My minor civ resources idea evolved out of my boredom. After playing a few games of Civ III, I found that no matter which civilization I chose to play, the game always seemed to unfold in basically the same way. I built the same city improvements and the same wonders. I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day doomed to repeat the same experience over and over. But because I was addicted to the game, I couldnt quit, no matter how frustrated I was. So, like in Groundhog Day, I began to experiment to lessen the tedium. One game I would play as a warmonger; the next game I would play so passively that I made Gandhi look like a bully. One game I would expand until I couldnt build any more cities; the next game I would limit myself to 10 cities. While playing different styles may have been a nice exercise in discipline, it was not entirely satisfying because all of those different ways of playing the game just were not me.
In Civ III, everything is basically predetermined depending upon what civilization you choose you know what your bonus attributes are and what your unique unit will be. And you know what bonus attributes and unique units each civilization that you meet has. Every civilization follows the same tech tree and builds the same improvements and wonders. In vanilla Civ III, you know your strengths and weaknesses and you basically know what strategy you will use before you even build your first city. You know where all the different resources are as you explore your surroundings and, early on in the game, you start preparing for when you discover iron working or horseback riding. I wanted more variety, more randomness, more uncertainty in short, I wanted to create a game that did not inevitably follow a single script from start to finish. I wanted to set up my game where circumstances outside of my control, and beyond my ability to anticipate, would force me to adjust my strategy at various points in the game.
I tried tweaking the tech tree, but there is only so much diversity you can gain through altering the tech tree alone. I then started adding numerous strategic resources clay, stone, limestone, marble, timber and making them a requirement to construct various buildings, which added some more diversity and challenge. But there were still two aspects of the game that really bothered me. First, in Civ III games, every civilization still followed the same tech tree and built the same improvements and wonders. Second, in Civ III there is no natural progression over time as there is in the real world in Civ III, you discover a certain technology and BANG, you can build the Pyramids, or Stonehenge, or the Great Wall. The Egyptians didnt just wake up one morning and build the Great Pyramid at Giza. The Great Pyramid is the culmination of hundreds of years of experimentation and increasingly sophisticated engineering principles and building techniques. The tradition of pyramid construction began with building a mastaba covering the royal tomb. Later, several stacked mastabas were used. The Egyptians then graduated to step pyramids and, finally, to the style of pyramids like those at Giza.
It was Ukas slave trade center that first gave me the idea that resources did not have to be confined to the traditional categories set out in Civ III. After seeing Ukas slave trade center improvement, I remembered the old Dilbert cartoon where the boss comes out and tells all his workers, you people are our most important asset of course, later the employees find out that they only came in eighth, behind such "important" things as staples, pens, and toilet paper. I started experimenting with minor civs as resources to see if I could add some more variety to the game and to fill in the gaps that vanilla Civ III has missed. For instance, I created a resource that allowed a colony port to be constructed only if the resource is within the city radius and the city is on the coast. The colony port builds a colony ship every 20 turns. The colony ship has the capability of building a city on a coastal tile. I have four luxury resources that appear only on coastal tiles. A second resource allows the construction of a merchant ship, again only if the resource is within the city radius and the city is on the coast. The merchant ship is the only way that a civilization can gain access to the coastal luxury resources until much later in the game. I created minor civ resources that gave me the opportunity to add a number of different flavor units, depending upon which particular resource your civ came in contact with.
I have restructured the tech tree so that it allows for basic advances. My game starts at 10000 B.C., with each civilization having the same generic clan lodge. All of the diversity in my game is generated through which building resources a civilization has acquired and which minor civs a civilization comes into contact with during a game. For instance, progressing along the tech tree will give a civilization the capability to build a Pyramid, but the architectural style of the Pyramid, the building materials used to construct the Pyramid, and the bonus received for building the Pyramid all depend entirely upon what particular building resources a civilization has acquired and which minor civs a civilization has acquired.
I have been looking over the minor civ thread today (except for when the Cowboys played). All I can tell everyone is that the use of minor civ resources can be as limited or as intricate and complex as you wish to make it. I like long, complex, strategic games. I have set my game for 900 turns, and the game goes from 10000 B.C. to 1500 A.D. And my civs are a little slow, because my game ends before the discovery of gunpowder. No cheap blitzkrieg wins with muskets. I do not like the way the vanilla Civ III game leads to the mad proliferation of cities, and I also do not like the way the vanilla Civ III game encourages and rewards building a million cities about two tiles apart. I liked the way Kal Els Double Your Pleasure mod slowed down the growth of civs so I have basically set up my game so that for the first 5000 years (200 turns) there is very little growth in my game.
