Exploration & Discovery of Strategic Resources

[Nomad_Wanderer]

Lost my third game this morning.... (SMAC was so much easier!)

I did notice something strange(though you could discout it with bad luck).....But..

In all three of my games, I've really tried to explore as much as possible....(I've been playing mostly HUGE maps)....By the time I've discovered Horsback Riding, or Iron Working, my first warriors are quite some distance from my cities......These important resources are very hard to find in the three games I've played so far...

My question is, Strategic Resources don't appear on the map until you discover the appropriate advance....Do they appear in squares that you have explored, or only within the "black shroud"?

Been trying to play as the persians or greeks....(I always thought SMAC's University was the best..) but this is tough..(And I'm only playing prince!

 

[bulletsponge]

they appear evrywhere. when i discoved iron working, 2 iron deposites poped-up right next to my cities. ive onlt seen iron in mountains and hills though. yes, resources do pop-up in already seen areas

 

[dozenlong]

Yeah--thankfully, when I discovered the steam engine I had coal deposits pop up right on my roads. Very convenient!

 

[duke o' york]

As I understand it, with some experience you will be able to work out which resources will appear on which terrain types and so if you try and settle these terrain types with the hope that they will yield as yet undiscovered resources, this will be a wise calculated gamble. Of course, it may be that the resources do not appear on your continent or within the radii of the cities you have specially positioned then it will not pay off and you will have to trade for them as you would anyway, but I think that it would be worth taking this risk. This is entirely conjecture as I don't have a copy of Civ 3, but has a good basis behind it and I'd encourage others to play with this strategy and see how it develops.
Also, is it a good or a bad idea to stick a fortified unit on top of one of the resources in order to prevent other civs taking it until your settler/worker can arrive there?

 

[Sentinali]

I've played only two games to completion but about 10 partially. What I have found it that the number of resouces seems to be dependant on the number of civs, not necessarily the size of the continent. Compared to my HUGE map games, the small map games are much more resource dense.

Hope this helps,

Sent

 

[Yeti]

Rubber tends to show up in the jungle.

Around all my major cities I've cleared most of the the jungle squares.

Am I screwed? Or will I have rubber show up in the plains the way I have gems (which were visible from 4000BC in the jungle) in the plains now because I cleared those squares?

I guess what this comes down to is:

Are the resources there from turn 1, and you only discover them later (so they're still there even if you planr trees or clear jungle/forest).

Or are resources randomly placed when you get high enough to discover them so that if you've cleared a lot of jungle, you're going to get less rubber?

 

[belarivo]

In the back of your manual, there is a list of terrain types, their values for food / shields / gold, what roads and mines and irrigation will do, and also the types of resources and luxuries that can show up in them. That having been said - planning your civ location around discovery of a specific resource is not necessarily effective or wise. I (playing as the French - special unit musketeers, requiring saltpetre) began a game right next to a huge desert, and (since there was a river and floodplains running through the center, and since I was quickly hemmed in by expansionist AI from other directions) settled the whole thing. So, here I am, waiting for the discovery of saltpetre, and camped out in a desert / mountainous terrain, with big plans for musketeers. What happens when it's found? The only sources of saltpetre are half a continent away, in some mountains surrounded by the AI. I had to use galleys and hug the coast carrying workers and settlers to access it. The same thing happened for iron (same set of wondrous mountains). Also, the game is in a large (one greater than standard) size map, with 8 civs. I just discovered the steam engine. Due to agressive exploration and trading, I have all the landmasses visible on my map. How many coal resources do you think I can find? Four. Four for the whole d@mn world, and none of them accessible to me. I'm beginning to have paranoid delusions that the resource system was designed by the antichrist.

b

 

[treadwin]

Resources are tied to STARTING terain types. If you clear jungle etc. You will not lose them.

 

[duke o' york]

belarivo, what resources exactly did you settle the desert for? Oil I would assume, but don't get angry because iron and saltpetre do not turn up in the desert. They never would have done. My strategy is to expand and choose city sites that will be near jungles for rubber and hills for iron and coal, etc. There is no guarantee that these resources will turn up exactly where you want them every game, but it's surely better than waiting for ages until the iron shows up and then having to war over it. I say that this will not always pay off, but it is definitely worth consideration.

 

[Yeti]

Saltpeter is a desert resource.

