Game Too Sting with Strategic Resources - Especially Aluminum

[Phanixis]

Ok, I am on my second playthrough of Civ 5 and while I enjoy the game overall, I am getting annoyed with the lack of strategic resources, especially aluminum.

First game was of Chieftan with strategic resources set to normal. I started on a continent with another Civilization(Indians) and several city states. I rapidly settled, taking most of the continent. While doing well overall, I found the continent to lack both iron and aluminum entirely. Furthermore, all three coal deposits were located right next to the Indian capital. The advantage the very easy setting provided me allowed me to go out and conquer both the Indians and nearby continenets for resources, but I was a bit annoyed the neighbouring continent(also a 2 civilization continent) hosted plentiful strategic resources of every type, while mine was lacking everything but oil, coal and uranium.

For my second game the difficulty was set to Warlord, and I set resources to "strategic balance" hoping for a more reasonable distribution of resources. I starting on a 4 civilization continent and managed to claim most of it and conquer the Russians early game. Initially, it looked promising as I was able to find plenty of Iron and Horses. But once I hit the industrial era, I found that this 4 civ continent was host to exactly 3 sources of coal, the two good sources of which I had to forcefully take from the Russians and a city-state, because both spawned near their respective capitals. I found plenty of oil, but once again aluminum proved to be elusive. In the whole of the 4 civilization continent, there spawned exactly 1 sources of aluminum of value 3, next to the Roman capital. I ended up taking it but its only enough to build three modern day units.

The game is just far, far too stingy with strategic resources and they always seem to appear in the heart of enemy land. I am doing well at the easier levels where I can conquer my enemies despite this disadvantage, but at harder levels all the aluminum spawning in the heart of an enemy empire and a different continent is going to be hard to impossible to take. Is there any way or setting I can use to deal with this problem? Is kind of ridiculous that I can't build any modern era units because the game chose not to spawn any aluminum nearby. Isn't this the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust, why is it so bloody hard to find?

 

[Camikaze]

Welcome to the forums, Phanixis.

I believe the resources are set in place from the beginning of the game, so don't worry, they aren't just placed according to how the game is going.

I personally quite like the problems you face with a lack of resources. It adds an extra element to the game. So you have to go out and actively work to get strategic resources (either through trade or warfare), rather than just have it all available to you. That's a Good Thing (IMO). It can be a problem with regards to iron, but in the late game is there really any problem that you cannot face without a given resource?

 

[biohazard72]

It's highly luck-based. Sometimes I have no Coal, sometimes I have 20. Same with Iron, Aluminum, and Uranium. However, you can make do with resource trades, assuming your tech level is about even with the AI (if you're ahead, just take their land using your tech advantage for military).

The more land you have, the better off you are obviously. So there's that too.

 

[Decker87]

The game is actually designed so that based on luck, you'll usually not get every resource easily.

 

[Germnoble]

I've played 5 games, and I've not yet had "Whales" anywhere close to me. I've taken to setting the resources on plentiful. So I have enough to grow halfway decently.

 

[BrianSpiller]

If you got every resource every time you played then there would be no point in having them at all! It's part of the game trying to control the resources that you require.

 

[EndoConvert]

I think this is a feature, not a bug.

Scarcity is what makes the resources valuable. And competition over them drives the gameplay.

 

[Phanixis]

I understand that strategic resources are supposed to be scarce but their needs to be a limit to the extreme rarity of some of them. In my second game, I control nearly half of all the land in the game, and I only got 3 aluminum. That is a little to much. It wouldn't be as bad if the game simply made the units you lack resources for more expensive, but not being able to build any of the modern units save mech infantry is far too harsh a penalty for aluminum only spawning on the other side of the world, a problem which you have no control over. Sure, you can always negotiate/take it, but often aluminum is too rare to negotiate for, and taking it requires toppling empires on the other end of the world, which may not be possible on harder difficulties if you can't build modern era units and they can. I just want to be able to build the units I researched without having to conquer the entire world, is that too much to ask?

