More colonial resources and general map changes

[Leoreth]

I was considering to add Coffee, Tobacco and Tea as additional resources for a long time, and now have finally settled on doing it. My main concern was that this would produce excess happiness, but considering that a lot of civs have been added, several resources that were abundant in RFC vanilla have become quite scarce.

I took the opportunity to fiddle with certain other aspects of the map as well. The screenshots are just proposals and I'd like to discuss the changes before I'm actually making them.

By the way, my proposed changes are in [brackets]. Markers without brackets are resources that spawn during the course of the game already. I haven't added a year to all resources that would spawn later, but it should be pretty obvious which ones these are (coffee in the Americas, for example).

Since spices often represent tea and tobacco currently (at least that's my impression considering their presence on Java, Cuba and SE Asia), they've become a little rarer, but that's no problem in my opinion. I'd need to take a closer look at the Dutch UHV to see if it still works.

Coffee should become available with Guilds or a similar tech, since it wasn't cultivated in antiquity. Tobacco and Tea are calendar resources. All of them give +1 happiness, but have no building associated with them; they'd probably need to be covered by the Trading Company corporation, though.

My changes:

Spoiler :

Brazil and Argentina. Other than adding Coffee and Tobacco there, I've rearranged and added some additional resources to favor Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo and Buenos Aires over Montevideo (motivated by this thread, by the way). Brazil could have even more sugar, though.

Spoiler :

Colombia and the Caribbean. Cuba now has coffee, there are also some in Colombia which should make the region more interesting. I was also thinking if the Caribbean islands could be enlarged a little, not sure about that, though.

Spoiler :

US East Coast - I've added Tobacco to Virginia and Kentucky. I've also noticed that Rhye spawns a cow near Jacksonville and immediately overwrites it with cotton, maybe that cow should be moved elsewhere?

Spoiler :

Hawaii. Needs to be opened for settlement. Sugar and fruit are its main agricultural products so it gets that, the fish is replaced with whale so that it doesn't grow too much (and Hawaii is actually used for whaling).

Spoiler :

India gets tea, fish spawns later to allow Mumbai to grow, Ceylon gets spices and clams to be more attractive. Don't know if the additional spices are necessary (intended to make up for the lost ones in Bengal, they're however already compensated by Ceylon's).

Spoiler :

South East Asia. Spices there have been replaced by tea, and China got an additional one.

Spoiler :

Indonesia. Coffee instead of sugar on Java. I thought some stone would help them construct the Borobudur more often.

Spoiler :

US West Coast. I'm including it here mainly to start a discussion about it, because cities like Los Angeles definitely need more to make them useful.

Spoiler :

Ethiopia and Yemen. The old world origins of coffee.

Edit: This is my 6666th post

 

[merijn_v1]

The Dutch UHV could be changed to something like this if neccesary:
Control X (10-15?) colonial resources in 1775 AD. (In any combination, with at least 1 of each type)

Colonial resources are:
Spices
Tea
Coffee
Tobacco
Banana?
Cotton??

 

[spartanlegend]

Cuba really should have Sugar as it was the corner-stone of their economy throughout the colonial era and into the 20th century. They didn't have anything else to export.

 

[Mef]

My comments:

1 Please change the La Plata river and its tributaries. Something like this would be more realistic.

2 Why Buenos Aires over Montevideo? I believe it should be encouraged that both are built, BA on the tile south of the river and Montevideo on the grass tile without access to a river. Maybe move the fish so it can only be reached by Montevideo?

3 If you want to make Colombia more interesting, you should think about removing the jungle from Bogota (the left one of the two new Coffee tiles), putting the coffee on a neighboring tile and adding one more food resource for the city (maybe move the corn in the west up?). After all, Bogota is really populous.

4 If you want move the overwritten cow, Los Angeles could use some food...

5 No tea in Darjeeling? What! Two tea resources in Bengal wouldn't be wrong.
Spieces in Ceylon is an obvious choice, I'd rearrange the other spices like this.

6 Concerning China, I think it would be wise to move the rice and deer in the middle down one tile so they are out of Luoyang's reach. The new tea would have to be moved.

