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My vote is for copper. Oil and Uranium are nice, but with a copper start, the game's over before those resources come into play, and since I like BW early, it's a natural fit for my playing style.
Ivory would be a good second, IMO, but I have to wait too long to...shall we say...relileve a neighbor of his territory....Gimmie speed!
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So what is the most useful resource to have within your fat cross?
I guess it will have to be either cows or gold. But gold is always on 0-food tiles, which is rather a drawback. Cows are 3/3 or 4/2. I can't really think of anything better.
Sure, pigs or river-corn are nice as well. But pure food is not as useful as a mix of hammers and good food. You can't whip every single time
Well, if I have cows in my fat cross I will, generally, head straight to Animal Husbandry. By the time I build a worker I will usually have the required tech. I still maintain that I would want cows over anything else in my capital. I can build or take cities with other necessary resources later. I can't remember more than one game where I didn't have iron or copper within the borders of my first three or four cities. By that time I'll attack to prevent a neighbor like Isabella or Shaka or Kublai from being able to use a nearby resource like horses or ivory.
A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.--Epictitus
Originally posted by Swiss Pauli
Fish, then Corn. Fish wins as it's good whether coastal or ocean and always adds health. Non-riverside corn is slightly weaker as you need to road it for health.
Stone and Marble are nice to have, but the Philo slingshot means you still do cool things without them in the early game.
I concede that having gold AND floodplains is a great start. In fact, if I have a start such as that, I'm pretty sure I've already won. It's starts like that which make me wish I could change difficulty level in the beginning of the game.
This might be an overly narrow hypothetical situation, but if you started the game on a river, but no floodplains, and no coastal resources nearby, what is the one resource you would most like to see? In a common situation like that, I want to see cows. In such a situation gold is useless at the beginning of the game because your capital won't even be able to use the resource due to lack of food.
A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.--Epictitus
My game start research usually consists of at least one of the following beelines:
1.Bronze Working
2.Animal Husbandry
3.Iron Working
The idea is, if the first doesn't reveal any copper in reach, the second is pursued immediately, if it doesn't reveal any horses in reach, the third is attempted.
If all three searches for military resources fail, Im considering myself screwed unless I have ivory and somehow manage to shoot up to construction or I am playing as Mansa (skirmishers are the best of the defenders - so cheap and strong).
The reason why I consider these resources crucial is Im playing on emperor and barb axes appear soon enough to be worried about. The improved AI doing 'dagger' strikes is another reason.
The reasons why I put priorities like that (copper > horse > iron > ivory) are:
- axe is the single most effective heavy-weight defensive unit during early game; in combination with archers it makes cheap and reliable defense vs any unit prior to machinery/construction
- chariots (war ones and immortals) as well as horse archers are comparatively weak or expensive (the latter), but they make it up with mobility - in most wars you can do with one stack of mounted troops vs two stacks of foot soldiers, unless spearmen involved (but here again you can trick them with pouring axes in), simply because they can traverse your empire before the enemy can attack that barely defended border city; they also make good ahead scouts for timely spotting; as an offensive unit horse archers qualities are often questioned, but I find them the best until elephants just because during games on quick speed you dont have that much time to run around and the quicker you get near the enemy, the less advanced troops you'll be facing
- iron is more of an attackers resource and the tech is also expensive enough to not rush it early on (Romans being an exception) if you dont plan agression; in most games, having secured either of the former, you'll be able to hold out until gunpowder (but construction will be an important precondition)
- ivory only gives you elephants and is also less common than copper/iron/horses, that's why relying on ivory for military might turn into disaster if you're rushed before you get to construction or if you havent secured oil/iron at the moment you reveal aluminium is nowhere in your borders (and ivory is obsolete).
-- What history has taught us is that people do not learn from history. -- Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
I vote for Pigs. The extra 4 food improves the city's workable terrain level immensely. Seafood does the same for otherwise ugly coastal locations that often have other resources one would like to have. (A secondary value of a resource can be the opportunity to expoit some other key resource.) Howeverm the resource that has most shaped my games is, interestingly enough, Coal. Whether it is having to go get it because I don't have any or having an opportunity to deny it to another Civ, that factor has become a key world-history moment in many of my games. I'm not sure I would declare it the most important resource, but when asked the question, that's the first thought that came to mind. Coal!
I concur with Blake regarding Ivory, especially if I can site a city on it. I'll go out of my way early in the game to get a settler on such a site, bee line to construction and begin the conquest of a neighbor. The advantage of always knowing it's there is huge.
However, throughout the game, what resource is most important for me to acquire?
Horses: I've played many a game on Monarch without horses. Muskets, Grenadiers . . . foot soldiers with siege weapons do nicely instead of mounted troops. Horses are nice, but not critical.
Food (Fish, Corn, Pigs): Great for a city, but quite often the rest of the terrain is terrible or food starved. I won't go out of my way to site a city to get the resource, at least until I need the health benefit.
