Critical, but still missing resource

[sylvanllewelyn]

I do hope people realize that for gameplay purposes, there can be only that many health and hapiness resources. Therefore, for every resource you suggest adding in, you must also suggest a resource to take away. Otherwise your suggestion is not constructive and will not be considered .

Salt is a difficult one, precisely for the reasons mentioned by the posters that although it is widespread, insufficient quantities have led to war or other economic conflicts. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that granaries require salt to build - gives a reason to fight for it. I believe the question is not whether salt should be included, becuase I really feel it should, but the question is what to remove. Personal suggestion is a health resource, probably banana, clams or crabs. Fish covers clams and crabs, and bananas... I don't really think an exotic foodstuff is that important, and besides, "spices" already covers that.

 

[Stylesrj]

Salt does sound good, but I agree with the spices. It's covered under spices.

And for all those wanting opium in the game:
Why do we need opium? We already have religion, isn't that enough?

 

[K.F. Huszár]

Salt is important.

1. You can get salt from sea. Thus you should add a point to the game from when you can distille salt at sheshore.

2. It is not that important nowadays. What about obsolating resources?

 

[Tavenier]

Not to mention ancient soldiery was pas paid in salt, hence the word salary.

 

[Lugo Moll]

Salt is different from spices. Spices was a luxuary resource used for making the food taste better. Salt was mainly used for conservating food, a conservation method that didn't get obsolete until the invention of the refridgerator. So it would be nice if salt was a recource on it own that gave some boost to the food storage in cities...

 

[Merkinball]

I do hope people realize that for gameplay purposes, there can be only that many health and hapiness resources. Therefore, for every resource you suggest adding in, you must also suggest a resource to take away. - sylvan

Not necessarily. Just add in various handicaps. How did Fireaxis deal with what they felt was to little unhappiness, and too much healthyness with BtS and patches? They just found ways to detract from too much of a good thing.

The obvious no brainer to "having too many resources" is to simply add to the handicap the player starts with at the beginning of the game.

 

[kazapp]

You can add more resources to the general game if you make them more a gradual thing rather than a "either you have it, or you don´t" kind of deal.

For instance, Timber could make shipbuilding twice as fast - or rather: lack of timber doubles the cost of any pre-Destroyer ship.

Likewise, lack of Copper could still allow double-cost Spearmen (but not Axemen).

And salt could mean you don´t have to pay twice for granaries.

 

[ShannonCT]

Salt is different from spices. Spices was a luxuary resource used for making the food taste better. Salt was mainly used for conservating food, a conservation method that didn't get obsolete until the invention of the refridgerator. So it would be nice if salt was a recource on it own that gave some boost to the food storage in cities...

Spices have all kinds of food preserving properties, because of their ability to kill bacteria and fungi. You can try it yourself. Take two samples of raw ground beef. Mix one with garlic powder, onion powder, cinnamon, oregano, thyme, etc. Leave the other one unmolested. But them both in a warm place for a couple days. Observe.

 

[stavka]

Well I for one would like to see Timber Spars as a strategic resource that is required or 50% discount for sailing naval units after the caravel.

Would change the whole colonial dynamic, IMO

 

[Airefuego]

The obvious no brainer to "having too many resources" is to simply add to the handicap the player starts with at the beginning of the game.

I disagree.

Currently the game offers the player various alternative strategies for combating health and happiness problems: build buildings; use religion; use the cultural slider; settle in better places; use health and happiness resources; change civics, etc.

If you crank up the handicaps and "balance" it by also hiking the number of resources, you are basically forcing the player to use the resources strategy, and devaluing the rest of the strategies.

 

[mrt144]

salt is important. but so are many things that arent in the game (i would love to see schisms in religion).

i think you could take away resource distribution amounts for current resources (such as reducing the amount of spice, bananas, etc around the world) and replace them with salt, coffee, etc, in the right amounts but I don't think we should be doing this in 5 resource clumps.

 

[Stylesrj]

Just remember this: When you see a resource pile in the ground, that means it's a massive pile of it. It does not mean it's the only pile of resources.

So if you have found a pile of stone, it means you can ship large quantities of it to the city, giving more production. Without stone, you have to mine locally, find spots where you can mine and then transport it, which means slow production.

So in a way, we already have salt. It's extracted from the sea, and already being used for daily things, you just don't have the resource showing it. Same with the other resources. Tobacco, Opium and stuff. All locally done and already used. You just don't have a big pile out there which is easily mined or grown or transported.

