Let's make iron relevant again

[smallfish]

Which, unless you use a mod that allows more than 2 levelups from fighting barbarians, isn't likely to happen for your sword units until long after their early city-conquering adventures, in my experience. The trick, is getting those 5 levelups into them before they've already been converted to musketmen (or killed).

Yes you can make it happen without mods. You'll need to keep rotating them in and out of the frontlines, for one

 

[kaspergm]

Agreed that there is a lot of interesting discussion in this thread. Some points I agree with are:

1) Reveal Iron with Bronze Working (or even Mining). I do this already in a mod I play, and this is great, because it allows you to prioritize either going for IW and many melee units (if you have Iron around) or skipping that line completely. IW might be only 3rd tech, but notice tat beaker-cost of IW is higher than other 3rd-tier techs so you actually need the same amount of total beakers to research IW and Horseback Riding.

2) Giving Swordsmen and Longswordsmen a promotion against melee units would be a good way to make them useful. That way Pikemen would be good against Mounted units, Mounted units are good against Archery units (because of their mobility), Archery units are good against Melee units, and Melee units are good against Pikemen. There is currently no Promotion giving a bonus against melee, I'll look into whether one can mod such a bonus.

3) Giving Archery units a penalty against cities would make sense. This will make CB rushes less of an option and thereby also make Siege weapons more useful (which suffer at the moment). I currently play with a mod that give all Siege weapons Cover I promotion which also helps a lot in securing their survivability against cities (an otherwise big issue in my book).

4) Some late-game use of Iron would be nice. I've changed the requirement for Ironclads from Coal to Iron myself becase a) I would never waste (ever scarce) Coal on an Ironclad, and b) it is an IRONclad, duh? This goes some way in solving the problem. Iron as prerequisite for Cannons might be bad for balance. Iron as prerequisite for Eifel Tower and CN Tower is a bad idea, because these are one-off buildings - if you have Iron, it's not going to have any impact that you use one on these buildings, whereas if you don't have Iron, ir gives you an unfair disadvantage of being cut off from these wonders (and if you buy one for 30 turns, what's going to happen when that deal runs out?).

I would have liked some sort of more flexible mechanism for Factories, i.e. they could consume either Iron or Coal or Oil Aluminum or a combination of these and they production bonus should be greater the more resources you put into them. I also think Factories should provide +1 production on any adjacent Coal, Iron, Oil and Aluminum. I guess as an alternative one could add some more industrial buildings (there is already a Coalplant icon, and one could add an Ironwork (changing the name of the national wonder to something else)).

I do agree that strategic resources - all of them - are a very find balance to master, because you don't want them to be useless, but having them be the difference between win and loss makes the game too random. Aluminum was a good example of this, but I also think that they showed a good solution for this by adding the Recycling centre. By the same means, if one makes Iron more important, there should be special buildings that produce small amounts of Iron to at least cover most basic needs.

Someone mentioned that you could get Iron from City States, but the current resource-sustaining mechanism makes this an unviable option, because if you lose allience with that CS, you units will no longer work. It would have been better in that regard with a accumulate-and-consume mechanism, i.e. you get a certain amount of Iron each turn that you have access to the mine, and when you build the Swordsman you consume an amount of Iron which is then gone for good. I would have favored that for several reasons, but alas, that's not how it works (I also hate how you can use your Uranium for a nuke, drop the nuke, and then use the same Uranium for a new nuke - that doesn't make sense).

 

[DrunkenRine]

well you simply forgot to mention every single ship since ironclad should require iron... it even is mention in the name of the darned ship... or am i wrong here. does the ironclad require iron or coal? it should imo require both, as well as destroyer, battle ship, submarine and carrier should require iron.
the swords of cavalry also seem to be made of wood in this game, as well as armor of knights, lances of lancers and so on.
imo the resource system really needs to be tweaked a lot in these terms. more quantity and spread of iron resources and more units who need iron to be build, maybe along with lower power, iron less alternatives, but thats not necessary if you at least make iron more frequently appear on the map.
the thing shouldnt be wether a player has iron, but rather how much iron he has. every player should find at least some iron around him imo (which also reflects the real world actually, because iron is not at all a rare metal, copper is much more rare than iron, and the dawn of the iron age relieved a lot of the pressure that formerly peoples felt to get to copper or bronze metals).
then when it comes to war, the larger nations would have more iron to build more troops which use the metal, while smaller, or tall going empires would be needing to trade some of their wealth against iron resources from their friends, which would be the obvious benefit of the peacekeeping, tall, trade-nation over the wide, warmongering nation who just gets the resources by raw force.
much more flavor at the cost of the balancing of a few numbers in my humble opinion.

