Synthetic Resources

[dresdor]

I was thinking...in WW2, when rubber shipments were severly limited because of the Japanese sinking merchant vessels and controlling much of southern Asia, the United States started building synthetic rubber plants. It was an effective solution to a resource problem.

So why can't we do that in Civ 3? Make a building that can produce one resource synthetically. It'd probably be a modern-era advance, and maybe should only effect the city it's in, but it would ne very useful.

Any thoughts?

 

[LordKestrel]

That's a pretty decent idea. For instance, have a horse ranch that you can build once you learn Horseback Riding, and would cost 100 shields. All it would add is the ability to build horse units in the current town. This lets you have a few cities that can build certain units, but because of the high shield cost, wouldn't be overpowering. The game would have to be changed to allow buildings to be built when a resource doesn't exist, and to be disabled when that resource does exist. Also, the concept of local resources would need to be added.

The other option, would be to make a 400-600 shield small wonder that provides the resource. This would give your entire nation the resource, but would ultimately reduce the value of resource trading. If every civ will eventually have every resource, there won't be any need to trade for them.

 

[Tomoyo]

Add a lot of maintainence.

 

[TomOC]

For instance, have a horse ranch that you can build once you learn Horseback Riding, and would cost 100 shields. All it would add is the ability to build horse units in the current town.

Great idea! I was thinking just the other day, if you recieve horses in a trade, why (when the 20 turns are up) you can't continue to bread them yourself. Your idea would make that possible!

Add a lot of maintainence.

I agree...

 

[iron0037]

I prefer the jimmydean small wonder mentality. You can avoid the inherent problem of every civ eventually having every resource though if you insert a production penalty on synthetically created units.

For example, you build a small wonder: synthetic oil refinery. You can now build units requiring oil, but you pay X percent more per unit...let's say 25%. So you can now build the unit at least, though not as efficiently as if you had real oil.

As an alternative, why not just allow everyone to always build every nonUU it knows how to build, but with a huge penalty if you don't control a required resource. Just because you don't have a major iron mine and no trading partners, that doesn't mean you can't scrounge up the necessary iron to build a swordsman. Granted, it may cost a bit more, like perhaps double, but you could still do it.

 

[dresdor]

Glad my idea is going over so well...shame I can't implement it in a mod, mainly because I'm innept at modding stuff...

And what iron said would make it pretty historically accurate as well. Although ideally it should be gained in a new advance...like domestication for the horse ranch, and something like Synthetic Alloys for iron...just an idea though.

 

[WS78]

Or maybe even simpler:
Create a building that produces one every turn!
Cost and maintenance at your own discretion.

 

[Colonel]

u should put this ideas in civ4 thread

problem is that for it to be realstic u would need horses resource at least once to make it realistic

now that wouldnt be a problem with rubber but for horses and other of those type of resourses

 

[dresdor]

I'm posting this in the Civ 4 forum now

 

[ColoradoBBQ]

Great idea! I was thinking just the other day, if you recieve horses in a trade, why (when the 20 turns are up) you can't continue to bread them yourself. Your idea would make that possible!

Because your rivals aren't stupid, all the horses are throughly sterilized before shipping in order to keep trading horses with you.

 

[TomOC]

Because your rivals aren't stupid, all the horses are throughly sterilized before shipping in order to keep trading horses with you.

Little do they know... I've built the Cloning Wonder.

 

[Tholish]

Technology makes resources obsolete by allowing new units and buildings that do the same thing without the resource. For example, rubber should not be required for Modern Armor because Synthetic Fibers is a prereq for Modern Armor. If you wanted to you could mod in pre-plastic and post-plastic units of all kinds.

In my mod/scenario "Ages" I have a tech "Horseback Riding" available in the Bronze Age that makes possible primitive cavalry units that require raw mustangs from nature or geldings from trades. When you get to the Iron Age you can research "Horsemanship," so all Iron Age cavalry does not require the Horses resource.
The rationalization is that the Horsemanship tech includes some animal husbandry and breeding pairs, so you can breed your own horses in captivity.

Also, I gave Horses a low number for Disappearance probability, so they tend to dissapear from one place and appear somewhere else, as real herds of wild horses will do.

Back when I played Age of Empires, before I boughtthe first Civ 3 right after it came out, I thought it would be great to have a Concrete tech that you could research, if you ever got to a modern version, so a new resource would appear that would replace Stone. Also, you could get new extraction technologies that make new oil appear, in Civ, but it would have to have another name, and you would have to make a whole array of the same old units, except using the new resource instead of the old one . Similarly, when I did my scenario, I included Copper, Tin and Iron resources. If you don't get either or copper or tin you can't make Bronze, and the chance of it is pretty good. But Iron is all over, and when you research it you can build a whole new panoply of equivalent or Iron units.

You can stay elegant.