops that helped these civilizations succeed are now in the New World continents too. Agricultural resources in our world can be farely easily transfered. Think about Kentucky horses or Eurasian crops grown in Australia. Perhaps it would be cool if resources that are worked by farms or animal husbandry could be aquired by a civilization and then maybe you could have the option to transfer that crop or animal to one tile in your national boundaries? I dunno, maybe that's stupid.

Also about the Horse resources. I had a particularly annoying situation on the Earth map where I invaded the Aztecs hoping to have a military advange, like you know, history has shown, only to be thwarted by Aztec knights. Turned out ol' Louis XIV had a trade deal with the Aztecs. I tried to get him to cut it, but "[he] couldn't turn [his] back on [his] good friends!!" Computers sure hate Colonialism in this game, except for the random city built in the Pacific.

 

[mjs0]

I was thinking about resources on the train the other day looking at sheep as I was going by, thinking about how all these Eurasian animals and crops that helped these civilizations succeed are now in the New World continents too. Agricultural resources in our world can be farely easily transfered. Think about Kentucky horses or Eurasian crops grown in Australia. Perhaps it would be cool if resources that are worked by farms or animal husbandry could be aquired by a civilization and then maybe you could have the option to transfer that crop or animal to one tile in your national boundaries? I dunno, maybe that's stupid.

If I understand you right, I quite like this idea.
Basically, a limited number of tiles would be either particularly fertile and suited to growing crops or particularly suited to use as pasture land. These tiles would default to a particular resource (crop or animal) but over time your civilization would get access to other diverse crops and animals and you could determine which resource was grown/raised on your fertile/pasture land.
In early eras you would only have access to crops/animals that were native to your area and would have to import other food resources but in later ages you could after importing a particular crop/animal for enough time learn enough about the resource to grow/raise it yourself and change one of your tiles to growing/raising that resource.
It might also be nice if even though you can grow/raise the non-native resource the health benefit is less to represent the inherently better quality of obtaining the resource from its native region.

This would nicely model the real world situation i.e. many of the valuable food resources of the ancient world are now pretty ubiquitous and new resources and commodities have replaced them as the key items for trade.

 

[cymru_man]

I think the Mystery of the Disappearing Resources is a more accute problem. I hate to lose a resource just to chance and I hate it even more when I only get to know about it when I see 1 of 1 (in stead of 1 of 2) in the trade table. If by any chance it stands for depletion of resources, fine but give me a counter then.

Your imagination. If you had 2 spare and now you have 1 spare (or whatever), then 1 has been pillaged, you have traded 1 away, or the tile that it was on is (for whatever reason) no longer owned by you. Resources do not disappear in Civ4 like they did in Civ3.

 

[weimingshi]

I just want sid to change 2 things.

First is if you don't own a ressource and cannot get it from trade, don't just outright ban you from building units require that ressource. Make it cost
3x, or 4x the original price. People seem to forget in real world there is something called contraband, illegal import or export of banned stuff. why not reflect this in game, if a country is willing to pay a hefty fee for it, theres always some greedy criminal willing to risk their butt to get it for them. Second reason for this is balance. Especially for AI, cause AI is too dumb to protect there most valuable resource like oil effectively.


Second, like so many said before, limite the number of simultaneous build a resource can support. I would suggest a harsher limit. my suggestion is 1 resource can only support 1 city to build at original price 100%. If you want build units in 2 cities at same time but only have 1 resource, you need to pay 125% to build both, 3 cities goes to 150% cost for all 3.

 

[SLM]

Your imagination. If you had 2 spare and now you have 1 spare (or whatever), then 1 has been pillaged, you have traded 1 away, or the tile that it was on is (for whatever reason) no longer owned by you. Resources do not disappear in Civ4 like they did in Civ3.

I imagine a lot of things, but this, no. It didn't disappear because it had been pillaged, culture flipped etc. It had been right beside my capitol. Perhaps it was fluke, a bug, a memory violation or perhaps it is hardcoded like the suddenly appearing resources. I don't know.

 

[gdgrimm]

I really don't like any of the changes that have been suggested.

Basically, the game already generates huge benefits for increasing empire size compared to improving empire quality. Allowing multiple copies of a resource to improve production (or hindering those that have only one copy) just pushes this in balance even further.