 

[iamdanno]

I would like to see modern ships and regular tanks require steel, which is provided by factories, if you have iron and coal (or oil). I would also like to see more resource-dependent (and resource-producing) buildings.

How about a building that turns wheat into extra food above and beyond what a farm provides? Maybe lumbermills and improved forest tiles are required to have the ability to build wooden ships? There could be a lot more synergy between resources/buildings/units IMO.

 

[budweiser]

If you started a game a Rome today, would you bother seeking iron and using Legions, or would go go cbow NC?

 

[ahawk]

The main issues with iron in G&K are:

1) some units no longer require it
2) some units that still require it got nerfed
3) Iron appears later than in vanilla
4) composite bows, a new unit, allow a good ranged defense/offensive without horses (chariot archers, in vanilla, could fill the role CBs fill in G&K, limited by # of horses you found) until crossbows
5) trading posts got moved back in the tech tree, which inhibits the ability to upgrade warriors or get money to start saving to rush-buy swords and longswords as soon as they become available (not a huge issue for most civs, but especially a problem for Japan, who used to be able to quickly pop out several samurai and start rocking and rolling)

Moreover,
On Standard Paced games, I rarely build enough warriors to really need iron for upgrading them (often, I only have the starting warrior unless the civ has a warrior UU).
On Epic, I may have a couple extra warriors, but again, not a huge need to upgrade them
On Marathon, I generally prefer to find Iron and upgrade what is often a reasonable number of warriors (~5 usually)

Until frigates, as others have said, Iron now usually takes a back seat. Only on Marathon games, where I can't very quickly start building spears, do I build warriors in enough numbers to serve as meat shields for my archers. And the need to upgrade is even higher just in general on Marathon, as experience is far more useful and not as easy to come by.

Other than on Marathon, only as Japan or Denmark do I really prioritize Iron (and Denmark only on Epic or Marathon, since the extra movement bonus doesn't carry over).

Tl;DR:

There are many issues with Iron, to the point of Iron being best skipped in many situations, but on Marathon Iron is still a smaller but good-to-have bonus.

 

[budweiser]

I am going to conduct a test on empereor where I pretned I am Rome, except I will be a random civ, and I will go for an iron rush to see what happens. Emperor because i dont feel like dealing with immortal.

Edit: Oh man! First roll was skilldorado turn 2. LOL!

Second attempt: India. Was able to capture the nearest cap with just my elephants. Iron not needed.

 

[fufie]

The simplest i saw was to make iron visible (but not exploitable) at bronze working. That way one could plan more easily second or third city to grab some iron hex.

Made a tiny mod for this, and after playtesting I found that I liked the earlier strategic choice, and it actually made me get bronze working earlier than usual Uploaded it to steam in case others might find a use for it. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=130580730

 

[kirbdog]

Made a tiny mod for this, and after playtesting I found that I liked the earlier strategic choice, and it actually made me get bronze working earlier than usual Uploaded it to steam in case others might find a use for it. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=130580730

This is how the game should be. Thanks.

 

[steveg700]

I'd be tickled pink if swordsmen were simply as strong as a pikeman. That alone would keep them from being kicked to the curb in favor of guy-with-a-stick.

It would be nice if the iron branch simply complimented a military civ better than it does. Barracks aren't an early build priority for any self-respecting warmonger. That's what barbarians are for!

 

[Bechhold]

I like that. Then we can just smelt horses into iron .

If you're landlocked that is fine simply improve railways (+1 movement), or simply trade it for another incentive with another Civilization. There are many gameplay opportunities if Firaxis would just think outside the box.

