[GS] Do you like that all Strategic resource deposits give them same amount?

I feel left out having never played Civ V...

When Civ VI GS came out I made a mod that added a single resource to many of the other improvements and buildings - and increased resource requirements for units. It does relieve the all or nothing issues and AI civs are almost always able to upgrade there units. I don't always play with it because it does take away some of the challenge and of acquiring resources.

 

Don't worry. I haven't either. Civ1, 2, and 3 were the previous ones I've played, and I TRIED the first Activision "Call to Power" homage game, but THAT one was horrible...

 

All of this please!

Comments on Civ V are interesting. Resources in Civ VI feel sort of “almost right", but something is not right.

Partly, I feel like it’s a lot of little things that aren’t right - eg planes using aluminium as maintenance not just one off cost. Maybe Civ V’s model would be better.

But partly I think it’s also that late game resources don’t have any empire wide impact. It feels like having a happy population or an effective army should require oil etc. whereas late game resources are really never essential outside of a science victory. I don’t really care if it’s resources that are directly required or power (which would put indirect demands on power). Either is fine.

I do think all this stuff comes back to a wider problem for Civ VI - it doesn’t do empire management at all. Civ is a 4x, not a grand strategy or empire building game, so I get why it doesn’t double down on empire management. But the game needs a bit of it in the mid to late game, otherwise you never get that feeling of “building an empire to stand the test of time”. It’s more “spamming campuses and ignore everything after the renaissance to leave the planet shortly before everyone else works out the world isn’t flat. Also Barbarians!”

 

That would interesting indeed. The dynamics of it, I mean. As an example, on reveal, all deposits are small, and as tech improves, some become bigger, etc. And with stuff like oil, perhaps more instances appear entirely. It would also help with making things like iron being used late game; you'd need industrial scale deposits to actually support a modern war or infrastructure effort. So better mining tech could easily gate the distinction between supporting some units vs units and buildings.
Beyond just applying the material cost to more units, i dream of having some kind of special IZ buildings that can consume a strategic resource to give benefit. So you could have a Steelworks consume Iron (and power!) to provide a powerful production bonus of some kind. A Fertilizer plant to consume niter and boost all the farms nearby. Lots you could play with. I do like people's suggestions of projects to produce a quantity of a resource, too. In theory - in practice it would be hard to balance.
And then on the flip side taking a leaf from CivBE and Civ5 and adding city center buildings that would improve the local strategics (and maybe some others.) A Forge to boost iron and some other mining deposits, a Refinery to make your oil wells and platforms very strong... etc. Just little things.

I realize that just because most people played it, not everyone has... Although civ5 is fundamentally the groundwork of civ6, much more than 4->5. Religion, trade, hexes, strategic resources... A lot of things carried over. And for the most part you could swap those systems between the two and they would fit pretty well. So for this thread you didn't miss much. It's really more about if there's enough resource available on the map.

I liked that civ5 had a uniform resource maintenance system. But it had some shortcomings - it was basically just a limited on how many you could have at once. GS adding material+fuel system is nice too. Really, controlling the rate at which players can push out stuff like swords and knights is more important in many ways than the absolute number.
However, if you were to use both material and fuel on the same unit, then you end up with a logistics curve / s-curve where the closer you get to your cap, the harder it is to get together enough resources to build the next one. So it's hard to fully exhaust your income in war if you're rebuilding, but if you're been wiped out rebuilding can happen fast. I enjoy the math of that.

We do need a limit of planes for how crazy strong they are right now. For context, in civ5, the almighty stealth bomber hit 33% harder than rocket artillery, both cost 1 aluminum maintenance. Right now, jet bombers are e (2.71) times stronger than rocket artillery, and both cost 1 resource in maintenance. (due to the combat formula, a 25 str difference is a factor of the number e.) In fairness, rocket artillery armies narrow the gap back to like 35%, but still.
But bombers right now in GS are so strong they can devastate armies of land units even with their -17 penalty. Can you tell I've been having fun in the late game recently?

 

It is complex because other mechanics are involved. I do not often take religious settlements but do take god of craftsmen and a civ V change would nerf this unless you got production based on quantity.

I do think generally differing quantities are found in the ground matches IRL better

I am sort of torn between the two and think the problems we have in VI are not down to quantities but to unit requirements so given only two voting options I chose leave where it is which is not a correct vote because either will do, it is unit requirements I feel are skewed.

