[Pool] It seems strategic resources will no longer be needed to build specific military units. Would you approve this change?

[sylvanllewelyn]

One way I could see it being interesting: not having the resource wouldn't make it so you couldn't build the unit or destroy units you have, but instead have negative effects like lower fighting strength, slower unit healing or some other type of lowering the unit effectiveness to represent things like not being able to use all your equipment or it breaking down more easily, etc.

The choice of words is important.

-33% strength if you don't have iron. Does not sound fun.

+50% strength if you have iron. Sounds more fun.

 

[sTAPler27]

As Paul mentioned, the naval battle short pointed that at least the powerful Modern naval units seems to have need resources to mantain them. Likely the same for some of the other units of the age. So it goes in line with what you said here.

If this is the case I'm happy, because things like swords and spears can be made out of a number of different materials but ships that big need some kind of fuel source. Gives me hope that we'll be getting power plants again. Hope units get access to alternative fuel sources too like we did with the power plant alternatives in 6.

 

[ezzlar]

How about increasing production speed or decreasing maintenance cost IF you had the resource?

The Civ4 mod "Sengoku" had this setup, +20% production if you held the resource. I almost like that more than the combat bonus.

This could even turn out better in light of the industrial resource needs debate, lets say that we are talking about +100% instead. That would really be required to build a large fleet of those expensive Juggernauts. But you could still have 2-3 units if you really tried (without the resource).

 

[JNR13]

Iron vs. bronze has already been discussed, but Niter is another resource where removing a strict requirement makes sense. Yes, there were some deposits where the stuff could be gathered cheap and in large masses and it granted a strategic advantage. But it was not the exclusive source. Acquiring niter was a rather infamous procedure a lot of times. It can be made from human excrements and so it was, quite often. Especially when war - the thing you need niter for, after all - made trading across multiple borders difficult. Your enemy neighbors weren't just gonna let those shipments through because of gameplay balance or so. It was dirty work, came with massive government overreach into the private sphere. Professionals with the lord's support would enter homes to remove pieces of wall and dig up the floor and they came to be known as rather ruthless.

So anyone could still field a gunpowder-based army. You didn't need to secure specific rare deposits. But then it came with a big political and economic cost. I think being able to always build units but getting a bonus from the resource is quite reasonable then to represent the advantages of a good deposit but also the ingenuity and non-linearity of handling scarcity.

Bringing back harder demands could make sense for oil later, but we've been teased that such modern resources could in fact be consumable again and even as a central age-specific mechanic for the modern age, so I'm quite excited to see what's the deal with that exactly.

 

[CivKirk64]

The Civ4 mod "Sengoku" had this setup, +20% production if you held the resource. I almost like that more than the combat bonus.

This could even turn out better in light of the industrial resource needs debate, lets say that we are talking about +100% instead. That would really be required to build a large fleet of those expensive Juggernauts. But you could still have 2-3 units if you really tried (without the resource).

That's what I was thinking strength bonus seems extreeme unless it is only 5-10%, you could even have an increasing (with diminishing returns) if a city has additional copies slotted in. Focus all your horses or aluminium in 1 or 2 cities producing units.

 

[Evolena]

That's what I was thinking strength bonus seems extreeme unless it is only 5-10%, you could even have an increasing (with diminishing returns) if a city has additional copies slotted in. Focus all your horses or aluminium in 1 or 2 cities producing units.

These are Empire wide resources, so no need to assign them to a city?

 

[BackseatTyrant]

I don't think I've ever reflected on resource management being a fundamentally flawed mechanic. The only times I cursed it out was when I felt there just wasn't enough of a certain resource around, and I always assumed the solution would've been to simply up the resource quantities, hence why I always select 'Resources: Abundant' in the game setup. Still, I always felt it made sense that I needed to set up some industrial chain from natural resource to end product.

One possible solution I've been thinking about, was to assign a resource to every single tile on the map, the same way each province in EU4 has an assigned trade good

 

[CivKirk64]

These are Empire wide resources, so no need to assign them to a city?

OOPS, I guess I'm still figuring things out, I saw all the slotting around and figured everything could swap around.

