Introduction

Resources are an important part of Civ. It was a big addition to Civ3. But how can it become better in Civ4?

Summary

Resources were not the most debated subject when making this list, but all participants seem to agree that it should stay. The general meaning seems to be that it should be expanded. The radical ideas was the most debated subject.

The term Region will represent the terms region and state in this thread.

Related Threads

Resources: How to Handle

Table of Contents

1 - General
2 - Food
3 - Syntetics
4 - Radical ideas
5 - Trade and stockpiling
Conclusion

The Ideas

1 - General

1.1 - List of resources

Coffee
Tobacco
Sugar
Vineager
Copper (needed for some ancient and modern units
Stone (Strategic - for wonders/improvements : eg. Pyramids, Hanging Gardens)
-Mongoloid Cow

Luxury:
Resin
Slaves
Marble
-Wernazuma III

Cotton
-DaleC76

RAW RESOURCES

Horses (for mounted units)
Iron (for many things)
Coal (for RR's & PP's)
KNO3 (Saltpeter) I prefer Sulfur instead (same use though)
Rubber (many uses) - replaced later with component Synthetic Rubber
Oil - replaced MUCH later with Synthetic Fuels
Uranium - replaced MUCH later with a product of Fusion Power (MAYBE)
Aluminum
Timber (for building WOODEN larger ships) - available in any forest - if timber is added, then timber/stone would be needed for many buildings?
Stone (for building structures) - available from any mountain/hill

FINISHED GOODS

Spears (no resource) - spearmen
Pikes (Iron) - pikemen
Muskets (Iron+KNO3) - musketmen
Rifles (Iron+KNO3 or none) - riflemen
Light Machine Guns(no resouce) -guerilla
Machine Guns (Iron+rubber) - infantry
Mech Inf (Rubber+Iron+Oil) -mech inf unit
Swords (Iron) - swordsmen + med inf
(sidenote: horsemen would be horse+spear, knights would be swords+horses, cavalry muskets/rifles+horses...)
Tanks (Iron+Rubber+Oil)
Fighter (Oil+Iron/Aluminum?)
Galley (none)
Frigate (Timber+Iron+KNO3)
etc...
-piratebrun

1.2 - Some units requiring resources to build

Cameleers require desert terrain in the city to build. If you arent fighting in a desert, they have no particular advantage anyway.

Elephants require the ivory spcial resource in your empire, and a jungle tile in the city (for a local habitat). Again, elephants, while good, arent essential.

'Large wooden ships' require a forest tile in the city radius. If you dont have forest, with the right tech, your terraformers can transform plaisn to forest, and even so, the earliest, lightest ships dont require forest (a cludge so you can always leave even the smallest island), and modern ships arent wooden.
-lajzar

1.3 - Make fish appear on right place

It would be nice if the Earth map had its fish ressources in the right place. I'm saying this because I remember it was quite something to make it on the "Marla's Earth map" for Civ3
-Trifna

2 - Food

2.1 - Sharing

-there should be some way to share food resources, there should be no reason to have two cities near each other, linked via road with one overflowing with food and the other starving.
-Bleyn

2.2 - Food only tiles

- "Rice" tiles : can't produce anything else than food, but lots of it, say five or six, and more with irrigation / railroad / farmland.
-Spiffor

3 - Synthetics

3.1 - Resources produced in factories

3.1.1 - Strategic resources

-Rubber should be able to be synthetically produced in certain factories after a certain date, say after the civilization discovers Synthetic Fossil Fuels... After that time rubber can be found on the map, grown, or produced in Rubber factories
-DarkCloud

3.1.2 - Luxuries

There should be a way to build manufactured luxuries (cars, hi-fi, but also some manufactured medieval ones). A specific improvement, say "car factory" should be available if you have the needed resources (coal, iron and oil), and would turn one shield into a luxury. It would also cease to function when you stop having these resources. You couldn't build more "luxury producing improvements" than the number of civs, and only one per city
-Spiffor