 

You could also have some resource sites deplete over time. So maybe a certain coal mine only has capacity for, say 500 units of coal in its lifetime at full capacity. Maybe after that point it only extracts at 1 unit per turn, or you can "harvest" it to remove the last coal and repurpose the tile for another use. I do think for sure that there should be more building options - I still feel that the T1 "workshop" should be a choice between maybe a workshop, forge, or water mill, each giving a different bonus that you have to choose based on terrain. Anything to give you more choices on how to improve the map to me is a good bonus.

I'm a little torn on the whole manufactured resources. I do think it would be a great mechanism that would bring back a little bit of the earlier version of corporations possibly, but balancing it is the real problem. If done right, it would be a massive improvement to the series, but I don't just want something shoehorned in.

 

I and a few others have been complaining about the lack of oil resources since this game came out. It's utterly ridiculous. I have a game save somewhere, with at least 15-20 tiles worth of desert and zero oil. I have game saves with less than 5 oil on the ground. Of course there are 10+ offshore oil including deep sea oil nobody can tap because there is no land anywhere near it. The devs at Firaxis probably think oil is a rare commodity or believe in the baseless notion of "Peak Oil". It's the only thing I can think of. What's this junk about oil is always in tundra and near the polar cap? I know Canada has the oil sands that cannot be drilled year round due to winter, but come on. There is more light crude and other in more places that are not Canada.

Before someone says, turn on abundant, I only play on abundant. Normal is damn near unplayable resources wise.

Maybe this is all geared around killing domination style gameplay since most players on this forum and Reddit prefer peaceful gameplay and hate war. With the new updates, they made more units require oil but we still get the garbage amount of oil on the map since the game came out. It's beyond ridiculous at this point. I struggle with the desire to play since loyalty is so difficult now, dark ages are much easier to fall into, and the oil drama. It just gets more annoying to want to play the game because it is not all that enjoyable anymore, even for sandbox fun reasons if the AI is not challenging enough.

Either way, a Civ 5 resource system would literally fix what they refuse to fix in the first place. If yield amounts varied, they would be forced to fix this issue, that has existed since launch.

I don't think they will implement your idea Sostrarus. They will leave it broken because too many other things need attention and half of this particular issue is 100% intentional. If they ever release that .dll for the modders, we will be able to fix this and much, much more.

 

sorry chap but I only play normal resources and while I often do not have oil initially I have never failed to get some.
Maybe you are playing a small map?

 

I think I can see where the Devs were going, at least with Oil.
Anybody who studies the great war of the Atomic Era (WWII) quickly learns that the outcome of the war, and even its direction, hinged on who had oil, who needed oil, and where oil was. Japan had to get oil from Indonesia, which meant they had to take the Dutch colonies there, which meant they had to attack their USA protector. Germany had, relatively no oil, so attacked the USSR (among other ideological reasons) to take the Caucasus oil. After the Japanese lost contact with the Indonesian oil, their war was essentially over: 2/3 of the Kamikazi pilots never got off the ground because there was no fuel for the aircraft. As early as 1943, lack of fuel forced the German air force to curtail operations in the middle of their major operational offensive of the year: Kursk.
So, the game makes oil relatively scarce. Playing on, mostly, Large maps (only because my computer has trouble with Huge maps in the late-game) I find that there is always Oil, but it's not always easy to get at without a stretch or without antagonizing someone by camping a city in 'their territory'. That's actually a pretty good model of the Atomic Era strategic problem IRL.
IF we want to change the 'Resource Model' (and it should be obvious by now that I do) then we will also have to change the Requirements for Resources to keep the Resource - Strategic Problems that help make the late game interesting.

With Oil specifically, of course, there is one 'extra source' in the game already: Off-Shore Platforms to access underwater oil, and others that could be added:
Oil from Coal, based on Chemical Engineering Tech in the Modern Era
Oil from plants, in alcohol-production facilities that 'extend' the amount of petroleum or even substitute for it.
Oil Shale or Oil Sands = Oil from rocks - or, in the game, Oil from Stone Resource, perhaps.
Using Units that do not require Oil, such as Promoted Infantry - men on foot with relatively few 'motors', the model of everybody's army in WWII except the British and American. Save the Oil for a few Tank and Air units, or whatever Navy is unavoidable.

