Resource Rarity or lack thereof

[Roxlimn]

Increasingly, it appears to me that BERT doesn't have a cohesive idea of what Strategic Resources ought to do. What is meant, strategically, when you have a unit that requires 1 Xenomass?

It feels increasingly like it's just meant as a limitless resource ala Civ3 - as long as you have one or more of the resource in question, you can basically just field the unit in question without much practical limit, which is kind of weird in that such Resources tend to be strewn quite liberally around the map. This means that the resource restriction is frequently meaningless.

On the other hand, the numerical value suggests that the number of the resource should matter, which doesn't make sense when there's so much of the resource at any one spot - Titanium being the most egregious offender. By the middle of the game, you could have something like 50 or 60 or even 100 Xenomass. No one got time to make that many Xeno Cavalry!

The only one that remotely feels like a restriction is Petroleum, because Holomatrices require 3 each and they're not as generous in number in each tile. This means that for each city that has something like two Oil patches, you could maybe cover it and another city in Holomatrices, but no more. That's a real, and relevant strategic matter.

But what about the other resources? What's the deal and how should they be arrayed?

 

[Callonia]

I have run out of Firatite, floating stones and xenomass.

Only titanium I don't really run out of it because I don't' want 20+ battlesuits because they have terrible movement range until teleporting satellites become available. I only build alot of battlesuits if I have no choice. This is arguably the factor that limits battlesuits from being too common in my armies.

Oil is barely needed at all, usually only for lasercomm satellites and that's it?

This is my own experiences from "huge" map on civBERT.

Personally I believe titanium being abundant is a good thing because all the worlds we're colonizing isn't Earth but rather new world with different mineral make up and deposits. And without them, there will be very few cities with good production making AIs even more weaker and easier to dominate through war.

And besides if Purity's Navy will now require floating stones then I'm going to have to insist on them being able to travel over land for obvious reasons. They're literally the only flying ships in CIVBERT but limited only to water for balance reasons. And besides you can see proof anyways in Purity Domination victory screen.

 

[Aldor]

Petroleum and Float Stones appear not as common in my games. Geothermic resources are rare in some games, abundant in others. The other resources (firaxite, xenomass, titanium) however are very common now.

International trade routes between allies and agents dealing on the black market can help you fill any missing resource (btw, I'm not sure how the agents are supposed to work...do they provide a "fixed" number of resources while they're active, or do they also "refresh" resources that you spend? It appeared that way to me).

So yeah, there is no real shortage of "strategic" resources. One problem is that most of the buildings which require the resources come quite late. Maybe it would help if there were resource costs for lower tier buildings as well? Another problem I see is the total shift of wonders from "too little effect, too high costs" to "huge effect, for basically no cost at all". This would be another area where it would be absolutely ok to add resource costs IMO.

Perhaps there could also be a division for "basic" strategic resources like petroleum and titanium, and "advanced" ones like firaxite, xenomass, float stone. Not sure where to put geothermals here Then you could have standard units use titanium and/or petroleum, similar to how it was in CiV.

 

[Roxlimn]

I think that when discussing this sort of thing we need to start first from high concept ideas - what we assume might be appropriate and what not. Is it appropriate to not have Titanium for a game or for a whole lot of the game? Which resources should funnel into which purposes and why? Civ 3's resources are limitless. They only became limited in Civ 5 (I think?). When it was first introduced, the limited nature of resource you can get from each node meant that there was a real limitation - sometimes you can't build a gazillion of your favorite unit, just 3 or 4. That's something significant. Do we want that?

Perhaps resources can be dual-nature - limited for units, but unlimited for buildings.

 

[Callonia]

Oh believe me, resources like floating stones is very limited. I'm lucky to have three Lev Destroyers and two floatstone factories... with about 10+ Lev tanks and so. I never have enough for something as bad as Aegis. With about 20+ battlesuits as the general infantry of my purity army.

Resourceless units like centurions is just too weak when battles reach that stage. Resourceless ranged units can get away with it.

But think, this is because resource units in CIVBERT Don't just require one floating stone, they require few. Lev Tanks require like 2 or 3? While Lev Destroyers require 5! Floating stone factory requires like 3? That can eat into floating stones count very very fast if we were to use the distribution of strategics of civ5. If anything I have more strategics in civ5 than I do in civbert on regular basis. Unless it's oil. I always have alot of oil.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The general CIV5 idea of limited resources and local resource use wasn't bad. It adds a strong geographical element to the game that affects city placements and makes some parts of the map become highly attractive as the game progresses.