3.1.3 - Other resources

Dye and Saltpepper could also be synthetically produced with a factory or a chemical factory
-Wernazuma III/DarkCloud

3.1.4 - Raw materials into resources

Maybe you can turn raw materials into new resources, that can be traded.
eg: You start near Barley. If you build a brewer, it can be turned into Beer, a luxury resource with +1 food. You could use it to supply your empire, or you could trade it off to another civ.
-Mongoloid Cow

3.2 - Un-historical resource restrictions

Unlogic and historical failures: 3 cases of recource restrictions:

1. Salpeter as strategic recource you need for gun powder. Stupidity. Salpeter isn't a strategic recource in fact (wake up in shool, ask your chemistry teacher) but always available where enemies or humens are. But inthe game it may happen that you don't have Salpeter recource and then you can't build the versions of that gun powder weapons.
   -Dreifels
2. Oil as condition for tank and motor ships / early air units also ask yout teacher. If you have coal (and do know the chemistery or refining coal) you can make the same. That was made until end of 2nd world war from Hitler as Germany didn't have oil but lot of coal. It's a bad joke in the game that oil is rare and your research already is until rockets and atom power but you are still using horses for your troops.
   -Dreifels
3. I don't know for saltpeter, but oil made from coal(at least under WW2) is less efficent and not as good as the original. Maybe that should be reflected?
   -Nikolai

4 - Radical ideas

4.1 - Each resource having its own uses and traits

In regard for resources, instead of having them divided into Strategic / Luxury / Food / Other, maybe each resources has its own uses and traits.
For example:
Take the idea of a new resource Silver. Out of all of the above categories, it would best fit into the luxury or other category, even though it was used differently. So instead, give it its own traits:
- Gives x amount of money into the treasury each turn
- Tradeable (can be traded)
- City Trade Bonus of y trade production
- Happiness benifit of 1
The idea could be applied to all resources, and although it might get a bit complicated, the importance of each, individual resource is enhanced.
-Mongoloid Cow

4.2 - Civ3 way vs. resource quantity

In a poll from late 2003, the vote was between keeping the old Civ3 way or giving resources quantities. The result of the poll was ~64% in favour of resource quantities. Here's the ideas:

4.2.1 - Resources giving a quantity

4.2.1.1 - Resources giving a quantity, the rest can be stored or traded

The current system of ON/OFF resources can be modified to have additional instances of those resources provide bonuses to the civ, so as not to make them useless.

If changed, then one iron supply would provide enough iron to build perhaps 5 swordsmen per turn. If you only work on 3 in a given turn, then you put two iron into storage, which can be stockpiled for later use, or traded away.

This solves the problem of one instance of a resource being enough for any empire, big or small. Also, it opens up the game to a lot more trading possibilites. You could continue to buy oil even if you have it, because more is always better. Any resource you don't use on a given turn is added to a stockpile (so if you lose connection, you can operate on reserves for a while).
-Fosse

4.2.1.2 - Resource quantity supporting an X number of units/factories

Each instance of a resource should be given a number , so you might see a lump of iron with 100 over it. Now, that now means your empire has access to 100 units of iron. That 100 units of iron would support a certain number of units or factories or so forth. Now, once you mine it, or build a road, that is all you need to do, now you have 100 units. Now, lets say you need a much bigger army, or more factories, whatever-well, you can no koinger uswe those 100 point, but need to trade for more or capture more iron. That simple. In essence, each tile of a resource would take you only so far-of course, if you strike it rich with one reosurce, you can trade it for handsome profits. But this also negates the possibility of one civ having a monopoly, since now you can spread out resources more widely.
-GePap

4.2.1.3 - Alternate idea on quantity

In Civ3, if a civilization has access to a single strategic resource, then that civ has access to that resource as if it was infinite. These resources should have finite values attached to them in Civ4. Each source on the map would produce a certain number of 'units' of the appropriate resource per turn. For instance, there could be 3 sizes of iron deposits which produce either 20, 30, or 50 units of iron per turn (the numbers are just examples). As the game progresses (tech-wise), certain resources could become more abundant. For example, iron sources could produce more once engineering is discovered.

