Discussion: Strategic resource unit requirements are utterly inconsistent, ridiculous and unbalanced

[Krajzen]

Strategic resource system is excellent regarding power and nuclear weaponry, and completely insane regarding unit requirements in so many separate layers it's making my head hurt and I'd personally prefer no units requiring strategic resources at all instead of this mess. Strategic resource unit requirements are thrown under your feet messing with progression of simplest military units upgrade lines, instead of serving as unlocker of especially powerful alternatives; they also have no internal logic at all and are ahistorical, but I'll use second post for this. Also this is not ideas and suggestions thread but general discussion as I am wondering how many people find this as annoying as me. Also obligatory mention: yes I am not fun at parties and yes I still love Firaxis. As they said, the opposite of love is not obsessive nitpicking but indifference.

Anyway, let's analyze every strategic resource and how logic involving their consistency is some eldritch abomination. Also I'll wonder whether it's even realistic those resources should be limiting in the first place.

HORSES

Spoiler :

Horses are required for Horsemen and Coursers. Good. They are, however, not required for War Chariots, Knights and Cavalry. What is the purpose of having horse resource to limit cavalry production at all, if there are more units that are exceptions from this rule than those that follow it? I mean seriously, you may as well turn horses into bonus resource at this point, it's not like anybody's civ will be broken because he has no light cavalry and only heavy cavalry.

The pragmatic answer to this is simple, give all horse units horse requirements (shocking, I know), double horse resources and stop making this weird ocd rule "no unit may require two separate strategic resources at once" because it creates problems.

IRON

Spoiler :

Iron is required only for Swordmen and Knights. Doesn't seem like a problem on the surface but it is, just of secondary importance. Why exactly Knights need only iron and Horsemen only horses, especially as horseman's era contemporary swordman needs iron for its armor.
Personally I think iron also should not be strategic resource at all. I think it's crazy to make base military unit in the game, warrior upgrade path, require not only strategic resources to upgrade but literally different strat res every era. If you really wanna fancy strategic resources, please introduce them for fancy support units, not for core of the army and then make switcharoo every era, creating especially big issues for AI to keep up.

The best part about iron? Without knight only swordman would need this resource, so Firaxis gave this requirement to knight too, and then removed horse req from knight because apparently unit cannot have two strat req. Personally I'd recommend scrapping the entire iron as strat res and make it bonus res if you struggle to find a niche for it so much that you need to mess entirely separate unit and resource lol. Copper actually is bonus resource, not strategic one, so that is yet another layer of inconsistency!

NITER

Spoiler :

My biggest frustration by far, utter trainwreck. Firstly, as I said with iron, it's so weird idea to "strategically limit" the main, simplest military unit upgrade line in game. Secondly, to add insult to injury bombard also needs niter (and cavalry as well - but no horses of course), so good luck fighting without it. I though devs learned its terrible idea to limit both melee and siege unit in civ5, when they actually patched out catapult's iron requirement. Thirdly, field cannons don't need niter despite musketmen and bombards needing niter. Completely inconsistent, and you know why is this the case - because if this was consistent, then warfare in this era would be completely dependant on one resource, so to solve this problem of this ahistorical "strategic resource", we once again introduce huge exceptions to the rule and throw all logic and intuition out of window to save balance.

COAL

Spoiler :

We once again have the problem of Iron. The only military unit realistically needing coal would be Ironclad, so Firaxis once again follows weird "at least two units must need strat res" and gives Coal requirement to World War II era Battleship instead of Oil. Yeah, because ww2 Japanese and American battleships

OIL VS ALUMINIUM

Spoiler :