 

[nokmirt]

At least having many units not require iron takes care of the issue of the map having a shortage of it. If they want to balance things out so iron becomes more useful, they could add buildings that make extra iron (a smelter for instance), and a production building for siege engines and cannons. One could be a siege workshop, and later a cannon foundry. The same idea could be applied to steel production as well.

 

[steveg700]

At least having many units not require iron takes care of the issue of the map having a shortage of it. If they want to balance things out so iron becomes more useful, they could add buildings that make extra iron (a smelter for instance), and a production building for siege engines and cannons. One could be a siege workshop, and later a cannon foundry. The same idea could be applied to steel production as well.

Well, the point of strategic resources is not for them to be abundant to the point of ubiquity. Making something ubiquitous does increase its value. Such misguided logic led us to where we are now, with horse and iron units thoroughly nerfed, so people don't feel bad for not having them, and bogus recycling centers so everyone can feel entitled to 15 aluminum no matter what.

Rather, they're supposed to be in key locations that promote the exploration and exploitation part of the game that has been all but discarded in the current mindset of diligently adhering to the four-city tradition formula.

 

[nokmirt]

Well, the point of strategic resources is not for them to be abundant to the point of ubiquity. Making something ubiquitous does increase its value. Such misguided logic led us to where we are now, with horse and iron units thoroughly nerfed, so people don't feel bad for not having them, and bogus recycling centers so everyone can feel entitled to 15 aluminum no matter what.

Rather, they're supposed to be in key locations that promote the exploration and exploitation part of the game that has been all but discarded in the current mindset of diligently adhering to the four-city tradition formula.

I am not saying they should be. This is not about making resources more abundant. This is about the need to process those resources through investment. Investment on producing iron to forge and build weapons that require it. This decision to spend money to produce weapons will affect your economy. So, it is not like we are using the iron for free. You have to make it usable and produce it in decent quantities to feed a large war machine. Keep in mind, swords don't just spring up out of the ground my friend.

Also, recyclying centers are not bogus. In the late game generally your going to have tons of everything anyway, why not more aluminum. I like to have large fleets and armies. The game would be hugely boring without them.

 

[kaspergm]

Well, the point of strategic resources is not for them to be abundant to the point of ubiquity. Making something ubiquitous does increase its value. Such misguided logic led us to where we are now, with horse and iron units thoroughly nerfed, so people don't feel bad for not having them, and bogus recycling centers so everyone can feel entitled to 15 aluminum no matter what.

Rather, they're supposed to be in key locations that promote the exploration and exploitation part of the game that has been all but discarded in the current mindset of diligently adhering to the four-city tradition formula.

I agree with this to an extent. However, if you go by this philosophy, you also need to make Iron visible very early so you can actually make a go for it in your settling phase. Unlocking Iron already with Mining would make it comparable to Horses (that unlock with Animal Husbandry, even though the first real cavalry unit comes two tech levels later, at Horseback Riding).

However, I think a good compromise would be to make a little bit of Iron common but a lot of Iron rare. If everybody have access to, say, 2 Iron on normal settings, you can make Iron units more powerful, because this way everybody will be able to at least build a couple of them to withstand an assault - whereas you will need to actively claim larger amounts if you want to have a larger amount of units required for instance for an offensive force. The game even has a mechanic that would favor this in the map creation, because it divides the map into regions (where the players are) and border regions between the player regions (which is typically where mountains and city states are placed). If small stacks of Iron are placed within the regions with large stacks appearing in the border regions, you would encourage a game style where you'll need to expand more agressively towards neighboring regions (thereby compromising diplomatic relations) in order to secure large amounts of strategic resources. I don't think the idea of making the Ironworks (duh) provide a small amount of Iron is a bad idea either, this will work as a safeguard for very narrow and tall / OCC empires to secure them at least a bit of Iron. Iron Works also come fairly late in the Iron-using age, so this will not be a huge bias to balance.