And heck, the fact that you have multiple copies, means there's a real good chance that somebody else doesn't have any. So you now have a military disparity to leverage. Do you really need an additional production advantage on top of that?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

But that is exactly why it has to work both ways. In truth, if you connect the benefit/penalties accrued to the ratio of no. of cities to no. of identical resources, it is actually the smaller nation that gains the benefit, wheras the larger nation needs more of the resource just to keep 'treading water'. Overexpansion therefore inhibits trading opportunities, whilst the smaller nation is in a position to leverage a larger civ in trade negotiations. That doesn't seem unbalanced to me. Also, any benefit/penalty only appears IF you have access to the resource at all. You can't notice a lack of oil if you haven't got any oil at all anyway.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[gdgrimm]

But that is exactly why it has to work both ways. In truth, if you connect the benefit/penalties accrued to the ratio of no. of cities to no. of identical resources, it is actually the smaller nation that gains the benefit, wheras the larger nation needs more of the resource just to keep 'treading water'. Overexpansion therefore inhibits trading opportunities, whilst the smaller nation is in a position to leverage a larger civ in trade negotiations. That doesn't seem unbalanced to me. Also, any benefit/penalty only appears IF you have access to the resource at all. You can't notice a lack of oil if you haven't got any oil at all anyway.

Aussie_Lurker.

Can you explain that to me?

Currently ----
Getting the 1st resource -- a larger empire is more likely to get 1 type of the resource, so the larger the better. This is currently offset (pretty well) now by having the strategic resources fairly evenly scattered around the map. A small empire is still likely to be in trouble, but as long as your empire is average size or larger, you'll probably have everything you really need.

Getting more than 1st resource -- a larger empire is obviously better positioned to have this happen. Currently the only benefit though, is something to trade. But you can only trade it to partners that don't have it, and even then, you can't really get much from them for it. So while having a larger empire certainly makes you better positioned to do this, the benefit really isn't a big deal.

Now look at some of the proposals....

Each resource lets you build X number of units. Now the benefit of larger empires that get more than 1st resource has just skyrocketed. They can build way more units. Since larger empires don't really need lots more units for defense (i.e. troop mobility allows you to not need as many defensive units/city in a large empire compared to a small one), these extra units can be made into attacking armies. Which allow the empire to grow larger, which means more additional resources, which means more units, which means more attacking units, etc., etc., etc.

Building X number of units simultaneously per resource. Similar situation, though this is now more along the line that it limits how quickly a medium empire can build units. The medium empire is currently only limited by the number of cities and how well the production of the empire has been managed. After a change like this, they'll be limited in how fast they can produce units by the number of resources they have -- a number that will be significantly smaller than the one large empires get.

Faster building for multiple resources. Similar to the above, but not quite as limiting. Still, the larger empires will now get special abilities to build military faster, above and beyond the inherent benefit of having more cities.

 

[weimingshi]

gdgrimm Your math is compeletely flawed. Lets compare a civ1 with 12 cities to a civ2 with 3 cities. The way resources work now. Both civs can build units in all cities with just 1 resource at 100% cost. So civ1 can build 12 units simultaneously without penalty, while civ2 can only build 3 at a time. mind you, they both only have 1 resource, if civ1 had 2+ resource, he can trade for something else, hence getting more advantages. if civ2 is unfortunate enough to not have the resource, he can't build any unit require that resource, most often the tragedy of small empire.


Now, alot ppl here suggests that 1 resource to only support 3 cities. that means civ1 needs to have 3 resources just to be able to build units in all 12 cities instead previously just 1. and civ2 is unaffected, he can still build in all 3 cities with 1 resource. So the playing field levels a bit. The problem with this suggestion is that, most often smaller civs don't have certain resource, they need to trade for it. Now if larger civs with multiple resources needs all of them for their cities, they won't trade it. So tough luck to smaller civs.

Thats why I suggested a soft cap for resource requirement. If you don't have iron, it doesn't mean you can't build that swordman. you just have to smuggle it in behind the back of your neighbor civs that has iron. It will cost you more money to build them though like double the cost, cause smuggling ain't cheap. I suggest this mainly to lessen the burden on smaller civs. Large civs usally will have most resources in their borders, so they don't need to smuggle to begin with. With smuggle at least it won't out right ban the small civ to build that tank or destroyer if they don't have oil.

 

[chopstyx]

I was thinking about resources on the train the other day looking at sheep as I was going by, thinking about how all these Eurasian animals and crops that helped these civilizations succeed are now in the New World continents too. Agricultural resources in our world can be farely easily transfered. Think about Kentucky horses or Eurasian crops grown in Australia. Perhaps it would be cool if resources that are worked by farms or animal husbandry could be aquired by a civilization and then maybe you could have the option to transfer that crop or animal to one tile in your national boundaries? I dunno, maybe that's stupid.

I think this would work well if you were able to 'plant' animal resources on any tile in your empire once you've discovered that resource. So if you find a Horse/Rice tile, you can then get your workers to create other horse/rice tiles in your empire. (It would emualte breeding / planting crops)

What's the point? you may ask. Well this would also go hand-in-hand with another new feature, where you can pillage animal/food tiles to remove the resource. This way you'd want to make sure you had multiple tiles of 1 resource as when you are taking part in a war the actual resource tiles themselves can be pillaged, not just the pastures/farms, and if you lose the last one in your empire, you're screwed.