Oil is needed for Tank, Submarine, Biplane, Carrier, Destroyer and Missile Cruiser. Excellent. Then logic goes once again thrown from a cliff, and in probably the most epic fail of this entire mess because
- Fighter, Bomber, Jet Fighter and Jet Bomber don't need Oil, just Aluminium!
- Please also notice how Aircraft Carrier requires Oil, but planes it carries do not.
- Modern Armor doesn't need Oil but Uranium. There was a risk of just one military unit requiring Uranium, Nuclear Submarine, so we had to throw some other unit under the bus to keep holy At Least Two Units Rule.
- Modern Armor, Battleships, Helicopters and four plane units don't need Oil, but Infantry and Artillery do. This is so weird I don't even know how to comment that in a clever way, it's simply self-evident. Seriously, at this point you may as well introduce some mana points and make randomly selected units need randomly selected mana, if we are not going to care about any sort of logic at all. Also, may we once again think how weird idea it is to make "main line of units starting from warrior, simplest main combat unit, cheap and plentiful, need them to take cities" and then not only limit them in every era with strat res but change resource required every era?

URANIUM
Ironically, the strategic resource needed to fuel Giant Death Robot is the most logical and internally consistent resource in the game.


CONCLUSION
I want to know your opinions on your subject. Personally at this point ideally I'd like all this being removed (turned into bonus resources) with the exception of Oil for planes and tanks and Uranium for nukes and GDR, but it's unreasonable to expect from company to cut entire systems from the game. So instead I suggest following changes
- All horse units should actually require horses
- I actually think iron should be turned into bonus resource like copper, Swordman require no resource which would make sense as its upgrade of a first unit in game and baseline unit path, and knight require just horses. That would simultaneously achieve upgrade in consistency and gameplay. That would be the simplest solution of the entire mess. Otherwise second solution is to make knight require both horses and iron and create problem for war chariot upgrade when you suddenly need a lot of resources.
- Niter should be required for Bombard and maybe for example Frigates but not for Musketmen, to avoid "every era other resource" chaos for the most basic unit type and deprivation of both melee and siege unit. Even better: turn it into bonus resource.
- Coal IMO should be needed just by Ironclad, nobody complained how it was the only unit in civ5 needing coal. Or alternately it should be strategic resource just for sake of power.
- Oil should be required by both tanks and all planes but not artillery and infantry which should need no strategic resources.
- Not sure about aluminium, to be honest. It could be required by modern armor, jet fighters, jet bombers and GDR as secondary resources "hey, those super advanced units need several resources at once", or just by advanced structures, spaceship construction etc.

What do you think?

 

[Krajzen]

Here second post, to not clutter main one by far less important remarks of entirely different nature.

I have yet another problem with strategic resources in this game - I think none of them has both historicity and civ gameplay niche reasons to be strategic resource at all, with the exception of oil and uranium. By "strategic resource in the historical sense" I mean: resource which was rare and frequently decided the fate of geopolitics and warfare, on a scale large enough to be worthy inclusion in this game. If somebody is better at history in this regard, please correct me.

Spoiler :

HORSES
Why are horses strategic resource in this game, like oil? Everybody has had horses everywhere (with two exceptions), it's not like they were found in super rare clusters like oil. Furthermore, isn't it kind of absurd that pasture animal is rare strategic resource in civ, as if it wasn't, you know, animal you can breed whenever you need it in large numbers?
Those two exceptions were Americas, which had no horses prior to contact, and large part of Africa, which had tse tse fly and geographical isolation. In both cases we wouldn't like to simulate them in game, where entire continents would completely lack strategic resources (although tbh I could play with such option enabled for interesting worlds - but only optionally).
Sure, there were rare and very valuable breeds, such as Arab horses, or excellent Mongol horses, but it's not the same as "we have literally no horses and need to run for their cluster as if they were oil in Persian Gulf".