 

Oh, Energy Crops and Shale Oil improvements placeable on the Wheat/Rice and Stone resources would be such a nice thing to consider, before harvesting them. And speaking of harvesting, at some point it should start costing you increasing amounts of Diplomatic Favour, to reflect growing concern of the society re stripping the ground bare, and the rising public awareness.

 

I find it very interesting that one of the most common remarks ITT is that the question of if there is enough fuel in the game is overshadowed by players struggling to get any fuel.

One thing that would be real nice is if the civilopedia was updated with the specific terrains & likelihood that these resources spawn. I often see aluminum int he desert but I'm not sure if I've ever seen it on grassland, for example.
Oil clearly has preferred biomes. I do best in the tundra, of all places - although usually because it's pretty unsettled.
Obviously there's the more data driven aspect of if the dispersion of these resources is sufficient (or if a particular limit is desirable.)

Hence all this discussion on potential ways to make the resource if you don't have it.

The screen grab from the OP was a unique game. Although I've very happy with it, I want to make a thread just to show it all off... for queen & country!
I almost exclusively play small and I always end up with some oil around (I'm not a huge warmonger, I tend to keep to about 10-20 densely packed cities most of the time.) But this might be 1-3 deposits. I might have 1-3 aluminum as well. Coal I never seem to have an issue getting 3+ deposits. One thing I always do when i get oil is check nearby tundra/snow, and scan around the oceans for any little islands that have decent formations. I usually do quite well prospecting. This often means a settler and ME ready for when it's revealed! Funny enough, I've found that England can put up a great showing without oil in the modern era because redcoats. Aussie Diggers don't need oil either, people! This is huge! But you always need to keep your eyes peeled for 2-3 deposits to claim so you can at least support a few modern armor armies or what have you. The navy can limp along on battleship armadas until nuke subs most of the time.
Uranium i virtually always have exactly one deposit. (I've yet to roll a game with sweden to experience the nobel prizes, apparently one of them gives you absurd uranium...)

So I can see how an unlikely spawn (but over the huge civ playerbase, this scenario will happen frequently) can lead to no oil in your borders in within very close reach. But that's what imperialism is for!

 

Just a note to all the discussion about Resource Scarcity: "Imperialism" or conquest/colonization in search of Resources has been around for as long as there have been people - following the game animals at first, all sorts of examples even since "Civilizations" started:
Egypt moved into the Sinai because there was Copper there, a requirement for early tools and weapons.
The Greeks settled a bunch of Colonies along the northern Black Sea coast partly because it was great grain farming country, and those little cities traded grain by the tons back to Athens as well as to the 'Royal Scythians' all around them.
Phillip of Macedon seized areas to the north and south of the Macedonian 'homeland' because they had gold and silver mines, and access to the metals for coinage paid for his professional army - which he bequeathed to his son, Alexander, with Earthshaking (or at least, Empire Shaking) consequences.
Britain was buying up oil leases in Persia before World War One because they were already laying down the first Oil-Fired Battleships and were determined to ensure supplies of fuel for them.

Having a scarcity which forces you into a certain type of military/diplomatic behavior is nothing new and should certainly be in the game. Having No Options other than Death or Conquest is limiting, though, (in every case I mentioned above, there were alternatives available but just not followed) which is why the game needs some of the Real Life alternatives to keep you from having to turn your nice, peaceful, cultural Civ that you spent 300 turns building into a warped military power because you reached the Atomic Era with no oil/aluminum/uranium and Temujin, Montezuma, Pedro and Gandhi for neighbors.

 

If that is their reasoning, this is corny and goofy. Japan is not indicative of the majority of the world. The Japanese military was too stupid to pause their warmachine and look hard enough for resources in the first place in the holdings they already had. Anyway, as time passes, exploration and production got way better. We find oil in all kinds of places now compared to the 1930's and 40s. Back then they only knew how to get the easiest stuff that bubbled out of the ground. Now the middle east does not have the largest reserves anymore. None of this is recent either. We have known this for some time now.

