resources and

[neotemujin]

It seems to me that resources are way unfair! Ive had the game for a while, and rarely get deeper than the medeival age into a game. why? because this frequently happens to me:
one horses within reasonable range. NO IRON, and the computer opponents have like two in their city's radius, plus several just outside them! And what's worse is they don't use all of them. They mine exactly one and don;t touch the rest. i know they have Iron Working because i sometimes even give it to them just to see if they actually use the iron.
Also, a similar thing happenes with Saltpeter. The only resource I have ever gotten in abbundance is Coal. And that is useful, but not for building units.
I'm often limited to resourceless units and and (maybe) trading the AI for a resource at an exorbent price. I've gone to the editor and played around with the appearance rates and such, but I can't find a balance between too much and not enough

help? anyone? please?

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Problem - you dun have the iron, they have the iron.
Solution - 'take' their iron.
Problem solved.

So what's your problem with that? I think sometimes, it's just luck. We just got to live with it. Well, it would make the game much more challenging than Civ2.

 

[that_guy]

You do know that you can change resources some, using the editor? If you run it and turn off "use default rules", then you can access Natural Resources and alter how often they appear, globally. Make some changes then generate a map to see the effect. You might also want to do the same using the default rules as well, to get an idea of how the original distribution works.

Of course, some folks find this unpalatable, but since there's no multiplayer, it's your game, and your rules

As noted, scarcity of something you might need is one of the basic strategy elements of the game. You haven't lived till you've had to go crawling to Catherine the Great begging for just one more shot at some rubber

 

[Monster_Magnet]

At first I didn't like the 'randomness' and inherent random bonusses/penalties for civs. I tought it was unfair.

But after playing a few games, I like it. It gives you a goal to work for, a very important goal. I've been directing my discoveries more and more to the ones that reveal the strategic resources asap.