IRON
I know what you think. "But during bronze age to iron age transition iron had enormous importance and iron based civilizations dominated over those who lacked iron working!" Iron would make excellent strategic resource - in a game devoted to ancient era. In civ the entirety of bronze age and iron age is covered by ancient era. This is why we end up with swordman being basically the only unit needing iron in the game, and "need" to come up with crazy solutions such as ridiculous ahistorical longsword unit in civ5, or knights needing iron but not horses in civ6. Exactly how many cases there were of wars decided by access to iron after aforementioned period, and excluding Americas (as we don't wanna simulate that in game)?
"But oil also is present for very short period of history as strategic resource"
Yes, but that period is far longer and has much bigger emphasis in Civilization games. Bronze-to-iron transition in civ games is blink of an eye, part of ancient era, happens in relatively few turns and its over, while access to Oil is very important for several eras - Modern, Atomic, Information/Future, and a ton of units. That's why iron IMO shouldn't be strategic resource and oil should remain.

NITER
Everybody across the entire world used guns once they got tech. Every European country used guns on a mass scale since arquebus, Amerindians adapted to using guns, 16th century Japan loved guns, Islamic empires used guns, even fairly isolated Subsaharan kingdoms used guns on wide scale. I have seriously never encountered "niter deprivation" issues in early modern period until civ6, hell I barely knew what "niter" was before civ6 and I know what "arquebus" and "colubrine" is for like a decade. I want the person who decided to make "niter" strategic resource explain me his thought process behind severely limiting gunpowder units. It's also ironic because historically one of the greatest advantages of early guns as opposed to bows was not range, speed or accuracy, but the ability to much easier train a lot of men in using massed guns rather than train them in becoming proficient archers. Yet in civ6 niter is the resource you have enormous pain with supplying to your troops, while you had no such issues of any kind with medieval armies. With the exception of horses which were extremely rare apparently.

WOOD
There is no such strategic resource in civ, but it should be for all sail naval units, bows, crossbows and siege weapons if we wanted to be as nitpicky as regarding horses, iron and niter.

ALUMINIUM
To be honest I am very ignorant on this subject so I just wanna express my disbelief regarding civ instistence on making this resource "strategic" of all real life limited resources.
Oh well, I guess it's really rare.

Wikipedia: "By mass, aluminium makes up about 8% of the Earth's crust; it is the third most abundant element after oxygen and silicon and the most abundant metal in the crust. Aluminium metal is so chemically reactive that native specimens are rare and limited to extreme reducing environments. Instead, it is found combined in over 270 different minerals."

Nevermind.

 

[Ziad]

I think the idea is that they don't want strategic resources to be required for all units. If you took out all the "inconsistent" ones you brought up, you'd be left with ancient melee units and a couple of ranged units.

A lot would require 2-4 resources just to be realistic

 

[AmazonQueen]

Agree with some units requiring 2 resources
Agree with chariots, knights and cuirassiers needing horses
Fine with battleships requiring coal (since the early ones did) although it would be a nice touch if they required coal or oil
I'd rather infantry didn't require any resource. WWI & II horses still played a major role in keeping troops supplied.

edit: I remember playing a WW II game where the German armoured and motorised infantry units movement depended on how much oil you had but the ordinary infantry units kept the same movement throughout.

 

[Krajzen]

I think the idea is that they don't want strategic resources to be required for all units. If you took out all the "inconsistent" ones you brought up, you'd be left with ancient melee units and a couple of ranged units.

A lot would require 2-4 resources just to be realistic

Not sure if my first post made it clear, but in my second one I say that my ideal solution would be to turn horses, iron and niter (and possible aluminium too) into bonus resources as they all don't make sense as SR regarding both historicity and gameplay

 

[Takfloyd]

I fully agree with this complaint in principle, and you're in luck because I already made a mod that fixes all of the problems, though not necessarily in the same ways as you suggest:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/logical-resource-requirements.642600/

Some highlights are:

• Planes require aluminium to build, oil to maintain
• All horse units consume horses in addition to their current requirements
• Ironclads and battleships are built with iron and use coal for maintenance
• Infantry costs no resources

The resource requirements making no sense either in terms of realism or game balance immediately stood out to me when Gathering Storm came out, but at least now it's possible to fix it, which it wasn't before because units could only require a single resource. I don't know why Firaxis insists on such arbitrary requirements when back in Civ III and Civ IV, units always had perfectly logical requirements, even going so far as to have alternate requirements such as submarines running on either oil OR uranium.