 

[Caprikel]

Generally I prefer strategic resources not being necessary for being able to produce units since not being able to acquire specific resources at all outside of conquest can be very frustrating, but I would prefer a system where you still need the strategic resource to build those units, but can acquire those units/resources by spending gold rather than production, since buying a unit can potentially represent hiring foreign mercenaries who DO have access to those strategic resources.
Oil and Coal would have to work differently of course, and so I still have to wait and see how they implement these resources in the Modern age of Civ VII.

 

[HktkNban]

An option like “Strategic resources are necessary, but access to them should be increased” should be added to the survey.
It seems that many people are not dissatisfied with the concept of strategic resources itself but rather with the frustration of being unable to produce any units at all.

If strategic resources were abolished based on this thread’s survey, players would soon start making suggestions like:
“Why can tanks operate without oil? That’s unrealistic.”
“Strategic resources would make the gameplay more interesting.”

 

[BackseatTyrant]

An option like “Strategic resources are necessary, but access to them should be increased” should be added to the survey.
It seems that many people are not dissatisfied with the concept of strategic resources itself but rather with the frustration of being unable to produce any units at all.

If strategic resources were abolished based on this thread’s survey, players would soon start making suggestions like:
“Why can tanks operate without oil? That’s unrealistic.”
“Strategic resources would make the gameplay more interesting.”

For me, it's been not as much units, as it's just been nuclear power plants. WHY IS ALL THE URANIUM ONLY IN ENEMY TERRITORY!?

 

[aieeegrunt]

The key word is "If": there was no time, in any place I know of before the Industrial Era, when anybody who knew the techniques of working iron could not find enough iron to work. Or, for that matter, any other metal. Uruk, one of the first major cities, imported copper from hundreds of miles away, from settlements established just to extract copper ores and smelt them and send them off to the Big City by pack trains. Rome imported iron from modern Balkans (before they conquered them) and so on and on.

Lack of Resources is a strictly Game Mechanic with no basis in history or reality until Industrialization jacked up the requirements for quantities of raw materials to previously unimaginable heights. Before that, resource scarcity never really existed: if you needed it, someone was willing to bring it to you for a price, no matter how far they had to lead a train of pack animals or sail a ship: Neolithic trade routes already went across the Mediterranean from Sicily to the middle east or from the Caucasus across the Black Sea with obsidian, copper, and probably a mass of more perishable goods now unknown. If you could pay for it, someone was willing to chance it.

It’s both terrible history and terrible gameplay.

The choice of words is important.

-33% strength if you don't have iron. Does not sound fun.

+50% strength if you have iron. Sounds more fun.

This is almost as bad as not being able to build the unit

Why won’t this dumb brain bug die already

 

[GrumboMumbo]

The fight over Strategic resources was always a fun part of the game for me. It adds strategic depth...'Do I need to rush Iron tech because it's important for my gameplan'....'Should I settle a bad city just so I can access an important strategic resource'

Having resources be important/scarce makes maps feel different and unique and adds to replayability. I can remember many games where the late fight for Uranium has been game defining. It can play a roll in creating emergent narrative moments which I personally find immersive. Maybe not immersive in a perfectly historical way but from a gameplay story generating perspective.

I do feel sorry for people who have their immersion broken by such historical inaccuracies, because if you hold everything in the game to that standard, my immersion would be broken every second of a civ game.

 

[aieeegrunt]

The fight over Strategic resources was always a fun part of the game for me. It adds strategic depth...'Do I need to rush Iron tech because it's important for my gameplan'....'Should I settle a bad city just so I can access an important strategic resource'

Having resources be important/scarce makes maps feel different and unique and adds to replayability. I can remember many games where the late fight for Uranium has been game defining. It can play a roll in creating emergent narrative moments which I personally find immersive. Maybe not immersive in a perfectly historical way but from a gameplay story generating perspective.

I do feel sorry for people who have their immersion broken by such historical inaccuracies, because if you hold everything in the game to that standard, my immersion would be broken every second of a civ game.

It’s also a terrible gameplay mechanic.

 

[Krajzen]

The fight over Strategic resources was always a fun part of the game for me. It adds strategic depth...'Do I need to rush Iron tech because it's important for my gameplan'....'Should I settle a bad city just so I can access an important strategic resource'

I mean... I get your point, it was an element of strategy and interesting dilemmas. But it was overshadowed for me by the fact this pain was not grounded in reality. That's the nature of challenges in games like this: the less arbitrary they seem, and more grounded in the reality of the ingame world, the more enjoyable they are to many people.

