Strategic resource dependency

[stealth_nsk]

I have great memories of epic wars in Civ III fought over oil and rubber. Though strategic resource dependence was probably a little too strict in that game.

Yeah, the problem with Civ3 resources was - if you don't have them, you don't have resources to fight over them

I believe more active non-military usage could fix this by both providing active demand for resource and still being able to have war.

 

[Nixalo]

The thing about strategic resources in Civ V was that the eras tended to use 2 of them. So you usually had one or the other.

The issue with Civ V was that until very game, the resources units were not that much of a big jump. Mostly because you could wreck with archers.

I almost would like a Rock-Paper-Scissors system. Where not having any strategic resource keeps you viable but makes you into Paper and vulnerable to the guys with Rocks.

No Iron and Horses? Well if you are Aztec or India, no biggie since you have Jaguars and elephants. Anyone else has to choice between settling a bad city on an valid spot with resources or crank out spear infantry to conquer the guy with Horses. If you chose option 2, beware the civs with Iron as they can tear through half your army.

I almost like the idea.

 

[dexters]

Yeah, the problem with Civ3 resources was - if you don't have them, you don't have resources to fight over them

I believe more active non-military usage could fix this by both providing active demand for resource and still being able to have war.

Not having coal in Civ3 was an economic death sentence. That plus rubber were the 2 biggies.

Iron was important too but due to it being early it just usually meant no early wars unless a quick war would secure iron nearby.

Continents games pre patch were the most intesting. Sometimes iron would be in all one continent and coal in another. This was later patched to be not so punishing.

 

[Larsenex]

I still say a good compromise would be to allow units 'built' with said resource 'iron' be given a chevron and an increase in attack strength. This gives you the incentive to grab them and make it worthwhile to build units that are strong but not terribly overpowered with them.

 

[dexters]

I still say a good compromise would be to allow units 'built' with said resource 'iron' be given a chevron and an increase in attack strength. This gives you the incentive to grab them and make it worthwhile to build units that are strong but not terribly overpowered with them.

You already sort of have this mechanic. A unit built with iron that you later lose will be weaker.

I just don't think it makes sense to allow players to build them if they don't have iron to begin with .

 

[m15a]

I just don't think it makes sense to allow players to build them if they don't have iron to begin with .

Depends on the type of unit, I guess, but for something like "swordsman", iron could be used or not used. So, it makes some sense from a real-world perspective. And if it doesn't make sense, the name of the unit can be changed so that it does make sense.

From a gameplay perspective, there is the benefit of having more flexibility with your units (being able to upgrade your units with iron when available without having to rebuild units) and also it means that fewer types of units are needed or, better yet, unit types can be more specialized because they don't need to fulfill the niche of "medieval warrior for civs without iron".

 

[Battlehelm043]

You already sort of have this mechanic. A unit built with iron that you later lose will be weaker.

I just don't think it makes sense to allow players to build them if they don't have iron to begin with .

I have to agree with you here... It would be potentially game breaking to allow a resource dependent unit to be built without actually possessing the resource itself.

 

[Battlehelm043]

Depends on the type of unit, I guess, but for something like "swordsman", iron could be used or not used. So, it makes some sense from a real-world perspective. And if it doesn't make sense, the name of the unit can be changed so that it does make sense.

From a gameplay perspective, there is the benefit of having more flexibility with your units (being able to upgrade your units with iron when available without having to rebuild units) and also it means that fewer types of units are needed or, better yet, unit types can be more specialized because they don't need to fulfill the niche of "medieval warrior for civs without iron".

Well they could always implement a bronze related substitute that if made into a corps or in a pack of 2 could go toe to toe with a swordsman. Might help the people who get stuck without iron and burn too many bridges with civs that have the iron. This way it prevents someone from having to rely solely on spearmen like in civ v if you lack iron...

 

[Roxlimn]

I have to agree with you here... It would be potentially game breaking to allow a resource dependent unit to be built without actually possessing the resource itself.

You mean like Iroqouis Swordsmen?

The entire question of where strategic resources fit into unit balance must first be broadly tackled, and then unit balance in the game in general has to be settled, and only then can individual or Civ or universal capabilities be built into the game.

One of the first broad questions is scarcity. I don't think there's enough of it. In Civ V, a single resource source was mostly enough to get you what you needed, and two was enough to trade. I don't think that's scarce enough. I think a single source must give you only two copies of the resource for unit building. At the same time, it can give you another two copies purely for trading. You can use the two copies for unit building for trading as well.

Scarcity of units depending on a resource allows for considerable more leeway in making it more powerful, which would be great!

 

[dexters]

UUs are the exceptions as already mention but not every UU should be a resourceless version of something you get via a resource.

 

[stealth_nsk]

UUs are the exceptions as already mention but not every UU should be a resourceless version of something you get via a resource.

Yes, this needs to be a part of general civilization idea. If you want civilization to spam some units at some point, making UU resourceless could be worth, but I don't think it's generally good idea. If I'd want to make, say, some horse-oriented nomads, I'd let them have some amount of free Horse resource as part of ability, instead of making their UU not require horses.