Horses are a great example for that - sometimes you have to decide if you want the Circus, the defensible hill position or another two wheat tiles. That's cool because it adds meaningful choice.

Limiting the amount of available units by resources is also not a bad idea. You'd have to decide what type of units you want (tank vs. bombers could be an interesting choice *if* air units weren't so OP). It also gives aggressive players a reason to conquer territory. By capturing that city with 8 oil, you can get even more powerful units, by taking their Uranium location you can prevent them from counter-attacking with nukes.

The idea of having to decide between buildings and units is also good - if it would work. Which it never did, since buildings are not affected by negative resources. Just buy as much as you need, build stuff, then cancel the deals. It's the big bug bear of the CIV5 resource system.

The problem with BE is that it doesn't know how to value resources. The general idea of CIV5 is still there when it comes to affinity resources, but stuff like oil and titanium is utterly useless outside of satellites. If some of the basic buildings (like the Institute or the Auto Plant) had Titanium cost, you would once more create an interesting dynamic where resources on the map would *actually* matter.

To solve the BERT resource problem you'd need to reduce the delta between the tile yields (e.g. not 2 Xenomass vs. 10 Xenomass, but rather 2 vs 4), adjust the cost for buildings and units according to their usefulness, add more resource costs within the available building and unit options (e.g. oil for Rovers and Tac Jets, Titanium for Submarines and Artillery, etc.) and completely re-evaluate the resource cost of wonders.

 

[Galgus]

I've never liked the idea of dividing resources between buildings and units, since I think all players should have a decent army.

Defender's bonuses should not be strong enough that a tiny handful of units is optimal.

Wars are far more interesting when they are between armies, rather than boring sieges where melee units can't hit cities on their own.

 

[Acken]

I don't really mind having to divide between units and buildings but yes I agree that everyone should have an army and that the defender bonus should be smaller. I think CivBE is actually a stepforward there though. In my somewhat limited experience CivBE cities are weak and melee units take them relatively easier compared to civ5.
What I don't like about civBE is that upgrades are free and production is too high to allow emergency build of an army.

 

[Galgus]

Upgrades being free seems fine to me, since upgrading almost felt like a punishment for having an army beforehand.

I typically think gold/energy buying is the go-to for emergency armies, though that is probably because I'm a Marathon player.

Producing units traditionally when you need them now in Marathon is, well, a third wave reinforcement at best.

(Behind the energy-purchased second wave, behind the standing army.)

 

[Gorbles]

The general CIV5 idea of limited resources and local resource use wasn't bad. It adds a strong geographical element to the game that affects city placements and makes some parts of the map become highly attractive as the game progresses.

Horses are a great example for that - sometimes you have to decide if you want the Circus, the defensible hill position or another two wheat tiles. That's cool because it adds meaningful choice.

Limiting the amount of available units by resources is also not a bad idea. You'd have to decide what type of units you want (tank vs. bombers could be an interesting choice *if* air units weren't so OP). It also gives aggressive players a reason to conquer territory. By capturing that city with 8 oil, you can get even more powerful units, by taking their Uranium location you can prevent them from counter-attacking with nukes.

The idea of having to decide between buildings and units is also good - if it would work. Which it never did, since buildings are not affected by negative resources. Just buy as much as you need, build stuff, then cancel the deals. It's the big bug bear of the CIV5 resource system.

The problem with BE is that it doesn't know how to value resources. The general idea of CIV5 is still there when it comes to affinity resources, but stuff like oil and titanium is utterly useless outside of satellites. If some of the basic buildings (like the Institute or the Auto Plant) had Titanium cost, you would once more create an interesting dynamic where resources on the map would *actually* matter.

To solve the BERT resource problem you'd need to reduce the delta between the tile yields (e.g. not 2 Xenomass vs. 10 Xenomass, but rather 2 vs 4), adjust the cost for buildings and units according to their usefulness, add more resource costs within the available building and unit options (e.g. oil for Rovers and Tac Jets, Titanium for Submarines and Artillery, etc.) and completely re-evaluate the resource cost of wonders.

This post, pretty much 100%.

