Playing without any iron

[Derpy Hooves]

After months of inactivity I just saw the opportunity to acquire the Korean and Ancient pack for a price I can live with, prompting me into giving this game 'another shot'.

Last game I played before quitting due to boredom and disillusion was on King so I figured that was a good place to start, playing Korea ofcourse, huge map, 12 Civ's, 8 City States (I find them more bother then fun), epic speed, earth (rest uncooked).
I figured to make use of the Korean UA I'd go tall high science and culture.

Everything starts out well, spawn in southeast asia, next to a river, jungle and marble, I figure perfect for a science/WW city, get my Tradition rolling, settle a second city around Nepal/India, next to another river and manage to defend it from the aggressive city spamming russians, rush to iron working as I've already had 2 games I gave up on due to lack of iron and from what I've read here getting it as early as possible generally results in better iron placement.

On a huge map I always go 2 scouts first so I got the main continent mapped out pretty well Eurasia has 2 Iron locations, the 'good' one, a 2 iron deposit in the extreme north east of asia, surrounded by 3 cities of Askia, a guy who does'nt take kindly to aggressive expanding and the other in Sweden under control of Alex, an even worse warmonger that has already been denounced by everyone because he's slowly consuming the mongolians. No city state has iron and apart from Africa I got everything mapped out that I can without getting frigates due to the turtleships.

So, what should I do? I already invested 4 hours in this game so if I'm honestly going to have to start a new one I might as likely just give up on the entire game for the forseeable future.
The only thing I can think of is exclusively expand and defend until I reach muskets or worst case artillery, which on epic speed is extremely boring.

Stupid thing was that this kind of problem was never present in the unpatched version of this terrible game because ships and horses where'nt nerfed so bad that your only units that where able to take cities with where iron based, for that matter I never even had a game without any iron before the 343 patch.

But alas, anyone know how to deal with this idiocy or should I just switch over to EU or such?

 

[Dirk_Diggler]

If you don't have iron, neither do they, for the most part.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

As long as you have room to grow, you can get by alright. Focus on expansion, maxing out on horsemen and having plenty of spears and archers. You're playing Korea, all you really need early is a decently-sized empire to tech off of. With your boosted science capabilities, you should be able to get to rifles first, and then you can start killing off your rivals.
You could probably manage a war offensively earlier, especially against a weak opponent, but you shouldn't have much trouble defending your empire even without iron in most circumstances.

 

[Tabarnak]

So, what should I do? I already invested 4 hours in this game so if I'm honestly going to have to start a new one

4 hours to discover that you don't have iron?

Or maybe you just played furthermore and just can't see how you can go warmongering without iron?

Well, since it's king level and epic speed, some archers, pikemen and horses can take cities if you are fast enough. You can always wait for crossbowmen, they are excellent against the AI.

 

[NotSure]

They did make a lot of changes to help the AI. The thing I hate most about a no-iron game is that you can't build any siege units until cannons. Don't the Koreans have a no-iron siege unit that isn't a siege unit (or is it)?

Anyway, I think you can still do whatever you planned on doing. At King you can attack an AI with a bunch of pikes and archers and be successful. That medieval rocket launcher thingy would probably come in handy too.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

The defense really is'nt the problem, I know the computers kindergarten tactics well enough to hold off any attack on my cities with minimal losses, the thing is that I really see little joy in only defending, Russia already took the best spot in India and I really want to take it from him, and will have to if I want to expand further west at all, to the north I have the Songhai that will close off any further expansion North very soon allowing for maybe 1 more city.

On a epic speed waiting for riflemen is going to be extremely boring and if I have to wait till the point where I usually find the game to get boring to even start playing properly, I'll prolly just leave it to collect dust on my harddrive.

And apart from 2 players I've met the others might not have iron either but that won't actually help me to capture cities.

Maybe a specific unit rush? I've tried warrior and horseman rushes but I find that the losses often put me behind too much to recover without extremely exploitative play.