Either way, the mechanic is too basic and hurts the game. Resource yields could improve when you research plastics and get oil platforms. Uranium could have a certain yield and then increase by researching a certain technology. They could even do something about the egregious coal CO2 output with scrubbers or modern coal plant upgrades. Just anything. It's just silly having a 1940s version of a technology be unchanged in a 2030 looking city when all or most of the information era techs have all been researched. If people feel like the unit upgrades are too frequent, duh, don't make them cost 350 gold! There were/are regular tanks before "modern armor" tanks in the Information Era we currently live in.

 

I said I thought I understood them, I didn't say they were right. In fact, Civ games have always truncated developments after about 1960 and grossly underestimated the amount, pace, and types of changes to everything from Resources to Units to Trade that have occurred.
Of course, part of that is that the pace of change has increased dramatically since the 1960s, and that would require a major revamping of numbers of everything so that the changes could be made in the game as fast as they were IRL. That would also require an understanding of the Revolution in Manufacturing, Trade, and Innovation that has accompanied the Atomic and Information Eras, and since they still haven't gotten the original Industrial Revolution and its impact right, I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to get the newer, equally overwhelming but less understood Post Modern Revolution right.

It would be nice to have, say, the Containerized Shipping revolution in Trade represented, or the several revolutions in military gear that have taken place in aircraft, armored vehicles, missiles, communications, surveillance, and Unconventional Warfare since 1945 . . .

 

I prefer the Civ5 approach, mixed with the Civ6 approach. I'd also like to see more Strategic Resources play a role in your non-military economy.

 

See, this is why I'd like to see a "scarcity" mechanic for Bonus & Luxury resources too-though maybe not as strict as the one for Strategic Resources. Have Copper give a boost to your Bronze Age Units (even Warriors) (& maybe have iron grant Bronze Age Units another boost)-the more Copper you have, the more units get a boost. Copper could also grant a bonus to production to your entire empire-based on how much of it you have. Basically, resource systems that drive players into either aggressive expansion or more frequent trading.

 

There is the future tech Advanced Power Cells which halves the co2 output of units.

But in general- and I'm not a total hater on the system, FXS lurkers, I post because I care- there's a fine balance point where the same resource system works well for all 3 of its use cases:
Power Plants
Military units
Global Warming

I already mentioned where I felt that civ5's implementation of resources for military units (they provide additional capability beyond a resourceless -but functioning!- military) has some upsides.
Power+military combine on resource scarcity generally: the systems become trivial if there's too much available.

Separate to this is Power+Warming, which operates on resource choice+abundance. If you have scarcity, then there's no choice: you just have to use what you have. That makes warming pointless.
You need a reason to struggle for a cleaner economy, and having 12 coal but 3 oil sort of makes that impossible. So in this realm you can't really have a smattering of resources so most civs end up with a little bit of each resource; there's no choice and it trivializes the warming system.

Because there's that tension between scarcity (resources as fuel) and abundance (resources as co2 emitters) one needs to be very careful in picking a map generation setting that can balance all 3 of those legs.

I think the qualitative revolutions made in civ6's tech trees when you unlock things like "can put units on water" or "can dig a canal" are something we need more of, especially int he realm of traders. Let this or that tech allow me to do something I simply couldn't before. I would actually prefer if you needed some kind of containerization civic before you could do hybrid land/water trade routes (water being city on coast or with harbor to another city on coast or with harbor.) Until then you can be stuck hopping up ports on the coast or plodding through a trading post network across the continent.

 

current way, there is virtually no way to get a huge mech army/navy without using Firetuner to add goodies.


I don't care for that.

(by huge, I mean 50+ tanks etc, and over 100 for the navy. on huge maps, a large navy is kinda important to me)

prefer the old way. (and yes, I do use abundant resources)

 

I'd really just like more deposits, period. The scarcity in-game is both unrealistic and bad for gameplay. Given what a "city" represents, it's completely unreasonable to have 20 and yet 0 sources of oil.

 

That goes back to what Boris was talking about. That is too late in the tech tree. There were ways in history to clean up coal power LONG before this theoretical technology comes into play. You are also spot on too about how you can have 12 coal, but 3 oil (sometimes none), so you have no choice but to have 5-10 coal plants and you could not run an oil plant if you really wanted to. I cannot remember the last time I had an oil plant. There is no reason to even build it. Tech up for uranium and if you get enough of that, MAYBE you can build a few nuclear plants. For the guys that love playing peaceful, this is something that hurts those going for diplomacy victory, which is one reason why that VC is not as quick as others, or efficient in ways.