Strategic Resorces as Cost cutters not requirments??

[Impaler[WrG]]

Well the tile basicaly says it all, should the current mess of strategic resorces Copper, Iron, Coal, Oil, Uranium act as cost cutters like Stone and Marble currently alow with Wonders?

It should be relativly easy to do, simply double the cost of every unit that needs a resorce and give it the same atributes as wonders with its resorces reducing its cost back to "normal". Now you can field an army even without access to strategic resorces it simply cost double. No more resorces screwage!

Resorces could be made sligtly rarer as a result to make it more or a "YESS I GOT IRON, BOOYA!!" rather then "OH THANK GOD I GOT IRON AND WONT BE SLAUTERED". Idealy when your resorce-less offensive wars will probably be prohibitivly expensive but you can still manage a resonable defence.

What do yall think?

Oh and on a side note I have been thinking of trying to add Rubber (probably going along with that Automobile stuff someone was thinking of adding) and Oak (the tree) as resorces. Oak would be used for LongBowmen and Frigates/Caravels. Possibly also Flint as a super early resorce for Warriors and Archers that gets obsoleted with ironworking. All of theses would also be along the lines of cost reducers.

[CyberChrist]

Re: Strategic Resorces as Cost cutters not requirments??

Rubber:
Good idea I have been missing that one.

Oak:
Might I suggest calling it Prime Timber instead?

Flint:
Might I suggest including Obsidian instead?

[Xerxes712]

In case you are really unlucky, I changed the worthless spearman into using even use ROCK quarry for a resource to build, instead of copper (iron) only.

Maybe even a new unit altogether; An upgraded warrior unit if you got ROCK...Caveman. Give him a power of 3 and some melee bonus to help at the start if your really unlucky with no horses, copper, or iron.

I think your idea does have merit. Maybe you can always build the spearman, but you could build him for half cost if you got copper or iron (or even Stone)! That is brilliant. Now I can play Alexander Phalanx units (power 5 unique unit) to gain alot of terriatory early as the Greeks did way back then in history.

I am going to try that out.

[Optimizer]

The lower-cost bonus makes more sense than mandatory requirements.

I have started by making power plants cheaper when you have access to Copper.

[Mylon]

It makes sense. It's one of the plans for my mod. Maybe I'll put it in the next version. The startegic resources are too important currently and the lack of can cripple a civilization. Is what's keeping me from making what might sound like a simple change is that the unit xml file does not have the same bonus fields that buildings have -- Such a change would have to be hard coded.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Mylon your wrong units DO have an aparently identical field for "ProductionModifiers" just as buildings do. I have done a quick check and confirmed that it works adsactly like a buildings cost reducing ability and it functions in the game.
Here is some XML from to demonstrate ("<" and ">" mostly omited)


BonusProductionModifiers
BonusProductionModifier
BonusType BONUS_IRON /BonusType
iProductonModifier 50 /iProductonModifier
/BonusProductionModifier
/BonusProductionModifiers

(YES I can see that "BonusProductonModifier" is missing an i. The Civ4 unitSchema mis-spells the element name and it must be entered this way to avoid an error. It might be possible to correct the schema but I am hesitent to mess with it because its otherwise working fine in game).

This gives a 50% incresse in production when the unit is under construction. As far as I can see their is no way to produce an OR relationship such as that with Axemen, if both resorces are present the Unit recives both bonuses cumulativly. So for example if I collect 10 base and have a 100% bonus and a 50% bonus I would have a finaly output of 25. Or type resorce relationships might have to be eliminated to maintain balance. And type relationships say for example Aluminum AND Oil for a Jet could be best aproimated with two 50% bonuses so one resorce is nice but two is twice as nice and the total comes out to half price, 3/4 with one resorce.

I should be able to complete a quick Mod that converts all units to this new style of resorce usage in a day or two.