Obviously this would only work with animals/food and not copper/uranium/coal, etc.

 

[gdgrimm]

gdgrimm Your math is compeletely flawed. Lets compare a civ1 with 12 cities to a civ2 with 3 cities. The way resources work now. Both civs can build units in all cities with just 1 resource at 100% cost. So civ1 can build 12 units simultaneously without penalty, while civ2 can only build 3 at a time. mind you, they both only have 1 resource, if civ1 had 2+ resource, he can trade for something else, hence getting more advantages. if civ2 is unfortunate enough to not have the resource, he can't build any unit require that resource, most often the tragedy of small empire.


Now, alot ppl here suggests that 1 resource to only support 3 cities. that means civ1 needs to have 3 resources just to be able to build units in all 12 cities instead previously just 1. and civ2 is unaffected, he can still build in all 3 cities with 1 resource. So the playing field levels a bit. The problem with this suggestion is that, most often smaller civs don't have certain resource, they need to trade for it. Now if larger civs with multiple resources needs all of them for their cities, they won't trade it. So tough luck to smaller civs.

I think you're leaning on a corner case example. In your specific example, your analysis is correct, well there's that one flawed math thing ( a 1 resource/3 city limit would not allow 3 resources to support 12 cities -- but that's undoubtedly a minor typo or miscalculation).

Strategic resources are fairly evenly spread out (as opposed to those luxury resources that clump alot), so civ1 with 4 times as large of a empire is most likely going to have 3 or 4 times the number of the resource as the small civ2. That means he gets to build in 9-12 cities, civ2 gets to build in 3. There's not much leveling there at all.

But if civ2 gets a 4th city, it doesn't do him any good (unless it picks up another of the resource). In fact, to get any further help, civ2 has to go on an expansion phase that's large enough to grab a 2nd resource. In the current system, civ2 wouldn't need to do that. If civ2 feels the need to expand for more military production, the expansion of just 1 or 2 cities (without getting another resource copy) works fine.

The current way of handling these resources pushes empire expansion to become large enough to get 1 resource (because lacking it is a big disadvantage), but doesn't provide much incentive to have to expand further. Getting the 2nd or 3rd copy really doesn't mean much.

A change to resource/city would skew that, and generate a situation were constant expansion is always getting rewarded, driving the feel of the game more toward domination/conquest being the best/easiest way to win.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Where this would get interesting though is allowing trade of partial units, instead of all or nothing.

To keep the example going, we will say that each iron resource could sustain production in 3 cities. A civ with 6 cities is probably not going to be building Swordsmen in all 6 cities, even if they control 2 iron resources. What if they could trade a way 1 or 2 "city's worth" of iron to an ally, rather than having to trade the whole resource? That would make trading more dynamic and fluid.

The idea hinges on the divisibility of the resource. Under the current resource model, small civs are completely cut out of the market because they have no surplus. They cannot even trade amongst themselves.

Under the current model, one source of iron can suply an empire of 15 cities; why shouldn't two smaller nations with 5 cities each be able use the market to "share" the one source they have?

Maybe that is an easier answer: create a diplomatic treaty (available with Currency maybe?), called a Trade Pact: The two nations share their resources.

You would need to put some restrictions on it to prevent player abuse:
1) The first two plots of a given resource may not be traded. They are required to supply each member of the Pact.
1a) If such a resource is already being traded when the pact is signed, the pre-existing trade is broken.
2) Excess resources may be traded by the controlling civ. If both members control plots of a given resource, each member may only trade one plot less than that member actually controls.
3) (maybe) The income from resource trades is split evenly between everyone with which you have signed a Trade Pact. it is a trade pact, after all.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I think what Grimm is failing to understand is how a resource system like the one I propose would penalise unusually large nations. Sure an empire of 25 cities might be able to seize 4 deposits of iron, but that is still going to leave them 1 short of the amount needed simply to run at normal efficiency. Yet an 8 city empire with only 2 deposits of iron will not only be running efficiently, it will be building things at a faster rate than normal. The obvious impact is that you will no longer be denied trade opportunities just because the two parties already have iron. Under this system it would be dynamic, with the nation lacking sufficient iron placing a higher premium on acquiring it from the other nation (who then needs to weigh up the benefits of holding on to the iron vs. the combined costs of antagonising a larger neighbour and missing out on cash per turn.) The other thing is that such a penalty would be cumulative for every resource they lack, so a very large empire could find itself completely crippled-by the modern age-unless it either got really lucky with all its resource deposits or is really good at trade relations.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[ollj]

As long as we don't have expiring resources a la Civ III I'm happy... that was one of my main bugbears with the game.

I see it exactly the other way around and want expiring resources.
I prefer resources giving boni instead of being an absolute requirement. Why is there no "iron weapon"-PROMOTION ?
Having double resources should boost trade routes.
Some boni could require the same bonus multiple times: "Iron armor II"