Any collected resources could be traded to other civs, used for upkeep of units/improvements, or in the building of new units/improvements.

1. Trade with other civs would involve the trading of a specific number of units/turn of a particular resource (eg. trade could involve 10 units of oil per turn). If a civ is unable to provide the agreed upon amount of a resource, that civ must provide compensation to the other civ, or the deal is cancelled and the one who broke the deal suffers a reputation hit.
2. Upkeep: some improvements and units would have upkeep that uses a certain number of units of one or more resources each turn. For example, a coal plant could use one unit of coal per turn, and a battleship could use two units of oil per turn. If resource upkeep can't be paid for an improvement, that improvement has its effects reduced or it stops functioning altogether. If a unit doesn't have its resource upkeep paid, one or more of its stats would be reduced (i.e. attack str, defense str, moves, etc.) depending on what resource it is lacking (eg. lacking iron/saltpeter could mean reduced att/def; lacking oil/coal/uranium could mean reduced movement, etc.). If a unit goes for several turns without having its resource upkeep paid, it would lose an experience level ( to a minimum of conscript level).
3. Building certain units or improvements could require access to a strategic resource. As a simple way of doing this, as long as a player has a surplus of a resource (after factoring in trade to other civs and upkeep), then that player may use that resource to create the appropriate units or improvements. Units and improvements that require access to a resource to build wouldn't necessarily require that same resource for upkeep (and vice versa).
4. Leftovers: There are a few options as to what the game could do with any surplus units of a resource: the player could be allowed to stockpile surplus resources; any surplus could be converted into gold and/or shields; or the surplus could simply be lost to waste. Or there could be some combination of the above. If the player is allowed to stockpile, there should be limits to how big the stockpile is allowed to get.

-Xorbon

4.2.2 - Several luxury sources giving a bigger effect

for luxuries it might be a good idea to increase the effect when you got multiple sources, that way it might add some extra things to think about when you're about to trade with another empire. It might even be an incentive to stop export before the trade agreement is over deteriorating relations with that other civ.
-Senator

4.2.3 - On strategic resources

on strategic resources i don't think a system with one oil deposit being able to provide oil for like 10 cities is good. (cuz you got small villages and huge mass-production cities) It's not even the size of a city that mathers it should be related to the amounts of shields produced per turn that sets the amount of oil needed then. keeping that in mind i think a system where a 'unit' of oil(for example) means you can produce 5 oil using units each turn as maximum is better. then again a tank uses less than an airplane, you'd need to set a number of oil that is needed for every unit.
-Senator

4.2.3.2 Strategic Resources With An Area of Effect

A good step in this direction would be to increase the occurance of strategic resources, and have each resource have a "range of effect". In other words, a city would have to be physically close to the resource in order to benefit from it.

Here's an example. Let's say that you have an iron resource, and the "radius of effect" for iron is 20 tiles. That means that only cities within 20 tiles of the iron can use it. You will be able to "export" the iron to your other cities on a per-city basis by road or sea, but doing so will cost you gold to cover the transporation cost. Cities connected to the resource by railroads would get double the base radius, and cities connected by airport would get quadruple. The result of this is that you will not be able to have every resource available to your empire being available in every city unless you want to pay a hefty fee to make it so. As such, you will be limited to producing various units and buildings only in regions where their raw materials are available.
--Ijuin

