Iron now THE key resource? Rome and Russia new top civs?

[Louis XXIV]

Of course, it may be possible to trade with the AI if they have spare iron (I'm not sure how often this is the case early game, but it might happen), use this iron to war on another civ for their iron, and then let the agreement end naturally (unless you still want more iron for more units), and now you have your own iron.

That's what I was going to say. Trade for 2 iron, build 2 catapults, and take an enemy city with iron. Ironless starts aren't bad, but they do require actually talking to and trading with the AI.

I'm not sure if horses are completely useless. Sure they can't take cities any more which is a huge nerf but horsemen may still have their uses like killing enemy units before you reach the city. I don't know how much their strength got lowered but even at 10 strength I would probably still use them. Hopefully we will see something like a combined arms strategy as a viable choice.

Yeah, I like using Horses to take out siege units, and I think that's still a good use of them. In addition, attacking swordsmen (especially weakened swordsmen) and then retreating into the city will be a smart move.

Anything that gives Rome a boost is a good thing, imo

 

[swordspider]

I play this game all the time in multiplayer and this modification will help make horsemen more 'fair' overall, I agree, but the problem is it will just make the rushers (who they are being nerfed because of) go for iron instead and instead of 4 horsemen, you're just gonna get taken out by 4 swordsmen. It won't help anything in multiplayer at all in the grand scheme. In addition, it will give civs with iron a HUGE advantage over civs without it whereas I think the horsemen actually helped provide some balance there before. Either way, it is what it is, but I hope they are not over-nerfing them.

Anyone know if they are going to screw with the Knights?

 

[Louis XXIV]

I think Archers and Horsemen can kill a Sword rush effectively. Especially if you get that "extra damage against damaged units" promotion. Then you city bombard and Archer bombard attacking units and use the horses to attack and then retreat without counterattack.

 

[Bibor]

Anyone know if they are going to screw with the Knights?

No, this change addresses only the Companion Cavalry rush and the like.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I also see Siam rising in favour...

It looks like they will now be the choice for pure builder strategies. The extra specialist slot is better than Babylon's UA until Public Schools. The Maritime buff should yield faster starts than anyone else. I don't think that the UU makes a huge difference; early warmonger strategies will run down the Iron line. Babylon's free GS should make them the big winner in the warmonger sweepstakes.

 

[alpaca]

Actually that's not entirely true. If you look at any map with uranium revealed, you'll see that the strategic resources are evenly distributed, usually with a 2, minumum 1 distance (excluding those of same type) between them. Unlike horses (plains, grasslands), oil (marsh, tundra, sea, desert) etc. iron has no specific attributes attached to its spawn, so it gets thrown around a lot. Iron is probably the last strategic resource to get seeded onto a newly generated map, so it gets all the "not already taken" spots.

If you restart as Rome fifty times, you'll notice you're very likely to spawn near either gold (dry area = very likely to get iron) or silver (less but still likely to get iron).

Nonsense, where do you take your info from? I looked at the file that distributes the resources and the process is quite complicated, but not really random and certainly not equally distributed.

The small sources are somewhat equally distributed, with a probability depending on which feature and terrain type is on the plot. So for these, you are somewhat right.

For the large sources, you are completely wrong, though. Iron can occur in flat tundra without features, in flat snow, in flat desert, and in hills. That's it. So while yes, you have some chance to get iron in your grassland area if you have a couple of hills (they are placed with 26% probability on 1/16th of all hills), it's far less likely than getting horses, especially because hills are as often in desert or tundra as in grassland or plains.

Add to this that large iron sources are larger than large horse sources and it's obvious you'll often have trouble getting one. And the small sources don't occur with a high enough frequency that you are likely to grab 2 with one city.

 

[alpaca]

It looks like they will now be the choice for pure builder strategies. The extra specialist slot is better than Babylon's UA until Public Schools. The Maritime buff should yield faster starts than anyone else. I don't think that the UU makes a huge difference; early warmonger strategies will run down the Iron line. Babylon's free GS should make them the big winner in the warmonger sweepstakes.

I actually expect 2 specialist slots for university and that they just forgot to list it in the patch changes, otherwise it would be a huge buff to Siam.

The free scientist is certainly a big boon. Popping Steel early or settling for an Academy sounds very juicy. For other civs, going for Writing has probably a lot lower priority now unless you want to follow up with Education

 

[Varanid]

I've never had a civ agree to trade strategic resources, even on moderate difficulty levels. They always tell me that's not a fair deal, regardless of what I'm offering, unless I'm willing to give them pretty much all my current gold and all my GPT for the next 30 turns.

 

[Sneaks]

Iron has never been that large a problem for me as far as location. My two biggest gripes with it are as follows:

For a strategic resource that will now be required for all early city taking, it shows up too late in the tech tree. As many mods have done, it should be visible with either mining or bronze working.

The early game has a vacuum between spears and pikes for basic no resource units. Given the city nerf to horses, archers, and chariots, that is quite a gap in a key development stage where without a resource, you are just not going to be able to efficiently grab a city. The easy solution in my eyes to this one is to remove the iron requirement to catapults and instead require bronze working for them, and perhaps for trebuchets as well.

