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

[AriochIV]

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.

Since bronze isn't a resource in the game, I'm not sure that's relevant. But if you're referring to iron, I think the Iron resource in game is more representative of heavy armor than it is the blade itself (Spearmen having no resource requirement).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Since bronze isn't a resource in the game, I'm not sure that's relevant. But if you're referring to iron, I think the Iron resource in game is more representative of heavy armor than it is the blade itself (Spearmen having no resource requirement).

Thanx for the correction - since I've been playing around with alternative resources and requirements I tend to lose track of the actual current game processes.
The game 'metal' requirements are pretty arbitrary. Bronze was, in fact, a fairly expensive and limited metal (in other words, a classic 'limiting resource') because of the alloy requirements (needed sources of both copper and tin or some kind of arsenical alloys) while iron was relatively plentiful (at least in the quantities required for ancient/classical weaponry). But 'bronze' was not especially associated with spearmen: the earliest bronze-particular weapons in fact were short swords and battle axes and the famous Hoplite used an iron-tipped heavy thrusting spear. Bronze armor wasn't even associated with spearmen - the Spartans notoriously never wore it at all, used felt/leather caps and relied on the heavy wood Hoplon shield for protection.

Still later, I don't know of anybody in Europe from Classical to Renaissance Eras who couldn't produce armored men because of a lack of Iron. The limiting factor were big horses for mounted armored knights, or the expense of paying men full-time to train on their weapons (in other words, having enough wealth to be able to afford a Knightly or Man-At-Arms Class of 'non-producers').

Now, when you start talking about Industrial Quantities is when serious shortages and limitations appear. Italian Rome had no trouble obtaining enough iron to fully equip and armor up to 50 legions, but 'modern' Italy could barely produce enough lightly-armored tanks for 3 smalll armored divisions, because every 10 tanks required more iron/steel than a legion of 5000 armored men!

Ideally, and it's what I've been wrestling with mentally for some time, Resources need to be divided into Normal and Industrial Quantities, the latter with special requirements to move or trade (railroads, modern trucks, ships only) while the former would include most of the 'Amenity' Resources - 100 pounds of Diamonds is more than enough to be worth Trading, and you can carry that with one or two fat mules.
This type of system would also make the Industrial Era a real 'Industrial Revolution' as your Resource Requirements would change dramatically in both type and quantity: the amount of iron required for a complete Tercio (roughly, 50 tons) would be about enough for 250 meters of light capacity single track railroad or about 2% of an ironclad - in other words, no longer enough for much of anything.

 

[Jkchart]

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?

Horses - If they don't want to make them all flat consumption requirements, then make the horse a maintenance requirement for all later cavalry units. Example: knights cost 20 Iron; Cuirassiers 20 niter, and each has a maintenance of 1 horse. But yes, all horse units should require horses in some form. Heavy cavalry should require 2 strategic resources to balance how OP they are.

Iron - Bombards should require this, as well as Ironclads. Ironclads could consume 20 iron and be fueled by 1 coal. It makes SO much sense. I've seen a suggestion for Tanks to also require iron to represent steel - I'd be on board with that just to keep balancing the heavy cav line. Heavy cav line gets Horses + another strategic resource later in the game, and one extra resource for fuel, cost, whatever.

niter - extend niter to infantry rather than make it require oil if infantry MUST have a strategic resource requirement. I'd rather they nix that so that requirement entirely so that even resource poor nations can have some offensive power by the modern era so they can attempt to acquire the more valuable resources.

Coal - On the topic of battleships, early battleships were coal powered, so I see where they are coming from here. Coal's military uses were more limited, I'm fine with Coal how it is.

Oil - this SHOULD be as required as it is since modern militaries and society live off of it, but they need to scale off this one a bit. Take this requirement away from infantry/artillery. It's ridiculous. Let resource poor nations have some sort of offensive power. You don't NEED oil realistically to have these. Rifles were mass produced without oil, same with cannons.

Aluminum - Make this a base lump sum cost for most advanced units, have them fueled by oil.

uranium - is fine the way it is.

I need to examine the unit trees and requirements a bit more and then I would love to put together/assist with a master proposal for a strategic resource rework. I like the new system, but the inconsistencies are glaring.

 

[Forster]

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).

I don't understand why archers having range 2 ok while machine guns aren't. Last time I checked, bullets travelled a heck of a lot further than arrows. Machine guns should have been range 2 from the start. If you want a ranged unit at 1, change the archers that would make far more sense. I think they both should be range 2.

 

[Forster]

- 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.)

Actually, modern era infantry should require iron (steel) also. Since WWI, infantry weapons have been made from steel. The requirement is basic to all of the armed services. Everything is made from steel or aluminum.

 

[acluewithout]

I don't understand why archers having range 2 ok while machine guns aren't. Last time I checked, bullets travelled a heck of a lot further than arrows. Machine guns should have been range 2 from the start. If you want a ranged unit at 1, change the archers that would make far more sense. I think they both should be range 2.

Actually, modern era infantry should require iron (steel) also. Since WWI, infantry weapons have been made from steel. The requirement is basic to all of the armed services. Everything is made from steel or aluminum.

Gameplay. It’s good that ranged units “top out” with Machine Guns. Infantry should be hard to get but not too hard, so only require oil.

I’m just not that worried about realism.

 

[Forster]

I'm not that worried about realism either, it is a game. But, it doesn't seem right that arrows go farther than bullets.