Coal In My Head

[Shark Diver]

Hi all, if you've read any of my recent posts, I've recently switched from playing Immortal to Deity (and even if you haven't read my posts, I still made the switch). I've played about 15-20 Deity games now, and have about 5 wins. I've won with Inca (my favorite Civ), Spain, France, and Poland (and I now understand why some call them OP).

Different civs, different VC, but one common theme. Every freakin time I hit Industrial, there isn't one single coal resource in my territory. With only 1-2 exceptions, my CS allies have no freakin coal. Yeah, in my Polish Domination Victory, my WHussars had claimed a few foreign coal cities, but they were puppets or razed, so that cost time. If you have zero coal in your own turf and none in CS turf, you waste time and resources getting that evil non-green energy resource, which significantly slows your progress towards ideologies (I state the obvious).

Same thing has been happening with oil. No matter my terrain, and only about 1/3 of my games have been Incan, I never get any oil.

20 games is not a terribly small sample size, so I'm now detecting a trend. I thought I had a good idea of what types of terrain would produce such resources, but apparently I'm mistaken.

Question: Is this random bad luck, or is there some trick to making sure you or your CS allies have these cute little tiles?

 

[Acken]

It's just luck. Making more cities increasing your odds though obviously.

Ir's not a mandatory ressource though.

 

[Shark Diver]

Nice to know it's random. It's just happened often enough that I'm starting to wonder. I've got 5 cities up, all in mountain/hills (I'm Inca ya know).

I get that it isn't mandatory, as I can easily get to Radio pretty quickly for my ideology, but it will still take 5-10 turns longer than 3 factories would have. Given that I lack GPT, I don't have very many research agreements going, and no GS due in time. I would have been 1st or 2nd to ideology with just 3 stinking coal……given the lack of GPT, I can't even buy the only CS that has coal ready to share.

I "could" have had another source of coal. Poland is down to its' last city, and it's only 2 turns from my northernmost city with a horse unit. Sadly, I only had 1 horse resource all game and have long since sold it off for GPT. I could declare war on 1 of 2 trade partners, rush-buy one, and maybe get there in time, but that city is about to fall and I've been peaceful all game and am not ready for a defensive war against any of my stronger neighbors.

Only solution here is to beeline Radio and hope someone else goes for Freedom early, as I assume I'll probably be 3rd or 4th to ideology now. I'm not set up yet to deal with unhappiness, but will manage.

On the bright side, all 5 cities are next to mountains, and while I'm waiting to build factories, I'll just build 5 Observatories………yeah, I should hit 1000 BPT before t200 and am still worried about winning. It's about timing, as usual.

 

[Shark Diver]

My first post here was at t180. I was wrong as I popped a GS on t181 from a City I didn't think was ripe for such (nice surprise) and I also hat a Research Agreement completed in t182. So I got Radio at t194. My 2 neighbors, France & Egypt are 1 & 2 in most categories, were at each other's throats, but both adopted Order on t192. Do I dare adopt Freedom? Right now my military is nothing but Xbowmen…..but that'll change quickly if they don't DoW me for another 10 turns. Since they are of the same ideology, I doubt I can get them to go at each other, especially given my lack of stuff to trade.

Yeah, I'm going Freedom. What the hell…..

 

[BlackWizard]

You can check if AI has coal to sell. You should check it every turn after they hit industrial era so they wont be able to start factories. Radio is good for getting ideology in peaceful games. In domination games not so much.

 

[Primacide]

Man you make me really glad I run abundant resources. Sorry you struck out with oil and coal. While it's technically not necessary for victory, it's hard to repel an invader without air units. I don't know if you do this, but I save great generals throughout the game for these situations. I have citadel chained up to ten tiles away to get a resource. (It's a great way to tweak the AI's nose, also!)

 

[joncnunn]

The other way to improve your odds of having local coal are to play a civ with either a Hills starting bias or a jungle starting bias. Both of these types of tiles are more likely to have coal.

Yes, it's unreliable though, which is why my ideology plan is the Oxford radio one instead of 3 factories. The tech is even late enough in the game that if you are playing below your natural level you may have a long wait waiting for an AI to research the tech so that the city states get granted it.

 

[Shark Diver]

I have citadel chained up to ten tiles away to get a resource. (It's a great way to tweak the AI's nose, also!)