 

[Krajzen]

I fully agree with this complaint in principle, and you're in luck because I already made a mod that fixes all of the problems, though not necessarily in the same ways as you suggest:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/logical-resource-requirements.642600/

Some highlights are:

• Planes require aluminium to build, oil to maintain
• All horse units consume horses in addition to their current requirements
• Ironclads and battleships are built with iron and use coal for maintenance
• Infantry costs no resources

The resource requirements making no sense either in terms of realism or game balance immediately stood out to me when Gathering Storm came out, but at least now it's possible to fix it, which it wasn't before because units could only require a single resource. I don't know why Firaxis insists on such arbitrary requirements when back in Civ III and Civ IV, units always had perfectly logical requirements, even going so far as to have alternate requirements such as submarines running on either oil OR uranium.

This is amazing job and you are so quiet about this mod. It goes into slightly differnet direction than some of my dreams (I'd actually like less iron and niter) but it's still much superior to Firaxis. Also, I LOVE the idea of aluminium being used to build modern units and oil to maintain them - this is excellent solution to the balance between these two.

I strongly recommend you uploading this mod to Steam Workshop so more people can experience it

 

[AriochIV]

Although the system isn't perfect, personally I think it's the best implementation of strategic resources in Civilization so far. Being short of a critical resource is usually something you can work through, as opposed to being "game over" as it was in Civ III-IV, and without making strategic resources irrelevant as Civ V eventually did.

The strategic resources are abstract. The Horses resource represents specially bred warhorses, which is a decent rationale for why you can't see them on the map before Horseback Riding (which could be seen as the ability to breed rideable warhorses rather than the ability to ride them). Chariots don't need the Horses resource because chariots didn't use warhorses, which didn't yet exist at that time. Similarly, Iron represents heavy armor, and so is needed for Swordsmen and Knights. Swordsmen are heavy infantry, not a "basic" unit; the basic unit is Spearmen. There were many Classical era nations that did not have heavy infantry.

I think it would have been nice for units to require multiple different resources; this may not have made sense in the binary "have it or don't" model of the previous games, but I don't see any problem in having Knights cost 10 Iron and 10 Horses instead of 20 Iron -- especially for a top tier unit like Knights. Most of the logical inconsistencies in the later units stem from sticking to the restriction that each unit can only require one type of resource, but in gameplay terms I'm not sure it really matters.

Having all the Renaissance/Industrial units require Niter does represent a significant gameplay problem, if not necessarily a logical one. I think it would have been better if they had kept to light cavalry requiring Horses as with the previous eras. It might also have been a good idea to reduce the amount required as well; it's pretty tough to field a proper military when you have six different units that each require 20 Niter to build. While it may seem illogical that Cannon and Pike and Shot don't require Niter, you know perfectly well that it would break the game if they did.

 

[Sostratus]

Some highlights are:

• Planes require aluminium to build, oil to maintain
• All horse units consume horses in addition to their current requirements
• Ironclads and battleships are built with iron and use coal for maintenance
• Infantry costs no resources

Points 2, 3, 4 are exactly how I feel. I'm okay with aluminum being the plane resource since ultimately we just want a limiter of some kind.

On to thread topic:
What I dislike is that they seem to have decided "hey, these unit lines will be resource-needed and these ones won't" specifically being Ranged/Anticav vs everyone else. Well, ranged and anticav in theory is the defensive army combination. Okay. Problem is, anticav suck. But even if they didn't, all late game naval units need fuel. This is a massive game mechanical issue since sans oil, you literally cannot build a navy. I would suggest that naval melee become resource free. If we want to have fun with ironclads sure, but everything before and after should definitely be no resources.

I also think siege units shouldn't need resources either. You happen to not have oil in your borders. Now you cannot capture urban defenses cities without massive suicide attacking? That's a bit too harsh. Niter for bombards I can stomach for the flavor but artillery should not need oil.

