copper or iron

[Sincro]

Given the choice, would you rather be facing a copper deficiency in the earliest part of the game, or an iron deficiency during the stage where you are making your push for liberalism?

I am currently facing the latter problem playing Cyrus, with Shaka covering my entire northern border, and Mehmed covering my entire eastern border. West and South is ocean. By the time I got around to iron working, I already had 9 cities down, and the only sources of iron I saw were either in my neighbor's lands, or a single spot of iron in the middle of an otherwise resourceless ice field. I elected not to plant a city on the iron, and Mehmed ended up grabbing it off a couple turns before I got Lib.

How big of an error have I made? Is it a normal course of action to plant a city to grab a resource like that, even tho the city is otherwise totally useless and can't ever grow past size 1 prior to Sid's Sushi? I don't plan on being lame and going back to an earlier save to change my mind, but I'd like to know for future reference what the conventional wisdom is.

-Sinc

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'd rather have iron...it's needed for too many medieval units, cuirassers, and cannons...not to mention frigates. Copper is not bad to have (colossus, maces/axes, later wonders) but iron is the better one to have.

As for settling it vs not being a mistake, that depends on your plans. If you wanted to use a cannon war or something, it was a mistake. If you were say going culture and intended no offensive warfare at all, then there would have been little point in settling it.

 

[Agent327]

Iron beats copper long before Liberalism comes into sight; without it you can't upgrade your Spearmen and can't build Knights, making Gunpowder a crucial advance to get ASAP.

 

[DigitalBoy]

I'd rather have copper available early on. Copper is better to have when you want to axe rush a neighbor, and axes + catapults works as well as swords + catapults for classical era wars.

Lacking copper can set you back early in the game. If you do have copper, you can secure a source of iron later on, even if you have to wage war to do it.

 

[Ataxerxes]

I'd have to vote iron. I find iron more common anyway. I prefer axes to swords, but sometimes an early rush to get iron isn't best. Iron isn't just swords, it's Knights, cannons, crossbows, etc. If my economy could've handled it, I probably would have tried to grab the "Ice Iron" city.

 

[kochman]

well... depends on your UU kind of...
Romans? Iron by a long shot...
Greeks? Copper...

And so on...

If the UU is later, I go with Iron, because most of the things that need copper can be built with Iron too (such as axemen and spears), but not vice versa.

However, if an early rush is in question, with a late UU, copper rules, because you can access it sooner and the axe rush is highly superior to the sword rush.

 

[UWHabs]

Really all depends on the plans. It kind of sucks to be missing out on iron if you had wanted to do a cuirassier or cannon war. But then again, Trebs+rifles aren't bad either.

Otherwise, if I have to pick either early copper vs. late iron, it again depends on the game. Most of the time, if you're lucky, the early copper can help obtain the late iron...

 

[LastLegionare]

Well, if you had a mass of chariots at your gates in BC, I'd give anything for copper.
Iron IS the more important of the two, though copper could get you out of a fairly deep hole with the Internet or Collosus.

As for the settling in ice, I never get iron in a favorable area, so I am forced to do that...

Oh, and the turn after I first saw this thread, liberalism was invented, so that was kind of funny...