With regards to the Recycling Centers, I don't agree with your view of them. Recycling Centers come very late, and since Aluminum is now required for science victories, it is fair to have a certain back-up here. Furthermore, Aluminum is uncovered late, which means you generally can't settle for it. In vanilla, Aluminum was very scarce, frequently giving you starting locations with no Aluminum at all, which was quite frustrating and (imo.) bad for gameplay. Of course one can argue that G&K seemed to make both Aluminum more frequent and added recycling centers, which might result in Aluminum being overabundant, but I don't really feel that is the case.

 

[Irkalla]

there should be special buildings that produce small amounts of Iron

There already is a building that does that, it's called "another civilization's state room."

Why does everyone always forget about diplomacy?

 

[kaspergm]

There already is a building that does that, it's called "another civilization's state room."

Why does everyone always forget about diplomacy?

No, diplomacy is not a viable option imo. It should be, but isn't because of the current game mechanics. If you get Iron from another player (or city state), if you lose relationship with that player (or city state) and end up without Iron, not only will it make it impossible for you to build new Iron-units (which is fine, gameplay wise), it'll also render your existing ones useless (which is bad for gameplay, because this means getting Iron through diplomacy is a very risky gamble).

 

[steveg700]

Also, recyclying centers are not bogus. In the late game generally your going to have tons of everything anyway, why not more aluminum. I like to have large fleets and armies. The game would be hugely boring without them.

It's not a big enough deal to warrant its own rant, but recycling centers are incredibly obnoxious from a game design POV, for the very reasons I stated. I like having lots of units too, but if aluminum is supposed to be abundant to the point of ubiquity, then remove it as a resource.

Come to think of it, aluminum actually is highly abundant. A third of the earth's crust, or somesuch.

I agree with this to an extent. However, if you go by this philosophy, you also need to make Iron visible very early so you can actually make a go for it in your settling phase. Unlocking Iron already with Mining would make it comparable to Horses (that unlock with Animal Husbandry, even though the first real cavalry unit comes two tech levels later, at Horseback Riding).

This is absolutely correct. I'm not even saying I agree with it. it's just plain right.

Part of the issue is that the revelation doesn't just inform you of its presence. It also grants the production bonus and allows you to build mines on it, just as revealing a horse tile nets you a hammer and a pasture well before you can make any horsemen. I guess they don't want you to be able to do that with iron until you actually have iron working, basically for verisimilitude reasons. Personally, I could get over that.

However, I think a good compromise would be to make a little bit of Iron common but a lot of Iron rare. If everybody have access to, say, 2 Iron on normal settings, you can make Iron units more powerful, because this way everybody will be able to at least build a couple of them to withstand an assault - whereas you will need to actively claim larger amounts if you want to have a larger amount of units required for instance for an offensive force.

Civ V leans towards smaller armies anyway, so the question becomes, how much do you need? Personally, if I got a 6 spot, I'm good.

I'd like to see more synergies between the Honor sopol and the mining/bronze/iron branch myself, because they both miss something I think they could each provide. If you go look in the Ideas & Suggestions, I tossed some suggestions out.

 

[fufie]

Part of the issue is that the revelation doesn't just inform you of its presence. It also grants the production bonus and allows you to build mines on it, just as revealing a horse tile nets you a hammer and a pasture well before you can make any horsemen. I guess they don't you to be able to do that with iron until you actually have iron working, basically for verisimilitude reasons. Personally, I could get over that.

With the tiny mod I uploaded the other day, the revelation of iron should be different from the actual construction of mines/utilization of the iron. This seems to be a mechanism that applies to most resources, ie revelation and improving a resource are different aspects.

Adding the possibility of creating mines to haul the iron is out is possible, but I didn't want to adjust balance too much. Just the knowedge of where iron can be found is quite powerful by itself.

 

[steveg700]

With the tiny mod I uploaded the other day, the revelation of iron should be different from the actual construction of mines/utilization of the iron. This seems to be a mechanism that applies to most resources, ie revelation and improving a resource are different aspects.

Adding the possibility of creating mines to haul the iron is out is possible, but I didn't want to adjust balance too much. Just the knowedge of where iron can be found is quite powerful by itself.

Thing is, it ought to be fine if revealing iron allows you to work it like any other resource. It's the tech three that's out-of-whack. Assyrians were equipping armies with iron way back in the DC. And forges and steel are certainly not medieval inventions.