Resources - their placement is flawed

[anglosaxon]

I often find that many resources only appear naturally at the start of the game in certain places.

As an example, Wheat is only ever on flat plains. Silver is not found outside the icy/tundra regions. Gold is not found inside the tropical or ice/tundra zone. Gems are only found in the tropical region. Beavers/Fur is not found outside the tundra zone. We all know they can be found in temperate zones in reality.

I can understand why incense, spices and sugar are found in the subtropical/tropical zone.

Do people agree with this? Should the developers widen the resource occurrence in the next expansion?

 

[DigitalBoy]

I actually like how certain resources are only found in certain areas. I find the distribution of resources to be near perfect. I can always find health, strategic, and luxury resources somewhere nearby.

 

[anglosaxon]

I can see your point, but why should anyone have to waste a city just to secure some silver on the north pole?

It just doesn't seme very realistic.

 

[JimT]

It's game balance issues rather than a flaw.

Plus: Cereals may be grown anywhere but they thrive well and are most useful on flat plains (such as in Canada). But agreed, it doesn't reflect the real world.

 

[anglosaxon]

Agreed. I don't want to see Spices in a temperate zone as they grow there normally. But I would like to see precious metals all over the planet.

Cereals grow best in a temperate climate with wet and sunny summers, not necessarily vast expanses of plains, as the wind can stunt the growth, rather like the failure of the Soviet attempt to grow cereals on the Eurasian Steppe in the 20th Century.

 

[JIM G]

Maybe the distribution is unrealistic, but it makes for better game play as you will be more likely to be able to trade resources with other civs.
T'is annoying that marble & silver only seem to turn up in very marginal territory though! How I cheer when my miners find some silver in an existing mine

 

[Monkeyfinger]

This topic is new and original and has never been made before.

 

[Syndrome Zed]

This topic is new and original and has never been made before.

Thank you for the helpful contribution.


Frankly, if you think the resource distro is crazy in normal games, try a fractal map sometime. When you get 3 of a resource in 4 tiles, it makes for some crazy trade possibilities. But I don't think resources should be expanded, if anything I'd like to see them even more restricted, at least happiness resources, to make resources more strategically valuable.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I often find that many resources only appear naturally at the start of the game in certain place

Have you tried the fantasy map? I think it overcomes those objections.

 

[Collier20]

Well I think the resources are better than in Civ 3. I thougth it was stupid that i could clear cut a jungle and have rubber appear 500 years later. Isn't the idea of rubber appearing in a jungle that it comes from the Rubber Tree?

While I am at it, I also miss the shield grassland bonus and the idea that roads produce commerce from the previous civ games.

Oh and while I am wondering off topic, if a city has a resource in its bfc and my entire empire is benefiting from it, should that city get massive trade bonuses instead of a meek +1 gold?

 

[pigswill]

I guess its to stop you from holing up in a small corner of the map with all resources to hand and ignoring the rest of the world. If you want big, healthy cities you need as many resources as possible which means expansion or trade.

 

[LucyDuke]

I can see your point, but why should anyone have to waste a city just to secure some silver on the north pole?

Without the silver being there, there's no reason to build anything. Taking out the silver would make useless land even more useless, which doesn't add much to gameplay. That silver city is a choice, and you're free to decide not to build it if the silver doesn't justify the ice city to you.

A quick tangent: there should be unique terrain improvements available on the tundra and ice. Something like a research station on the ice that provides a beaker or two, or some untradeable resources like seals for food. Something to make the polar regions a little less useless. End tangent.

Fur, as represented in the game, is more prevalent in cold places. It wouldn't make sense to have a beaver hanging out in the jungle. I could understand broadening the occurence a little bit, such that you might find gems three or four tiles (or so, varying by map size) from the jungle, but it's reasonable to have them focus in one region. The map generators are designed to geographically separate the corn and the wheat and the rice, so that they don't all show up in the same place, necessitating expansion and trade. I think the distribution resources generally follows the same logic. If your capitol is in the jungle, you might have gems all over the place, but you're going to have to go out of your way to secure some silver.

The fantasy realm map gives me nightmares. The idea of randomly jumbling terrain is an interesting one, but they take it too far. If there were slightly larger areas devoted to each region, it might be tolerable, but each individual tile being randomly generated is just too much. City placement is like throwing darts.

Anyway, I think a bit more flexibility would be good, but there needs to remain some challenge in securing various resources.

 

[bassist2119]

I can allow suspension of disbelief regarding most of the resource placement tendencies but I do have a personal qualm with one in particular: deer. CivIV deer only show up in tundra squares (unless in a starting BFC, in which the tundra was switched to plains). I live in upstate NY, which is a far cry from tundra. Yet the tile which represents the area that I live, along with the 8 adjacent tiles, should all have between 7-8 deer resources.
On a similar note, I find some of the resources becoming obsolete with some of the technologies questionable (fur and ivory, in particular). Yet the side of many of the roads in my area would indicate a correlation between the advent of the car (combustion + replaceable parts?) and trends towards the obsolesence of deer.

 

[potatokiosk]

Minerals don't care about the climate. The idea that silver would only appear in tundra is absurd. A better way to encourage expansion/trade would be to discourage placing gold, silver, and gems near each other, but not basing it on climate.