Too much oil

[pauli]

oil is everywhere on earth.

and i gotta say, the plentiful strategic resources in civ4 beat the pants off of the Great Saltpeter Wars and the Disappearing Coal Affair.

in civ4, it's gone from "i need oil to build modern units" to "i need to protect my oil so i can keep building modern units" or you end up with "why the hell am i building cossacks NOW?"

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner


It's all Oerdin's fault for posting an off-topic thread in the civ4 general section.

I don't really mean that about the republican civic -- I mean I can also take the other side and make a democratic party civic joke by saying they already have that in the game, but it's just called the Bureaucracy civic.

Wouldn't the republican civic be just like Bureucracy without the benefits then?

-Drachasor

[Shogun Gunner]

you see, it is fun to mix political humor with civ! Really, just about any combination will work. Try this template.

Wouldn't {insert group you wish to slander here} be just like {insert civ concept here} which would lead to {insert final insulting comment here}.

Its easy! Give it a try!

[Simplicity]

I wonder if the chance of oil showing up is some percentage per tile... And then large/huge maps wind up with quadratically more oil as the world gets larger. I tend to play on the larger maps as well... Hmmmm...

[Dis]

I always go for scientific method early so I know if I need to conquer to get oil. Best to do this early before you face tough defenders. I've had a few games where I didn't have oil. Not too many.

[MasterDave]

It is nearly impossible to fight a modern war without oil, so I am glad that it is plentiful. It sucks to play a game for hours only to find out that you are going to have to survive the last 100 years without tanks, modern ships, or planes. The AI's that don't have oil become easy pickins in my games.

To continue the political off-topicness of this thread, why does State Property give a food bonus???! This is definitely a case of gameplay trumping reality since collectivising farms has always resulted in terrible productivity, if not outright starvation in most historical cases.

Also, why should environmentalism create happiness? I have yet to hear about or talk to an environmentalist who was not angry, bitter, and ranting about some horrible affront to an obscure endangered species.

[Dis]

yeah green freaks are whacko.

[petermarkab]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
I just enable the republican civic and i get an automatic invasion of an oil producing nation and oil drilling in my arctic zone. no problems

surely thats the 'Neo-con' civic?

[Odin]

Originally posted by MasterDave

Also, why should environmentalism create happiness?

wilderness areas better preserved for recreation?

[Odin]

Originally posted by Dis
yeah green freaks are whacko.

Thats only eco-luddites, don't confuse the legitimite enviromentalists with the New Age Hippe wackos.

<----------Green Socialist

[rjwoer]

It's pretty easy to adjust the prevalance of a particular resource. The file is in ...xml/terrain/ (CIV4BonusInfo.xml, I believe). One of the reasons oil appears with regularity is that it is coded as "placement order" 0. This means it is the first resource, along with Iron, to be placed during a map's creation. The designers did this because of the importance of these two resources. One easy way to reduce the prevalance would be to make Oil placement order 2 (which is the 3rd).

In case you're curious here are the "stock" Placement Orders:
0 (1st) = Iron, Oil
1 (2nd) = Copper, Horse
2 (3rd) = Marble, Stone, (Salt in my mod)
3 (4th) = Banana, Corn, Cow, Deer, Pig, Rice, Sheep, Wheat
4 (5th) = Dye, Fur, Gems, Gold, Incense, Ivory, Silk, Silver, Spices, Sugar, Wine, (Coffee, Tobacco in my mod)
5 (6th) = Clam, Crab, Fish, Whale, (Pearl in my mod)

[Strudo]

Originally posted by MasterDave
Also, why should environmentalism create happiness? I have yet to hear about or talk to an environmentalist who was not angry, bitter, and ranting about some horrible affront to an obscure endangered species.

I think that the point of the civic is not that there are environmentalists but that everyone shares an environmentalist attitude. If everyone was an environmentalist then no one would have anything to complain about...... yeah right!

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by rjwoer
It's pretty easy to adjust the prevalance of a particular resource. The file is in ...xml/terrain/ (CIV4BonusInfo.xml, I believe). One of the reasons oil appears with regularity is that it is coded as "placement order" 0. This means it is the first resource, along with Iron, to be placed during a map's creation. The designers did this because of the importance of these two resources. One easy way to reduce the prevalance would be to make Oil placement order 2 (which is the 3rd).

In case you're curious here are the "stock" Placement Orders:
0 (1st) = Iron, Oil
1 (2nd) = Copper, Horse
2 (3rd) = Marble, Stone, (Salt in my mod)
3 (4th) = Banana, Corn, Cow, Deer, Pig, Rice, Sheep, Wheat
4 (5th) = Dye, Fur, Gems, Gold, Incense, Ivory, Silk, Silver, Spices, Sugar, Wine, (Coffee, Tobacco in my mod)
5 (6th) = Clam, Crab, Fish, Whale, (Pearl in my mod)

What about coal?
I don´t see it anywhere on the list

[King Thor]

I dont see aluminium on that list either

Also, I played a game where I didn't get an oil resource. It was a large map and I had a pretty hefty land mass (it was on continents and I controlled 2/3rds of my continent) .

I actually really enjoyed that game because after I realized I didn't have an oil resource, I frantically went searching for oil and eventualyl establised a city on an island and started using an oil platform. whew!

but then the chinese declared war on me.. and they sent a battleship (against my destroyer defending the oil platform) and pillaged my oil platform.

this was while they were landing troops on my land and trying to take cities from me! I was shocked.. it was a great move by the AI .. most likely hardcoded.. but I dont like to guess hwo the AI works. I just loved how intelligently it ended up acting.

I rebuilt the oil platform ofcourse.. also let them have a city in exchange for peace.


...

I took it back later

[James M]

In my last game there wasn't any copper on the *entire planet*. Standard map. God knows how we discovered bronze working...