7 Java: maybe remove the mountain to enable settling Jakarta?

8 Los Angeles: move the second fish to within its reach?

9 Something that has bugged me for a long time is that Oman doesn't have any incense. They deserve it and it would help Portugal's Muscat. Maybe move the Incense from Yemen there?

 

[Fresol]

One off-topic question: why does rice yield 1 less food than corn and wheat?

 

[Leoreth]

2 Why Buenos Aires over Montevideo? I believe it should be encouraged that both are built, BA on the tile south of the river and Montevideo on the grass tile without access to a river. Maybe move the fish so it can only be reached by Montevideo?

Well, Buenos Aires has almost the population of all of Uruguay. Usually both are built and I don't want to change that, however, currently Montevideo is usually the largest city in the area.

3 If you want to make Colombia more interesting, you should think about removing the jungle from Bogota (the left one of the two new Coffee tiles), putting the coffee on a neighboring tile and adding one more food resource for the city (maybe move the corn in the west up?). After all, Bogota is really populous.

Sounds good. I need to make the region more habitable for other reasons anyway

4 If you want move the overwritten cow, Los Angeles could use some food...

I wouldn't want to move it so far ...

5 No tea in Darjeeling? What! Two tea resources in Bengal wouldn't be wrong.
Spieces in Ceylon is an obvious choice, I'd rearrange the other spices like this.

The tea in Bengal is meant to be Darjeeling tea. Any particular reasons for your proposed distribution of spices?

6 Concerning China, I think it would be wise to move the rice and deer in the middle down one tile so they are out of Luoyang's reach. The new tea would have to be moved.

Problem is, I don't want to encourage cities west of Guangzhou even further.

7 Java: maybe remove the mountain to enable settling Jakarta?

Jakarta is the current sugar tile.

9 Something that has bugged me for a long time is that Oman doesn't have any incense. They deserve it and it would help Portugal's Muscat. Maybe move the Incense from Yemen there?

Masqat needs some, however, the Yemenite incense is supposed to be part of the current Ethiopian UHV.

One off-topic question: why does rice yield 1 less food than corn and wheat?

No idea, I think Firaxis wanted some difference between the cereals.

 

[Mef]

The tea in Bengal is meant to be Darjeeling tea. Any particular reasons for your proposed distribution of spices?

The old spices spot in North Bengal would a better representation of Darjeeling than the southern current one, wouldn't you agree? (Edit: I remembered that incorrectly, initially there were bananas in the tile i'm talking about)

I guess my proposal for the spices in southern India would only make sense if Goa were to be added instead of Vijayanagara. The South West coast is the wettest region in India and has a long tradition of spice (esp. cinnamon) trade.

Problem is, I don't want to encourage cities west of Guangzhou even further.

The only issue would be the rice, it could also be moved to the tile west of the stone.

Jakarta is the current sugar tile.

I guess that's also appropriate, but with the stone on the hill Java has resources on every tile, so opening up a new tile for a city makes sense to me, especially if that city is one of the largest in the World today.
The fish would have to be moved obviously, the Eastern resources can be worked by Makassar.

 

[srpt]

I don't know if anyone cares but the map's portrayal of Canada in general and western Canada in particular is not good. the tundra south of hudson bay should be marsh and there should be no marsh and at least 1 wheat in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. also the westernmost lake shouldn't be there. in the game Engalnd usually settles that annoying York Factory, which wasn't even a town, accessing it from the Hudson bay. to this day there isn't a settlement on hudson bay over 5,000 people probably. here is a picture of what the terrain could look like, with the major city sites that could be encouraged for a more realistic Canada (and also a picture of York Factory in 1925, just for laughs, and sorry I couldn't really get the marsh to look right but the whole southern part of hudson bay should be impassable):

 

[stemcnally2000]

Rice isn't as nutritionally valuable as other grains, you need to eat much more rice than say wheat, just to consume the same amount of calories. One less food yield makes sense

 

[IrishDragon]

For LA, you could remove some of the mountains and replace with hills, give them oil if it doesn't unbalance things too much, give them another food source around the start of the 20th century, when the population really began to grow (California went form ~1.5 million people in 1900 to nearly 40 million today.)

