Strategic Balance + Abundant Resources

[Rpger29]

I've been able to find a few threads about the strategic balance and abundant resources settings for advanced map setup.

I was hoping to get a larger amount of feedback from players on these.

Personally, I enjoy the challenge of settling or conquering to get scarce resources, but sometimes I get a little tired of being continually shafted by resource placement.

In my most recent game, my four city civ that probably covered over 500-600 hexes had no coal, one oil, no aluminum and no uranium. Not only were there none of these in my territory, there were none nearby and none in nearby city states. Only 1 of 12 city states had any aluminum as well.

So here's my line of questioning for players who have used one or both of these settings:

1. Do either of these settings (separately) have severe game-changing side effects? For example, I could see the trading of luxuries to be an issue with "abundant resources."

2. Have you used both settings together? If so, please comment on this.

I appreciate everyone's feedback on this. When I get home this evening and settle in, I'm thinking of rolling a map with both.

Edit: Petition for a "don't screw me over" advanced map setting.

 

[Rpger29]

I just realized one reason for no answer to #2. In the unmodded game, this is obviously one pulldown menu with one choice. I had some maps and/or mods that allowed for multiple selections. Or seem to anyway.

I'm rolling up a highlands game with abundant resources, but moving up one difficulty level from my comfort zone. We'll see how that goes.

 

[GfxJG]

I always run Abundant resources in my games, because I like being able to build most units

 

[Steelyglint]

1. Do either of these settings (separately) have severe game-changing side effects? For example, I could see the trading of luxuries to be an issue with "abundant resources."

Not really. Unless there's someone massive you'll always have something to sell to most people.

 

[vexing]

setting strategic balance would make me generally tech animal husbandry first, and be more inclined to play as russia.

 

[Rpger29]

So I've had a chance to play most of a game as Korea on a Highlands map with abundant resources. Honestly the biggest difference are the quantities per tile of strategic resources.

I had heard from a few people that it resulted in absurd quantities of luxuries, but I did not find that to be the case (on this map at least). In fact, I actually ended up with fewer unique and fewer overall luxuries than on my previous non-abundant map.

So far, I'm finding that it makes it more fun to play the game at +1 difficulty.

I have had a bit of a terrible game so far though. It felt like it took absolutely forever to get my science up and running. I'm just now about to build the Apollo project in 1920 - normally I have it done pre 1900.

I don't think the abundant resources influenced that much either way. Mostly I was slowed down by Monty sending wave after wave of jaguars. I actually got him to give me two gold settlements for peace, though one was admittedly tiny.

 

[Lokos451]

I play a lot of hotseat with friends, and we often play abundant so we don't have to re-roll if one player gets particularly screwed on placement.

The biggest difference seems to be the amount of secondary resources. There are slightly more luxuries, and the strategic tiles have larger yields by about 50%...but mostly it's the secondary resources, wheat, cows, sheep, and especially stone that I see the really dramatic increase in.

 

[Rpger29]

Now that you mention it, I do think I can say with certainty that there were a good amount of cow/sheep/horse/deer tiles. Bananas/wheat seemed about the same, but that might be based on the map type.

I think I'll keep playing abundant and try it on a few map types. Hopefully I won't have Monty as a neighbor next map.

 

[Dai]

"Strategic Balance" seems to tend to stick 4+ each of horses and iron (number of available ones, not number of tiles, although I have seen four iron tiles happen) at least right in everyone's capital area, and often dramatically more - even players who start in areas that would normally be pretty iron-light will generally get huge amounts. It changes the early game calculus as little because you don't have to worry about getting the techs that reveal the resources before you want them, because you don't need to worry about the whole settle-the-second-city-on-iron thing. On the other hand, the techs that reveal horses and iron are more valuable because they're worth a big pile of production in your capital typically.

 

[Rpger29]

I finally got science going in this game and won a LATE spaceship victory (around 1940).

I like to play after the win a bit until I conquer at least one empire, but my game kept crashing at turn 1200. I guess I'm back to small maps.

I think I'm sticking with abundant resources + disable start bias. Sometimes I swear start bias only works in favor of the AI.