No strategic resources

[Evil Beejeebers]

Who would you say is the best Civ when you have no realistic strategic resources?

I play hotseat from time to time, more often than not the starts I inherit are pretty rotten. the food is usually poor, there is no copper, horse or iron. Oh and monty or someone similar to him are usually my dear neighbors

I prefer to build rather than war but I am okay at warring.

 

[JoeyB98]

One of the NA civs, I'd say Aztecs.

 

[Strickl3r]

Mansa Musa or Sitting Bull.

 

[oranje willem]

Mansa Musa

 

[Strickl3r]

Not that the inca is any good

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

Thanks for the pointers, I know the Incas are awesome. Anyway I started my game yesterday as Lizzy and I got lucky and captured Joao's capital about turn just after the rush period. it is around 1 ad I only have 6 cities but 3 of them are becoming very strong.

I have the great library in lisbon and I am working on the national epic there too, whilst working 2+2free scientists. I am the tech leader but I am falling away in power I will rectify that when the game continues.

If you acquire a holy city do you spread the religion?

 

[Izuul]

If you acquire a holy city do you spread the religion?

Usually just hope it spreads itself. Does it even have a shrine?

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

No shrine I don't really want to try and pop a prophet either. I am just worried for/about Fredrick as he has fallen under the sway of a heathen religion

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Mansa Musa. He doesn't need resources to fight against ancient/classical stuff and come out ahead on and is very obnoxious to kill. Nice traits help him out too.

 

[shakabrade]

India, Gandhi. Fast worker is top tier and killer trait combo climbs up the tech ladder to treb+muskets
or, more favored, draft rifles. You can survive on LBs in early era if need be.

You can count on Gandhi. Gandhi always wins.

 

[UnforcedError]

If you acquire a holy city do you spread the religion?

No, that's not really efficient, not even in your own cities unless you want to go wonder-heavy and build the AP + UoS + SM trio. otherwise just make sure you uncover / establish trade routes with others and hope for a good spread.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Spreading religion while building infra in OR or to cities running massed specs in pacifism makes sense. It also makes sense to spread it to strong production cities if you're going to war and can run theo.

Missionaries cost much less than a forge but are an identical bonus while building structures under OR. Spreading religion can be a good idea, but you wouldn't do it just to get another gold/turn in a shrine city, excepting maybe huge/marathon games where shrines can be worth 50-80 and all units are discounted except for settlers.

 

[noto2]

This is why I've always said I value the resource independent UU's very highly, especially in competitive play. Also keep in mind that although everyone hates the protective trait it is designed with this exact purpose in mind. You can always build archers and longbows, regardless of your resource situation, and protective boosts those units. Also keep in mind the timing. If you tech well and prioritize it, you can get longbows quite early. Things like swords, horse archers, and elephants/catapults require significant investments in tech (well, swords not so much). Longbows and catapults are a match for pretty much any classic unit stack, aside from elephants which are a broken imbalanced unit so I won't mention them again.

Longbows also come with access to the vassalage civic. If you find yourself in a war of survival, shock longbows will outmatch swords/axes in the field. They don't really clearly outmatch horse archers but HA's have no defensive capability. Obviously the 2 moves is a huge advantage but if we're talking a defensive war you should be able to use your roads to mitigate that.

Finally, if you still have no resources you can bee-line gunpowder. Once again, muskets can match medieval units and I find muskets are actually better overall. Whereas with medieval units you need to get into a rock-scissors-paper counter-fest, wich maces, pikes, crossbows, and knights, muskets are just overall good and beat everything except knights

 

[CivMcNut]

Oh, I hate games without strategic resources. That usually means I can't go over and take my neighbor's land by force. I usually make it a point to research animal husbandry, bronze working, and iron working early so I can get an early settler out to a site that has a strategic resource. It is rare that iron, copper, and horses are all too far away from your starting location to get a city up by it.

Having Monty as a neighbor would really make that awful. I just played a game where I was shooting for a space race win and Monty came all the way across the map with top tech stacks of doom and won a domination victory by wiping out all my lower tech forces. That was a painful way to end a long game.

 

[VSarius]

Mali, Maya, or Natives.
Excluding Inca of course.

 

[Nexlev]

This might be a noob question but I'm at work, I can't open my game to figure it out myself.

Is there a map option to make strategic resources non-existent or at least more rare? It would be a unique twist.

 

[noto2]

There's no clickable map option but you could mod it yourself. Resources are already not very dependable, though, at least I find it that way. Then again, I don't like playing on maps with tons and tons of room. I find it boring when everyone can peacefully settle 10-12 cities, so I add an additional civ to the map usually.

 

[Tall German Joe]

This might be a noob question but I'm at work, I can't open my game to figure it out myself.

Is there a map option to make strategic resources non-existent or at least more rare? It would be a unique twist.

try the "arboria" mapscript. it's essentially a pangaea map with tons of forest and deer (having 3+ grassland forest deer per city is not uncommon), but hardly anything else. there'll be some corns, maybe a few rice, a handful (total) of metals and horses, a couple (total) of marble/stone, hardly any calendar resources on the whole map, maybe a gold or silver or so. needless to say, it makes for a very WEIRD experience!!

 

[Manco Capac]

Hey, noto2, although this has nothing to do with the present thread, something struck me hard. You say here and there Civ4 is getting boring. Have you ever tried to set up some kind of succession game on K-mod? Maybe that would a kind of new experience to you...I think I have never seen one ever...

Yeah off-top...

 

[Manco Capac]

try the "arboria" mapscript. it's essentially a pangaea map with tons of forest and deer, but hardly anything else. there'll be some corns, maybe a few rice, a handful (total) of metals and horses, a couple (total) of marble/stone, hardly any calendar resources on the whole map, maybe a gold or silver or so. needless to say, it makes for a very WEIRD experience!!

No. Not a weird experience. Boreal is one of them. Arboria is just an easy experience due to the sheer amount of forests. The AI was not taught to efficiently chop except when willing to improve a tile...thus while the AI is choked with forests for a long moment, the human will leverage that extreme amount of forests. That is why Arboria is condamned from HoF games. And is rarely utilized in xOTM/SGOTM. I think I have seen just one deity BOTM with arboria mapscript.