embryodead-
Then, the help file is wrong. I actually tested it. Test it yourself if you want, you will see. Appearance ratio of 160 in an 8 player game does not give 2 resource per player, but 1,6 resource per player, that is 12.
That is pretty surprising, and it's hard to imagine, how could they be wrong, wouldn't the whole of Civ3 be unbalanced? Or was it just some guy who got the detail wrong when making the helpfile? It wasnt changed in c3c.
So I tested it, I used all the standard settings I could think of, and had Iron require no tech (plus debug mode). And from the start of an 8 player game I only counted 11 iron resources, which holds true with your theory of 12. However! I have my own twisted theory

, I believe the appearance ratio is quite different than the essential distributive property, which comes into play upon map generation. For instance, the map may start out with only 11 resources, but over the course of the game 5 more resources will appear, and later some of those (within the number of 5) will disappear.
So I tested it out again, this time with the appearance ratio set to 200 with all standard sets and debug mode on. I counted 16 resources this time. Now conceivably, if a setting of 160 supposed to be 16 resources with 8 players, then a setting of 200 there should be 20 resources in the game. And once again, we find that with only 16 resources with a setting of 200, we are still short by 4-5. (Even my math is good enough for that

) Seeing as this is the case, I dont think 16 resources, or two (2) per player (and a little extra) is so extreme. I dont see why we should lower it from 200, especially to 180. Why do we not make it 190 and call it even

?
I see no reason to give Luxurys appearance ratios... Perhaps we could give them a low disappearance probability, however? They usually come in mass, how could one disappearing be problem, it would simply reflect historically accuracy, what do you guys think?
Sorry for the slow reply, been transferring everything to the .biq before we go on. Ill post the civilopedia for the next 5 resources next time.