Where are my Iron resources?

[crag]

I'm having the problem of entire maps being generated with no Iron present at all..anywhere. 3 games on Pangaea and even some on Continents and no Iron showed up. Oh, I have luxury resources everywhere and Horses in such abundance you can't even trade them to anybody...but not a single source of Iron.

At this point I don't see how Horses can be considered 'strategic' resources as they show up in dozens upon dozens of locations in every terrain type. Iron is apparently the rarest substance in the ciV universe.

I've had this happen to me too. Iron is absolute the most needed resource in the game. Even more then oil. And there's little of it. The bad thing, is that you need iron up to the end of the game.

It should be everywhere. Right now, I play a game until discovering iron. If I don't see any around (me or my neighbors) I restart the game. It's that bad.

 

[SomethingWitty]

Had the same thing happen to me. Built an iron mine shorting after getting the iron working tech. Icon bar at the top of the screen said I had two iron resources available. But I couldn't build swordsmen. Reason? 0 iron available.

I thought maybe I had been gifted something by a military city state that used iron, but I wasn't aware of it. But I hadn't been.

I'm now thinking it may be a real bug.

Also, a complaint about the civilopedia- there just isn't enough information. In a related example, I clicked on the iron resource to see what units require iron, and the information is absent. I don't want to have to go click through the entire unit list to see which ones they are.

 

[NDawn]

Could it be some buildings you've captured/built?

I forgot about this at one point and used up my aluminium on hydro plants.

 

[Conspirator]

Sorry I just re-checked and it was in fact a none completed mine. It's not very easy to tell like in Civ 4 (i.e. it would say in red writing, access with mine or whatever). So I'm continuing my game.

 

[Beardy Dan]

Is the city that's working them connected to your capital?

The resource distribution do seem to need a tweek, there's 0 oil on my continent! Bring back The Ethanol Co (not realy corps were a pita).

 

[Yosomono]

Well, when you've used a resource on a unit if you mouse-over it will say beside the resource number how many were used...I assume it will do the same thing for buildings that require the resource. I would argue that the system should also say how many were traded, so that you will have a clear understanding of where it went.
I'll check my save again later to see if it got used on buildings or something. I captured a LOT of cities all at once and left them Puppets for awhile, it is possible they wasted it on something and I didn't notice.

 

[BigChiefLizzy]

You don't need to connect a resource to the trade network, the resource needs to be in your cultural borders and have the right improvement on it (not sure how this applies to captured cities). Don't build roads to them, as the roads cost money to maintain.

If you have the resource in your borders and can't use it then it could be:-

a) You have already started building units and/or buildings that use it.

b) You traded is away to an AI player (be careful of resource trades - the default amount seems to be *ALL* the spare units you have of the resource!)

c) A puppet state you control is happily building units and buildings and using all your precious iron/oil, before you get a chance.

d) could be bugged...?

I agree that iron is far too rare, I've only seen it on desert or desert hills so far. Current game I have 2 gold hills in capital, and one in a second city. And have seen 2 iron nodes on the entire continent, one in a poor location and the second right next to the AI (Darius), I had to place a city miles from my capital just to grab it before him.

When I get to rifles I'll be using gold bullets, steel jacketed will be too expensive

 

[Malchar]

Not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but sometimes if your mine gets razed, it still looks like there's a mine built there until you hover over the tile.

 

[BigChiefLizzy]

Unlike Civ4, when your mine (or other improvement) gets razed/pillaged it's not completely destroyed. Damaged and unusable yes but send a worker to the tile and you should be able to 'repair' it rather than rebuild.

 

[YohanLeafheart]

puppet states have this nasty idea of using your resources without asking so maybe that was it. About the lack of iron, i had the oposite experience. I finished my game having about 60 iron left. But then I was russia, and their ability is amazing.

 

[Rince]

I also had unfinished mines because my workers woke up due to an approaching enemy, but I did not notice and thought they were just done building the mine. It is hard to tell apart a finished mine and a mine under construction.

 

[Yosomono]

So I'll emphasize again that I'd like the UI to list not only resources you have and used but also resources you've traded.....as it turns out my fault was stupidity and forgetfulness, as I had frantically traded away all my aluminum ages ago in order to appease Napoleon.

 

[Abremms]

strategic resources are one of my favorite things about civ5. the rarer the better. if there is only one aluminum node on the continent... you know that's where the war is going to be. same with all of them. over half of my wars are over strategic resources.

it happened to me once in civ4, it was on a small map and only one source of oil spawned. it was one of my most memorable games with all the back and forth taking and retaking of the controlling city. now every V game is like that