Having resources be important/scarce makes maps feel different and unique and adds to replayability. I can remember many games where the late fight for Uranium has been game defining. It can play a roll in creating emergent narrative moments which I personally find immersive. Maybe not immersive in a perfectly historical way but from a gameplay story generating perspective.

Uranium, similarly to oil and coal, is actually sensible as a limited strategic resource - like Boris said, in the modern era strategic resources make much more sense than in the previosu ones; wars have been thought over oil and coal (and maybe uranium, in Africa?), but not over iron and horses, and especially not over niter

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Uranium, similarly to oil and coal, is actually sensible as a limited strategic resource - like Boris said, in the modern era strategic resources make much more sense than in the previosu ones; wars have been thought over oil and coal (and maybe uranium, in Africa?), but not over iron and horses, and especially not over niter

Even then, I'd argue the wars weren't fought over access to resources, but rather, over relative monopoly over those resources. By restricting your enemy's access to, say, clean drinking, you have gained yourselves tonnes of leverage and call the shots on pretty much anything

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

The completion over the scare resource of natural wonders is still in the game.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Civ 3 and 4 resources where infinite. You only needed one horse resource. Iron may need more than one bc it could deplete.
Civ 5 and 6 introduced resource limited amount. Now you need 8 coal units per City, 2 coal for each Ironclad and so on. But resources are no longer depleteable.
Huge step back from civ 3 and 4 in my view.
The best implementation had to be inverse of production per turn of an infinite resource. Limited resources but say 4000 units of Iron, or 200 horses, upgradeable
with recycling tech. Some recycling and manufacturing tech, like the Diesel from coal of the germans in WWII, could allow the civs that researched that tech, to
get some of those resources that wouldn't otherwise have. And to that extent I might accept it.
Extensive trading, and allowing even early civs, to trade all sorts of things, like Iron, horses, copper, zync, with each other, also yes. This is the way.
Allow NPC traders from foreign civs, to trade with your civ, and give you all of these resources.
It's not that ancient civs without Iron couldnt build Iron swords because everybody had Iron. No. They traded. No trade, or resources within your borders, no
Legionaires. Stop.

To give less efficient Legionaires without Iron works ok, but to give Tanks without Oil or Carbon made Diesel is not Ok.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I also prefer this new approach. It could be tweaked perhaps, but the RNG of needing a resource in order to build a specific thing was too annoying. Now I don't have to worry about strategic resources, simulating that these resources were never scarce, but I can make a play for them to give me an advantage. I can use diplomacy to get as much as possible, I can still pillage iron mines during a war to hamper my opponent, etc. I think it works better from both an immersion and a gameplay perspective.

We just need a good trading AI, so that every city state spams traders, and everyone get the opportunity to get all necessary resources needed for everything.
Diplomacy is bloatware. We don't need diplomacy for something as basic as resource trading.

Can you imagine the AI had to manage diplomacy for every single trade route?
Resources should be finite, and have a cap per turn for own many units can be processed. The bigger the resource stack, the bigger the value, the
more it will be a military target. The gameplay depth will greatly benefit.
Just give everyone no need for resources is like give all cities automatic defence capability. AI will no longer need to build up a defence Army or units to defend
its cities. Ai will not need to actively search for resources as it will not be a military strategic asset of interest. Gameplay will be damaged greatly.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

An option like “Strategic resources are necessary, but access to them should be increased” should be added to the survey.
It seems that many people are not dissatisfied with the concept of strategic resources itself but rather with the frustration of being unable to produce any units at all.

If strategic resources were abolished based on this thread’s survey, players would soon start making suggestions like:
“Why can tanks operate without oil? That’s unrealistic.”
“Strategic resources would make the gameplay more interesting.”

Exactly. Automated trade routes that gives everyone fair access to every kind of resources is the way.
Block those trade routes, it's like a declaration of War. The gameplay will only benefit from this.
Take the need to have resources away, and the AI will no longer have any necessity to go to war.
The gameplay will result in be boring and flat.
No way taking away resource necessity can be a good idea.

look up at my thread https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/automatization-wishlist.690531/

Automate: build military resources network (similar to trade, but focused on iron, horses, ivory and camels- stone if it was a needed resource for building walls and old growth forests if it was calculated also as a resource- sail boats with timber necessity eg)