 

[ipris]

I personally quite like the problems you face with a lack of resources. It adds an extra element to the game. So you have to go out and actively work to get strategic resources (either through trade or warfare), rather than just have it all available to you. That's a Good Thing (IMO).

Completely agree.
I love that the resources are so key that it keeps the game itself fresh time and again. The replay value of Civ has always been high, but IMHO the resource situations add even more to that value.
Sure it can be frustrating (where the f*ck is my iron!), but it's a good frustrating in my book.

 

[Buccaneer]

To me, that's one of the greatest changes in Civ5 and improvement over Civ4: how resources are more scarce. I still think some resources are too abundant (i.e., in the quantity that you get), while others should be rare. That way it makes for a significant decision making, which usually mean balancing whether you it is worth fighting a war over (and to secure the resource). But there are still many resources to where trading for them is not really necessary, as well as easy alternatives if you don't have one kind.

 

[bonafide11]

I don't really mind the stinginess of late game resources because by then I usually have conquered a whole continent for myself, and there's always resources available for me then. However, iron is the one that bothers me because some games you are no where near iron, and it's very difficult to wage war without iron, especially since they nerfed horse archers.

 

[vexing]

"strategic balance" adds mandatory oil, horses, and iron to every start location, and removes some luxuries. as far as i can tell other than these three strategics it doesn't increase the amount of resources.
legendary start ensures every civs starting location has a high "score" and extra luxuries (maybe 2 of one type?)

abundant is the only one that increases the actual amounts you'll see. it increases the amounts per deposit and allows them appear closer to together.

 

[bryanw1995]

generally speaking you can live without any strategic resources at all. sure, an AW pangea with no iron within 50 hexes would be a bit of a challenge, but otherwise there are typically equivalent units that you can acquire to make up for or at least mitigate lack of a resource.

1. no iron - tough but not impossible, just utilitze bows/pikes/horses, beeline chivalry and/or muskets
2. no horses - who cares now with the horseman nerf? I rarely build more than one or two horses now, though I usually get a couple knights/cav
3. no coal - oh noes, I can't build ironclads!!! you can easily trade for coal for the factories that you want, coal is even less useful than horses
4. no oil - 2nd worst resource to be without, but mech inf, AA, and artillery will lead you through this dark hour quite well
5. no aluminum - meh, stealth bombers/jet fighters/modern armor are nice, but if you have either oil OR aluminum you can get by just fine
6. no uranium - probably most common issue since uranium is so rare. however, the ai puts no premium on it so it's easy to trade for. if you have to trade for it build nukes, take out the ai you traded for it from, then clean up the fallout and either build more nukes or gdrs (depending on whether you are also getting nuked or not).

speaking of nukes, wouldn't it make sense to have SOMETHING (a building, unit promo, etc) to help you survive a nuclear assault? maybe something like the deflector shield but have it go out 2-3 squares for a city or the obvious national wonder sdi. and maybe a "cover"-like promo for units to get -50% damage from nukes or at least something to allow a big more survivability for them. nukes are WAY stronger now than they were in cIV, even when factoring in the limited distance they can reach.
5.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

nukes are WAY stronger now than they were in cIV, even when factoring in the limited distance they can reach.

They are also WAY harder to built then they were in Civ 4. In Civ 4 you only needed something like 1 or 2 Uranium mines and you could build a massive nuclear arsenal of 80 or so nukes and probably much more then that. With over 80 nukes+subs you could typically nuke every city in the world if there was enough ocean space all in the same turn.

In Civ 5, you have only a limited amount of Uranium so nukes can't just be easily mass produced provided that you have the time and some Uranium like you could in Civ 4 so I don' think there is a balance problem. If anything, I actually like it that there is no very effective counter defense against nukes in Civ 5 since I hated it how nukes pretty much just became large bombs rather then WMD's once everyone had underground bunkers and SDI's.