Oh and CyberChrist is right Obsidian would be much better (though arrowheads were often made of flint), Obsidian sounds cooler and being Black it could easily be recognized on the Mini-Map (perhaps we could simply take the gem graphic and blacken it).

[Optimizer]

That's great - let's just change all units requiring oil to be cheaper with oil. Then the Nazis will have some Panzers left even after the loss of Romania.

[Mylon]

Ah, I guess the unitInfos.xml file just leaves the tags out. I'm usually too lazy to read the schema file. Thanks.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Idea for creating OR relationships

Perhaps we could create a new resorce that represents the combination of 2 other resorces. Their are only 2 different OR relationships in the game Copper/Iron and Oil/Uranium. Two new resorces call "Base Metals" and "Fuel" could be created and any unit that we want to make cheaper with an OR style relationship could use that resorce.

Iron and Copper (and potentialy aything) would also provide the Base Metal bonus in addition to their normal bonus. Same with Oil and Uranium. We could set these combo resorces to be non tradable as well.

[MilkmanDan]

Originally posted by Optimizer
That's great - let's just change all units requiring oil to be cheaper with oil. Then the Nazis will have some Panzers left even after the loss of Romania.

Can units require resources as support? If so, bump up oil tile to give x (20? 50?) oil resources which determines how many oil units that can be supported. Would also need ability to trade for more than one of a resource at a time too as well as balancing the AI sense of value. Perhaps another improvement to allow extracting a minimal amount of oil (enough for 1 or 2 units) and requiring active work within city radius.

Resources currently are 1 per entire empire, no matter how big or small and always the full 1, no matter how big or small. Trying to think how to balance out other resources/luxuries.

[Kuciwalker]

Doubling the cost of the unit will mess up upgrade costs. Since not everything requires a resource, you can't just change the gold/shield ratio either. There may be a tag that modifies a unit's upgrade cost, though; I'm too lazy to look it up now.

[MattPilot]

@kuci -

Just half the upgrade cost modifier I think i saw it in the "global" file.





Anyway, i love this idea and will probably go ahead and do it too.

There is however, one inherent flaw with this model.


Bare with me:

If base production is 10 hammers, and the unit costs 60 hammers, it will take 6 turns. Now lets say we have the required resource, and we get a 100% bonus. So now we can do it in 3 turns.

But what IF, and this is the thing that messes it up ... what if we have a forge, factory + power for an additional 100%?

So now we produce one unit every 2 turns, assuming we have the resource, and if we don't, one unit every 3 turns.

So now its not 1/2 as expensive as intended, but only 2/3s. Now if we add the Iron Works into the mix, it goes down to 3/4's.

No big deal really, but one must consider its effects before doubling unit prices. Perhaps make Ancient units twice as expensive and modern units only 1/3 as expensice, since we can assume most will have factories. ANd if they don't, the unit will take many turns to build anyway.

[Impaler[WrG]]

This is simply an inherant flaw in the Civ 4 ProductionModifier system the same things happens when your say for example building StoneHenge with Organized Religion and Stone. If your base production was 20 the stone give you an additional 20 and organized religion gives 5 more for a total of 45. Admitedly is dose make the math simpler.

I have desided to just settle the OR relationship problem by eliminating them, all the Copper Iron units will probly shift to Copper only (Axeman, Spearman, Maceman, Phalax). The Oil Uranium units are all Navel units. Destroyer and BattleShip will use Oil, Carriers and Subs will go to Uranium. Transport might just drop any resorce requirments as its just a simple barge afterall.

I'll be cutting and pasting, expected completion this weekend some time. Oh and I will also inpliment that Upgrade cost modification to keep things balanced (or even better I might lower it a bit)

[Optimizer]

Thanks in advance. To keep the value of resources, they should be used as bonus for more units and buildings.

Iron could be used as bonus for most things you build from the industrial age and later on. Copper could be used for power plants.

[Mylon]

I've incorporated into v0.30 of my mod, which is still in development.