4.2.4 - Replace current resource shield system

The main problem, for me, is that the current resource system makes the resource shield concept meaningless. In earlier civs, the resource shields that one could get from hills and deserts and so on were justified by the fact that stuff like coal, iron and oil was being extracted from them. But with the resource system we have now, all linked up cities can get all the coal, oil and iron they need. But production is still decided by the number of hills and mines. This makes no sense. I mean, what are all those mines on the grassland extracting? It's not coal, iron, aluminium, oil, etc. The resource shields should be replaced by a raw material x productive power figure. Raw materials would be extracted from squares instead of shields, and productive power would be calculated by the population of the city, and any industrial improvements. You'd also need some sort of market to allow raw materials to flow to where they're needed.
-Sandman

4.2.5 - Population as main source of shields

How about having population as the main source of shields, with strategic resources and terrain giving factory-like percentage bonuses, rather than discrete numbers of shields?
-Sandman

4.2.6 - Tech affecting resource output

Another big change-with tech changes, the visibility of sources would change- mines of iron you could have never gotten before now are avaliable, or exiting mines now yeiled far more- creating an even bigger bond of tech with resources. Finally, as tech changed, the necessity would change- primarilly, you might waste less, so that same gets you further. All this could be done without any significant change to the shield system of city production.

But what you could introduce is manufactured goods-for example, forms of luxuries that are made (like TV's, or cars, whatever)-so that if your factories are idling and not building units or buildings, they can build luxuries you can not only use for internal happiness, but to trade.
-GePap

4.2.7 - Fresh water as resource, affecting food supply and city growth

On resources, one idea I am playing with in my head is making fresh water such a resource- in order to support people or make irrigation tiles, you need fresh water (which is already true in civ3)-the difference being that each tile would have a sort of fresh water production- and remove the arbitrary limit of 6 and 12 for cities- cities should be able to grow as big as food supply (which for good sakes, MUST be something than can be moved around, how far to be determined by tech levels) and water supply allow. Th danger of huge cities shoul be the omnipresent danger of great pandemics (and addition to any civ game that I see as a must, but not a resource issue). The point of aqueducts woul be to tap new water resources for cties (thus allowing growth, but not a must for all cities not next to rivers), while sewers would limit disease.
-GePap

4.2.8 - Some questions that must be decided upon

1. Do we want named resources to still expire? Is this dependent on the rate one produces units or improvements that require them?
2. Are surplus resources stored? If so, how? Invisibly with no limit? Transparently with no control? As a city improvement? As a tile improvement? (IMO it would be good if reserves could be targeted).
3. Are luxury named resources quantified?
4. Obviously a mine built in 1000 B.C. will not produce a named resource at the rate one built in the modern day would. To what extent is the resource rate dependent on a tile improvement and its era?
5. Can an AI manage successfully a complicated system, both for itself and the player who doesn't want to get involved except when necessary?

4.2.9 - Extend the Civ3 system

Shield production of city squares is independant of those resources being present or not. To take clay from a hill and produce pottery doesn't require oil or aluminium presence on that square. But on the other hand, if mere access is enough for luxury goods (other than gems!), some kind of a mine is necessary to access the resources (except horses of course!). Having just one resource spot supplying a civilization that controls nearly 50% of world population is quite weird. Which is why I voted for the limited quantities of the resource for each spot. Some spots may have just a little bit of aluminim, and other enormous amounts that will supply you all game long. But that should also depend on how fast you use it up. Which implies that each unit must have a resource quantity specification as well. (I would not vote for complicating with having only a given amount available per turn depending on our extraction investment, but rather to simply deduct the quantity used up from the reserve, until it is exhausted). If you have several spots of the same resource, of course you should be able to indicate which one you'd like to use first. Obviously better to start using up border resources while you have them... just in case.

Obviously, there should be more resources.
- Natural gas for instance, for energy production (see the thread on "energy" with my idea on this, which implies using up coal, oil, gas or uranium resource depending on the power plant you build).
- Copper for electrical appliances.