 

[bite]

Yes, this needs to be a part of general civilization idea. If you want civilization to spam some units at some point, making UU resourceless could be worth, but I don't think it's generally good idea. If I'd want to make, say, some horse-oriented nomads, I'd let them have some amount of free Horse resource as part of ability, instead of making their UU not require horses.

That's actually a good idea, give them a couple of free horses, rather than they can build Horse Archers without Horses

 

[ftl]

One interesting idea would be to have the resources very unevenly distributed.

Like, maybe iron comes in tiles of (1) or (10). The 1-iron tiles might be common, the 10-iron tiles really rare. So it's pretty easy for a civ to get at least a bit of a resource so they're not completely locked out, but pretty tough/lucky to get enough of it to equip a large army.

Would take some balancing to get the numbers just right, but it could be a middle ground between "don't have resource -> screwed" and "don't care about resources because it's easy to get them all anyway".

 

[m15a]

Or maybe they can build on the recycling center concept from Civ V. Have more buildings that grant single strategic resources. Like a workshop gives one iron or something (in addition to a general production bonus). Then anyone can get a small number of strategic resources, but civs that have the resource tile get more of the resource, don't need to prioritize that building, and get the resource much earlier.

 

[dexters]

One interesting idea would be to have the resources very unevenly distributed.

Like, maybe iron comes in tiles of (1) or (10). The 1-iron tiles might be common, the 10-iron tiles really rare. So it's pretty easy for a civ to get at least a bit of a resource so they're not completely locked out, but pretty tough/lucky to get enough of it to equip a large army.

Would take some balancing to get the numbers just right, but it could be a middle ground between "don't have resource -> screwed" and "don't care about resources because it's easy to get them all anyway".

That's what we have in civ5 and if I understand correctly is part of the complaint by some.

I'm actually ok with the resource distribution in civ5. The alternative is to further reduce their importance with substitutes or on the other extreme create monopoles by haVing resources pop in clumps. Neither are really appealing.

 

[DCParry]

I like the idea of buildings producing a small amount of strategic resources (I vaguely remember in FFH2 that the Horse Lord clones had a palace that produced a few horses). This is not so much to say that these building magically produce resources, but it is an abstraction of the various and divers ways that resources could be gathered (since Civ represents other cultures as monolithic entities, so if you are hostile to one person you are hostile to everyone, and something like this might serve to represent small scale commerce and exchange of such things. I mean, from where exactly does the gold from marketplaces come?).

I found resource scarcity and the speed of tech usually pressures the player to ignore many UU in CiV (barring those that are objectively superior beyond their own time period). As cool as the Kris swordsmen could be, it was often the kiss of death (HAH) to tech out, hunt out resources, and produce them on higher levels.

EDIT: The shame of ending a sentence in a preposition.

 

[Ryika]

I think the biggest problem with most strategic resources in Civ 5 was that they're not really worth fighting over, because those that you can get early become meaningless later on and those that you get later... well, at that point you need them immediately.

I feel like giving Strategic Resources a Military Bonus Early on and then fading that out into an Industrial Bonus when they become "obsolete" could be a good compromise to fix that issue for things like Iron and Horses. Even if you don't want to conquer the world you'd still have an incentive to go conquer - or invest in trade of resources that would otherwise become meaningless.

Not sure how to fix things like Coal and Uranium though, on Standard Speed the Eras just fly by too quickly to make wars for Strategic Resources a real thing.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think the biggest problem with most strategic resources in Civ 5 was that they're not really worth fighting over, because those that you can get early become meaningless later on and those that you get later... well, at that point you need them immediately.

I feel like giving Strategic Resources a Military Bonus Early on and then fading that out into an Industrial Bonus when they become "obsolete" could be a good compromise to fix that issue for things like Iron and Horses. Even if you don't want to conquer the world you'd still have an incentive to go conquer - or invest in trade of resources that would otherwise become meaningless.

Yes, I was thinking about the same. Horses using early for military units, later could be required for some horse-racing buildings, Iron could be used in production buildings, etc.

 

[dexters]

I think the biggest problem with most strategic resources in Civ 5 was that they're not really worth fighting over, because those that you can get early become meaningless later on and those that you get later... well, at that point you need them immediately.

I feel like giving Strategic Resources a Military Bonus Early on and then fading that out into an Industrial Bonus when they become "obsolete" could be a good compromise to fix that issue for things like Iron and Horses. Even if you don't want to conquer the world you'd still have an incentive to go conquer - or invest in trade of resources that would otherwise become meaningless.

Not sure how to fix things like Coal and Uranium though, on Standard Speed the Eras just fly by too quickly to make wars for Strategic Resources a real thing.

Right, I've thought about turning horses into glue or into a luxury later on but that seemed to have solved itself when they added horses as a requirement for circuses improvements.

That leaves iron.

I've thought about maybe creating a supply chain for some of the earlier resources so we end with some sort of manufactured resource in the modern era, but given the game has some pretty strong reset points, that may not be what the devs want.

We've had issues with early game resources becoming mostly useless since Civ3 when the concept was added.

 

[Acken]

The problem with 5 though is not that they become useless. It's that they are useless from the start and mostly a source of gold.