Does anyone understand iron or exhaustion?

[MeowTau]

I had one iron ore mine that I exhausted. It was previously owned by Greece, but I stole it. I then made 5 iron ore units and it was finished. I literally sat there from classical age to industrial not able to make any iron units.

Furthermore, trading for iron with AI/city states did not re-enable iron ore usage. I'm thinking this is a glitch, so I posted it in the bug forums. If you only have one exhausted mines, it seems like trading for more iron does not re-enable building iron units.

So What's the deal with iron? Does it run out permanently and never regenerate?

If so this seems just plain stupid, as I might as well restart an emperor game each time I do not have at least a couple of sources of iron. My last game was going quite well until I had to sit around for 100 turns waiting for musketmen/cannons as I had no iron to build/upgrade my units to keep up with the AI.

 

[Pragmatic]

Strategic resources are used to build and maintain units and/or buildings. As long as the units and/or buildings exist, they'll continue to consume that strategic resource.

So iron, for instance. If you have 6 iron, and you make 4 swordsmen and 2 catapults, you're out of usable iron. You simply have to wait until they've been killed, disbanded, or upgraded to using a different strategic resource (or, in the case of the swordsmen, put into the melee/gunpowder unit path, which doesn't tequire any resources, IIRC).

 

[MeowTau]

Cheers. So swordsman are definitely not the thing to build if I want these units to stick around. Couple swords and spearmen it is if I only have one iron.

But how come trading for iron does not let me build more units? What is the point in trading for iron ore resources if you can't build more units

 

[NakedYoga]

Are you sure it "gives back" the iron if a unit like a swordsman is killed? I haven't lost any iron-using units yet, but to me it doesn't make sense if you were get the iron back. I thought the concept on this new exhaustion feature was that the particular iron mine will allow you to build X number of units, and that's it. The idea is that your citizens have used all the iron in the mine. It wouldn't make sense, to me, to magically get that iron back.

I do have a different question similar to OP's, though. I had a small iron mine near one of my cities which I used to build a ballista and some legions. I exhausted the mine. Then I gained favor with a neighboring city-state when I defeated another nearby city-state. When I became the city-state's ally, I was given access to their iron. I didn't really need it at the time. So, several turns later, I decide to build another legion. I had 6 iron from the city-state. During the build period of my legion, my influence with the city-state ran out, and I was no longer its ally, so I no longer had access to its iron. Well, the iron display at the top of the screen changed from 6 to -1. Not to 0... to -1. I'm not sure if this is what the developers intended, but it seems strange to me.

I actually really like the new exhaustion feature, as it forces diplomacy/trading. Anyone else experienced this?

 

[Pragmatic]

They've set up strategic resources as a way of limiting the best units. No strategic resources are needed for about half of the units (e.g., spearmen are limited solely by your "unit cap" which, IIRC, is "# of cities + # of citizens + some factor").

As for trading not working, perhaps post a saved game in the Discussions/Bug Report subfolder? I think I've seen one or two of those threads already.

 

[Pragmatic]

Are you sure it "gives back" the iron if a unit like a swordsman is killed?

In the 2-hour video that came out shortly before Civ 5 was released, the Firaxis (2K?) guy was playing Japan. His samurai would get killed, he'd go make a warrior and buy the upgrade to samurai (because one of his iron was now available again).

Well, the iron display at the top of the screen changed from 6 to -1. Not to 0... to -1. I'm not sure if this is what the developers intended, but it seems strange to me.

Yep. You have enough iron to build or maintain "X" number of units. You currently have "X + 1" number of units. So your available iron is "-1." That's not good.

When you have this sort of case, the units dependent on that iron aren't able to obtain enough. Their combat effectiveness drops. Those units are going to be suffering a -25% or -50% penalty (I don't remember which, or if it's some other number). Get back that iron, FAST!, and protect those units (because they're currently very weak). You can also delete one unit (to get to 0 available iron).