Okay, now we have another issue: the divergence in unit class roles at the modern era.
This happens to be where the game assigns fuel vs material distinction for land armies, but the classes themselves change a bit.
We go from this very precise progression of Melee/Anticav/Ranged/Siege/Light Cav/Heavy Cav, to: Tanks absolutely murder everything. Also airplanes.
Anticav no longer has a combat advantage against mounted - now they only hit tanks at parity. Infantry are hit by tanks for +10. Infantry hit AT crews for +10. What is the issue then? These units all cost 400, 430, 480 production (AT, Inf, Tank.) Pretty similar pricing.
Infantry hits one for +10, one for -10
Tank hits one for +10, one for even
AT hits one for even, one for -10

Can you take a guess which of these units is the worst? (Infantry and AT should be base 75, modern AT 85.) Why should I ever use limited oil on infantry when Tanks have 80 strength and can only ever be hit for parity by AT crews?
They need to really think about the balance between the unit lines and how the resource costs should lay on top of that. The machine gun is worthless; even though it now has 2 range, 75/65 for the top level upgrade? It should be 80/70.

Another symptom of this early in the game is: what exactly is the difference between light and heavy cav? In the medieval and industrial, both lines have upgrades. Knights do need iron, but IMO Cuirs are worse: they both use niter, and cuirs just straight up have more strength and upgrade to tanks, while Cavalry must wait for helicopters... which are only +2 vs tanks. Why make coursers when knights come at the same tech level and have more strength?
The resource system, for all its brilliance in mechanical options, really fails to make heavy cav the "expensive and limited" option. I have very deep thoughts on what the unit lines should do, but as much as like the new resource system mechanically, laying it on top of the existing units without addressing the combat balance problems was... shortsighted.

 

[acluewithout]

Light Cav should use horses up to Helicopters, then Helicopters should be resource free. This preserves LCs role as the “resource light” unit line. Combine that with LC having a -17 v Cities, and they’d be a very balanced unit line.

Frigates should use Iron not Niter. There’s too many things that need Niter; too few that need Iron. Resources for Naval are otherwise fine, although I think Naval Raider line should always be resource free, so that they become your no-resource default.

You should be able to build Infantry without Oil, but they should still require Oil maintenance. So, if you don’t have Oil, you can still get Infantry but they are weaker.

Aircraft should only require Aluminium to build, not maintain, to make them more accessible. They shouldn’t otherwise have any maintenance costs.

@Sostratus Overall, I agree Heavy Cav still haven’t been nerfed enough. And Infantry v Tanks doesn’t make sense. But it might be all thats needed is for Tanks to require higher resource and or resource maintenance costs compared to eg melee.

Machine Guns have lost their way entirely. Giving them 2 ranged has made them more confused, and was a step backwards (maybe driven by pandering to Reddit and Steam comments). The idea is ranged stop being a good offensive unit by the late game, and become a completely defensive / deny territory unit. FXS should have kept Machine Guns at range 1, buffed their CS, maybe buffed their Defense, and given them ZOC (which would require tweaking ranged promotions).

 

[Sostratus]

I think Naval Raider line should always be resource free, so that they become your no-resource default.

Why raider and not melee?
If raider, then you cannot take enemy coastal cities with your ships. I guess my gut says the goal should be to have the few resource free options to preserve as many strategic options as possible, with resources allowing significant tactical improvements.

The new air units are completely devastating. Those jet aircraft... holy cow. We may want to keep them limited in number.
Alternatively, reintroduce Civ5's Recycling plant to give you a limited supply of aluminum or something. If the AI ever really learns how to airforce we may feel the arrogance of having limitless aeroplanes.

 

[acluewithout]

@Sostratus Well, my simple minded brain thought Raider as the no-resource default unit because (1) can’t take Cities (so, you need resources to be a big naval threat), (2) you can still raid like the scrappy resource-less banana republic you are and Naval Raiders are not bad on defence really, and (3) you should always be able to build pirates because, you know, pirates.

