Strategic Resources woefully lacking

[Funababbitt]

It wasn't until I had given up and restarted two previous games playing Persia, that I found that strategic resources are restricted to the point of wrecking games. That accounts for my three abandonments.

There are mods offering any number of bonus and luxury resources - but they don't matter when the game gets down to coal and oil and there are no resources. In my Game 3, Persia, which I have just abandoned, I never found coal. There was one oil, in water, stuck in no man's land between three of my cities and France. I could not purchase the tile - it was too far away. There was another oil behind two countries one friendly one neutral between me and it. I was suzerain over three city states. None had oil or coal.

I was surprised to find little comment here. I found a few complaints on Reddit. There are horror stories there revealing worse experiences on strategic resources than my own. Apparently the game designers intended strategic resources to be "extremely rare." They're supposed to be scarce to make you fight for them. Going to the extreme however just wrecks the game, when time after time, critical resources are permanently out of reach. It's small consolation that specialty units require no resources. I didn't have iron but with Persia, immortals don't need iron but in the later game when critical resources are absent or completely out of reach, my interest starts to nose dive.

I started out this final game in a jungle region and used the "chop" extensively so that by the time I was researching flight, my four major cities had encampment, campus, commercial hub, industrial zone entertainment and theater districts. So, I thought I was coming along quite well.

I don't really see the point of mods offering super abundant luxury and bonus resources. They become meaningless when there are no strategic resources to advance units. It would be nice to see someone address that issue with a mod or for the problem to be fixed in the next patch.

 

[Tech Osen]

When setting up your game there is a setting in options to increase the number of resources on the map.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I'm not sure what you consider "extreme", but the quantities seem fine to me. With an 8 to 12 city empire, I'll typically have access to each specific resource about once every two to three games.

There isn't a single strategic resource that you need in single player. Want, yes; need, no. You could easily play the game without having any strategic resources, but that's not likely to happen. You can pretty much count on getting at least one out of every three types of strategic resources, probably one out of every two types of resources with a little effort.

If that's an issue for how you like to play the game, perhaps the type of mod you want is one that eliminates all requirements for strategic resources.

 

[Disgustipated]

land oil is the one that's difficult for me. Sea oil is plentiful usually. Iron I have a hard time with until I get over 10 cities. Coal seems fine.

 

[criZp]

not sure what your problem is, as you don't need any of the resources to win the game

 

[chazzycat]

They are supposed to be somewhat rare. If they weren't, there wouldn't be much "strategy" involved. And the game is NOT forcing you go to war for these resources. Trading for them is also an option.

If you are sitting on 4 cities for most of the game though, it's not surprising you're having issues. Civ 6 is much more balanced towards having more cities, generally you want to be more in the 8-10 range (minimum)

 

[Chefofrats]

I generally don't mind the relative scarcity of strategic resources, but there really should be more oil on land. I recently played several games on huge pangea maps, I had a huge empire each time, and only once did I get oil on land. This is quite representative of many of my games in general.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Resource assignment is generally much more reasonable compared to previous games. The only truly valuable resource is one source of iron. And yes, it is intentional you may want to have to invade something you didn't want to.

If you don't have coal, you can build submarines, which can be upgraded from privateers. Oil can be a problem but it really only applies to tanks, and modern armor doesn't even need oil anyways. Though not having carriers can be an issue. It's also possible to use Magnus's ability to build units without the resource though they can't heal, though this is rather moot with carriers.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Civ VI was designed to make Strategic resources much less important than in previous games. You only need one source of any resource, for example, to build or repair any number of resource-requiring units. And in every case, instead of the unit that requires a Strategic Resource, there is an 'alternative unit' that does not require resources.
No Iron - build Spearmen and Encampment buildings to get Thrust Promotions as fast as you can.
OR Build Heavy Chariots and Beeline to Tech: Stirrups for Knights.
No Horses - see above: Chariots to Knights will keep you in the game through the Medieval Era, at least.
No Coal - build submarines
No Oil - build Infantry, Artillery, and Antitank Crews - none require any resources. Beg, borrow or steal a Horse, build Cavalry and Upgrade them to Helicopters and you'll even be able to match the mobility of the Oil-Requiring Tanks.
I can't comment on Air Units, because in 1400+ hours of playing, I have yet to build one. The wretched design of the game makes them too expensive and limited to be of much use, unlike the historical reality, where Air Superiority since 1940 has been almost a Requirement for military success.

Like the OP, I've had lots of games where my Starting Position turned out to be 15 + tiles and several Civs or City States away from the nearest Iron or Nitre or Oil. It is annoying to suddenly have to rebuild your army from what you thought were promotable Warriors to Spearmen or Mounted Units, but it's never been a game-breaker for me.

