quest for iron

I recently finished a vanilla civ 4 game on chieftan level (still learning). In the beginning, I had plenty of copper and horses, but no iron. I was still able to wipe out invading barbs and acquire three nice barb cities with what I had, but I knew I needed that iron to defend myself against my neighbors--and win.

I built mines like crazy, hoping one would pop for me, but nothing happened. Later, I did get a Persain city near my capital to flip, and I mined it too, but I had no indication of having any iron. I checked the resources screen in the foreign advisor and saw I had no iron, and my rivals weren't about to share.

In the early 1900's (AD), I decided I was going attack my Spanish neighbors and take their iron mine. My borders surrounded the area with the mine on three sides. I began preparing and even though I didn't have iron, I was able to build artillery, a destroyer, gunships, and tanks(!?!). It was never a contest.

Around the same I deprived the Spanish of their iron mine, and three of their cities, one of my mines in my city of Gordium, the one that flipped to me, popped iron. Before I built the mine near Gordium, I was starting to build catapults, but after I researched artillery, my catapult production was upgraded.

So...was it there all along and the game gave me the benefits of iron, but not the acknowledgement of its presence?


R.Hall
ceaserhall
""-empty string

 

All the iron that was originally in the game should have popped up as soon as you researched iron working I think. All the other ones that show up later are random events that may happen throughout the game.

 

By working mined hills you have a random chance to discover any resource that can naturally appear on a hill AND be mined.

 

Some recources you can work around if you do not have them, but I was just wondering what would be the long term military strategy if you missed out on oil and aluminium?

 

I think we've got a thread-jacker here. You would get better/more responses with a new thread.

Anyway, uranium can substitute fairly well for oil while aluminum isn't a military resource. You would have trouble waging an offensive war but defense should be doable. Focus on gold and see if you can buy oil or team up with another civ to take down someone where you take theirs.

 

It is not an obvious thread jack... it could be a 'bit' of a thread jack though.

Aluminium is not a military resource?? Is that a change in one of the expansions? I Play Vanilla and i noticed Aluminium is needed for modern amour, stealth bombers and jets.

 

My bad. I rarely play that far into the game and, when I do, I always seem to have aluminum. I knew it helped in the space race but forget about the modern military dependence.

 

Strangely enough, in my game I didn't have aluminum either. Despite my mining efforts, I got no random pops of aluminum, but I did get more uranium and some gems.

When the game says 'small chance' they mean it.

Even though I never got aluminum, I dominated my rivals so much that not having jet fighters was never an issue. And I won a spaceship victory that game while the others were just getting their Apollo wonder.

I just thought it was odd that I had access to iron even though my 'advisors' told me I had none.

R.Hall
ceaserhall
""-empty string

 

By 1900 you shouldn't need Iron for war anyways, gunpowder replaces the need for it.

 

It's that way in BTS too.

Hope for uranium . Otherwise you're going what, mech infantry? You can make guided missiles too. Mech infantry/guided missiles can win on land (though dealing with opposing mech infantry will be hard and you'll probably need ambush promos among other things). For naval combat uranium will let you build ships so that should help.

If the enemy has modern armor, nuke it . If you literally have no strategic resources just use mech infantry/missiles. I've used them before and won...missiles can't be intercepted, and while using them in any way destroys them, they only cost 60 hammers on epic which means any podunk half-!@#$ city can throw them out every turn. I've actually used stacks of these to bombard defenses down and then soften most of the city's defenders!

Mech infantry are extremely versatile and will dominate everything but modern armor. You might want to get your hands on some oil or aluminum though (for gunships or your own modern armor) ASAP.


Edit: never mind, you play vanilla . Not sure what you can do then, better get your hands on oil or aluminum. Both of these resources are revealed before they're usable in considerable military campaigns, take advantage and do everything you can to acquire some.

 

I believe also sometimes you discover that you built a city on what turns out (when you later discover iron) to be an iron spot, so you "get" the resource even though you never mined for it (and might not have even noticed that it was there).

 

Just to reitorate, you must work the mine with a citizen (not just build it) in order for the random resource to appear, and even then it is a very slim chance--don't bother mining at the cost of more productive tiles "in hopes" that iron or aluminum will appear.

 

Building a city on a resource gives you access to the resource if you have the technology required to build the improvement that is associated with the resource. In this case, if you have mining when you discover iron working (which you will) then you will be able to make use of the iron resource that appeared beneath your city.