And... all depends on how much complexity you want to introduce. Given that resource are seldom surfacing, there would be need to have specialized mining workers (there was that kind of unit in Settlers n°something) looking for them. It's OK to have some appearing right away when we discover the appropriate technology, but we should be able to discover new ones through geological exploration, rather than just wait for the God AI to have some appear or go take it by force from our neighbor. >And obviously, those geological explorers should be able to search on water and therefore become amphibious at some point of technological advance. Trading those resources would then of course negociate a quota, either a bulk buy for a given lumpsum, or that many for so much every turn.
-grap1705

4.2.10 - Using the Colonization model

Personally I would suggest using the Colonization model. Here are the advantages to remind those who have forgotten and/or are not familiar with them:

1. Resources are quatified and can/need to be distributed explicity using physical trade networks.
2. Resources needed to be converted into finished goods.
3. Resources & finished goods need to be combined in fixed numbers to build stuff. (Ex, need 100 tools to build cannon, etc)
4. The concept of labor disbribution/specialization.

You assigned a certain number of carpenters, blacksmiths, etc and they would build finished goods at a rate proportional to the number of people assigned to work on it. MUCH BETTER THAN THIS "SHIELD" CRAP in CIV!!! Personally, I hope (but is probably not going to happen) is that Civ 4 use the underlying Colonization model rather than the underlying Civ 1 model. It was in many many many ways way SUPERIOR.
-polypheus

I really did like the Colonization resource model. This might get too complex for a game with as many eras and resources as civ though. I do like the idea of getting specific resources from the land/resource deposits, and finished goods too for trade. Also horses should be able to be "found" as resources then moved into the city so they can be "grown" (using food) once acquired, then traded with civs who have no access to these.

A warehouse building (ala Colon) could be built in cities to make storage space (no warehouse, 100 of each max, warehouse1, +100, warehouse2 +200, etc...) Supply would be per city, perhaps you could click on the city, get a popup menu, click "send goods" then click the good, how much, and to what city (be getting tgt cursor and clickon city), and it will be dispatched automatically (via auto-caravans or built&stocked caravans). Once cities are linked via RR's then strategic resources will be in a "regional pool" of RR connected cities. Perhaps food could be shared reginally via RR's too. Harbors/airports... they would fit in as well somehow. Perhaps commercial docks would allow oversea areas to be linked to the same "region".
-piratebrun

To actually MAKE a unit, a population unit would be dragged and dropped on the "city units area" (again ala Colon) then a list of what units were available via the existing finished goods would be given. obsolete finished goods could be sold to lesser equipped civs for whatever the lesser civ will offer in trade, or "recycled" for their base components at a rate of something like 1/2 - eg 50 muskets could be scrapped for 25 iron/25 KNO3. For finished goods, to make/equip a pop unit with them would not only require the resource, but the tech perhaps? or at least a tech to "understand" guns well enough to use them? or mebbe not, indigenous peoples have had no problems soon adapting to modern warfare technology if they have access to it.
-piratebrun

4.2.11 - A model in the middle of Civ3 and quantity

How about a model that's somewhere in the middle between the binary 'Have/Have Not' Civ3 system, and a really complicated resource quantity system? Specifically, instead of just two resource states (1 and 0), have a broader spectrum of resource states, say from 0 to 5.

These would be: Absent, Scarce, Adequate, Plentiful, Abundant and Super-Abundant.

Now, availability of a resource would depend on a variety of things. Firstly, the number of worked resource sites would strongly influence the availability. Having two iron ore sites would raise your supply from adequate to plentiful, for example. Secondly, the size of your civ would affect the availability of the resource. A single city civ with high technology and an oil site would have abundant or super-abundant oil supplies. But a huge continent-striding civ with the same amount of oil would only have adequate or even scarce oil supplies. Certain improvements (mass transit, for example) would reduce the effect of a large population base.

Thirdly, higher levels of technology would increase the resource yield from mined sites, although they'd also increase demand for the resource as well. Forthly, you could trade with other civs to increase your supply of a certain resource, or sell them your excess resources.