 

[duke o' york]

Well OK. I don't see why they made it a desert resource but I suppose that they needed more reasons for people to have cities in the desert as opposed to just oil. This still doesn't mean that the strategy is necessarily a bad one. I'd be surprised if anyone could come up with a resource seed map like the one for Civ 2, because I doubt that it works like that, but bearing in mind which resources crop up in which areas should have a bearing on your expansion.

 

[joe75]

I have not played through to completion yet but it seems to me that building cites on plans with some hills close enough to mone works best for me. I tend to build a lot of culture so if posible I try to place cities so that things like jungles and desserts are close but not within the 20 squares that I can improve. I can build a road out to the resources as the pop-up which by then my borders have usually expanded a couple of times.

 

[ironfang]

Salt Peter is also a hill resource as well.

Yes, resources are the anti-christ and a savior at the same time. It adds another dynamic not present in CIV2. Those who control the resources dont neciscarily control the game, but are in a good position.

On the protecting a resource. If you dont have a road to a resource, its pretty much useless. If you have a resource you definantly dont want to lose, build a town right next to it (if its not deep within your empire), even if that city never grows. The AI WILL DO THIS TO YOU if its a resource on your border. I had this happen to me a dozen times already, so it IS an AI strategy.

Once the road is built, and its your only resource of that type, build a fortress on it, and put at least one modern defender on it, to prevent a sneaky AI from pillaging the road to it. I had the AI do this to my only saltpeter mine, and it stopped the production of gunpowder units for almost 4 turns, which really stunted my war effort.

If you can figure out where the AI is getting its iron/saltpeter from, and its a single source, find it, pillage it, and fortify it if you can. This will CRIPPLE their ability to produce modern units (this is of course, if you can stave off attacks for a long time).

ironfang

 

[9 ECAC Titles]

The manual states that resources are relatively evenly distributed among the civs. If the resources are pegged right at the start, that suggests to me that capitals should be near resources. This doesn't seem to be the case for me.

Of all the resources I have reached (I have not played up to alum and uranium yet), oil has been the biggest pain. I would have liked to have seen something like Imperialism's exploration using the explorer unit -- but of course I love Imp II so much that I am always looking to crossbreed it's better features with every game. ;-)

I haven't been truly screwed on resource yet, but I've seen AI civs that have -- large island civs with *no* saltpeter, for example (nobody is going to trade saltpeter, so that prety much counts as screwed). I have had to negotiate deals for horses but haven't had much trouble -- generally it costs a luxury and some pittance per turn, but it gets you out of the short term mounted gap and lets you build sufficient cav to go grab a horse from some convenient corner or coast.

I REALLY LIKE the way resources are done in the game. I would always prefer far more resources and a more complex econ (take Colonization's good ladder for example), but again that's just me.

 

[benn]

Originally posted by treadwin
Resources are tied to STARTING terain types. If you clear jungle etc. You will not lose them.

Have you seen this in your games? That is, rubber show up on a grasslands square that you or someone else had cleared?

Does this mean the resources are coded to the square when the gamemap was originally generated or made?

 

[quinalla]

I know the number of resources are set at the beginning of the game by the number of civs, so if you start out with 8 and 4 are gone by the time oil pops up, there will be enough for 8 civs (whatever the ratio is for oil). I don't know if the starting points are fixed on the map when it starts, but that would seem to make sense.

 

[LKendter]

Sorry for multiple post on this one. But this question keeps showing up all over the place.


When I played around with the map editor, ALL resources where placed initially. The map already had everything up to Uranium.

The only thing that isn't clear - If a resource is exhausted. I know it will show back up elsewhere. That may require the correction terrain.

 

[doink66]

so far as I can tell, you need to build a city next to a resource or risk the computer civs building a city right next to it. I had an ally civ build a city next to my only iron deposit, even though I had a fortress and several defenders on the deposit. The next turn they told me to get my troops off their land or prepare for war... if you've been developing next to a strong ally for many turns this could be an unfavorable position.

Do colonies keep other civs from building a city in that area? Can an other civ build a city whose area of control would contain your colony? or would they need to destroy your colony first... an act of war on their part, before they could build the city?

 

[quinalla]

My colony didn't stop another civ from building right next to it, my last source of iron! That's ok, though, I was meaning to kill those Japanese anyway and they had 2...

 

[Daaraa]

I'm not sure about the act of war but Yes, thier cities and boundaries do wipe out your colonies. So I build colonies if I cant get a settler there first.