 

[Mef]

Since we're already talking about resources in colonies: Currently, Belém (on the river in northern Brazil) is one of the best city spots in South America. It gets two spices, banana, sugar and either horse or aluminum. As soon as you can clear the jungle, the city goes insane.
While it was one of the areas where Portugal settled, it has never been a massive city like currently in the game and has clearly been inferior to southern Brazil.
I propose moving one spices north to Dutch Guiana and one east to Recife, which was conquered by the Dutch. Good synergies with the UHV!
Oh and of course, sugar production was the big thing in Recife, so their bananas could be changed to sugar...

 

[Fresol]

Rice isn't as nutritionally valuable as other grains, you need to eat much more rice than say wheat, just to consume the same amount of calories. One less food yield makes sense

I see. I guess rice does not contain as much nutrition, but it does provide some good energy. I was just wondering because like I eat rice everyday, it doesn't seem like they are in short supply

 

[civ_king]

I see. I guess rice does not contain as much nutrition, but it does provide some good energy. I was just wondering because like I eat rice everyday, it doesn't seem like they are in short supply

It's not like rice has historically fed India and China amirite?

 

[Leoreth]

Since we're already talking about resources in colonies: Currently, Belém (on the river in northern Brazil) is one of the best city spots in South America. It gets two spices, banana, sugar and either horse or aluminum. As soon as you can clear the jungle, the city goes insane.
While it was one of the areas where Portugal settled, it has never been a massive city like currently in the game and has clearly been inferior to southern Brazil.
I propose moving one spices north to Dutch Guiana and one east to Recife, which was conquered by the Dutch. Good synergies with the UHV!
Oh and of course, sugar production was the big thing in Recife, so their bananas could be changed to sugar...

Good ideas. Brazil needs more sugar anyway, so I can easily move the bananas where the food is actually needed.

 

[killerkebab]

Leoreth: In the first picture (the one of Brazil) why move the coal one tile West? That tile is pretty much exactly where I settle Sao Paolo 100% of the time

(unless I'm reading the map wrong)

 

[Mef]

Leoreth: In the first picture (the one of Brazil) why move the coal one tile West? That tile is pretty much exactly where I settle Sao Paolo 100% of the time

(unless I'm reading the map wrong)

I guess Sao Paolo is supposed to be one tile south of that. But yeah, I'd settle it on the river too.

 

[Fresol]

It's not like rice has historically fed India and China amirite?

It was only possible to grow rice in the south (in China) where water is abundant. But I'm digressing too far...

 

[Mef]

Good ideas. Brazil needs more sugar anyway, so I can easily move the bananas where the food is actually needed.

One other strange thing I found was that if you look up the most populous cities of Brazil, you will find Manaus. If you look up its position on the map in civ, you will find it's a gem tile surrended by marsh.
Manaus has 50% of all the population in the Amazon, but currently that isn't represented at all in the game.
If there is one city in South America, that should be surrounded by jungle and be able to grow into a good city late in the game, it's Manaus...

 

[Leoreth]

Leoreth: In the first picture (the one of Brazil) why move the coal one tile West? That tile is pretty much exactly where I settle Sao Paolo 100% of the time

(unless I'm reading the map wrong)

I thought Portugal usually founds Sao Paolo on the current coal tile?

 

[iOnlySignIn]

(1) There is one simple way to create supercity sites without adding resources: Flood Plains.

(2) IMHO Brazil does not need more supercity sites - it is already very strong. With your changes it will be so strong that controlling it can be game-winning. That is not historical at all. Case is similar with India. For your proposed changes to not disrupt balance (I already scramble for Brazil as England, America, and Russia per the old map), the resources need to spawn gradually and later.

(3) What needs to be improved/changed are:

- Canada (like the other poster pointed out - York Factory? Seriously?);

- American West Coast (Los Angeles can use some Flood Plains);

- Middle East (All those historical city sites being worthless in terms of food);

- North China/Manchuria (Too Food poor compared to Southern China - not historical);

- West/Central Africa (Currently worthless for colonization).

(4) Could you also add Slaves (Revealed by Optics, Obsoletes with Radio/Mass Media, +3 Production Resource, secured only by Fort) as a resource? That will allow for some Triangular Trade (a thing I really missed in Civ IV) and make West/Central Africa more palatable for colonization.

After 1775 Slaves spawn in Southern U.S..

And make Slave Trade a Corporation. Spreads only in the Americas, provides lots of , as the converse to Trading Company.