Being able to build units without the required resources

[ShadowWarrior]

Instead of not being able to build units without the prerequisite strategic resources, how about having the ability to build it without the resource, but it will be weaker or more expensive to maintain, or both?

Just a thought.

 

[mintcandy]

Instead of not being able to build units without the prerequisite strategic resources, how about having the ability to build it without the resource, but it will be weaker or more expensive to maintain, or both?

Just a thought.

Presently, if you have units that require a strategic resource, and you lose access to the strategic resources needed to maintain them, they receive a 50% penalty to combat and their ranged attack.

In most cases, you should be able to build units that don't require strategic resources that will be stronger than units with that penalty, thus a waste of hammers most of the time.

The two main exceptions are pre Renaissance siege weaponry and aircraft. Personally, I think a more elegant solution would be to remove the iron requirement for siege weapons.

I suppose Unique Units are also an exception. Keshiks at 50 percent strength are still better than any unit in the Medieval era.

 

[Strategia]

Yeah, if you don't have Iron for Swordsmen and Longswordsmen, Spearmen and Pikemen work better. If you don't have Oil or Aluminium for Tanks and Modern Armour, Infantry and Mechanised Infantry perform better. Like mintcandy said, the strategic resource limitation hurts most for pre-Renaissance siege, and aircraft (because AA guns and mobile SAMs are purely defensive). Only for these types of units do strategic resources really matter. (And your scouting and fast-attack capability is hurt if you can't build cavalry or armour, but your overall combat ability doesn't suffer that much if you just spam Pikemen and Riflemen.)

Although mintcandy's suggestion of removing the iron requirement for catapults and trebuchets looks good on the face of it, I'm slightly worried that if that happens, people will start spamming catapults and using them as standard border defence and front-line ranged support rather than keeping them in the rear until they're in range of a city.

 

[claestw]

It would also be open to single player abuse where you no longer seek out iron sites, but instead build what you need, and only seek out those resources from another AI when you need to use them, instantly bring them back to full strength. Same with horse units, although horses seem much more plentiful.

I think Civ 5 has it right that we can have spears for a mostly defensive army until muskets. Back in Civ 4, if I remember correctly, there used to be times when you have no copper, no iron, sometimes no horses, and you're stuck with ranged units all the way until muskets.

Strategic resources are strategic because they are have-or-have-not resources, unlike luxury resources are mostly interchangeable and you have multiple sources of happiness.

It is rather disappointing if we draw a start and we can't build our special unit. Perhaps special units could still be built without resources? They will come out as the usual non-special units, and still suffer the same penalties as today. They cannot be upgraded into their special unit versions even if you obtain the resource later on. They gain their special promotion when they are produced *with* the resource. Of course, losing your special resource won't downgrade your special unit to normal units, they just gain the same temporary penalty to combat as usual, which.