It's an interesting strategy: When attacking an enemy, always stop to see if they have strategic resources in their territory. If they have used up all their iron, for instance, you can render their most effective units weak by just sending them into the negatives.

Check the city-states around your enemy. See if they're allied with the enemy. If they are, and if you've saved up a good surplus of gold. bribe the city-states into being your ally instead. That takes away the resources from the enemy (luxury which gives happiness, and strategic which gives extra units)--and gives them to you, instead!

 

[NakedYoga]

Thanks, Pragmatic. I never watched any of those teaser videos or anything like that before Civ V came out, and for whatever reason I never saw anything about this maintenance aspect of resource-dependent units. Interesting... I also didn't realize that I was suffering any kind of penalty with those units. Since I've gone into -1 iron, I know I've used iron-based units to attack and destroy a barbarian encampment, but never noticed the penalty (obviously, it's no big victory to destroy them, but still). Wow. Looks like I might have to take a good look at taking over Tyre for its iron...

 

[Pragmatic]

Note that the penalty is the same, whether you're at -1 or -20. Which can be frustrating when you have 50 swordsmen, but only 49 iron (i.e., you're only 2% short, but you're still suffering the full -25% or -50% or whatever it is penalty).

And no, I'm not suggesting you build 50 swordsmen!

 

[MeowTau]

Thanks pragmatic. I quite like this system like a lot of things they've changed.

Once again though, everything seems to be coming up France. Their musketeers for 120 hammers have 20 power, as opposed to 150 hammers for 18 power knights and longswordsmen. And they don't need iron, leaving all of it for your catapults and trebuchets. As if the culture bonus alone wasn't enough.

 

[neptune2000]

Are you sure it "gives back" the iron if a unit like a swordsman is killed? I haven't lost any iron-using units yet, but to me it doesn't make sense if you were get the iron back. I thought the concept on this new exhaustion feature was that the particular iron mine will allow you to build X number of units, and that's it. The idea is that your citizens have used all the iron in the mine. It wouldn't make sense, to me, to magically get that iron back.

Think of it this way. That unit is in existence for 10s, 100s of years. They need to constantly be resupplied with arms and armor, and there's only so much that can be mined at one time. So while it's a clever way to keep army sizes down, it's also "realistic".

 

[DalekDavros]

Check the city-states around your enemy. See if they're allied with the enemy. If they are, and if you've saved up a good surplus of gold. bribe the city-states into being your ally instead. That takes away the resources from the enemy (luxury which gives happiness, and strategic which gives extra units)--and gives them to you, instead!

And for a double-whammy, if you follow it up with a DOW, the city-state will then DOW them too and the other civs dearly bought influence with the CS will suddenly drop to -60 (making it much less likely that they'll be able to buy more influence to outbid you).

 

[This is Aru]

Just remember, Longswords can't be upgraded to Musketmen. You will need Rifling to upgrade them and save you iron. On the plus side, Longswords are Strength 18 and Musketmen are only 16.

Also, I found out the hard way, you can't skip Riflemen through upgrading to Infantry, if you don't have Rifling researched, you can build infantry, but not upgrade existing units.

 

[Magc8Ball]

Do we know offhand if buildings that rely on resources are similarly limited when you're deficient? I went through a game where the only coal I used was to build factories; I lost my one coal tile, so I was running at -6 Coal but never thought to check whether or not the factories had been impacted.

 

[Tutankhamun]

As for trading not working, perhaps post a saved game in the Discussions/Bug Report subfolder? I think I've seen one or two of those threads already.

I had this happen.

Traded enough iron early on to get me 4 swordsman. 2 from upgrades and 2 built. Gained access to more iron in a peace deal later on and it let me start 3 more builds, but they disappeared from the build queue the next turn. Traded for more straight away but still no joy.

A number of turns later however (can't remember how many, but well within the deal turn time) and I noticed that I could once again build and upgrade. At that point, I had lost none of my original 4 swordsman.

I've got a save from the turn before the peace deal and second trade.