The most annoying thing that happens in the game

[PPQ_Purple]

Why?

Because there is newer any good reason to do so. Settling on a resource looses you the tile yield for absolutely no benefit other than saving a couple turns on building an improvement on top. The only two reasons why it is allowed in the game is so that players can screw them self over by accidentally settling over a resource that is not yet revealed and so that the AI can anger us by doing it and thus force us to burn their cities.

 

[ArchGhost]

Because there is newer any good reason to do so. Settling on a resource looses you the tile yield for absolutely no benefit other than saving a couple turns on building an improvement on top. The only two reasons why it is allowed in the game is so that players can screw them self over by accidentally settling over a resource that is not yet revealed and so that the AI can anger us by doing it and thus force us to burn their cities.

Combined with terrain features, settling on some resources is objectively better than waiting to develop them. See Jungle/River Sugar or Plains/Hill Marble. What you gain isn't just the worker turns for the improvement, but saving the opportunity cost of even having to tech the proper unlocking technology while gaining an effective bonus to yield that is in the most important stage of the game.

You can just as easily settle on resources to make it much harder to pillage to cut off that resource as the AI does. In fact that's likely why the AI does it, and it's only really beneficial to do so with strategic resources in the first place anyway. You really shouldn't care about the tile yield of copper or horse as much as the benefit of having access to copper or horse units. Though I do understand the principle of the issue...I commonly try to most effectively utilize every single land tile I can take without wasted/unworkable space in my games.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Terrain certainly can make settling on a resource useful. For example, in a recent game I had three furs in tundra and snow, with only enough food resources in the area to use two of them. I was able to settle on one of them and develop the other two, thus giving me fur and two more to use for trade.

 

[Gumbolt]

I seriously wish there was a game option to make it impossible to settle on top of a resource.

On that basis all resources would have to be visible. How would you know in 4000bc where coal and uranium are? I doubt they would even know what coal is in 4000bc.

Settling on resources that are only 3-4 food when improved is not a bad thing. In fact settling on a zero food tile might give you extra hammers which can seriously speed up your start. 3H marble tile can lead to a 10 turn settler from T1 or T2.

Overall any zero food tile will only slow down city growth. Which is why some people might suggest settling on gold at times. Early on only hidden iron or horse might be a bad thing. Sometimes I might settle on horse if I want the resource sooner. As ever you always play the map. If you see tiles like plains surrounded by forest at start you can often tell if they are a hidden resource anyway.

Hidden resources makes the game more fun. Otherwise high level players would see military resources and settle cities to do early rushes or just worker steal and prevent the AI from grabbing resources. So there is a level of abuse by the human player with too much info. On always war games this could be highly abused to ensure the AI get no horse or metal.

 

[Kaiman]

Honestly the whole combat system is odd if you ask me. The way I would have done it is simply to subtract the numbers from one another and who ever still has HP left wins. So like if a unit with 4 vs one with 3 the end result would be the first unit wining with 1 remaining. Easy to understand, easy to predict, no stupid dice rolls or probabilities or anything.

That would make the early game even more important than it already is - whoever gets a small advantage has a guaranteed, no-risk, single definitive best plan to destroy the opposition if only they spend enough time to figure it out.

 

[civac]

Combat damage per round was changed with a patch to make injured units more effective. I don't think the combat strength and chance to win a round changed but not sure.