 

[Dirk_Diggler]

When I was a super noob, I used archers to take out cities, and honestly, it's actually pretty good and I still do it.

Use archers and spearmen/warriors. 3 archers and some warriors should take a city rather quickly

 

[Derpy Hooves]

Tabarnak, 4 hours total, setting up, and exploring Eurasia to at least be sure there is'nt any iron that I can take without having to plop down a city in extremely hostile territory or conquer someone on the other side of the continent. Perhaps the cavalry, pikeman and crossbow combo might do something, I might give it a shot, but in my experience the losses can be extremely devastating, ofcourse infinite reloading might fix that but I prefer not to resort to extremely exploitative play (not to mention that loading a game takes absurd amounts of time).

Notsure: Cannons are no iron units? I thought Artillery was the first but that might help matters somewhat, and the Hwa'Cha UU is a catapult replacement that is only good vs units so even IF I could build it, it would likely still be useless.
Yeah I figured I could try the archer pike aproach but in my experience, unless you have absurd amounts of them to keep 'rotating' into the city battle you will either succumb to the absurd regeneration that cities have or have to sacrifice a good amount of units to take it. This might be doable for 1 or 2 cities but after that your sacrificing too much production to keep up with the runaway civ's.

 

[King of Prussia]

Notsure: Cannons are no iron units?

They are the first no resource siege unit in the game.

 

[TyBoy]

If you're already at astronomy the strong need for iron is nearly over anyway. From wherever you are now beeline chemistry and go on a musket + cannon rampage. You can get back to middle/top of the tree research from there if you want or continue on to rifling and save up some money for upgrading those muskets into rifles once you've captured some friendly territory to do the upgrading in.

 

[Silverfuturist]

Is there iron in Australia/New Zealand/Islands? I have had some fun games where I started in Southeast Asia, and expanded south.

 

[bozosmithy]

what i dont get is you are complaining about a game of chance where you have chosen to go epic, however complain that you have not secured the resource you require, if u dont want to wait dont play epic games

 

[That nerdy kid]

This thread: why i always go with legendary start

 

[Derpy Hooves]

what i dont get is you are complaining about a game of chance where you have chosen to go epic, however complain that you have not secured the resource you require, if u dont want to wait dont play epic games

Are you seriously trying to say choosing epic speed is my problem?
I play Epic because I love playing on huge earth maps with 12 civs and when you play standard speed I often find I have to rush like crazy to get a domination victory before the space age (not that I've ever had an AI actually make a complete spaceship, the further teched the units the worse the AI is with them though because it does'nt know how to use siege units, which are absurdly strong at that point).

Not sure why you're so aggressive, are you white knighting the resource distribution system?
The point is, it SHOULD NOT be a game of chance, in CIV or pretty much all of the games I played before 343 getting strategic resources was never much of a problem, worst case scenario you have to take a couple of your neighbours cities.
Hell, if they had a shoddy system like this in any other game like SC2, a starting position without vespene gas or Heroes of Might and Magic with any of it's 8 or so resources practically unatainable it would get fixed as soon as possible, I suspect the only reason stuff like this has'nt been adressed yet is because of the absurd amount of stuff that still needs to be fixed.

And quite frankly, the resource distribution in this game is freaking terrible, the other post on the first page "One uranium in the whole world" attests to that pretty nicely, we as humans can deal just fine with lux resources being split very weirdly, same for things like alluminium and oil, there are enough alternatives for whatever you want to do without having to sacrifice the main components of a city capturing force, but when the 2 main units capable of taking cities, strong meelee and siege weaponry both require the same early game resource which spawning is terribly coded it's design problems, not mine.

Nerdykid, yeah I'm fairly sure that's what I used to do too, I figured cooking the settings too much to my advantage might make the game boring but appearantly it's the other way around, silly me for trusting standard settings.

