Will Random Maps Get TOO Balanced Now?

[LordGek]

Hey Gang,

I read in some intereview among many of the improvements to the Civ random map generator is that the maps will be much more balanced/fair for all of the players. While this sounds nifty on the surface I'm afraid this might lead to the nonses we saw in games like Age of Mythology where they seemed to have gone OVERBOARD in the balancing where everybody starts in near mirror image locations with all of the exact same resources. While I hate really lame start positions OR being the only one on the main continent with all of my AI opponents starting on dinky islands, there was something kinda cool in knowing anything was possible.

 

[Gogf]

I'm sure by more balanced they just mean that resources aren't placed in one or two clump, appearing nowhere else in the world.

 

[troytheface]

well an interesting notion..to much balance...but i know what you are saying...always root for the underdog and kinda like playing a civ in a precarious start position just to see if i can overcome the odds. (in civ3 tho a tundra start on a small isle = no way to win -at least in all the times i tried in over 2 years of play -emperor- huge)

 

[Leprechaune]

Yeah, I too don't want to see resources so well disbursed that everyone gets one of everything... What would you trade then?

 

[Icevulture]

I think it's the core resources that will be more balanced. Luxury resources will not necessarily be balanced in the sense that everyone will get one of the same resource, but one civilization might get one luxury versus another civilization with another, and they trade those.

As far as core resources, I hope it's not so awful that you can't cut off a civilization's supply of a certain resource. If they put the core resource beside everyone's capital, then a big strategic element (cutting off supplies) has been taken from the game. I don't mind that every civ has the opportunity to easily get the core resources, but it should be in such a way that it's not necessarily smack in the middle of their civ where it's nearly impossible to cut off their supply lines.

 

[CivFan91]

I don't think they (the developers) are stupid. I have a shred of faith in humanity left. If I am betrayed, I will scream... and burn my Civ IV CD

 

[Commander Bello]

I am currently playing a game (RaR mod - Emperor level) where I lacked iron until medieval ages (I had to kill off the Carthagens for it) and after that, I completely lacked saltpeter, so I had to pay tons of gold and inventions to the Sioux, who meanwhile own 7 deposits of it, as with my money and my inventions they were able to conquer all of the biggest continent (archipelago), making them the top dog in the world.

One of the most interesting games I ever have played.

I have to constantly please the Sioux, although I meanwhile have one of the saltpeter deposits by myself (due to the fact that conquered cities loose their cultural influence, and so I was able to have a small bridgehead on the Sioux continent). Nevertheless, they walk around with SOD's of 50+ units, so I have to avoid any military confrontation at the moment.
To get access to more than 2 luxuries, I had to have a colony on a third continent, so my forces are far spread and I have to be careful, how to deal with whom.

This interesting game would have developed completely different if the resources would have been "evenly spread".

I fear that this idea - in combination with having got rid of saltpeter - will make:
a) iron the most valuable and decisive resource in military aspects
b) will make trading for resources less useful (for strategic resources)

 

[nicae]

i read somewhere about how they balanced the resources.
they simply seperated all resources into categories, and then distributed them among the map according to them so you wouldnt find clumps of the same category.
dont know what resource went to which category, though.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I agree that balancing is one of those things which must be done very carefully in order to not remove all the challenge from the game. I also agree that removing Saltpeter (and allowing civs to build improvements that make oil) are ultimately poor decisions from a strategic viewpoint.
That said though, on the broader issue of what they mean by balanced resources, I get the sense that it means two things:

(a) that if a civ starts without access to any luxuries, then he is more likely to start close to a bonus or strategic resource (and vice versa).

(b) if a civ starts close to a particular luxury-say grapes-then he has a much smaller chance of also starting near dyes, for instance.

If this is what it means, then this really does boost potential opportunities for trade, 'cause there was nothing worse in civ3 than getting your hands on iron-say-but finding that everyone else you had contact with already had access to iron (by trade or by themselves) or else had nothing with which to trade you for it.
I might say, though, that if some form of quantitative resource model were implemented into the game, then there would be less to be concerned about in relation to the balancing of resources. After all, you may concievably begin your game in close proximity to over half of all the resources present in the game, but if all but one of them is a size 1 resource, for instance, then it won't be very long before you are going to have to seek out new sources of the resource in trade-or conquest !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Xerin]

It is still possible to start without a strategic resource. The only change is that they now require such resources to be a certain distance from one another.