I'm not sure I'd limit the yields so severely, but this is something you can play around with anyhow. Just involves messing with the starting plots / map generation code, which is moddable, but a massive unoptimised pain in the ass.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I've never liked the idea of dividing resources between buildings and units, since I think all players should have a decent army.

Defender's bonuses should not be strong enough that a tiny handful of units is optimal.

Wars are far more interesting when they are between armies, rather than boring sieges where melee units can't hit cities on their own.

It should be possible to have a decent army AND a decent economy with 0 resources.

To have a really good economy or army should require the use of resources, and you should have to decide which you want to be really good.
(same as deciding to build more buildings+colonists or more units with your production)

 

[Gorbles]

Problem is there, "decent" is a sliding scale. You should be able to play the game with no resources.

However winning the game should come down to having resources.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Problem is there, "decent" is a sliding scale. You should be able to play the game with no resources.

However winning the game should come down to having resources.

Well.... winning the game WELL should require resources.

If you are playing on a lower difficulty level you should be able to play a 'no resources' game, and still win.

 

[Ryika]

I find that Buildings that require Resources should generally cost more resources than they do now and be a lot stronger than normal buildings. That way you don't just spam them as you do now.

Resources for Units are okay imho, the Ultimate Units are probably a bit overpriced for what they do (especially when factoring in actual construction cost and high tech-unlock-requirements), but overall it's fine. Either having an army of Affinity-driven Units or having economic advantages sounds like a good decision to make to me.

What really breaks the system is the distribution on the map. When you can have single-city locations that have like 30-40 Floatstone - and that's not even that rare - that just blows up the whole system. I find that Affinity Resources should be somewhat normalized in Quantity and have higher quantities in Desert/Tundra/Snow areas to create the choice of taking the "weaker" spot for more Resources.

 

[Aea]

I feel the bigger problem with resources is that there's simply too many resource tiles on the map. This makes competition for land somewhat lackluster since there are so many good city spots. In CiV getting that "amazing" city spot can really make or break a game (especially on Deity), whereas in BERT I feel there's such an overabundance of good locations that competing for land isn't so pronounced.

This also breaks aquatic cities (IMHO), because the game seems to favor aquatic resource density. I've settled cities that have all three affinity resources with a helping of Titanium and Petroleum thrown in.

I think cutting the number of resource tiles (and as a side effect resources) by half would make the game much more interesting.

 

[Galgus]

It should be possible to have a decent army AND a decent economy with 0 resources.

To have a really good economy or army should require the use of resources, and you should have to decide which you want to be really good.
(same as deciding to build more buildings+colonists or more units with your production)

I don't think there should be a trade-off beyond production opportunity costs.

If a non-resource army can defend against a resource army, all else being equal, the resource army would seem underpowered.

If otherwise, a resource army would be required anyway.

 

[darkskies]

I did actually recently get one map where there was almost no firaxite, don't know how it happened. I ended up with 7 which was annoying but most of the AI's had none. Only has happened the once though, made me rethink my strategy slightly...since I tend to favor those three range units (at least until I can get jets built up to decent strength if I play that long). This was on the largest map.

In general until or unless the AI is improved I'm not sure limiting resources is a good idea as I'd worry it would weaken it even farther, but I only do single player.

 

[Genghis_Sean]

I've struggled with lack of multiple resources on small maps. I tend not to play the larger ones, so perhaps the difference. I've also run into difficulty where I got into a war, which immediately canceled all my trading convoys and suddenly many of my resources dropped into negatives.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I don't think there should be a trade-off beyond production opportunity costs.

If a non-resource army can defend against a resource army, all else being equal, the resource army would seem underpowered.

If otherwise, a resource army would be required anyway.

Well... they won't be equal
1. defending should be easier than attacking (how much easier is debatable, but it should be easier)
2. If you put all your resources into buildings, then your 'non-resource army' will either be a)Bigger because you have more production/energy or b) Better because you have more tech/virtue perks

Also a 'resource army' where ALL units use resources, should probably be nearly impossible. (or a sign of a very small army)

 

[Galgus]

I agree that defending should be easier than attacking, but I prefer defender's bonuses that require an army to benefit over ones that don't.

That is a big part of the problem with separating resources between economy and war - a large economy directly feeds into war production.

So it can create scenarios where the player invested in war, with a weaker economy because of it, has either a marginalized military benefit or little at all.

In which case, why choose to have a standing army of resource units? Why not simply sell buildings when the war comes and buy the units?