As for planes, I’m happy for these to be a scary as possible. If they need a nerf, do it with Gold maintenance. Because then at least the AI can ignore that.

 

[acluewithout]

Just bumping this, because I think it’s worth a little more chat, and because I hope FXS might pay attention and give resources a bit more thought.

One thing that’s really missing from the resource system is “steel”. In the real world, a lack of steel is a big bottle neck. WW1 and 2 both placed huge demands on steel (as well as coal and oil). And look at the conniptions caused by Chinese steel tariffs. Steel is a big deal.

It’s a bit hard for the game to represent steel, because it’s not something you dig up from the ground. Instead, you get steel from
combining Iron and Coal (and doing a few other things).

GS captures this a bit by requiring railroads to use iron and coal. But that’s it really.

I don’t think any great changes are needed here. Instead, I think maybe the game needs three changes:

- First, some late era units (eg Tanks, Artillery, maybe some naval units) should require Iron. This “iron” would actually represent Iron being used to make Steel. This would mean Iron stays relevant into the late game, and would maybe mean Niter would be slightly less important (eg Frigates and Bombards would need Iron not Niter).

- Second, neither Infantry nor Tanks should require Oil to build. Infantry should have no resource requirement to build, and tanks should require Iron not Oil. But both would require Oil to maintain. (Meaning everyone can build Infantry, but if you don’t have oil they’ll be weaker.)

- Third, once you research steel, Factories should increase your resource capacity and provide +1 iron per turn. This would help offset Iron now being more important and would help capture the idea of your economy requiring steel not iron as such.

Before someone suggests, I really don’t think FXS should go down the route of having manufactured resources like steel. I mean, I get the appeal, but I think it would result in way too much micro. Instead, I think FXS need to look at making Iron more important long term both to capture (in part) the importance of steel and just for gameplay reasons.

 

[old_andy]

I would like to see combined strategic resources.

Something like early gunpowder units requiring actual Gunpowder (Niter + Coal) and is created in specialized workshops that doesn't provide any extra production to an Industrial district, just gunpowder.
Modern units would require Munitions (Gunpowder + Copper) -copper is needed for the cartridges, and can only be created in specialized munitions factories that (like the gunpowder workshops) don't provide any extra production towards the Industrial district, just munitions.
The city also must have an encampment with an armory to store both gunpowder and munitions, and if the encampment is pillaged, there's a BIG-Bada-Boom.

Units don't 'cost' gunpowder/munitions per turn, instead they require it to be able to attack/defend.
Not enough munitions stored?
Then units can only attack every other turn, and defense is halved.

Once Steel (Iron + Coal) is developed, it can be forged in a steel mill that would replace the factory.


A unit like the battleship would then need a given amount of steel to be created, a certain amount of coal for movement, and a given amount of munitions to be able to attack/defend.


Kinda the same with oil.

While regular oil is still used to fuel the power plants, mechanized units require Fuel, which is created in a refinery at a given ratio (say for sake of argument that three Oil resources makes one Fuel resource). The refinery replaces the factory in a given Industrial district. Fuel depots would then replace the power plants in the district where the refinery is located (requiring choices to be made)

A later tech could improve that ratio. An even later tech could see oil replaced by food units (bio-fuel), that food would then be taken away from the growth of a city (more choices to be made)

If the Industrial district with a refinery and fuel depot is pillaged, there would be more BIG-Bada-Booms.

The units require the Fuel resource for movement. If there's insufficient Fuel stockpiled, then the unit can only move every other turn (and aircraft are simply grounded).

For railroads, only steel is required to build railroads, but any units moving over railroads would consume coal per x number of tiles moved (rounded up).
Not enough coal stockpiled?
Then the unit goes back to regular road movements. (units that require Fuel for movement would have it replaced with coal for the duration that they moving along a track of railroads)

My only concern is that this mechanic might be too convoluted..