 

[Mewtarthio]

I agree that balancing is one of those things which must be done very carefully in order to not remove all the challenge from the game. I also agree that removing Saltpeter (and allowing civs to build improvements that make oil) are ultimately poor decisions from a strategic viewpoint.

Presumably, Oil Synthesis won't be around until much later than Oil itself. Are we even certain that Oil Synthesis will be in the game? I only recall an article saying "They'll probably include a way to synthesize oil." After all, if making your own oil was easy, people wouldn't be complaining about gas prices.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, if I remember correctly, you can synthesize oil from coal-but it isn't particularly efficient. It was what the Nazis were having to do at the start of WWII but-because it was so inefficient-it was the reason why they needed to capture the oil fields of the Caucus mountains region so desperately.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[bman003]

It is kinda stupid to have resources spread evenly. I mean, think if Germany in WWII didn't have to attempt to take over oil fields to keep their armies running. Imagine how different a world we would be in today. Keeping resources not evenly spread out adds another dimension, in a game and in the real world.

 

[ComradeDavo]

I'm sure by more balanced they just mean that resources aren't placed in one or two clump, appearing nowhere else in the world.

I agree. Civ 3 tended to produce some real crazy distributions.

 

[Yusaku Jon III]

I agree. Civ 3 tended to produce some real crazy distributions.

Tell me about it. More often than not, I was the little orphan sitting on an open desert or in a broad jungle while the strategic resources weren't even on my continent or, if they were, they were within 10 tiles of at least one of the SOD-crazy, settler-pumping AI civs that just took any excuse to be the aggressor in a war against harmless lil' ol' me. It was a challenge, if you were a hardcore gamer, but I have no intentions of playing games lasting more than a couple of hours any more.

That being said, I kind of welcome the plans for a more even distribution of resources, but we don't know yet what it exactly means. It could mean that the iron ore is more evenly spaced out on a continent, making it possible for all civs present to need only move a settler 10-12 tiles to reach it. Yet you may still find yourself over 20 tiles from that resource with hyperactive AI booming in your direction from all quarters.

One more thing: if they're eliminating the need for saltpeter when Gunpowder is discovered for building your musketmen and cannons, you can always say that a market for the black powder sprung up and that you're taking advantage of it so that those rivals who have big supplies of the stuff can't just come in and kill you off..

 

[Commander Bello]

[...]
One more thing: if they're eliminating the need for saltpeter when Gunpowder is discovered for building your musketmen and cannons, you can always say that a market for the black powder sprung up and that you're taking advantage of it so that those rivals who have big supplies of the stuff can't just come in and kill you off..

Sorry, but I have to completely disagree.

First, why would you have such a black market only for saltpeter?
Second, under the assumption that the sequence for strategic resources would still be iron - saltpeter - coal... - this would make iron even more decisive.
Any nation to own iron will have the better units. The next level of units - which in Civ3 were the gunpowder units - would be granted for free from a resource point of view, so no chance for the poor iron-lacking nations to catch up, as the "iron nations" would get them at the same time, regardless of resource spreading.

 

[Dearmad]

Who cares? We can tweak these things- and I, for one, like clumpy resouces that more accurately represent the haves and have not civilizations of the real world.

 

[troytheface]

not sure that i agree with the have/have not theory....Brazil has lots of resources but as a whole are poorer than say Norway that has very few resources- unless the suggestion is that have not resource peoples have to compensate into being warrior civs (Mongols- tundra ) Vikings-(Fijords) or good traders but Civ has no means by which a Tundra people can beat someone with horse and iron ect. ...if there were a mechanism by which non resource peoples are hardier or war smart or mercantile whizes -something- then it would make sense-
but i agree that resource distribution should be region specific - i too like the idea of uneven but there has to be some kind of other compensations.

 

[toft]

I don't think they (the developers) are stupid. I have a shred of faith in humanity left. If I am betrayed, I will scream... and burn my Civ IV CD

Blasphemy!

 

[warpstorm]

If I am betrayed, I will scream... and burn my Civ IV CD

And then a few minutes later you will regret this and run out and buy another copy.