Resource and hostility trouble

[Vekar]

I have two problems when I play and I was wondering if anyone knew if this is just "natural" or a programming problem with Civ 3 gold edition:

1. Resource spawn. I have read up on resource spawning and rarity... However, whenever I have played I have yet to see a game where there is any resources near me... They say they are rare but it is RIDICULOUS when I play, sometimes it only spawns 1 iron for the whole world or 1 saltpeter, horse, etc. I make a larger world and resource rarity gets even WORSE. Then when it does spawn... it clumps it together most of the time on the other side of the world.

2. AI hostility, I know I can just set AI to less aggressive... However it never works. I set it to be "lay down your arms" and it become hitler, stalin and mao wrapped into one. I have yet to be able to get past the stone age without having world war break loose almost immediately on contact. Whenever I meet the AI I check to see its "disposition" and it goes almost straight from "polite" to "hated" or whatever the word is in less than 20 turns and they are nowhere near me. I try to trade with the AI to get better disposition but it always wants my soul for something I do not need.

The above two problems happen EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I. PLAY. WITHOUT. QUESTION.

I also play on chieftain difficulty and this are just as bad no matter WHAT I do.

I am hope there is a way to fix this, if not I am taking the CD and all the other junk that came with it to the shooting range with me next time I go.

I hope SOMEONE can help,
Vekar

 

[Turner]

Moderator Action: Not a TS issue, moved to General Discussion.

Resource rarity can be changed in the editor. You can see it there. Probably there is more there, the AI knows resource placement before it's viewable and likes to place cities on it. Do a clean map - Ctrl-Shift-N, to set your clean map preferences and then Ctrl-Shift-M to see the clean map.

The AI will also go to war with you if it thinks it can beat you. Without seeing a save, it can be difficult to determine exactly why the AI hates you. Are you invading trying to explore their territory? Are you breaking deals? There's a lot that can piss the AI off, including the simple act of breathing.

 

[vmxa]

"Vekar"

1-Resources are set in the editor and are affected by map size. I would say you would have to play at least tens of thousands of games to determine, if you are within the std deviation.

2-it is quite possible to play on chief with no war, if you are strong compared to them and you should be on that level.

I would suspect that you may be playing on a map with a lot of space between nations. If you met them early they will be polite at this level. The AI will not like you much, if you are richer, bigger, stronger than them.

Trade for techs are measured in beakers first and then overlaid with values. IOW a 80 beaker tech with no units or gov or wonder is worth 80 beakers. If it comes with one of the other things, they will put a higher value on it as you would.

Once you know the beaker cost and subtract any discount then you can tell its value. Here I am ignoring weither it has wonders and such. Discount means how many civs know the tech and how many beakers one has put in at the point of the offer.

If you are talking about lux, well then they are measured by the happy faces. IOW if you have 1 lux they will sell you one cheaply. If you have 2 lux they up the vlaue and the larger the number of towns the more it is worth to you. Even, if you do not realize it (read extra happy face for markets).

The best way to fix is to to play better, get stronger and annex more land.

 

[Vekar]

I am very honorable to the deals I make (if I live long enough to make any) and I never explore anything beyond what I am going to colonize. I usually just sit on what I have till map trading then trade for maps. The last time I played the AI on the other side of the HUGE continent I was on declared war on me shortly after meeting me. Also, because of the AI hostility I keep 2 spearmen per city as a minimum plus a fighting force, should I have time to build one up.

I am going to give your map thing a whirl and see what happens.

 

[Vekar]

Turner: I do not see anything to edit resource rarity.

Also correction: I have Civ3 COMPLETE edition if that means anything.

 

[vmxa]

Complete is just a package with all three versions in it and patched to last fixes. So when you play the conquest version, it is th esame as C3C with 1.22 patch.

The editor is a seperate application you open from the start menu (windows). You can then load the biq and change things so they are for all your games or you can make a map and edit the rules for that map only.

It is not something that can be used on a save game file.

 

[Vekar]

Ok found biq, so the change is to "appearance" correct?

 

[vmxa]

Yes, the larger the number the more frequent. I you change the biq I would suggest you copy the original. Then you could go back, if something goes wrong.

You could just generate a map in the editor and not change the biq. On the map you generate you can select a start location and assign it to player 1.

That will be you. You can then simply add what ever resource or lux you feel is required and not change the biq at all. You save the map and load it with the civ-content option. The problem with that is you have seen th emap.

That is not a big deal, unless you can remember it.

 

[Vekar]

Ok I will give that a try sometime today and see what happens.