 

[Tech Osen]

No Iron - build Spearmen and Encampment buildings to get Thrust Promotions as fast as you can.
OR Build Heavy Chariots and Beeline to Tech: Stirrups for Knights.

Knights require iron. But yeah, iron is the most important one, which makes unique swordsmen and knights all that more powerful.

I generally don't mind the relative scarcity of strategic resources, but there really should be more oil on land.

I always get annoyed that the eureka for plastics (for oil platforms) is to build an oil well...

 

[ezzlar]

I think the game wants you to play the map. Even in this case when it comes to strategic resources. You aren´t supposed to assume that you can do a knight rush as long as you get the appropriate tech. Or a musketman rush.

And it also increases the value of the UU:s. Sometimes the non-requirement for strategic resources is one of the biggest advantages.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

land oil is the one that's difficult for me. Sea oil is plentiful usually. Iron I have a hard time with until I get over 10 cities. Coal seems fine.

Far too little land oil.

Far too many turtles!

 

[BarbarianHunter]

They are supposed to be somewhat rare. If they weren't, there wouldn't be much "strategy" involved. And the game is NOT forcing you go to war for these resources. Trading for them is also an option.

If you are sitting on 4 cities for most of the game though, it's not surprising you're having issues. Civ 6 is much more balanced towards having more cities, generally you want to be more in the 8-10 range (minimum)

And realistically more like 20-30. The only time I seem to have any issues with oil is with Korea, as I tend to arrive at the combustion technology faster and notice that I, not only don't have access to land based oil in my meager 10 city empire, but have no idea where to find any oil (be it land or sea based).
PS, I'm saying this is bad per se, and may well be a good thing to make a smaller city count technology runaway burn through a few more techs if it wants to play with the bigger city count domination civs.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I always get annoyed that the eureka for plastics (for oil platforms) is to build an oil well...

It's always a minor annoyance when you have a district on your only source of land oil or aluminum and miss out on the related boosts.

 

[Casualty of war]

If you want to have high odds for oil, you've got to settle that Alaskan tundra city. If you want high odds for aluminum, you are going to need some Desert within your borders. Iron and coal tend to be a crap shoot in my experience, with highest odds of them appearing in a place I was planning on putting a District!

 

[Dragabond]

critical resources are permanently out of reach

Strategic resource. Not critical, because they aren't. You can work your way around not having any particular resource, it just may make the game slightly more difficult than you're used to. They can easily make your units more effective, but they're not strictly necessary for you to have one of your very own, especially since you can trade for 1 copy to upgrade any units that require it (or even just temporarily capture a city in a war before upgrading your units and then returning it).

Coal is effectively useless in VI; I remember going crazy looking for more coal in V because I couldn't build my precious factories without it. In VI it's only used for 2 units. Oil is one resource that I find myself going crazy looking for, because it is so scarce, but it's also not really all that important: by that point in the game I'm generally fielding a huge infantry heavy military, tank support is nice but hardly necessary. Yet I still go crazy trying to lock down at least 2 oil, and one of the ways I do that is making sure I get John Rockefeller. Another way I do that is by throwing settlers off into the arctic circle to claim terrible areas that I never would have settled otherwise, but hey there's oil there so I may as well plant a city there.

Niter is a pain in the butt, because it comes at a turning point in the game (much like in history) where you either have muskets or you get shot by them and lose all of your stuff. But even that is easily worked around with other units and some extra numbers, and niter really isn't that rare. You didn't even mention it, and it was barely mentioned by anyone else, because while it may be an issue, it's one easily overcome.

Really just don't worry as much about it, and just work your way around from point A to point C.

 

[Tech Osen]

This just happened. Standard resource settings, just luck of the draw.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

This just happened. Standard resource settings, just luck of the draw.

View attachment 505939

You could potentially make a small fortune trading the excess Iron to other civs.

 

[Socrates99]

Weird, I've been playing with scarce resources lately and haven't had much trouble. Usually if I don't have iron I do have horses or vice versa. Some of those later resources can be a problem though since they don't have that dual nature horses and iron does. Maybe an answer would be more strategic types that work with the different unit upgrade lines?

 

[Myomoto]

I honestly preferred the strategic resource system of Civ V over the one in VI. Especially the Pantheon for bonus production from mines over strategic resources (and the Magnus promotion that does the same) seems incredibly useless as you're lucky to have 1 iron in like 2 of 10 cities in your empire.

I don't know, but I generally think: More resource icons on the map = better.