How often to stone and/or marble appear?

[Yeosol]

I wondering how often you would get them within a reasonable distance of your capital? Say 2nd or 3rd city. I tried to guess but I've never real payed much attention to it. Anyone have a ballpark on this?

 

[Cleverbeans]

If you're Obsolete they appear in 95% of your games.

 

[brianb1974]

Depends on your definition of reasonable. If you want to run SSE (ala Obsolete), you may be willing to go way out of your way to settle that marble.

You can always use map-finder to ensure that your first city is founded on a marble/stone hill. If you let it run overnight, you can probably insist on good food, too.

 

[brades]

Id say I either have stone or marble in almost all of my games, occasionally i get both occasionally I get neither. I usually settle them ASAP, and often times settle on top of them.

 

[Milly]

I have only gotten stone within the third city once. Other times I must either conquer a foe's city or wait until the new world (I often play Terra maps) before I even stance a chance of that.

I don't get marble all that much either. =/

 

[tycoonist]

i'd rather have copper...

 

[Scoottr]

I see marble all the time, but stone seems pretty rare.

 

[Bleys]

If you're Obsolete they appear in 95% of your games he posts.

Fixed that for you.

 

[schwartz]

I have one or the other 85% of the time. Both probably slightly less than half.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Maybe this is map size dependent because I rarely have stone or marble in one of my first 5 cities. I play on huge maps and I guess the map generator creates a limited number of these sources on a map and maybe relatively less on huge maps.

My guess is (without actually counting, but just from memory) that I get stone or marble before conquest in about 40% of my games, 60% of my games are without either of these resources before conquest. On a huge map, you can easily have more than 20 cities before you start conquering. The fraction of games where I have both of these resources before conquest is close to 0%. I simply can't remember such a game.

Because the map is so big and the marble and stone resources so scarce, it also means that I'm rarely able to get one of these resources for the early wonders.

 

[Bleys]

I have one or the other 85% of the time. Both probably slightly less than half.

This sounds right to me as well. For the record, I generally play Standard sized maps, Continents or Hemispheres, with occasional B&S and M&S mixed in. If anything, I think I see one or the other MORE on maps that have LESS overall land.

Hard to gauge though, I think we have natural selective memory. You might get an idea if you go to the Sample Games directory and just check the first turns of a bunch of games, and keep track.

 

[dubrown]

To me the above assumptions sounds about right. In my experience I usually finds one or the other for my third or fourth city. It's rare for me to see stone or marble within my capitals bfc. To get both with my first 3 cities has only happened once if I recall correctly. In some way I seem more lucky in OCC games to get atleast one of them within reach of my cultural border, could be though that I tend to regenerate maps more often with OCC games than with other games as the starting position is somewhat more important...

I never count on stone or marbe but if I get one of them, I may reorganise my strat and try to get some wonder I would've skipped otherwise.

 

[brades]

A better question... Has anyone ever gotten both marble and stone in there BFC? I'm positive I've never seen that.

 

[y2jaus]

A better question... Has anyone ever gotten both marble and stone in there BFC? I'm positive I've never seen that.

An excellent reason to play Hatshepsut in the Earth 18 civs scenario. Starts with both, as well as food and horses

 

[kazapp]

You can always use map-finder to ensure that your first city is founded on a marble/stone hill. If you let it run overnight, you can probably insist on good food, too.

Map-finder?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I get one of the two pretty often within first 3-5 cities. In one of my recent games I actually built the mids with the 4th city I settled using the stone it claimed and the fact that there were some trees there.

IMO, the trouble with them is that they're often located in poor spots otherwise, making the commitment to using them bigger than just a wonder attempt...sometimes hooking them up requires junk cities and I'm usually not willing to do that early on.

 

[JujuLautre]

I'm pretty sure it's civ (or leader) dependant. Like, the mongols get marble more often, and the egyptians get stone more often.

Not especially in the fat cross, but at least "near".

 

[bjam]

Map-finder?

Map Finder is an utility that require the HoF mod and that allows you to choose some settings (for example, stone and gold in the BFC or lots of food resources... or both!), then you just have to let run the game while the maps are automatically regenerated. You let it run for a few hours, then you just have to choose which one of the selected map you want to play.
It's definitely a must-have to get good starting position.
I got once four gold and a dozen of flood plain in the BFC...
Edit: I rarely have access to stone if I don't get it in the BFC of my first city, however, there are often some marble available in horrible place with a lot of ice / tundra.

 

[Yeosol]

This is interesting. I agree that it definitely 'feels' like some resources are civ dependant. Is there any real evidence for this however?

 

[OTAKUjbski]

This is interesting. I agree that it definitely 'feels' like some resources are civ dependant. Is there any real evidence for this however?

I'm not sure there's evidence supporting or denouncing it. (Glancing over the scripts, it doesn't appear there's any consideration for UU resources.)

I think it's a matter of perception. After all, if you're Persia, do you really care if Copper is 20 tiles away when Horses are in Persepolis' BFC? On the contrary when playing Greece, do you care about the Horses in Athens' BFC when Copper is 20 tiles away?

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It depends on the map script and the settings used to generate the map.

For example, how often do you see Marble on anything other than Plains or Tundra ... or Stone not on Plains or Desert? So what happens with a Cold or Arid climate setting? (That's right! Marble goes up and Stone goes down for Cold while Marble goes down and Stone goes up for Arid!)

Similarly, it's not uncommon in Hemispheres to see Stone on one side of the globe and Marble on the other (I've also witnessed this in Continents and B/M&S).

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That being said, I agree with 85/45 ... Marble or Stone appear within reach in ~80% of my games, while both appear in ~40%. Either appears in the BFC ~5%. Both in the BFC is a fluke.


-- my 2