[GS] Gathering Storm General Discussion Thread

[Gen.Washington]

Wait, what? I hadn't heard this. How does this work exactly?

Let’s say you have an iron tile with a yield of 64 iron, then you create a sword man which for this example requires 5 iron. You only have 59 iron left even if the swordsman dies. Use it all up and it’s gone for good.

 

[DeepKing]

Oooh, that will definitely make early wars more sweaty.

Might actually get attached to my units

 

[Jaybe]

Might actually get attached to my units

Aarrggh!! No getting emotionally attached to units unless you can name them out of the gate (and rename them as desired)!

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Let’s say you have an iron tile with a yield of 64 iron, then you create a sword man which for this example requires 5 iron. You only have 59 iron left even if the swordsman dies. Use it all up and it’s gone for good.

Have they ever said if strategic resource tiles can be fully exploited and used up? Because if not then scarcity is a problem solved by time.

 

[Gen.Washington]

I would assume they can be fully used up as they’ve used power plants and limited coal as an example several times

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Nerf England? Sigh. Just two small points. First, given the changes to horses, it looks like England won’t be making super Knight rushes. That’s okay... but it was exciting for a week or so thinking England might be a Medieval powerhouse. Second, I’m still liking England’s buffs to MEs. It’ll be fun to play with. But if ME aren’t going to buff hammers, then ultimately this isn’t going to be a very useful or powerful ability. I think England are still in a good spot. If iron doesn’t boost Knights, I’ll be interested to see if it boosts something else. And the bonus power yields could still be useful. Dunno. I think England will still be fun - but God I hope they’ve fixed the +1 movement bug.

We don't know about Eleanor yet. She might be the thing that England needs to be a Medieval powerhouse.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Eleanor's greatest "achievement" such as it was, was creating the Angevin Empire by uniting her lands with the Kingdom of England and its possessions by marriage. Of course, this empire was short lived. Her youngest son lost every bit of it not in Britain.

I wouldn't be surprised if her LUA is something like Austria's UA in Civ V.

 

[Seek]

I would assume they can be fully used up as they’ve used power plants and limited coal as an example several times

The dev's have absolutely not said the resource nodes depleted, and there hasn't been any indication of that in game. All we know is that each node gives 2 per turn. When the devs mentioned a per-turn cost of power plants or tanks, I'm pretty sure that simply means that one needs a regular supply or stockpile of the necessary resource. We do not know how much coal a coal power plant eats per turn, and we don't know how many power plants will be needed - we could be looking at 5 coal per turn, and one power plant per city, who knows. So yes, multiple nodes will be much more beneficial than currently regardless, but let's not make assumptions that are more than likely misleading.

 

[Dragabond]

Have they ever said if strategic resource tiles can be fully exploited and used up? Because if not then scarcity is a problem solved by time.

I don't think they've mentioned it one way or the other.

However, looking at the today's livestream for Hungary's gameplay, when they opened the policy menu there was a military policy slotted called Equestrian Orders that said "All improved Horses and Iron resources yield 1 additional resource per turn", which to me implies that they'll be producing X amount every turn, so they can be stockpiled or diminished as you play.

If there are things that require resources on a per-turn basis, that would definitely eat into your stockpile if your demand outweighs your supply, so I'd think it would pay to keep track of everything.

 

[acluewithout]

@Alexander's Hetaroi Agreed. I’m happy with England. Just interested to see where things go.

In particular, I’m very interested to see how resources and power work.

Eg

• Do UU need resources?
• More units mean more UUs can be prebuilt and upgraded. Will all UUs therefore now be able to be prebuilt to balance that? Can you pre-build Beserkers and Samurai?
• How doe resources are corps and armies work?
• Do any new units now need resources? Eg Frigates and Niter?
• Is iron only work for Swords, or are there other units that need iron? Does iron have any other uses?
• Are IZ and IZ buildings now “buffed”?
• Does power only boost yields in the city where the power is generated, or does it apply to other cities (eg cities within 6 tiles)?

