Never any Coal

[Stockman]

Is anyone else having a hard time finding resourses? I have played three long games of many hours only to find out that there was no coal on the map to get my rail going.
Not kidding, three straight games of not even being able to trade as the other civs do not have it either. I actually was starting to think that it was left out of my CD. Crazy but the fustration has me thinking stubid thoughts.
Anybody having this problem?

 

[-proletarian-]

First off, coal is REALLY hard to spot on the map, except if it's placed on grasslands. But I know what you mean, although there has always been coal on the map, it's always been in my enemy's territory. Ditto for oil. Well, actually, one game I DID have one oil resource, but it ran out THE SECOND I linked up a road to it!

 

[Darkadder]

saltpeter and horses too.

In my latest game I had about 30 veteran horsemen waiting around to be upgraded to cavalry, but there was no saltpeter ANYWHERE.

I finally bought some from a neighbour two doors down, upgraded my units and "secured" the resource through some strategic manoeuvres.

The worst is always rubber for me. Oil and coal seems alot less rare then the elusive rubber. Figures that it would be hard to find considering its usually whats holding the production of hoards of modern armour back.

DA

 

[Gholam]

It's all luck, in my previous game I had to trade for coal and uranium, in my current one I haven't had to trade for resourses yet - got like 4 iron, 1 or 2 saltpeter, 2 horses, 2 rubber, 2 (well, one, but the other is on the very border so it'll be mine too) coal, haven't researched refining/rocketry/fission to know about others yet.

 

[The_Clash]

I agree fully, I have the hardest time finding some resorces, what confuses me (esp with coal) is many of these resorces are come on place in the world and found in most places. For example when I was a kid in KY I could dig in my back yard and after digging for 2 ft I found coal!

I hope on the MOD they fix that

 

[Ferd]

The AI likes to build cities ON TOP of resources and luxuries. I have searched the entire map wondering where the heck they were getting their resources from, and resorted to right clicking on each of their cities and looking at the topo information. Sure enough, the cities were hiding it. Once, I even found saltpeter under one of MY cities! Had me pulling my hair out trying to figure out where I was getting saltpeter from!

 

[The_Clash]

I have noted that too(while playing after I posted my last post) It is a pain!

 

[ElfMan]

I am currently playing a Huge map and have about 2x the size of any other civ. I have no: coal, rubber, aluminum, uranium, or saltpeter . I had to do an all out war with several allied civs to conquer my resources.

Lucky for me, my neighbor didn't have any iron, and I was able to see saltpeter before him. Going to war to procure my resources has been the theme of the game. I have stretched my holdings to 2.5x the second largest civ, and finally have all the resources, after conquering 3 other civilizations to get them.

I would think that would be enough, but NO... no aluminum exists on my continent. Which is the largest in the game.

The AI has it out for me, I know it.

 

[Dreadnaught]

Same here..I'm playing my first Huge map and there's no coal or oil what-so-ever. I mean there extremeley little compared to the number of terrian squares. Out of like to six coal I've spotted there weren't any in my territory. I got lucky with the rubber, there was some in the woods at the north of my continent. The oil is non-existent.

On the continent that I have settled, they is a huge amount of jungle towrds the equator, and I was hoping either coal or rubber would show up there. I built about 8 citites there without destroying the surround terrian with the promise that I'd have abundant resources later...didn't happen.

On my entire continent there is 1 saltpeter, 1 horses (which I had to destroy the axtec civilzation for) and 1 rubber. But my saltpeters dried up and I'm in the middle of the indutrial age!

 

[.:KNAS:.]

resources arent placed fairly in real life either..........

 

[socrateach]

I have no idea whether or not this works for finding resources in foreign lands (in fact, I seriously doubt it), but if you want to know where each of your "home" resources come from, go to the trade advisor's screen. When you slowly move the mouse cursor over each resource's icon, it will tell you where it is located. Of course, when you don't have a resource, such as in my last game where I had *no* oil and *no* coal, all that screen tells you is that the AI nations are going "Nyah-nyah, you stink!" Oh well.

 

[Iskan]

Large map. All Aluminum belongs to Persians - they have 4 extra pieces of it and would not trade it for nothing! At some point I offered them half of my cities, all money I had (>2500), poured all my silks and furs and spices, added most of what I was making per turn... (just to try..) and still got a response: "Sorry, friend, won't do.." They are big and strong guys with lots of modern armor, but I am thinking about going after them. Need that aluminum, boy....

 

[Sam_Catchem]

Sometimes you are just screwed! That's it.

I took over a continent early this weekend. It has NO iron..none. It was a random map..so I was a small archipelago island..not really a continent. When I finally got a complete world map only 2 civs had iron...2! Now..I ask you..How do I go after the french with freaking galleys that only carry 2 dudes at a time to a continent that is 4 spaces away! I would lose half of them and there really isn't anywhere to land. Plus, they have Swordsman and so forth..ugh..any ideas? They won' trade (neither the French or the Germans..bastiches). I wouldn't either. I love those Babylonian Bowmen..but they get shredded by swordsmen. The only thing I can think of doing is trying to launch an assault on the Russians (no iron too!) to get more luxury items and see if Ican trade then. Still with galleys..this blows!

 

[Buecephalus]

There are endless threads about strat. resources all of them of a similiar vein. There's never enough of anything! And coal is particularly hard to spot not to mention that if you can't find any coal you can't build railroads for 1000's of years until combustion/refining. Hate that, especially when I've got my research cranked up high enough that I COULD be building railroads in the 800-900 AD range and sometimes won't be able to start building railroads till the 1800's. Sux.


"do or do not, there is no try."

 

[Dreadnaught]

Well i've continued playing my game, and now i've gone through one deposit and found two more. These deposit seem to appear over time...any thoughts, I think i saw all of them the first time i checked, you know under cities an all that...hmmm

 

[Heffalump]

You guys are scaring the hell out of me with all your resource deprivation stories. I just finished my first game and never (ok, almost never) lacked any "strategic" resources the entire game although my civ was only 8 or 9 cities in size much of the time, 12 at the end. Everything showed up right on schedule within my borders!

The only thing I did lack for for a few turns was saltpeter. That showed up one tile inside of my neighbors border. I acquired that long enough to upgrade all my city defenders to musketeers.

So I'm a big fan of the resource system right now.

But as I played it did seem to me the resource system is kind of unforgiving. I think you should practically always be able to build something ....... at a cost. In my view a "better" approach would be to have your resource supply affect the COST of what you're building. Market forces so to speak.

 

[Sam_Catchem]

Hey everyone..don't get me wrong. I love the resource system. It is one of the things that makes the game great! Maybe it could be tweaked..but you should get screwed every once in a while and have to beg, plead or maul your rivals. Heck, a lot of wars throughout history are about securing resources. This is one of the things that make Civ3 really really cool and challenging.

 

[aatu]

I don't think the resource system has to be modified in any way.

I have played about 7 or 8 games so far, on tiny, small and medium maps. Have been in the top punch or in the middle one. Only in 2 games I have had all 8 strat.resources without trading or going to war.

That what's makes the game even better. It wouldn't be great anymore, if the resources weren't so rare (imho 'rare' is a wrong word even at the moment).

One should also remember, that in the beginning when everyone is expanding and after all the excellent city spots are taken, get some cities on desert and on mountains and on jungle. It's definitely worth it in the late game, because you have a greater possibility to find resources inside your own borders.