Coal: Yes!! Coal Wars. I play on Large and Huge maps and railroads are crucial. This puppy shows up and I'm either a very happy camper or looking to see who will taste steel first.
Oil: Yes!! Oil Wars! The military application is certainly important enough to go to war to acquire this resource. Just like in RL.
So, it comes down to Ivory, Coal and Oil . . . situational and depending upon the point in the game involved.
Originally posted by Eggolas
I concur with Blake regarding Ivory, especially if I can site a city on it. I'll go out of my way early in the game to get a settler on such a site, bee line to construction and begin the conquest of a neighbor. The advantage of always knowing it's there is huge.
However, throughout the game, what resource is most important for me to acquire?
Horses: I've played many a game on Monarch without horses. Muskets, Grenadiers . . . foot soldiers with siege weapons do nicely instead of mounted troops. Horses are nice, but not critical.
Food (Fish, Corn, Pigs): Great for a city, but quite often the rest of the terrain is terrible or food starved. I won't go out of my way to site a city to get the resource, at least until I need the health benefit.
Coal: Yes!! Coal Wars. I play on Large and Huge maps and railroads are crucial. This puppy shows up and I'm either a very happy camper or looking to see who will taste steel first.
Oil: Yes!! Oil Wars! The military application is certainly important enough to go to war to acquire this resource. Just like in RL.
So, it comes down to Ivory, Coal and Oil . . . situational and depending upon the point in the game involved.
I'm guessing it's almost never viable to trade for these strategic resources?
I think that the fastest you can use a ressource, the more important it is.
oil or think like that you can livre without... a good artillery force + the rifleman with 20 pts force (i play in french so don't know the term in english) can do a great job.
For modern sea unit if you are not on isle maps, you don't need it so badly . And there is also uranium. You can allways take care or taking a city on another continent when your boat are not deprecated and then transport earth unit using airports.
But ancient ressources make or breake your game. Iron is good contender because you can research the tech fast and axeman are good until administration or mecanics.
health ressources are important but are ofen numerous. You'll always have some of them on your capital and will not settler in a poor food site anyway. They wil be usefull only after... And by then you could always have captured them.
Gold or Gem without jungle are likely best ressources that is not military oriented. At the begining they can almost double your gold income and will help a lot afford a better number of city while researching fast. Gold comes with production so it's always good to use it if you have at least one food ressource in the city. They also add an aditionnal happy smile to you city... This is enormous. When you city can't grow more that size 4 it really destroy your economy.
Monarchy is not help with low hapiness because it will take endless time to research and by then you'll be left behind.
I'm guessing it's almost never viable to trade for these strategic resources?
Actually in the mid-to late game, you can take advantage of the AI by trading them copper or iron in the gunpowder age when they are no longer so important. The AI still prioritizes them big time, and will trade dearly for them (I guess copper matters somewhat for making some of the SS parts, but Statue of Liberty- but those are not as critical as copper is in the Anceint age).
"Cunnilingus and Psychiatry have brought us to this..."
Indeed it can be possible to trade for strategics - you just need to trade them a better strategic! I find the easiest to trade for is Ivory, most often it'll be along the lines of trading Copper for Ivory - most likely to an AI who already has Iron (making the copper 100% useless except for the two wonders and I can cancel the trade at those points)... trading Iron to a Copper AI is also moderately non-harmful...
Also if an AI is trusted to not attack you then there's no real harm in trading them strategics. For that matter Stone and Marble are useless at certain points and can make it easy to afford ivory/copper/horses.
Iron and Aluminum are the two resources which are always too expensive to trade for, but they do make excellent trade fodder themselves. Note that the AI does have a fair idea of resources going obsolete, they wont value Iron nearly as highly in the modern age as in the ancient age, Iron might be a lot more affordable when you want it for Cannons than when you wanted it for Swords.
Returning to the power of Ivory, the idea of Ivory is that you can use it to acquire the other resources you need, because of the dominating power of elephants you can crush whoever has the iron/horses etc you need and hopefully secure enough land to get Coal/Oil etc too. Targeting a Horse AI is particularly good because they really overbuild mounted units and the elephants just ruin them. With Horses in hand you can later upgrade to Knights or Cavalry.
A particularly strangely exploitive strategy is to trade or gift an AI a resource in order to get them to build the unit you are countering - if you are going Elephant heavy you can trade an AI horses and they'll inevitably build more mounted units for you to kill. If they have copper and are going mounted-heavy, you can also trade them Iron up until the point where they get Engineering, since Crossbows and Swords are easier to kill with mounted units than spearmen are, you just have to avoid them getting pikes (and maybe knights). Likewise you might encourage a copper AI to train Swords up until Machinery, so your axemen can make a bigger mess of them. In this way it can be profitable to trade an AI a "stronger" strategic because it actually weakens them, as such making strategic for strategic trades are not always bad.
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