Stormfather's Black Gold- Changing the way we fight for oil.

[Stormfather]

"Although aluminum demand is rapidly increasing, known reserves of its bauxite ore are sufficient to meet the worldwide demands for aluminum for many centuries. Increased aluminum recycling, which has the advantage of lowering the cost in electric power in producing aluminum, will considerably extend the world's bauxite reserves."

- Wikipedia​

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Aluminum is the single most abundant metal on Earth's crust. This mod aims to bring the modern era of Civ 5 more in line with world history by making Oil the chief resource of the modern era.

All occurrences of Aluminum are removed (though the resource is not deleted, to avoid compatibility issues with other mods that might add a reference to RESOURCE_ALUMINUM). Most units or buildings that originally required aluminum now require Oil. For game balance reasons, oil is slightly more common.

Formerly required Aluminum, now require Oil: Jet Fighter, Helicopter, Missile Cruiser, Modern Armor, Rocket Artillery, Mobile SAM, Stealth Bomber.

Formerly required Aluminum, now have no resource requirement: Hydro-electric Plant, Spaceship Factory.

Formerly required Aluminum, now require Uranium: Nuclear Submarine (+1 movement to offset the opportunity cost of using Uranium).

In addition to the above features, the mod also contains updated tooltips and civilopedia entries to reflect the changes.

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I've played though Civ 5 a few times, and not once have I really felt the need to secure Oil, or deny my enemy access, because Oil is replaced almost immediately by Aluminum. It's entirely feasible, even likely, to survive and thrive in the modern era without burning a single drop of oil. For my first foray into modding Civ 5, I decided to change that by making Oil the resource du jour for the Modern Era.

After a playtest, I decided to leave Mechanized Infantry, Submarines, and Destroyers with no resource requirements. A nation with absolutely no Oil is already at a big disadvantage, and removing these three units from their choices pretty much seals their fate. Destroyers and Submarines can still be used to harass and destroy enemy oil wells, and Mech. Infantry are a necessity.

UPDATE

There's a lua script that checks the worldbuilder file to see if any resources were not correctly allocated; thus working around my workaround to get aluminum off the map without deleting it completely (and risking stability with other mods). Thus, aluminum was visible in 4,000 BC in V3. In V4, Aluminum's dispersion is completely unaffected by the mod, only unit and building dependencies (and civilopedia and tooltips.)

 

[Metal_Head89]

I think Mech Infantry should use Oil to force ppl to build regular infantry eventually. Thats just my opinion. Would give it more of a feeling if you use both. The Mobile SAM should use Oil as well, I just wish there was a SAM station you can build like a fort with the same benefits as a Mobile SAM just without the movements.

 

[Szpilman]

Though I'm yet to reach the Modern era, this sounds like a really good idea! I'm all for less but more meaningful resources, and Oil is indeed the chief strategic resource of these days we live in. Plus any mod that fosters war over territory looks good in my book.

 

[Stormfather]

Don't want to bump my own thread, but can anyone help me out with how to format the description? It's all ready to go except for that. Basically, what I want to do is turn the wall of text into something more neat and ordered, but any formatting I enter into modbuddy doesn't reflect in the ingame browser, making me think that there are commands like [newline] and [bullet] (neither of which work). I've seen other mods with formatting in their descriptions, so...

 

[Decimatus]

Don't want to bump my own thread, but can anyone help me out with how to format the description? It's all ready to go except for that. Basically, what I want to do is turn the wall of text into something more neat and ordered, but any formatting I enter into modbuddy doesn't reflect in the ingame browser, making me think that there are commands like [newline] and [bullet] (neither of which work). I've seen other mods with formatting in their descriptions, so...

You can always open some of those mods in modbuddy and see how they do it.

 

[Stormfather]

You can always open some of those mods in modbuddy and see how they do it.

Weird. I tried that last night, and modbuddy crashed. I tried with a different mod, and it worked. If at first you don't succeed... anyway, thanks for the pointer!




Update

It seems that there is a lua script that adds aluminum if there isn't enough on the map, so my previous attempts to eliinate aluminum from spawning are being overridden by this safeguard. Back to the drawing board...

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

Formatting a description for your mod is pretty simple, you pretty much use any of the commands that you would use in writing a tooltip description. So far I've successfully used:

[NEWLINE]
[ICON_BULLET]
[COLOR_RED][/COLOR]

They have to be capital letters and they have to be in brackets. The annoying part is that Modbuddy won't give you a preview so you can't see the effects until the mod is uploaded...for more possibilities of different codes check out this file:

Assets\Gameplay\XML\NewText\EN_US\CIV5GameTextInfos_Jon.xml

Bear in mind that there is a 1024 character limit so don't spend too much of your space on these. Also, for the colors, make sure you take a look at the interface XML files to know which ones the game can read.

Thanks for Thalassicus for initially passing this info on to me.

 

[mattpilot]

hmm... not quite sure i like the idea of completely removing the resource.


I agree that oil is not really that special. NEver cared if i had it because, as you said, it almost immediately gets replaced by aluminium. You really only need oil for aircraft carriers, battleships and bombers u want to put on aircraft carriers. The rest is done with aluminium.

Aluminium is also so abundant that every player still alive in the modern area usually has 40+ of it (in a standard game). Instead of removing it, why not just make more units require it, IN ADDITION to oil.

I also quite like the idea of mech infantry requiring aluminium. That alone should eat a lot of that resource. But Jet fighter, missile cruiser, modern armour, etc... should require oil AND aluminium. Is this possible?