Is aluminum too important in this game?

[chazzycat]

Hi all,

Lately I've been getting a little frustrated when I get to the late game, because aluminum is so important and I never have enough of it to go around. There is a realism argument to be made, but I am going to focus on gameplay reasons here. Currently, all of the following require aluminum:

- Spaceship Factories
- Hydro Plants
- Air Force (jet fighter, Stealth Bomber)
- Navy (Missile Cruiser, Nuclear Sub)
- Army (Modern Armor, Gunship)
- Specialized Units (SAM, Rocket Artilltery)

I just never have enough aluminum to do what I want to do. Clearly if I'm going for the space race I'll prioritize the spaceship factories, and in that case I rarely have enough for any military at all. I'll build the factories & hydro plants and hope I blast off before anyone conquers me.

If I don't go for space, I'll have a few leftover aluminums after building the hydro plants. That leaves either an air defense or a ground defense, but rarely both. And even if I do find some aluminum for my military, it will be spent on jet fighters/stealth bombers/modern armor, because they are so powerful. I don't think I have ever built a rocket artillery or mobile SAM in this game, which is a shame because they look fun.

I also think that Oil is not emphasized enough currently. You only really need it for your Navy & tanks. Since the AI is inept at naval combat anyway, and tanks are available around the same time as mech infantry, oil becomes really undervalued. So, I think the solution to the oil/aluminum imbalance is to switch several units from requiring aluminum to oil.

Suggested Changes:

- remove aluminum requirement from Hydro Plants.
- change the following to require Oil instead:
- Jet Fighters
- Modern Armor
- Gunship
- change nuclear sub to require Uranium

Then the only units left requiring aluminum would be stealth bomber, Mobile SAM and Rocket Artillery. The choice would be "space race production vs. advanced specialized military" instead of "space race production vs. any modern military period".

Let me know what you all think.

 

[Bat-LB]

agree.

actually, oil should be needed for buildings too (actually you dont really need oil - can easily skip it)

if u have no aluminium, you got a big problem. actually all good buildings in the late game require it and the good units need it too. its the "iron of lategame". while u can try to skip iron with pikes and fast tech, aluminium isnt skipable.

make aluminium less strong and oil more powerful.

 

[Drawmeus]

Only change I really disagree with is nuclear sub - Uranium is balanced in map scripts as the nuke-and-GDR resource, and nuclear subs simply don't measure up against either of those usages.

EDIT: Also, I find the British "Aluminium" to be hysterically funny. I have no idea why. I know it's correct in British English and it's one of many words that differ slightly between the two, like grey/gray - I understand the difference. But for some reason, it cracks me up.

 

[ElWanderer]

What gets me is that aluminium smelters are often located next to hydro power plants because the process uses up so much electricity... making the hydro plants require aluminium in the game sounds like someone got that relationship backwards.

I think oil should be more important in the game than it is already. The list of suggested changes possibly devalues aluminium too much, in game terms, but it would be more realistic and emphasise the liquid, black gold.

 

[Sonereal]

I think some units should require both oil AND aluminum and mechanized infantry should require it.

 

[jjkrause84]

No imperialist wars for aluminum!



I agree....aluminum needs to be taken down a peg.

 

[blac]

I personally find I never really run out of it. I do think oil should be more important though, it really doesn't get much use. Maybe a oil plant or something to increase production

 

[Sonereal]

.....oil plants?

I don't think we need to go with that. Most oil is used for transportation so to reflect that, anything that moves on wheels should use oil. Except GDR of course.

 

[ColinTH]

To the OP - Good solutions for a late game headache.

As Bat-LB has stated "iron of lategame". City building areas are long gone by the time aluminium comes to light. Unless you are ahead on techs, you could have serious problems trying to capture some aluminium.

 

[Doctor Phibes]

I think the whole strategic resources thing is too simple in Civ5. Don't see why factories might not use oil or coal for example. (But then I'm the kind of person who wouldn't mind seeing electrickery becoming a secondary resource, so you build power stations on tiles, connect them to oil/coal/uranium and your local cities to power factories and the rest. Then you discover The Grid and distribute it, even export it. Sorry, digression, and a bit Sim City too.)

WRT to aluminium, I always have too much of the stuff, maybe we should trade It's always coal I worry about the most, I like heavy production capacity. Plus you can't build later power-ups like nuke plants unless you have a factory in the first place (which is deeply silly IMO.)

But there are all sorts of possibilities. If you have no oil, then a 'side-spur' technology, Synthetic Oil, could allow you to make it from coal, maybe at the ratio of one oil to two coal. Except, as I just remarked, I think coal is a more vital resource, turning it into oil is a waste.

EDIT: Also, I find the British "Aluminium" to be hysterically funny. I have no idea why. I know it's correct in British English and it's one of many words that differ slightly between the two, like grey/gray - I understand the difference. But for some reason, it cracks me up.

I find US 'aluminum' to be mildly amusing, especially if you say it in the right kinda Yankee accent. Anyway, not trying to start a transpondian punch-up, but the British discoverer, Humphry Davy, first called it 'alumium'. This sounded so rubbish (which it does) that he changed it later to the somewhat prettier aluminum. But -ium was becoming a standard, so it went to aluminium in most publications (not just in the UK, in the US too). Somehow, though, aluminum became dominant in the US (some people say due to a misspelled flier for an aluminium company).