After some experimentation, I have found what I think is a fairly balanced game structure. Each population point uses 3 foods, and the AI settlers cost 4 population points and cost 70 shields. Each AI civilization gets two settlers at the start. I get one. My testing showed that I was way more efficient in using the various food resources that help to set up settler cities than was the AI. Therefore, whichever civilization I play, I create a separate settler just for my civilization that costs 6 population points and 70 shields. With the high population requirement, and the emphasis on strategic resources, there is not a mad dash to build cities indiscriminately. Even the AI seems to be more particular and chooses building sites near resources rather than just building cities three tiles apart. And I have to be extremely choosy about where I build. I think the growth of the civilizations is much more realistic, with cities tending to be built around good food sources or other important resources. I usually have 4-6 cities built by 5000 B.C. Non-agricultural AI civs usually have 3-6 cities and agricultural civs have between 4-8 cities. Generally, the cities are not bunched together, but are scattered somewhat depending upon the resources. In addition, all of my units cost 1 population point. My version of Civ III may be about as exciting as watching paint dry, but it is the way I like to play the game.
There was some discussion in the thread about what names to give the minor civs. I currently have 50 minor civs in my game 10 civs each of the red, yellow, black, white, and brown races. I am not concerned so much about pristine historical accuracy as I am about enjoying the game. I did not want to use all of the barbarian civs, so I started browsing through the internet looking for inspiration. I found a number of interesting ancient cultures or city states that did not survive through time. They caught my attention, however, and I created a number of what if minor civs. I set out a few of those below:
Qadan culture along the Nile. Between 13000 B.C. and 10000 B.C., had a number of settlements from the Second Cataract of the Nile to Tushka. This culture practiced ritual burial and was either a warrior culture or the victim of a warrior culture (or maybe both) 40 percent of the people buried in the Qadan main cemetery died from wounds due to thrown projectiles; spears, darts, and arrows.
Caral site in Peru. Perhaps the oldest urban center in the Americas. The 150-acre complex of pyramids, plazas, and residential buildings was a thriving metropolis nearly 5,000 years ago. The people grew cotton and coca plants. They traded cotton netting to fishermen on the Peruvian coast for fish and they kept the cocaine for themselves, inhaling the drug from bone inhalers.
The first settlers of the Maltese Islands around 5200 B.C. The people built 50 temples and two underground burial shrines on islands that are one-half the size of the city of London. The megalithic temples were built of massive limestone blocks, some weighing up to 50 tons; the temples had trilithon entrances. These people were the first Neolithic culture to erect freestanding temples and monuments. The oldest temple, TaHagrat, is over 5,600 years old and is the oldest freestanding temple in the world. It was built more than 1,000 years before the Pyramids.
Ban Chiang site in Northeastern Thailand. Developed independently of the Chinese and Indian cultures. Cultivated rice, domesticated water buffalo, and developed a unique and highly colorful glazed pottery. Smelted copper and tin and discovered how to make and use bronze, and then iron, for jewelry, farming implements, axes, spears, and arrows. An egalitarian culture with no ruling class.
Indus River Valley culture. Traded with Mesopotamia, southern India, Afghanistan, and Persia for gold, silver, copper, and turquoise. Harappa and the city of Mohenjo-Daro were the greatest achievements of the Indus valley civilization. These cities are well known for their impressive, organized and regular layout. Over one hundred other towns and villages also existed in this region. Five thousand years ago, Mohenjo Daro, Harrappa, and other cities had paved streets with a grid pattern similar to US cities today, indoor showers and toilets that were flushed, a sewer system that ran under the streets with "manholes" for inspections. They had invented the wheel, used bricks that were fired in kilns, plus pot-ery and jewelry works.
haha 
When I try to "upload" my screenshot in the "manage attachments" box, I get an error message that says the limit for my filetype is 500.0 KB and that my file is too large (1.60 MB). 
(I always wondered where all of the smiley faces came from).
