Help Acquiring Vital Resources

[gkguitar]

As I press on through the industrial age, I've found my lead slip away as coal, uranium, and oil are all on distant corners of the map from my civ. I hate to say it but my civ, once great, is becoming mediocre.

It will take a bunch of turns to build up an army that could sustain a conquest of such scale. Nobody seems to want to trade.

Are there strategies that I'm not considering? Is there a way to coerce rivals to trade their resources?

I made a lot of mistakes in judgment earlier on but hey its my first time playing the game and I think it might be fun to plan a long-term strategy.

 

[frob2900]

As I press on through the industrial age, I've found my lead slip away as coal, uranium, and oil are all on distant corners of the map from my civ. I hate to say it but my civ, once great, is becoming mediocre.
...
Are there strategies that I'm not considering? Is there a way to coerce rivals to trade their resources?

What difficulty level? If it's Noble or less, build an army ASAP (by whip+draft) and conquer the world. It shouldn't be a problem.

Otherwise, get big early is the only surefire way to guarantee resources. The bigger you are the more likely you are to have them, but more importantly, you'll be big enough to take them by force later on.
(In the renaissnace you can dominate without strategic resources, by building muskets+grenadiers+trebuchets).

 

[madscientist]

How many cities do you have? Playing Civ, warloard, or Beyond the Sword? It is a bit unusual to be missing all three resources. Oil and Uranium are important for military so if you can stay at peace you might be OK. Lack of coal limits you though, no railroad, 50% production from iron works, and no coal plants (I think this is correct). So you need to hope you cities are on rivers so you can build hydroplants. Also important is do you have aluminum which is improtant for the spacerace (and AI may trade coal or oil for excess aluminum). Sounds link space race is the best or perhaps a UN diplomatic vote if you ar eliked enough. Cultural victories require a little earlier planning.

As far as persuading and AI to trade with you, well you can build an enormous inferior army and try to take the resources but if the AI has flight and industrialisation it would not be a good idea.

If the distant resources are in unoccupied land send settlers there settle on the resource, then be prepared to defend it because the AIs will likely want to take it, especially if it's viewed as easy pickings.

 

[gkguitar]

I'm playing on Prince level as Queen Victoria. Alum has not been revealed yet so I'm not sure where that is. I started using the Inland Sea map and I'm dead center on the right side.

I read in the civilopedia that mining randomly has a small chance of discovering resources, is this a viable option or just a bonus if you happen to get lucky?

Thanks for the quick replies!

 

[madscientist]

I'm playing on Prince level as Queen Victoria. Alum has not been revealed yet so I'm not sure where that is. I started using the Inland Sea map and I'm dead center on the right side.

I read in the civilopedia that mining randomly has a small chance of discovering resources, is this a viable option or just a bonus if you happen to get lucky?

Thanks for the quick replies!

I never played the inland sea board. You will never pop oil. You have a small chance of popping a know resource from a mine, so in your case coal/iron/uranium/silver/gold/gems/copper all have equal chances of being that one pop.