What's your favourite resource

[foudres]

if someone send one huge stack of tank or other... just try a nuke on it

[Krill]

Best use of nukes is buying (yup...uni sufferage and 5000-10000 gold depending on the amount of cities you have) as many as possible the turn you complete manhattern, then using them asap to break any defenders in cities you can attack. You have to do all this in, like, the first 2 or maybe three turns after Manhattern is built, because a human will get up SDI asap, and (hopefully) the AI does this as well.

What the nukes do though is save you a fair few tanks, and let you eliminate a couple of opponents in those few turns. They aren't the most powerful tools, not by a long way. It's just fun to watch an opponents land get turned the wrog sort of green.

[Krill]

Doesn't apply to OCC as much as the normal SP or MP games though, because you only have one city to buy nukes in, but I know you will have alot of stored gold in a fair amount of the OCC games that are played. In that case many tanks probably are a good substitute.

[foudres]

If i am not wrong any unit not in a city is detroyed in the 3x3 nuke area of effect ?

[SadistSavant]

My favorite would definitely have to be cows. I love the +1/+2 with the pasture, giving either a 4/2 on grasslands or 3/3 on plains (though I can't recall the last time I saw that). I know it's not a massive six or so from fish or corn, but I love my production. Also, early in the game, when I'm trying to snag a good wonder, I need all my tiles to work for me, and just plain old food doesn't cut it. I s'pose though, with a lot of population, one could just enslave for a good wonder, but that kind of thing never works out for me.

After cow comes coal, since the +1 prod bonus, from railroads, to lumber mills and mines is a godsend for later wonders, like the Three Gorges Dam.

[couerdelion]

Well it seems that my original idea of dropping the “ancient/classical” military resources has rather backfired. Now we are talking about nuclear war in a game where this has almost zero importance!!!

But not wishing to try to fight against the prevailing current I think I will join in on the overall debate concerning the military resources which basically boil down to Copper/Horses/Iron/Ivory. Anything after this cannot be crucial because

a) if the game is close at this stage, you would probably already be losing badly without those resources
b) if you are already ahead then they will be easy to acquire.

First of all, the basic sequence

1) Copper
2) Horses
3) Iron
4) Ivory (for Elephants not happiness)

Is given because this is the typical order in which you would normally be able to use the resource (if you have it).

Now the general rule still applies that the sooner we get something the more valuable it is so Copper is always going to be a useful resource. Good for both defense and attack so I suppose that I would really prefer Copper on grassland right next to my capital over all the others.

Horses are the best for dealing with barbarians but that’s about it. When it comes to campaigns of conquest, horses work better as fast moving defensive or flanking groups to sweep up any stray units that might have sneaked past your main forces.

Iron also has no greater chance of being in your zone of control than Copper and it is also harder to acquire. But Iron’s only early game benefit is the use of swordsmen which provide a slightly cheaper assault force than axemen. I don’t think the gain of swordsmen (or later crossbows/knights) is sufficient compensation for the extra time lost in launching an early strike. But I say this with a little reservation because it also depends on how quickly that early strike might be. There is, what I would consider an “axeman window” in which an axeman-based assault army can be reasonable cost effective. This overlaps with the “swordsman window”. If the copper is a little distant (say third or fourth city) or your nearest enemy is also far away, then you’ve lost time. And in that time, the AI will have gained units and, more crucially, culture. By this stage you could probably already have the technology for iron so here, Iron would be better. Since the combination of factors needed for an early strike can be quite rare, I think Iron makes the better resource in a “normal” game but that Copper works strongest if close and you have a nearby neighbour.

As for Elephants, these fall down for me on several counts. First, they come too late in the game for the early strike. Second, they are expensive. Third, they are still susceptible to spears or catapults. NB War Elephants are rarely at risk from praetorians because they hardly ever meet them. On the whole, I don’t find elephants any cheaper than swords for getting into cities.