 

[Bearmanjew]

I would suggest that naval melee become resource free.

Lolwat? ...you're serious? No. Not unless you want it to sit motionless in the harbor all day, this is silly. If you don't try to secure resources, there should be a penalty to not having them. That's the point of a strategic decision. There have to be consequences to your choices or else there's no point to even asking the question "what do you want to do next".

Honestly, while I agree with OP's diagnosis that resources have been used ineffectively, I would like to see more use of it. More iron, more resource requirements, more things all around. Units that require two resources as maintenance, units that require different resources for maintenance as upfront costs, all of it. Bumping up slightly the distribution of resources on the map might be necessary but I'd rather we do that than come up with some frankenstein compromise that lacks either any historical or logical basis whatsoever. Only one basic infantry type should be exempt from resource requirements, and the price of that is that they should be less strong all around than they are now. I do think OP had a point with how coal is in a weird place in that the only unit that indisputably needs it that uses it is battleships, but that is nicely solved by...

even going so far as to have alternate requirements such as submarines running on either oil OR uranium.

swordsmen are heavy infantry, not a "basic" unit; the basic unit is Spearmen. There were many Classical era nations that did not have heavy infantry.

Relating to this and my belief that only basic infantry should always be guaranteed resourceless (though other units can sometimes be), I would like to see the return of optional promotion lines. In Civ IV I remember you could choose to update units into one of several different options. Promotions would be complicated but it's not unsolvable, and that way your warriors that you get some experience on aren't stuck that way if you make choices that fail to yield iron for heavy infantry. Most people can make a wooden spear.

@old_andy I also play a fair amount of Hearts of Iron (bear with me), and in that game, steel deposits are sometimes placed and used in place of iron deposits. This gets complained about a fair amount but I think it's fair, because it's reasonable to assume that everyone had sufficient steel making capacity by virtue of steel being so common. Applying this same logic to civ, by the time steel is commonplace in the military, it's likely that means the civilian industry has evolved far enough to make large amounts of it, and thus it's safe to abstract it away. Just leave the unit at costing 20 iron and 10 coal (or whatever the values are), and skip the manufacturing step in between. It's interesting and it could work but I don't think it's necessary by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Sostratus]

Lolwat? ...you're serious? No. Not unless you want it to sit motionless in the harbor all day, this is silly. If you don't try to secure resources, there should be a penalty to not having them. That's the point of a strategic decision. There have to be consequences to your choices or else there's no point to even asking the question "what do you want to do next".

As it stands, currently every single naval unit from ironclads on requires a fuel resource, mostly oil. If you don't have oil or uranium you quite literally don't have a navy at all. Now, certainly, if they had synthetic resource production buildings a la the recycling center of civ5, that would be one thing. Currently without oil there is no naval strategy because there is no navy. So there's no strategic decision making at all. You cannot secure oil because you don't have a navy (or a modern land army either,) and the oil owners do. While perhaps realistic, at a game level this isn't so great because RNG outcomes means many players will encounter no oil scenarios, and this will result in a deeply un-fun experience.

I was using the same argument that there should always be a basic unit or two on land you could build resource free - you identified anticav, ranged is also resourceless- with resources allowing you to utilize more powerful/capable units or boost your economy. So why should this not extend to the navy? Since it seemed like destroyers were the most vanilla line of naval units, and it seemed that supporting a destroyer might be less resource intensive than submarines and battleships, I suggested naval melee.

In the beginning of the game, no naval units need resources - but this doesn't seem to be generating problems/un-fun. My general philosophy is that there should always be a military option that needs no resources in a given situation - AC, ranged, naval melee round that out well - and the powerful units need resources. Then we can actually have strong units like tanks which are able to drive over everything else, and a big incentive for conquering is getting access to more of them. (Or you could pump it into your economy.) Ditto for air power: they are very strong but resource limited, and players without can invest into AA/SAMs so they aren't totally hosed.

