Where has the stone and marble gone?

[Tyrant Roger]

In my last several Warlords games [Monarch/Standard] and either continents or pangea I have noticed that stone and marble appear much rarer than in vanilla Civ4. Have you had this experience as well?

If this is intrinsic to Warlords, how does that affect the various strategies discussed on this forum [e.g. SE v. CE]? The absence of stone and marble makes most wonders more expensive in hammers, but OTOH the number of AI's with stone/marble may also be less than in vanilla.

Does the presence of stone or marble in your early cities argue for a wonder based strategy than was true in vanilla?

 

[Corporal Kindel]

I've noticed that (in general) there is not much stone and marble. Usually when you do find it, stone is the middle of a desert and marble is on an ice-pack somewhere, making it almost impossible to use these resources early in the game when you really need them to build the Parthenon, Pyramids, etc...

I'm not sure what can be done. I usually use the wood-chop method (which doesn't always work). A better method is to have a high production city with a forge & a lot of hills that can crank out the wonders. That's the approach that’s worked best for me. It's always the 46+ production cities that can build the wonders before the AI (unless you burn a great engineer). Even then, I've lost wonders to some AI after burning a great engineer (because otherwise the city's production is so low .. < 10 shields simply doesn't cut it in Civ IV, IMO, without using whipping early in the game).

 

[mice]

It seems that horses are rarer too , and there are more barbs. The starts just seem tougher, with difficult decisions to make. I haven't noticed the AI building wonders earlier though so this could be a good effect.

 

[Proteus]

Hm, for me stone seems to appear in the vicinity of mountains (grassland or hills near mountain tiles) and marble most of the times on flat terrain (grassland, plains, desert)

 

[MrCynical]

If anything in the case of stone I seem to be finding the opposite. Despite plying at immortal level I've had stone either in on right next to the fat cross of my capital for the last five games. That said, I've only had marble anywhere nearby in one of those, and I can't remember when I last had horses before about the Renaissance.

 

[Cookie Crumbs]

I've noticed also that in the trade window the AI's Marble/Stone doesn't show up for trade, when I know damn well they have it. Where does it go?

 

[carl corey]

Well, if they have only one they won't trade it. I think that's the rule.

 

[Pantastic]

I've noticed also that in the trade window the AI's Marble/Stone doesn't show up for trade, when I know damn well they have it. Where does it go?

It won't show up in trade if they haven't improved/connected it, if there's only one since the AI will only trade surplus resources, or if they've already traded any surplus away.

 

[Corporal Kindel]

If anything in the case of stone I seem to be finding the opposite. Despite plying at immortal level I've had stone either in on right next to the fat cross of my capital for the last five games. That said, I've only had marble anywhere nearby in one of those, and I can't remember when I last had horses before about the Renaissance.

Wow, that's very different from my experience. I've played maybe 40/50 games up to now, and of those games maybe 2 or 3 had stone in my fat cross. I can't remember marble ever being in the fat cross, though it's been nearby several times. Most of the time, (I'd guess right offhand) 70%/80% of the time, I've seen stone in desert & marble on ice packs ( sometimes marble appears in grassland, but not that often ), and that's definitely rare from my perspective (maybe 30% of the time). About horses, I think most of my games horses have always been nearby. I think there was only a couple (maybe 3, 4, or 5) games that horses weren't nearby. Usually I'm able to scarf up 2 or 3 horses when I expand out to 9 cities. Other resources tend to get clumped in regions, I've noticed (gems & spice in jungle, pigs on hills, sometimes plains, sheep is usually close to tundra along with deer & gophers).

I've always been playing on huge maps though, so maybe the smaller map sizes have some differences?