 

[swordspider]

The early game has a vacuum between spears and pikes for basic no resource units. Given the city nerf to horses, archers, and chariots, that is quite a gap in a key development stage where without a resource, you are just not going to be able to efficiently grab a city. The easy solution in my eyes to this one is to remove the iron requirement to catapults and instead require bronze working for them, and perhaps for trebuchets as well.

I agree with your assessment of the gap here, but you're completely discounting the horsemen just because of a -1 attack. They are still a valid, powerful unit if you don;t have iron.

Now, if you don't have iron OR horses... well yeah, then you are pretty much screwed to spears and archers and the prayer that no one is going to attack you until you get one of those two resources!! Expand fast my friend!

 

[Ahriman]

It looks like they will now be the choice for pure builder strategies. The extra specialist slot is better than Babylon's UA until Public Schools. The Maritime buff should yield faster starts than anyone else. I don't think that the UU makes a huge difference; early warmonger strategies will run down the Iron line.

I think it will make a slight difference that those elephants can eventually become tanks.

As many mods have done, it should be visible with either mining or bronze working.

This, this, 1,000 times this. Bronze working is sufficient, I think.

where without a resource, you are just not going to be able to efficiently grab a city

I don't see this as a problem. It should be hard to take a city. You shouldn't be able to easily take one "efficiently" without losses.

Maybe we'll just have to use pillage-choke strategies rather than outright rush->conquest.

 

[Bibor]

We must not allow... a strategic resource gap!

 

[Ahriman]

We must not allow... a strategic resource gap!

Yes, we must build more mines! To have more Iron.... and Mine-shafts.

[Does the Russian unique ability mean their iron mines are bigger, and hence more mine-shaft space per tile?]

But yeah; horsemen are still going to be very powerful at dominating units out in the field, they just won't also be superb assault troops.

I think its *good* that you'll be in a much weaker position if you don't have the appropriate strategic resources of the era.
If you have no iron or horses, you'll be weak up to the medieval era, but then you might have more coal or oil or aluminium and be more powerful in the later era.

Strategic resources are only strategic if you *don't* always have them, and if it hurts not to have them.

 

[Sneaks]

I don't see this as a problem. It should be hard to take a city. You shouldn't be able to easily take one "efficiently" without losses.

Maybe we'll just have to use pillage-choke strategies rather than outright rush->conquest.

See, this does not work though. Ideally, I would love for cities to be a challenge to take. The problem is the AI is dumb as rocks. Another thing I have learned from several mods is that if you make cities much tougher to take, the AI is going to make vanilla suicide rushes look like a stroll in the park.

As of now, it is much easier to tell the AI "if you are going to attack, build some effing siege units" than "given your current resources, perhaps you should pillage shrink this city, attack and retreat cycling units." Until we have an AI with a firm grasp on combat, requiring subtle strategy will actually make the game easier.

 

[Ahriman]

See, this does not work though. Ideally, I would love for cities to be a challenge to take. The problem is the AI is dumb as rocks

How does AI weakness mean that it won't be harder for a human player to conquer the AI?

Tougher cities doesn't require any subtle strategy. It just makes war more expensive for the conqueror.

If you mean that its problematic because of how easy it can be to bait the AI into wasting its army by attacking you with insufficient force, then yeah, that requires AI fixes.
But we'll have to see how it shakes out with the AI changes and the reduction in open terrain penalty.

 

[strategynoob]

RE: the seeming scarcity of iron, I've experienced this lots with my own games, especially when playing as Russia and Rome. Awesome, I get double iron! Except there's no iron on this continent. Bummer.

Seems like another change that might help would just be changing the resource setting of "strategic balance" to be the default when starting a new game, no? It's as annoying as ever to play as an iron-dependent Civ and build your strategy around rushing to swords/catapults only to never get any nearby iron.

 

[Tabarnak]

In many multiplayer games i was stuck many times with only 2 iron or nothing with 4 cities and neighbors city-states getting all the rest. Ok for getting ressource from them by diplo or war, but i agree that iron should be revealed at bronze working instead.

You often have plenty of time to settle 3-4 cities before the discovery of iron working. I don't want to wait many turns before settling extra cities while other civs take good spots around.

 

[Soronery]

Even bronzeworking is kind of late I think. Horses you find with the first tech. It should be the same for iron.

 

[Roghar]

How can a civilization be expected to properly locate iron deposits before they’ve identified the use for the ore?? It’s one thing to see a horse and realise it could be useful, before having figured out how to domesticate, train and use them, but what plausible explanation would there be to see iron before iron working??

From a gameplay perspective, it makes it interesting. Do you settle several cities early and take your chance on what you’ll find? Do you wait for your 3rd/4th cities to iron working? Do you rush iron working so that you know where to expand? I make the call on these decisions every game, and I’m glad there is a lot of risk in what iron you end up with. Iron working was a critical technological advancement, to make it anything less in the game would be a shame.

With the changes in this patch city defence will be easier, so if you luck out you should be able to survive as you tech hard for gunpowder. If you had great militaristic expectations and you can’t find a way to get iron, well, you’ll have to adapt and look towards the next wave of troops.

 

[Buccaneer]

In the games I have played, iron was ridiculously plentiful (both on map and from CS) - standard size. I think by mid-game I was getting something like 72 iron. I think they did reduce that in one of the recent patch but I still vote for making iron (and all resources) much more scarce. It was stupid to have that much iron (and horses too).