Corn tiles means really fertile ground for corn, which is grown there. Timber is found in forests or in grasslands with all those low trees you cannot see over the tile. Each tile is hundreds of kilometres, so you don't know what might be on it.

In conclusion, we don't need salt added to the game, it is already there

 

[Ace of Gold]

yes we do get our salt from oceans right. i also like to think that my plain farms grow potatoes and vegtables and maybe have some chickens so like Stylesrj said you dont need a resource icon to have resources in your country.

 

[Merkinball]

I disagree.

Currently the game offers the player various alternative strategies for combating health and happiness problems: build buildings; use religion; use the cultural slider; settle in better places; use health and happiness resources; change civics, etc.

If you crank up the handicaps and "balance" it by also hiking the number of resources, you are basically forcing the player to use the resources strategy, and devaluing the rest of the strategies.

A negative one starting health handicap for salt isn't a big deal. And on top of it, it would make even more critical to have, and trigger early wars to get it (like copper and iron do).

I'm not talking massive handicaps. Maybe a -1 health modifier, and a negative 1 happiness modifier. I also don't think that this would be degenerative towards different ways of combatting health and happiness problems.

 

[mrt144]

why would you increase the amount of total resources on a map instead of simply dividing the same amount of total resources on the map among more resources

 

[Stylesrj]

Or we could just assume we always have it, just not in large numbers like a resource pile? Problem solved.

A slower unit production should be in place if you don't have the right resources for units. It represents you have it, just not in large numbers or in an easy pile, so production is slowed

 

[CHEESE!]

Umm yah, i'll trade you this grain of salt for those sheep over there....

Rome used salt as currency.

 

[TopDog]

If you crank up the handicaps and "balance" it by also hiking the number of resources, you are basically forcing the player to use the resources strategy, and devaluing the rest of the strategies.

Not neccesariy, you could have the same buildings give salt +1 health with grocery, essentially acting the same as other resources, except since theres more different types you balance it by changing base modifiers for health/happy.

This means that the health/happy system works in exactly the same way, however the colonial dynamic is increased dramatically (colonise far off lands for unique resources like in terra) and more wars over resources, especially as your cities grow larger. However i dont think this is the best way to include new resources, they should be given unique bonuses

eg

Salt +10% food stored in cities (work like granary), +5% gold in cities before currency, +1 health with grocery

Tobacco +1 happy, -1 health

Timber +20% ship production

Saltpeter +10% gunpowder units production, obsolete with assembly line

Opium +1 happy, -1 healthy, +2% base unit strength increase

 

[lutzj]

I have to disagree that salt is evenly distributed in the world. In ancient time many smaller nation has to either (a) pay through their nose for salt, or (b) go without salt for certain period of the year. And it was still happening in 13th/14th century, mind you. Salt was so important that it was a controlled commodity in China. Salt were being smuggled while other luxury items are not back until even Qing (清）which is 19th century!

I concede that salt was harder to extract in ancient and classical times. However, resources in Civ are chosen partly on the basis that they are still used today (or became obsolete in the past 150 years); this is why copper is in even though tin was by far the rarer component of bronze and the defining factor in who got bronze weapons. Yet, copper is in because it is still used today to make wires. I meant that salt can easily be collected from coastline (saltwater = cheap salt). Just like how Timber is not a resource because you get it from forests, which exist already.

Also, I would like to join the group of people who say that the spices resource includes salt. Maybe we could rename it Seasonings?

bananas... I don't really think an exotic foodstuff is that important, and besides, "spices" already covers that.

Ummm... we kind of need a tropical food resource for balance purposes, and bananas are NOT spices, and they are not that "exotic" (although I guess it depends on where you live), they are actually very important.

Just look at this excerpt from Wikipedia:

Most bananas grown worldwide are used for local consumption. In the tropics, bananas, especially cooking bananas, represent a major source of food, as well as a major source of income for smallholder farmers. It is in the East African highlands that bananas reach their greatest importance as a staple food crop. In countries such as Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda per capita consumption has been estimated at 450 kg per year, the highest in the world. Ugandans use the same word "matooke" to describe both banana and food.

 

[kniteowl]

I'd do it like this

There's probably a Happy/health resource cap, for example 10 and if you were to add more resources, the computer would randomly pick resources and only 10 resources would be playable on the map, and the resources would always be different on each map but the balance of resources would always be the same.

Of course I'd also make it on larger maps the resource cap would be higher so you'd have more resources to play around with.