Resource tile yields are way too low

[Brawndo]

In Civ 4, having things like wheat, rice, bananas, corn, etc within your city borders was HUGE. Depending on terrain type, these tiles yielded 5+ food when improved. This was important because it allowed you to have citizens work tiles with no food output, like plains hills, in order to get more hammers.

In Civ 5, these "bonus" resources are largely useless. With the exception of fish, all of them give +1 food, which isn't very helpful. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the maximum yield you can get on a land tile prior to researching Civil Service is 4 Food: grassland with some kind of bonus food + farm. Thus, if I don't have every citizen working a tile with at least 1 food, my city either barely grows or stagnates. This means I can't work most high production tiles, keeping production slow for most cities besides my capital (24+ turns for a ****ing Windmill, yay!).

I know this can be modded relatively easily, but it's annoying nonetheless

 

[mattpilot]

I wish we could put roads or railroads on mine or other improvement tiles to up the output production. Sure, you got higher maintenance cost for roads, but you got more production. Hope someone will mod something like this.

 

[Matte979]

Its a diffrent game, slower and more strategical in some ways and more streamlined in others.

I like that resources are not so important and things are much slower.

Maybe you should play on Quick speed.

 

[Brawndo]

Its a diffrent game, slower and more strategical in some ways and more streamlined in others.

I like that resources are not so important and things are much slower.

Maybe you should play on Quick speed.

Historically resources like food staples were extremely important, and Civ IV accurately portrayed this. Sometimes I would go to war over good city location with lots of resources.

Quick? You must think I'm impatient or something. On quick tech advances come so frequently that most units are obsolete before you build 2-3 of them. I'm sorry, but many buildings are ridiculously expensive - watermills cost more than half of what some early wonders cost

 

[muxec]

I often find it useful to just settle on top of the resource.

 

[Ahriman]

Yeah, I wish the yield bonuses on resources were larger (particularly those bonus resources like cows and sheep, where the bonus is the only advantage of the resource).

 

[Aegis]

Maybe you should play on Quick speed.

By the time a unit has been built, it is already obsolete.

 

[alanthreonus]

I think the reason they did this was to make the different areas of the map more balanced. In Civ IV if you started on a floodplains river with a bunch of corn and pigs nearby, and your rivals started in tundra, you pretty much won the game. In Civ V, you still have an advantage, but it's not overpowered.

 

[PawelS]

You can get more food by allying with a maritime city state or from some buildings (Granary, Watermill). So I think the overall food situation isn't very bad, in the demo my cities grow quite large.

But I agree that the yields from improved resources should be a little bigger. I'm going to make my personal mod with some tweaks to the game, and this will be one of them.

 

[Lillefix]

You have access to many more tiles now. It takes time to get them, but it's possible.

 

[12agnar0k]

I think its works just fine, with the "population use less food, specialists use less food" social policies, eventually growth will speed up.

 

[Biz_]

well if you think about it it ends up being a little more balanced in terms of a player not being able to get a huge advantage with a nice start

however, it means that everything takes a long time to make, and it seems like this is turning into the game where just 1 extra unit can end up making a big difference

if you have to spend your time making happiness buildings, you'll be down those extra units

 

[Iberian]

You have access to many more tiles now. It takes time to get them, but it's possible.

This is part of the equation. Also we don't know how to play yet. I bet in a year when this thread is brought back from the grave we will all laugh at how stupid we were. If anything I think this version of Civ is easier. We will laugh remembering how easy vanilla CiV was.

 

[Buccaneer]

I think the reason they did this was to make the different areas of the map more balanced. In Civ IV if you started on a floodplains river with a bunch of corn and pigs nearby, and your rivals started in tundra, you pretty much won the game. In Civ V, you still have an advantage, but it's not overpowered.

I agree with this. In Civ4, there were way too many resources - a wealth of riches that felt like cheating (some mods made this even worse). Everyone had too much, which rendered resources nearly meaningless to fight for or to trade. I like how in Civ5 resources are rendered more valuable, not only in their yields, but in their use to make units. But I'm sure there would be some mods later that gives all resources more yield so you don't have to think about them strategically.

 

[Mannu]

I wish we could put roads or railroads on mine or other improvement tiles to up the output production. Sure, you got higher maintenance cost for roads, but you got more production. Hope someone will mod something like this.

No. Because then you will have to do it to be competitive and to get the best from your tiles. And then we'll be right back to road spam.

 

[edpovi]

Look at the buildings like Granary, Water Mill, and Lighthouse. There is where you will find some of the food you need to grow or be productive.

I like the re-balancing of the resource tiles, it's a pretty big change, not just Civ IV with hexes.

 

[Iceciro]

I have *already* fixed this in the XML. Much better. This is one of the Civ V changes I *don't* agree with. But fixing it has the awesome side effect of helping to solve the "production too little compared to research" problem.

Probably release it as a protomod later today.

 

[Seven05]

Even at the standard settings I found that I had TONS of these 'useless' resources. Between three cities I had four cattle and five wheat tiles. So I view them more like the goofey shield on the grassland tiles in Civ 2, not really national resources but instead a way to provide smaller local boosts.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

I often find it useful to just settle on top of the resource.

Wait, so if you create your city on top of a iron resource for example you will just automatically get that resource?

I thought that creating cities on top of resource tiles simply meant that the resource on it was forever lost since you could no longer build a tile improvement on it.

 

[Brawndo]

Wait, so if you create your city on top of a iron resource for example you will just automatically get that resource?

I thought that creating cities on top of resource tiles simply meant that the resource on it was forever lost since you could no longer build a tile improvement on it.

No I believe you get it. Same thing happened in Civ IV, if you built a city on top of dyes or iron or whatever, it was immediately connected to your trade route