(I’m also a little sorry England doesn’t somehow get Longbowmen, although I think that’s just me being greedy.)

 

[Gen.Washington]

“Consumable” resources. Meaning once used, they are gone.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

“Consumable” resources. Meaning once used, they are gone.

That may only refer to the individual units of currency, not the sources of them.

 

[Gen.Washington]

Makes sense, it’s an odd way to word it though.

 

[Stringer1313]

Anyone here afraid that the strategic resources might suffer from the same issue a similar system have in beyond earth? There it's so easy to pile ridiculous amounts of resources like firaxite, that the fact things cost that resource is meaningless, you have more than enough to do whatever you want and more. It also don't make difference to get a tile that give you 5 or 10 of that resource, you gonna have more than you need either way. I don't want it to be too punishing (you never have enough) but it kind kills the point of having a resource as a limiting factor if it doesn't limit anything. In late game you might hold back because of global warming and try to keep its use to a minimal but will it be a factor earlier? Will I go on a war because I need more horses and my neighbor have it? Will I feel the need to trade?

I saw in the Hungary trailer that the player had 232 horses, 115 iron, 70 nitre, this seems like a lot. The same part also show civil engineering giving 11 governor titles, so I assume this numbers might be wrong and just taken from a test build.

I was thinking the same thing. For a moment in today's playthrough I thought there seemed to be a hard cap (39?) of how many horses/iron you could have total -- that might be an idea. I also don't think upgrading units should require only 50% of the resources; it should require 100% b/c there's already a huge problem with upgrade spam. But I agree something needs to be done with old resources that become obsolete, it just seems silly to have 999 horses and 999 iron towards the end of the game.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Makes sense, it’s an odd way to word it though.

I'm not committed to one interpretation or the other. I'm just playing Devil's advocate to illustrate that it's not fully demonstrated whether sources of strategic resources are finite. The luxury resources still seem to be infinite.

 

[Gen.Washington]

I understand, I’ve not committed either I was just explaining what I meant by permideath resources

 

[AriochIV]

Let’s say you have an iron tile with a yield of 64 iron, then you create a sword man which for this example requires 5 iron. You only have 59 iron left even if the swordsman dies. Use it all up and it’s gone for good.

That's not how it works. I don't know who made that up, but it's wrong.

It was clearly demonstrated in the playthroughs. Each strategic resource tile produces a certain number of units of the resource per turn when you build the appropriate improvement on it. It adds that amount every turn to your stockpile. When you build a unit, the appropriate amount is deducted from the stockpile, but this doesn't affect your income per turn of that resource. If you lose the resource node for some reason, you lose the per-turn income, but you don't lose your stockpile. It works just like Gold or any other currency in the game. I don't see why people have trouble understanding this.

In the first playthough, you can see in the UI that the English player gained an income of +3 Iron per turn the moment he built his first Iron mine. The stockpile also immediately gained 3 Iron. On the second turn the stockpile had 6. On the third turn it had 9.

A Swordsman deducts a one-time cost of 13 Iron from the stockpile when built (at least, on the speed they were playing). Upgrading a Swordsman to a Musketman deducts a one-time cost of 9 Niter (in addition to the Gold cost). None of these actions affects the per-turn income of the resource.

Later game units also have a per-turn resource upkeep cost, but we haven't yet seen an example of these.

 

[Cuneiform]

Let’s say you have an iron tile with a yield of 64 iron, then you create a sword man which for this example requires 5 iron. You only have 59 iron left even if the swordsman dies. Use it all up and it’s gone for good.

As mentioned by others, that's not how it works.

Also, it appears that certain Civs will have bonuses that increase the per turn accumulation of specific resources. But if resources were finite, this would make these bonuses somewhat less useful.

 

[Gen.Washington]

Ok so I just had a misunderstanding of how stockpiling worked

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Speaking of Equestrian Orders,

It seems likely there are similar policies for Niter, Coal, Oil, Uranium, and Aluminum later in the Civics tree.