Which is more important, early or late game resources?

[QuantumPion]

For most of the games that I play, I usually end up not getting any iron or marble, and I'm lucky if I get stone or copper. However by the late game in these situations, I do usually get coal, oil, uranium, and aluminum. Now the game I am playing I had all the early resources (except horses, which really hurt when I wanted to build cavalry ). This allowed me to boom really well and get far ahead of the other civs. The access to marble allowed me to pump out wonders and get lots of great people.

However, now in the industrial age, I am somewhat screwed. While I do have oil, uranium, and aluminum (not bad, considering I have all the early resources too! ), I don't have any coal. It so happens on this map that all of the coal, 5 of them, are on one continent controlled by my worst enemy who is nearly as powerful as me and is a world away. While I still have the other late game resources, not having coal is a HUGE burden. No railroads means SLOW reinforcements for my long protracted battles, and less resources for late game booming.

So, in your opinion, what is more important? Having access to early-game resources like iron and marble, or late game ones like oil and coal?

[Proteus_MST]

Both are important as long as they are needed to build certain units.

Miss on Copper and Iron and your Warriors and Archers will have a hard time in fighting against barbarian axemen.

But having no Oil and coal would mean no railroads and being defeated at sea (fighting with Sailships against Destroyers and Battleships would be hard ) and would AFAIR also mean that you don´t have any airforce and tanks

Other resources like marble or stones are less important. Even without them you can still build everything you want (it´s just that some wonders take longer; but this can be compensated b y being the first who researches certain technologies (which unlock certain wonders) so that you start with building them several turns before the AI can do so

[khearn]

You need them all, but if you don't have the early ones, you aren't likely to ever have to worry about the late ones.

In your situation, I'd recommand mining every hill you can, and make sure the cities are working the mines. For every mine, on every turn, for each resource you can see, there is a 1 in 10,000 chance of having that resource be discovered (this info is from a post by Soren, so it's reliable). So the more miines you have working, the more chance you have of discovering a new coal resource. It's not a great chance, a hair less than 1% per 100 mine/turns, but it's better than trying to live without coal.

[The Pioneer]

It is not a question of either-or. You definitely need both early and late resources. Of course it is too early to say (I only played a couple games) but there seems to be a better balance of resource distribution in CIV IV compared to III. So one may be unlucky and not be able to get a resource but hey that is what happens in real life (oil would be a perfect example everybody needs it but only a few have it).

So long...

[joncnunn]

Well, a lot depends upon WHICH resource your lacking and also your playing style.

Someone who prefers swords/axes/archer stacks attacking won't mind missing horses, and neither would the player not planning on attacking anyone early on.

But those that want to say horsemen rush would not like to be without horses. (Come to think of it, horsemen rushes seem much more likely to fail in Civ IV than Civ III)