 

[darski]

Just a quick note: you have to change the properties for the .biq so that it is not read only when you want to change it. then, you need to put that back (read only) when you have changed the .biq for safety.

 

[Vekar]

Alright it worked, there is now more than one iron source on a huge continent.

Thank you,
Vekar

 

[Zefyrinus]

Late reply, but I think the amount of resources is also affected by the number of players in the game, so the more players there are, the more there will be of each resource. Though I'm not 100% sure on this.

 

[shl7070]

Resources are definitly tied to number of civs on the map
If number is reduced parts of the resources on the seed map won't appear.
regarding individual avalability on pangea:
Iron: Usually common unless extremly unlucky. Can connect it in almost every monarch game although sometimes require special effort like building colonies, resource cities (that can't grow) or start wars to secure them.
Saltpeter: Ridiculusly rare, usually only very far away and require imperial expansion and conquest.
Horses: Very common resource, always available.
Coal: Rare, much more then supposed by real world availability wich is about a third of real world countries and sometimes hard to find.
Rubber: common and located sometimes in counter-intuitive location like polar forests (north/south of the map), in real world restricted to tropical rainforests.
Oil: very rare like in real world, depends on luck.
Don't know about the rest because never reached modern age on pangea.
If the pangea is seemingly resource poor there are usually some resource rich islands.
Making the resource bearing terrain rare will not diminish the availability of resources but will only help locating it (5 billion world- few hills and more iron bearing ones relatively).
Non pangea terrain requires more luck as resources can unevenly spread between landmasses. Don't know but it looks like food bonuses chase strategic resources away.
Luxuries usually cluster but strategic resources not

 

[Vekar]

Well I tweeked it just about right and resources as I said before are more common and not a "rip out hair and use CD as skeet at the range" kind of problem now even when you deck out the continents with civs.

 

[Raliuven]

Part of the resource game is recognizing where a resource is likely to appear. If you are expanding your empire, don't forget to claim tundra, desert and jungle terrain. Oil and Rubber will appear there - the point is to think long term if you think you are going to the IA or MA.

I play PTW not C3C, but I've never had a problem with saltpeter. As long as you are capturing a variety of terrain in your boarders, this is rarely a problem.

One thing to note is that iron is not necessary to win a game. True, you will want it when RR become availalbe, but I've played many games with no iron. If that happens, look for horses - they are very common, then remain relatively peaceful while making a straigh line to MT for Cavalry. Cavalry only requires horses and salt, iron beomes almost insignificant at that point. Why tanks don't require iron I'll never understand.

In the meantime, anything that attacks you, just whittle it down with horsemen. The time between knights and cavalry is relatively small, just try to stay out of a Knight vs. horseman war until Cavalry rolls in. Even so, if needed, Musketmen only require salt and are a reasonable defense against knights until you can race to MT. Once you have Cavalry use them to secure a source of iron for RR if/when possible.

Living without horses, IMO, is harder than living without iron. If you have iron but no horses, then you need to move quick with swordsman gambit before they are useless.

And if you can't live without a resource, try trading for it. I will admit that I've never seen a map without such a limited amount of resources. You usually get a # of resources equal to one less then the number of nations (or something like that). So if you are playing on a huge map with only one opponent, you are setting yourself up for a very frustrating game.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

Why tanks don't require iron I'll never understand.

They already take Oil and Rubber - if they took Iron, so would every other modern vehicle unit (Ships, planes, etc), and that would basically break the game in favor of someone who had the requisite resources.

Living without horses, IMO, is harder than living without iron. If you have iron but no horses, then you need to move quick with swordsman gambit before they are useless.

Medieval Infantry FTW. Same Attack as Knights, and they don't have to slow down for Trebs. Not to mention just LBows and Pikes. I play Regent, but even so I don't think I've ever build cavalry units until I hit Cavalry, just because I don't like them a whole lot.

I will admit that I've never seen a map without such a limited amount of resources.

Well, Conquests made them a bit ... more difficult to acquire. I know that when I played Gold/PtW I never had to worry about resources, and when I got my hands on Conquests I had to start scrambling for any/all Hills/Mountains and then beg the RNGods for some Iron.

 

[vmxa]

Yeah you do not need horse, till cavs. If you do not have horses by then you are not trying. I played a game of Always War and I was not allowed 2 move units.

 

[Raliuven]

They already take Oil and Rubber - if they took Iron, so would every other modern vehicle unit (Ships, planes, etc), and that would basically break the game in favor of someone who had the requisite resources.

