Strategic resources never appear near my cities

[hardcore_gamer]

Is it just me, or do important strategic resources like coal (as well as all of the other ones) always just so happen to be located just far enough from your cities that you can't use them once you have researched the techs that allows you to see them on the map? At first I just thought I was getting unlucky, but now I have seen this happen so many times that I can't help but wander if the game actively makes sure that important strategic resources are rarely located within your borders by the time you can finally see them them on the map.

Is this indeed the case or am I just being extremely unlucky?

 

[Surgeon]

resources are set at the time of the map beign generated. You can test this by restarting a map and noticing the Iron/horses still pop up in the same place every time.

You may find that your settling cities in places with lots of resources already, its unliekly that coal will pop up next to a city that already has 3 silver and 2 wheat.

 

[Beef Hammer]

I think the AI always knows where all the resources are as they they ALWAYS have cities placed next to resources they sure as hell didn't have the techs to see at the time.

 

[bonafide11]

Iron is really the only one I have a problem with. I always conquer a good amount of land so I end up with all the other strategic resources, but I need iron to start conquering and sometimes it's not close by.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

I think the AI always knows where all the resources are as they they ALWAYS have cities placed next to resources they sure as hell didn't have the techs to see at the time.

Is this something you are just saying, or can someone confirm it for a fact that this is true? If it is true then that's complete c*** and has to be a bug. There is no way the devs would give the AI the ability to see where resources are without the needed techs in advance on purpose.

 

[Furiey]

This definitely was the case in Civ 3 but was not in Civ 4. In Civ 5 I have seen some very suspicious settling eg: a settler sailing to the opposite side of a pangea to settle the only 2 tiles of snow not within my borders, one of which eventually turns out to be oil, the only oil that I would have had had my borders expanded quicker. At the time it was a long way from anyone discovering oil. Of course this is not confirmation, but I am suspicious.

 

[Ahriman]

There is something of a selection bias here.

Resources are scattered around the map, somewhat evenly.

If you place cities near resources you see then you are tending to place cities NOT near resources that you cannot see yet.

Agree completely that the iron reveal is a problem though, it needs to be revealed at an earlier tech than the one whose units require it, like every other strategic resource.

 

[ApocalypseMao]

There is something of a selection bias here.

Resources are scattered around the map, somewhat evenly.

If you place cities near resources you see then you are tending to place cities NOT near resources that you cannot see yet.

Exactly. Incentive to expand.

Agree completely that the iron reveal is a problem though, it needs to be revealed at an earlier tech than the one whose units require it, like every other strategic resource.

Agreed. I'm in favor of having iron be revealed by Bronze Working, just to make the decision interesting.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

I think the AI always knows where all the resources are as they they ALWAYS have cities placed next to resources they sure as hell didn't have the techs to see at the time.

Yep -- Proof by actual facts -- right near her Capital mind you!

 

[tnick777]

Iron is always hard to come by...

 

[Ahriman]

Iron is just as ubiquitous as horses, its just that it often spawns in tundra or desert terrain, whereas horses always show up on grassland or plains.
You tend to build cities near grassland and plains rather than tundra, so you're less likely to settle near iron (from a blind perspective).

 

[Surgeon]

I did manage to get a standard fractal map starting city with the following resources once though:
-2 river wheat
-3 silver
-1 aluminium
-1 iron

then gems & coal just outside the 3 ring radius.


I wish i could repeat that again!

 

[Beef Hammer]

Is this something you are just saying, or can someone confirm it for a fact that this is true? If it is true then that's complete c*** and has to be a bug. There is no way the devs would give the AI the ability to see where resources are without the needed techs in advance on purpose.

It's just a really frustrating reoccurring annoyance i notice in all my games, AI gets resource "pops" of late game resources right next to cities they make. Every frigging game.

 

[Maktaka]

I've had games where coal and aluminum appeared directly adjacent to my capital. In a given game, it's not that uncommon for one or more civilizations to get a gimme resource. If we assume that one out of every four well spaced cities (as in non-ICS spacing) will get at least some discovered resource (including horses to uranium) to appear next to them at some point in the game, and there are 8 civs total in the game (standard map size), there's a 90% chance that at least one civilization gets a gimme resource right outside their capital. If we assume one out of 6 (drop horses and iron) but bump things up to three cities including capital per civ (since you should have your third city by the time you finish Ironworking), then there's a nearly 99% (98.7% to be precise) chance of a gimme resource showing up near one of those cities.

 

[bryanw1995]

Is this something you are just saying, or can someone confirm it for a fact that this is true? If it is true then that's complete c*** and has to be a bug. There is no way the devs would give the AI the ability to see where resources are without the needed techs in advance on purpose.

I disagree, the ai needs all the help it can get. if it doesn't have this ability now then they should add it. if the ai scooped up all the iron/horses early in the game it would make a conquering spree much more difficult to implement.

@OP: if you're worried about iron/etc availability, just click legendary start, balanced resources, etc in the advanced settings before starting the game.

 

[Buccaneer]

Is this something you are just saying, or can someone confirm it for a fact that this is true? If it is true then that's complete c*** and has to be a bug. There is no way the devs would give the AI the ability to see where resources are without the needed techs in advance on purpose.

WTH??? Why not? You already have an evaluative and judgemental advantage over the AI and you want to make it even more lopsided? You can fight them for key resources better than they can fight you, so let the AI have them.