I love the citadel snatch of strategics, but a chain of 10? I'd love to see a screenshot of that. I may have to try that just for fun. I'm laughing pretty hard just imagining that.

 

[Shark Diver]

The other way to improve your odds of having local coal are to play a civ with either a Hills starting bias or a jungle starting bias. Both of these types of tiles are more likely to have coal.

As Inca, I had a ton of hills on all of these games. Still coal-less. It happens, but this run of bad luck made it seem as if I was missing something.

 

[Shark Diver]

You can check if AI has coal to sell. You should check it every turn after they hit industrial era so they wont be able to start factories. Radio is good for getting ideology in peaceful games. In domination games not so much.

I did check just about every turn. I didn't see any. Looking back at the map, there really was a global shortage of the stuff.

In retrospect, I played this game too passively. Poland settled a city just North of my borders. When they were getting steamrolled by France, I should have joined in on the many DoW offers on Poland and hopefully gotten the last hit on that city. It ended up having 7 coal. I was too passive and didn't have a unit within range.

Which brings up the first lesson I've learned on Deity: You can't play passive even when going for a peaceful victory. There are too many opportunities that you'd be missing.

 

[GoStu]

Some of those really obnoxious forward settles are for future strategics. The AI knows where they are, at least roughly . This is why I keep the city settling recommendations on despite disabling all other AI suggestions - an inexplicable recommendation of a seemingly lower value area is a good hint that there's a hidden strategic there.

Sadly, there's just nothing that can be done for a map that's deprived of a resource. I find it really aggravating as I warmonger a fair bit and often own a third to half the map by that time. Finding that my 50% of the globe is bereft of resources is a major nuisance.

 

[johnny_rudeboy]

Empires have had a lack of strategic resources and luxuries through out history and it is one of the reasons why they expanded by going to war against their neighbors. If you lack something either buy it or simply take it. Not having everything within your borders is what makes the game fun imho. And I even use to play a tall, defensive game with most civs. Normally I start only 3 cities and fill up the tradition tree and save that 4th city with a free monument and a aqueduct until I know where the oil, coal and aluminum is and try to settle it so I can get the resources I lack. I usually save up some cash so I can buy buildings in that city so it grows very quickly and can have a harbor (if it will be a city far away) so that it have a city connection asap. This is of course very dependent on how aggressive the other civs are to settle around me. But a 4th city is usually possible to squeeze in and some times it can be an unsettled island in the middle of the ocean who have coal and oil and some luxury I dont have.

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

I once played an archipelago game where one Island had 4 coal deposits (all claimed by Carthage, in a single city) and the only other coal on the entire map was in 2 CS, one of witch I captured on principal, the other on I allied before long, and they didnt even mine the coal for a long time. It was completely ridiculous, as only myself and Carthage picked an early Ideology and everyone else had to wait. Carthage was roundly hated by everyone (I may have played a role in that) so they didnt seem to be able to trade their coal away.

Most of the time its more spread out. Same with oil.

In My current game, I had 7 Cities spanning a large area. No coal. Had to settle an 8th City AND use a GG citadel for a faster connection. Thats on Emperor standard continents. Im playing Wide as Egypt, so 8 cities is not too hard to manage (burial tombs + Pagodas ). Hoping to get Order first and settle every last piece or dirt out there

 

[Vitruvius]

The good thing about coal is you don't need them permanently to maintain your factories. Just buy some coal from AI.

 

[Trackmaster]

I think that the problem may be that the CS's don't always work their coal immediately when you need it. This can sometimes be remedied by you gifting them gold to improve a resource if you're friendly or allies though.

 

[Shark Diver]

Empires have had a lack of strategic resources and luxuries through out history and it is one of the reasons why they expanded by going to war against their neighbors.

Yup, that's one of the many ways this game resembles the real world, and I love that fact (except, as noted above, when my lands seem to NEVER get any hidden strategics). It's a great part of strategy. You have to be ready/willing to go get that resource.

I stated earlier that the first big lesson I learned after switching to Deity was that you really can't be passive. I've found myself in the situation where I just didn't have an army capable of going out and taking a city with a resource. It's a mistake, and I'll try to avoid ever being in that position again.