Sure - I get that. I wasn't hacking on the game mechanics. But when I think of tanks and infantry, I don't think - boy, we need rubber. Its a incongruity of logic for me, but hey, its a game. If it says I need rubber and no iron, then that's cool. But to carry the logic through, then why make iron a requist of RR? I mean, if I can make tanks without iron, why can't I build RR with just coal? I suppose one could argue that a lack of iron already has consequence (no RR) so it would be a double penalty to need it for tanks and, well, almost everything else.

Medieval Infantry FTW. Same Attack as Knights, and they don't have to slow down for Trebs. Not to mention just LBows and Pikes. I play Regent, but even so I don't think I've ever build cavalry units until I hit Cavalry, just because I don't like them a whole lot.

Point taken, I forgot about them. It seems they come to late to be really useful in most games - again, usually have no problem with horses. At that point, knights are just a hop away and they are fast movers with a retreat option (if you absolutely can't wait until MT and Cavalry). And I will admit that I was using the unit list from this website - and they don't list MI. I should have remembered them, though. Yes, they would make a good substitute, but then they deadend until you can make them guerillas (which are also not listed) - and I don't know that I would spend the gp to convert MI to guerillas unless I really had no choice. I've rarely felt that desperate, though it has happened.

However, without horses, they are the best unit that requires only iron. Pike can make up the defense difference but I can't really say I have ever purposely created a longbowman. If they have a defensive shot, then it might be worth it. But without any resources, I suppose there are no other choices.

I only have PTW - I have heard that resources are more limited in the C3C version. I must admit, I like my resource rich worlds! Don't take all that valuable rubber away!

 

[ChaosArbiter]

Sure - I get that. I wasn't hacking on the game mechanics. But when I think of tanks and infantry, I don't think - boy, we need rubber. Its a incongruity of logic for me, but hey, its a game. If it says I need rubber and no iron, then that's cool. But to carry the logic through, then why make iron a requist of RR? I mean, if I can make tanks without iron, why can't I build RR with just coal? I suppose one could argue that a lack of iron already has consequence (no RR) so it would be a double penalty to need it for tanks and, well, almost everything else.

RE: RR requiring Iron: a reasonable guess (IMO) would be that when Rails started becoming common historically iron and/or steel wasn't in easy supply (I have no idea on the reality), while by the time tanks et al came into play, nearly every country had relatively stable supplies of iron/steel and could make more.

Another idea is that Rubber is supposed to take the place of 'general' equipment supplies - like a modern foot Infantry unit requiring Rubber would need it for Kevlar and polymers and such.

Point taken, I forgot about them. It seems they come to late to be really useful in most games - again, usually have no problem with horses. At that point, knights are just a hop away and they are fast movers with a retreat option (if you absolutely can't wait until MT and Cavalry).

Something else to note about Conquests, though, is that Chivalry is an optional tech now, while MedInf come in with Feudalism, so you don't need to get Chivalry at all (unless you're Japanese with broken Samurai).

And I will admit that I was using the unit list from this website - and they don't list MI. I should have remembered them, though. Yes, they would make a good substitute, but then they deadend until you can make them guerillas (which are also not listed) - and I don't know that I would spend the gp to convert MI to guerillas unless I really had no choice. I've rarely felt that desperate, though it has happened.

Eh, they are listed, just not in the first list - you have to look at the Units Added for PtW/Conquests ... although in Conquests they've got a Modern Upgrade (TOW Infantry) which are pretty good (12/14/1) with 6 Defensive Bombard. Also, MedInf can attack Rifles (if you're lucky) or all those obsolete units the AI always has running around, or simply act as decoys once you have something else.

However, without horses, they are the best unit that requires only iron. Pike can make up the defense difference but I can't really say I have ever purposely created a longbowman. If they have a defensive shot, then it might be worth it. But without any resources, I suppose there are no other choices.

I've use LBows before, not so much for the Defensive Bombard as for the few times I've had Iron only hooked up to a few places. If nothing else, they're still 4 Attack units, and they seem to be a bit luckier attacking some places than MedInf.

 

[darski]

I've use LBows before, not so much for the Defensive Bombard as for the few times I've had Iron only hooked up to a few places. If nothing else, they're still 4 Attack units, and they seem to be a bit luckier attacking some places than MedInf.

In one of those quirks of Civ 3... I once had a game where all my tanks just died against Infantry. I purposely sent in my longbows and they finished off both the infantry in the town. I'ts just one of those crazy things