Promotions would be complicated but it's not unsolvable

I agree with you here. it irks me that as cool as the new promo trees are, it probably would have been better to split the unit lines at the modern age and have something like past games had, and fold the foot soldiers into one line (ex: muskets+pike&shot both into riflemen,) create an Armored unit class, handle helicopters/MGs/AT crews without the baggage of archers or horsemen. If there was a clean way to map veteran units' promos to new promotion trees without people feeling like they are being cheated, then this would work well.

 

[Bearmanjew]

Because navies, irl, need fuel. If you want add a synthetic fuel building, I'm all down, and then you have just a little bit to play with depending on what you think is most important for your situation, ships, tanks, planes, whatever. (Seriously, that'd be a good building to add, synthetic refineries that give, say, +1 oil per turn from the city center). But saying melee ships cost no fuel is just such a break from any sense of realism, I can't support that. Civ isn't supposed to be hyper realistic, but it is rooted in some sense of what is real, and if you're going to have fuel, it makes sense that all modern warships need it.

I'm also more okay with saying navies don't follow the same rules as armies since navies are, end of the day, less important than armies. They're more balanced than they used to be in Civs past, given that they can now capture cities, raid coast, and can be built by some inland cities, but at the end of the day, they can only capture coastal cities, and capturing cities wins wars. Ships are just lesser than armies.

 

[AriochIV]

If you don't have oil or uranium you quite literally don't have a navy at all.

I don't really see this as a problem; having a navy is not a human right.

And in game terms, a navy is largely irrelevant. The much bigger issue is that if you don't have oil, you literally don't have any kind of modern military at all.

 

[acluewithout]

I’m with @Sostratus . Real life is just a starting point; but for more interesting gameplay, there needs to be one Naval unit like that doesn’t need resources and there are too many things that need niter or oil, and not enough that need Iron (which really should stay relevant through the whole game).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I don't really see this as a problem; having a navy is not a human right.

And in game terms, a navy is largely irrelevant. The much bigger issue is that if you don't have oil, you literally don't have any kind of modern military at all.

Firmly Agree. Just ask the Italians in WWII, who had quite a good navy with some excellent modern battleships and cruisers all of which were largely useless because they never got enough fuel to take them out of harbor as a fleet.

But a more general observation about Resources in the game. Not only are there some really strange resource requirements, but there are some totally artificial resources that are not 'natural' at all, but have almost always been manufactured.

Case in point: Niter. There are a few natural deposits, mostly in tropical or semi-tropical countries where the ground is wet enough to naturally precipitate the salts that make up 'nitre' or 'saltpetre'. But very early in the development of gunpowder people from Europe to China learned how to manufacture Niter in Nitraries. They were horrible examples of Industrial processes that made the surrounding 'tile' Unappealing in the extreme, but from the Renaissance on they allowed niter to be manufactured at will: no natural Resource required.

Other point: most Natural Resources have alternatives. At the most ancient level, Obsidian makes a perfectly good blade if you don't have Bronze - as the Aztecs showed the Spanish. (Not, obviously, a substitute for Steel, but that's another thing)
Oil can be manufactured from Coal - Germany stayed in WWII largely because her advanced Chemical Industry was able to provide fuel oil resources above what was available naturally in Europe.
Aluminum is 'required' for mid-20th century aircraft like the in-game Fighters and Bombers - but some very advanced combat aircraft, like the British Mosquito bomber and many components of the Yak and Lavoschin Soviet fighters, were built largely of wood - and laminate wood at that, so major 'old growth' timber wasn't even a requirement.

So we need a major revamp of Resources, both to 'rationalize' the Unit Requirements, but also to provide potential 'manufactured' alternatives or even 'new' resources - like Steel, which requires major fixed industrial installations to produce in industrial quantities and, as stated, is probably the Basic Resource for most military heavy equipment from 1890 to 1960 - Modern and Atomic Eras.