Someone posted somewhere that it would be nice if the strategic resources were consistently found on a certain type of terrain, you could predict that and settle there in preparation. A response correctly pointed out that if that were the case, the American pilgrims would have settled in Saudi Arabia instead of America….IOW, you shouldn't know where oil is going to be before you even know what oil is.

Another observation: when oil does pop up on Pangea maps, it is often found on 1 tile islands. Guess who is always the most aggressive in settling these? Shaka. Every freakin game. I'd love to know what is in Shaka's code that makes him covet these more than everyone else around, especially when he's usually pretty far behind in tech.

Oh, and I'm about done with playing Pangea. Continents seems much more realistic and balanced, as you have to use more tech branches (as does the AI). Pangea also seems to nerf several civs that have seafaring UU's or UA's. I just steamrolled a DV on continents as landlocked Poland and never even had to build a ship. The last civ to go down (and also the 2nd strongest) was England. I never saw a SOTL the entire game.

 

[beetle]

Some of those really obnoxious forward settles are for future strategics. The AI knows where they are, at least roughly.

People who have looked at the code swear this is not true, but it certainly conforms to my experience. Confirmation bias be damned!

This is why I keep the city settling recommendations on despite disabling all other AI suggestions - an inexplicable recommendation of a seemingly lower value area is a good hint that there's a hidden strategic there.

I am superstitious about the game settling recommendations, but I like the suggestions and almost always settle on or next to the icon. It never suggests settling on luxes, or my hit rate would be even higher.

That one prolly is confirmation bias, because when I replay maps where access to coal or oil was difficult, I don’t notice the site suggestion icons being particularly close to future resources.

 

[johnny_rudeboy]

The good thing about coal is you don't need them permanently to maintain your factories. Just buy some coal from AI.

Cool, did not know that. That kind of changes things, a lot. I dont have to play nice with the civ or city state who have coal to keep my factories running, just when I want to build them.

 

[RatesAnalyst]

Confirmation bias be damned!

I had an astonishing run of bad luck in my most recent game. I was playing a peaceful Polish game on Emperor targeting a science victory (duly achieved). I got three salt-heavy cities up and running early, with two on either side of a protected bay and one inland on a river next to a mountain.

I decided that was probably going to be enough (I was right). But I hadn't planned on my utter lack of strategic resources.

Seriously, I got no Iron, no Coal, no Oil and no Aluminium.

And my three cities were pretty culture heavy as well so I had plenty of land around my cities too.

A forward settling American city got the Iron. No biggie, I was playing peaceful and rode my luck and had crossbows for defence.

The coal proved a problem because I was already I the tech lead by then and the AI hadn't used theirs. I gave up and used Oxford into Radio for Ideology.

The Oil was most frustrating. There was offshore oil 1 hex outside my "lands" but the hex-chooser never took it. Of course, why would I want the strategic resource I don't have instead of that desert tile miles from my city... I had settled near the base of a headland so that I could work the inland salt tiles too. But the oil was two hexes off the end of the headland. I couldn't even found a new city on the point of the headland because it was too close to the existing one!

I eventually got aluminium, but not before sending my settler cross-continent three times. The first one got snatched (my fault). The second one got to the perfect place. There was both oil and aluminium to be had if you put the city in just the right place. Only, the Americans had settled a city nearby, but not actually close enough to reach the offshore oil or the Aluminium on the headland (without massive tile buying)... So back cross-continent I went and took an Aluminium double lux city spot....

My only stroke of luck was Uranium. Even then, it got weird. My cities were pumping culture by this stage and there was a tiny gap between the Americans and the CS next door. So my lands took the shape of a squeezed balloon and created a "headland" of their own straight between the two. And, right at the end of my lands, about 8 hexes from my nearest city and much closer to both Philadelphia and Genoa, was Uranium.

 

[GoStu]

People who have looked at the code swear this is not true, but it certainly conforms to my experience. Confirmation bias be damned!



I am superstitious about the game settling recommendations, but I like the suggestions and almost always settle on or next to the icon. It never suggests settling on luxes, or my hit rate would be even higher.

That one prolly is confirmation bias, because when I replay maps where access to coal or oil was difficult, I don’t notice the site suggestion icons being particularly close to future resources.

Really? Because I've seen the icons-without-explanation turn out to be a motherlode of strategics later. I seldom argue with people that are reading the game code, however I know from reading sections related to land evaluation that those portions of the code are a bugger to decipher.