The only thing that annoys me about the nukes in Civ 5 is that they don't appear to have any affect on how other AI factions treat you or look at you while in Civ 4 using massive nuclear strikes would almost always devastate your reputation among the civs that did not already hate the victim you were nuking.

 

[Buccaneer]

generally speaking you can live without any strategic resources at all. sure, an AW pangea with no iron within 50 hexes would be a bit of a challenge, but otherwise there are typically equivalent units that you can acquire to make up for or at least mitigate lack of a resource.

1. no iron - tough but not impossible, just utilitze bows/pikes/horses, beeline chivalry and/or muskets
2. no horses - who cares now with the horseman nerf? I rarely build more than one or two horses now, though I usually get a couple knights/cav
3. no coal - oh noes, I can't build ironclads!!! you can easily trade for coal for the factories that you want, coal is even less useful than horses
4. no oil - 2nd worst resource to be without, but mech inf, AA, and artillery will lead you through this dark hour quite well
5. no aluminum - meh, stealth bombers/jet fighters/modern armor are nice, but if you have either oil OR aluminum you can get by just fine
6. no uranium - probably most common issue since uranium is so rare. however, the ai puts no premium on it so it's easy to trade for. if you have to trade for it build nukes, take out the ai you traded for it from, then clean up the fallout and either build more nukes or gdrs (depending on whether you are also getting nuked or not).

speaking of nukes, wouldn't it make sense to have SOMETHING (a building, unit promo, etc) to help you survive a nuclear assault? maybe something like the deflector shield but have it go out 2-3 squares for a city or the obvious national wonder sdi. and maybe a "cover"-like promo for units to get -50% damage from nukes or at least something to allow a big more survivability for them. nukes are WAY stronger now than they were in cIV, even when factoring in the limited distance they can reach.
5.

Very nicely done!

 

[Oerdin]

To me, that's one of the greatest changes in Civ5 and improvement over Civ4: how resources are more scarce.

You can easily adjust how scarce resources are in Civ4 using the menu options so I have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[Soronery]

Welcome to the forums, Phanixis.

I believe the resources are set in place from the beginning of the game, so don't worry, they aren't just placed according to how the game is going.

I personally quite like the problems you face with a lack of resources. It adds an extra element to the game. So you have to go out and actively work to get strategic resources (either through trade or warfare), rather than just have it all available to you. That's a Good Thing (IMO). It can be a problem with regards to iron, but in the late game is there really any problem that you cannot face without a given resource?

If you don't have uranium you can basically get screwed as the AI doesn't need it to make nukes...and nukes have no counter except nuking them first.

 

[Camikaze]

If you don't have uranium you can basically get screwed as the AI doesn't need it to make nukes...and nukes have no counter except nuking them first.

Care to link me to something explaining why the AI doesn't need uranium to use nukes?

If you've researched atomic theory and find that you have no uranium, then you should take action before nukes become a problem for you. If your opponent doesn't have any cities, then they can't build nukes.

Of course, you will probably be at a disadvantage due to not having uranium, but that is part of the challenge of the game. Resources are redundant if there is no actual value associated with them.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

Care to link me to something explaining why the AI doesn't need uranium to use nukes?

He is probably just talking about the higher difficulty levels, as it has been stated that the AI can't cheat on prince besides getting slight production bonuses.

 

[Buccaneer]

You can easily adjust how scarce resources are in Civ4 using the menu options so I have no idea what you are talking about.

Default (Standard) resource setting is scarce compared to the other settings (adundant, legendary). Not sure about no bias though. In any case, a typical Civ4 map (default settings) has resources all over the place, a wealth of riches that make them nearly irrelevant.

In my latest game, iron is scarce on my continent. There are two, one was near a Songhai city and the other within a city state. I switched gears to make sure I get allied with that city state and stay allied (only 4 civs on the continents). But it still took them a little while to work it (barb troubles). India declared war on Songhai to get at that iron and succeeded. Going to have to decide about taking that city myself. Never encountered stuff like this in Civ4.