The final factor would be technology again. This time, however, it doesn't increase the output of resource extraction, but simply confers a basic benefit upon your whole civilization. For example, once you research animal husbandry (or some such thing), your supply of horses is permanently set to 'adequate', and you don't need to worry about finding a horse resource. Similarly, once you get 'organic chemistry' your supply of oil is set to 'scarce'. This means that you can still build and use units that use oil, but you're going to be at a serious disadvantage against a civ that has plentiful oil supplies. The effect of the different levels of availability would be fairly simple. Units which needed oil to be built would be very expensive if oil was scarce in your civ, and inexpensive if oil was abundant. Upkeep costs, movement, stats, happiness, terrain improvements, etc, could be dependant on the availability of resources.

Note that having very high levels of resource availability would not be that beneficial - it would usually be more useful to trade them instead.
-Sandman

4.2.12 - Quantity of a resource giving bonus effects

My idea is that when you have lets say 5 horses in your possesion, then you should get a +1 to movment of mounted units. It could be explained that you have the best breed in the world , and they are stronger. The same applies to iron --> get 5 of them and you can smelt the pure iron --> +1 to defense... Then you could play the game like in a real world, where resources matter a lot. There's been many wars for resources.
-bykhai

4.2.13 - Resource disappearance

First of all, I think that all three types of resources: Bonus/Luxury/Strategic should have appearance and disappearance ratios. Second of all, I think it would be great to have a concept of resource 'size'. This could simply be a number from 1 (the smallest) to 10 (the largest). The size of a resource effects its base appearance and disappearance ratio!

In addition, the disappearance ratio of most resources will be effected by the number of cities within your empire! The larger your empire, the greater the chance of a single resource vanishing! Each additional source of a single resource will, obviously, reduce its chance of disappearing. Other factors which should effect the disappearance ratio of a resource are:

1. # of cities over size 12 (or 8?)
2. The number of improvements/wonders in your empire which specifically require that resource (eg, each coal plant in your empire will increase the chance of your coal resource drying up!)
3. The number of civs you're trading the resource to!
4. The number of units you build using that resource.

If units in the field lose a resource which they would require a constant supply of (such as tanks and oil) then they will begin to lose 1hp per turn until you get it back to a fort or city! If Improvements that require a constant source of a resource lose that resource (such as an ironworks losing coal and/or iron) will cease to function until a new source of the resource is found.

Such a system would not be THAT big a change from the civ3 resource system, but would have a HUGE effect on the playing style you adopt. For instance, not only will ICS's have to deal with the problem of inherent corruption, but they might have to look out for constant loss of vital resources. In addition, though, it will force players into a constant search for more sources of a resource-even if they THINK they have plenty!!

Lastly, certain improvements and techs should be able to REDUCE the disappearance ratio of resources! Anyway, those are MY THOUGHTS on the matter-hope you like them
-The_Aussie_Lurker

5 - Trade and stockpiling

5.1 - Resource screen rather than trade screen

- a Resource screen rather than a trade one. You can see all the ressources u have access to or stockpiled and can decide (click) to trade it or transform it for example (if u have a factory and it can be transformed). For both luxuries and strategic.
-LouLong

5.2 - Stockpiling

- ability to stockpile some resources (non plant nor animal) to prepare for war for example.
We would like to be able to produce synthetic luxuries, etc.
-LouLong

5.3 - Trading under a system of resource quantity

5.3.1 - Being able to trade away all sources of a resource

when we have only one supply of a given resource, why should we not be able to trade if we so wish? If I have only one horse spot but am building tanks and armoured infantry, what do I care about horses anymore, while much less advanced civs may be very interested in them?
-grap1705

5.3.2 - Being able to trade a resource which the trading parter can't use due to tech

As for buying resources, it happened that I was not able to buy oil which I had none of, from another civ that had lots of. the only explanation I could think of was that it was because I was the only one to have discovered petroleum at that stage of the game. But why wouldn't I be able to buy oil from a civ that doesn't know what to do with it? The western world precisely built its economy of third world oil. We had the tehnology, they didn't but had the resource. So if this is the explanation of why oil wasn't available to buy, it is a very unrealistic feature.
-grap1705