It should be noted that this isn't just a UK/US thing - as of the 1990s the US (as with metric measures) is in a minority of one, aluminium is the accepted international spelling.

Personally, either would do me, as long as it were standard, it's pretty clear which one is here, though.

EDIT: Oh, meant to say that I keep thinking that Civ4's copper, which becomes perfectly irrelevant after iron in that game, should be restored, but apart from being a lame alternative to iron, it could suddenly become vital again after the advent of electricity, which means some thinking ahead from the early game to the late. I generally think that more and varied strategic resources is the way to go. Sometimes a unique unit might be possible if you had a rare combination of two of them. But this is a little Civ4...

 

[jojorah]

I dont think that civ 5 is perfect by any means. But if they where to make aluminium needed for less things then another recuarce woulkd become overpowered like oil. The only sure way to solve this is to delete some units but that would be "dumbing the game down". So it makes since to have alumnium as a recuarce, or if not try to get another one

 

[Atwork]

Not too important -- just too scarce.

In my game there's only one aluminum resource on my continent and it's located in one of my best friend's borders......desperately needing aluminum, I conquered an island for 7 aluminum.....I still need more as I am in an intense cold war & military build up with a neighbor, but my goal is to win by space race. So, I guess my only real option is prepare for future wars for aluminum.

 

[Magic_gorter]

Moderator Action: Moved thread

 

[CYZ]

I think, for realism and balance reasons:

a) make aluminium much more common. Every empire should have a good chance of having some, and there should always be some lucky nations with enough to trade away. Also make all late modern units require aluminium.

b) make oil required for tanks and modern armor (which need a boost), perhaps also for battleship.

This way aluminium becomes a resource you will certainly need but are not very likely to run short off. Whereas oil becomes what you will definitly need to give your army the edge that tips a war in your favor. And fighting a big war over an oil reserve of four or six is not unreasonable at all.

 

[Deggial]

If the limitation of aluminium makes the game harder - good!

Make choices! Why do you want to eliminate one of the few really hard decissions (OK, not exactly *you* did say that CiV is to easy. But there are enough people to state this) and get rid of the "headache"? It makes the game interesting!
Manage to deal with your share in aluminiom or (as Atwork stated): Fight a war to gain it!

Maybe tanks need a buff so they can withstand modern armor a little bit better, if they have the superiority.
Who says, moderan armies *must* be composed only with he most modern equipment? Have a mix! Let there be just a few "elite forces" you have to use wisely and a rest of "oldefashioned standard forces" which might be replaceable.

My personal point of view is: limitations are fun!

Therefore I agree: Make more units (and buildings?) use oil to make it more important!

 

[Camikaze]

I can't say I've ever really had many issues with access to aluminium. You need it for things, but it usually seems to be fairly accessible. I would say the solution if such a problem does exist is to increase it's occurrence on the map, rather than to worry about readjusting what it's needed for.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Given, it's tricky balance issue.

Just the name "Strategic" resources implies a form of gameplay importance. While it makes sense to provide such stuff as features, it must certainly provide a linear pattern towards Victory condition_S.

As seen by the number of Mods attempting to re-balance the entire TUBW concepts.

Even i got caught in the "Fine-tuning" urge (See Terraforming below, that thread also contains most of my reasoning). Where others would prefer a few adjustments here & there, we should all be aware that there is an extremely fragile principle at stake; context.

If you raise the bar for Resources, you must also *ADD* new features that measure up to factors introduced. Thus why Wood, Stone, Salt, Copper, Sulfur, RareEarths & Silicon (etc) were being considered but with some kind of decimals distribution.

Dozens of different threads are now flooding Ideas&Suggestions with the exact same premise.
Chaos will possibly never convince devs to tackle a new "system"... unless they pick & choose what *THEY* think should be done.

To me, though -- there are some irrational "Disconnects" from reality which need a complete overhaul of numerous concepts. Least of many, invisible Oil that propels a Destroyer and a Frigate that floats without wood!

So, it's not that Aluminum has a priority feel, it's that something else doesn't or is simply absent from gameplay. Coal for factories comes to mind.

Trick is to make it all efficient.

 

[Sonereal]

Finding aluminium hasn't been a problem for me. The problem is that for some reason, my stealth bomber runs on the stuff instead of oil or uranium. Err, what?

 

[chazzycat]

I played a couple of games over the weekend, one where I had bountiful amounts of aluminum and finally got to use the late military units. Then the 2nd one, there was 1 deposit on the entire map. Go figure.

I think the realism argument is definitely important here too. I mean, helicopters & tanks running on aluminum? really? C'mon. All I use oil for is battleships.

 

[pirsq]

I think aluminium is not supposed to be actual aluminium, but a figurative representation of modern ultralight materials. This way, it makes sense for modern aircraft and spaceship factories to require it.

Hydro plants, on the other hand, are kind of silly - they actually predate aluminium casting! It's also better strategically for them not to require aluminium, as a benefit for settling on a river.

Modern armour too doesn't really fit - the armour component is mostly ceramic-based. Again, strategically, it's better for oil to remain useful in the modern era, giving a third relevant strategic resource, rather than it being only about aluminium and uranium.

So we could have a split where aluminium = airstrike capabilities and spaceship factories, oil = tanks and battleships, uranium = nukes/robots and power plants. This seems to strike a better balance.