At this point I'm not feeling much like continuing it to be honest, I might try to get to Australia and hopefully there will be some Iron to take there but as I did'nt expect to need boats any time soon, spawning on a beautiful spot in Asia, I dont even have the tech for fishing boats.
Too much effort for little gains, when I have games like SC2 and Phoenix Wright waiting for me, perhaps in a couple of days or weeks I might give Sejong another shot and get my legendary start on.

 

[ense7en]

Really?

Iron distribution is random, unless you change the settings for the resources before you start.

The point is, it SHOULD NOT be a game of chance

Again, really?

Entire parts of the game are chance.
When you attack an enemy, it's a dice roll (with-in parameters).

If you want guaranteed resources, change the settings.
Otherwise it's going to be random, which is a large part of the beauty of the game.
You never know how your starting location will be really until later on.

And also, you don't need Iron to function.
Sure, it sucks not having it, but there are other unit to use in wars, not to mention trading for it, getting it from city states, etc.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

Really?

Iron distribution is random, unless you change the settings for the resources before you start.


Again, really?

Entire parts of the game are chance.
When you attack an enemy, it's a dice roll (with-in parameters).

If you want guaranteed resources, change the settings.
Otherwise it's going to be random, which is a large part of the beauty of the game.
You never know how your starting location will be really until later on.

Iron distribution should be random, the amount of iron however should not, or at least to the extent that you can have 30 deposits in one map and 3 in another, it is just completely inconsistent, especially when you nerf everything that does not require iron.
What you say about parameters is very true, but also the issue here, on a huge map the parameters should fit the situation, on a small pangea map 2 iron deposits can be fine, it's a bit restrictive but can lead to interesting situations, when you have 4 or 5 opponents. When you have 12 opponents on a huge earth map, what I like to play, it will break your ability to take cities without excessive losses, y'know, that not losing your units you have to do because the AI cheats like crazy and will always outproduce you?

And also, you don't need Iron to function.
Sure, it sucks not having it, but there are other unit to use in wars, not to mention trading for it, getting it from city states, etc.

Not sure if your just trolling but I explained this in the OP, 2 iron deposits in Eurasia, one that is'nt even connected yet but surrounded by enemy cities, the other is being used by the main warmonger to murder a suprisingly docile Genghis

I have had to do with fighting a war without iron numerous times, hell, even in that game I had to stop Cathy taking my second city with about 10 units that I had to hold off with a warrior and a archer/scout that was'nt even there yet, I know you can capture a city with just archers, warriors and horsemen but the fact that I CAN do that does not make it fun, it's a lot of work, you need waves of units if you don't want to lose most of them, this is fine for an early war but should not be my only means to take a city until the siege weaponry and heavy infantry doesn't require some idiotic arbitrary resource, the resource being required is not a problem, just that this is the ONLY resource that is this absurdly important to warfare.

The only thing that comes even close is aluminum and at that point you can create more then enough units that still scale well that don't require aluminum, do you even mildly care if you don't have horses? Oil? Uranium?

It could be my tendency to play on huge maps, the game before this that I played that had a iron defficiency was with Augustus spawning in South America with a rather militant Pacahuti blocking off my pass into the north, even when I went to explore Eurasia I could not find more then 3 deposits total.
Either way, it looks like, once again, bad programming and not taking account of their insane nerf spree in the first couple of patches.

 

[Knut_Are_M]

Try to build a crossbowmen/pike combo.
it does kill off cities fast. And a human player will massively outproduse a AI up to emperor.
key thing is get the heroic epic, barraks, armory and a good productive military city.
get honor to professional army as well.
this will get you crossbowmen that does 2-3 damage each. strength 15x1.45x(2/3)=14,5 effective strength vs the city defenses. which means a average of 5 damage when the cities defence is 14,5.

crossbowmen are quite popular in mp as it kills off infantry quite fast.