5.3.3 - Trade specific amounts of a resource

I would like to see a system where you could offer to trade resources in specific amounts per turn, and in most cases your offer would be accepted, but the profit you would gain or price you would pay would depend on the relations between the two countries as well as the supply/demand factor. (and perhaps other factors) Of course, then the resource-tile would have a specific turn output, that would be stockpiled, used for production, or sold as you wish. - As it is in Victoria, but they use a common world market for resource trading...
-ThePlagueRat

5.3.4 - World Market

I would actually be fond of a "World Market." You could place a resource on the market on turn 1, then on turn 2 you'd have the other player's offers. Then you can select who among them gets it. It would help to establish real "prices" in the mind of the player. In Civ 3, things cost what the AI tells you they cost, and you just have to shrug and accept it. If there were bids then things would cost what people are willing to pay. Kind of neat, I think. This would be in addition to the system of calling one Civ up and hammering a price out right then and there.
-Fosse

5.3.5 - Banned resources/The Black Market

Another idea I had for resources was the concept of 'Banned Resources' and 'The Black Market'. If you ask me, though, many of the ideas I'm suggesting for resources could be incorporated into Civ3 without too much difficulty!

My idea was that, with the advent of Code of Laws-or a similar tech-you should be able to go to the trade advisor screen and click on a resource, even if you don’t have it yet, to indicate you want it to be banned. This means that you gain NO benefits from the resource, and can no longer trade it through diplomatic channels!! It should be possible, however, to build a small “wonder” called ‘The Black Market’-as an example. This Wonder has the effect of increasing happiness and corruption, whilst lowering culture and War Weariness-Civ wide! It would also have a higher than normal maintainence cost than other, similar types of Small wonders. The other effect of this wonder, though, is that you can turn “Banned” resources into “Contraband” resources-a mid-point between banned and un-banned. Once you’ve indicated you want a resource to be “Contraband”, you can then click on it, in the trade screen, and a pop-up box will ask if you want to trade this contraband

a) Internally b) Externally c) Both or d) neither.

If you select a, then your empire gets the normal benefits of that resource, plus a bonus happy face for it-but at the cost of increased corruption in any cities which have the resource in their radius!

If you choose b) Then you go to the diplomacy screen, and choose which Civ(s) you want to trade the resource to. You get a set gpt for the trade based on several factors: 1) Distance between Civs; 2) # of said resource owned between both civs and 3) The ‘rarity’ of the resource (luxuries are more ‘rare’ than strategic resources, and strategic resources are based on appearance and disappearance ratios!).

If the resource is also banned in the other civ, then the gpt value is doubled AND the trade has negative impacts on the other Civs culture and corruption-Civ Wide. That civ does get the ‘benefits’ of the resource, however (like happiness effects!). It should also be possible to build improvements or wonders which off-set, and even cancel, the negative impacts of Contraband trade.

Also, if you trade in banned resources, then your reputation takes a hit amongst other civs-especially those who might also have banned said resources!

The purpose of the UN, in this system is that you can pass a ‘resolution’ DEMANDING that a resource be banned-you might do this if an enemy Civ is gaining too much benefit from a resource, has a monopoly on that resource or just to increase the value of the resource for your own benefit (You have the resource, but you want to increase it’s trade value by turning it into contraband!)

If the UN assembly gives you the vote, then the resource is automatically banned for ALL CIVS-though it can still be turned into Contraband through normal means! Equally, you can demand, via the UN, to have a ban on a resource lifted! This would greatly increase the importance of the UN, especially for the building player-as said player would have a greater influence over the vote, and more control over when a vote is taken!
-The_Aussie_Lurker

Conclusion

The general meaning seem to be that the resources model should be extended and that Firaxis should implement some radical ideas.

Respectfully compiled by - Nikolai
Special thanks to - Asmodean, DarkCloud