 

[The_Quasar]

Scarce Iron resources happens from time to time (especially when I decide to play Rome, LOL). I've even had 1 game where there was no iron anywhere on the map. However, I think it only happens on Prince or King and above (but I'm not sure on that), so perhaps dropping a level or two might help.

If you get something like that, however, you need to deal with it, using different strategies. It's the same for the AI, so it's even. Especially when that AI has a scarce iron resource, you can get a fast unit (like a Horseman) to deprive them of it, and put their units that rely on it at a disadvantage. Often the AI is too dumb to get it going again, especially if that Horseman captures a nearby Worker too.

If you don't like random resources, there are other settings you can use to make sure you get plenty, like legendary or abundant (although that's still random).

Imho, unusual distribution can make for some interesting games, and interesting challenges.

 

[eris]

Iron distribution should be random, the amount of iron however should not, or at least to the extent that you can have 30 deposits in one map and 3 in another, it is just completely inconsistent, especially when you nerf everything that does not require iron.

I disagree with this base assumption. I have played quite a few games and the situation you describe, although perfecty possible is very rare in my experience. It creates a game state that you may not want to play repeatedly, buy whether you find it especially challenging and rewarding to overcome, or whether you find it boring and a waste of time is a totally subjective reaction. I have enjoyed one or two games like that, even while grumbling about the "unfairness". It took patience and some connivance and I probably play a less aggressive game anyway.

But the assumption that it is a poor design decision is one I disagree with. From what you are saying I have to advise you to discard this particular game as not to your taste and roll up another one. I don't care how many hours you have invested, if it is not going to be fun, don't do it.

 

[apocalypse105]

After months of inactivity I just saw the opportunity to acquire the Korean and Ancient pack for a price I can live with, prompting me into giving this game 'another shot'.

Last game I played before quitting due to boredom and disillusion was on King so I figured that was a good place to start, playing Korea ofcourse, huge map, 12 Civ's, 8 City States (I find them more bother then fun), epic speed, earth (rest uncooked).
I figured to make use of the Korean UA I'd go tall high science and culture.

Everything starts out well, spawn in southeast asia, next to a river, jungle and marble, I figure perfect for a science/WW city, get my Tradition rolling, settle a second city around Nepal/India, next to another river and manage to defend it from the aggressive city spamming russians, rush to iron working as I've already had 2 games I gave up on due to lack of iron and from what I've read here getting it as early as possible generally results in better iron placement.

On a huge map I always go 2 scouts first so I got the main continent mapped out pretty well Eurasia has 2 Iron locations, the 'good' one, a 2 iron deposit in the extreme north east of asia, surrounded by 3 cities of Askia, a guy who does'nt take kindly to aggressive expanding and the other in Sweden under control of Alex, an even worse warmonger that has already been denounced by everyone because he's slowly consuming the mongolians. No city state has iron and apart from Africa I got everything mapped out that I can without getting frigates due to the turtleships.

So, what should I do? I already invested 4 hours in this game so if I'm honestly going to have to start a new one I might as likely just give up on the entire game for the forseeable future.
The only thing I can think of is exclusively expand and defend until I reach muskets or worst case artillery, which on epic speed is extremely boring.

Stupid thing was that this kind of problem was never present in the unpatched version of this terrible game because ships and horses where'nt nerfed so bad that your only units that where able to take cities with where iron based, for that matter I never even had a game without any iron before the 343 patch.

But alas, anyone know how to deal with this idiocy or should I just switch over to EU or such?

Agree with you 100% They nerved horses to much... If they just made the horse resource less available like iron then it wasn't a big deal..

Now you usally allways have horses thats why it was overpowered...


Olso they should improve the AI to let him make more spearman instead of nerving the game mechanics to the ground.

BTW I am sure there will be city states with iron allie with them

BTW I olso made a toppic about this : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=450141

So it is obiously a problem


LIke maddjinn said in his lets play the game sometimes gives someone a monopoly on a certain resource wich is kinda anoying.