On a separate note, why are the game writers obsessed with making that obscure catapult unit – whose basic ability is the ability to hurl stones at walls into some super field combat unit which can charge into a city, dodge stray missiles, and has the chance to retreat from combat. What sort of historical weapon are we actually dealing with here?! The catapults I know

a) would have no ability to assault a city (or probably not even another unit)
b) would be subject to the first missile attacks from the enemy
c) would need other troops just to protect them from capture.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by couerdelion

On a separate note, why are the game writers obsessed with making that obscure catapult unit – whose basic ability is the ability to hurl stones at walls into some super field combat unit which can charge into a city, dodge stray missiles, and has the chance to retreat from combat. What sort of historical weapon are we actually dealing with here?! The catapults I know

a) would have no ability to assault a city (or probably not even another unit)
b) would be subject to the first missile attacks from the enemy
c) would need other troops just to protect them from capture.

I struggled with this too.

I finally decided that catapults are really just normal infantry divisions with plenty of engineers, equipment and training suitable for siege warfare and artillary bombardment. I certainly can't envision these civ4 units as representing a bunch of literal catapults for the reasons you describe.

[foudres]

If we go by that a catapult should't be allowed to attack or city...

But each catapult action should also do colateral damage AND decrease city defence (but never be able to make damage to unit by attacking)

If you think about it, it would be even more effective because the defender would have to attack to destroy the catapult
Another thing i can't understand is why catapult can't take collateral damage now ?

[AshenPlanet]

.

Anything after this cannot be crucial because...

I disagree.

I would submit that you could have any of the ancient resources, and you'd be just as well off.

If copper, everyone knows what to do.
If iron, you beeline to machinery and hold off with archers.
If horses, chariots and horse archers until you beeline to early guilds for knights.
If ivory, then it's very simply cats and jumbos.

I don't think it matters much which resource you get.
As long as you get any of those, you can build armies around it.
Each ancient resource has advantages and disadvantages over the others.
You can build armies of just horse units or just axes or just swords/xbows/maces.
As long as you do your fighting in the appropriate time period for the resource you have - very early ages for copper and ivory or middle ages for iron - you're good to go (horses are good till the modern ages).

When you get to scientific method and beyond though, warfare completely hinges on whether or not you have oil.
Unlike copper, horses, iron and ivory, all of which you can still fight without, you can't fight effectively without oil.
Without it, you are stuck to basic infantry units and crappy artillery.
If you are just cruising to an easy space race win, you can keep cruising as long as you keep other players happy.
If you plan on doing any fighting after that stage of the game, however, you need to get oil.
The computer ais don't use bombers much, but once I get radio, warfare changes totally.
I spam dozens of bombers, because they trivialize great numbers of troops.
They make a far bigger difference in warfare than even the railroad does.
With vastly fewer and smaller armies, you can roll over other players.
Naval combat is totally dependant on oil as well.

That's why I rate the military recourses as: horses > oil > copper > ivory > iron > aluminum > uranium.

Horses I do put higher than oil, simply because horse units are the strongest for most of the game.
From the beginning (wheel) to very late (rifling), units from chariots to cavalry are immensely powerful, making horses one of the most useful, and certainly the longest useful resource.

.

[rah]

I did win an OCC conquest game without Oil, but only because I was so far ahead on research. Uranium saved my navy.

Having said that, I too think overall, Oil is the most powerful. Horses a close second. (you have to have something so you survive to use the oil)

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by rah
I did win an OCC conquest game without Oil, but only because I was so far ahead on research. Uranium saved my navy.

Having said that, I too think overall, Oil is the most powerful. Horses a close second. (you have to have something so you survive to use the oil)

so occ games are often practically lost the moment your settler arrives on the oil-less landscape in 4000 bc but you don't find this out until dozens and dozens of futile turns later?

[Krill]

It's OCC. It isn't supposed to be easy. And that only applies if you're going for conquest victory; SS is easy as hell on prince IMO, so long as you have a decent start (ie not coastal with some decent food+health)

[couerdelion]

Horses?

If the four starting resources were scissors/paper/stone then horses is a small little ant that gets crushed by stone, rolled up in paper and cut by the scissors. It’s by far the most vulnerable of the early military resources and if you don’t find something else soon then you’ll want to be looking rapidly to capture something or trade if for a useful metal. If you’ve got to the middle ages and all you have are cats, horse archers and longbows your going to find life a little tricky.

Some also seem to missing the whole point about combined arms. Sure you can send over a large number of horse archers or axemen but both of these groups are vulnerable. The horse archer (50 hammers) gets eaten alive by the spearman (35 hammers) while the axeman (35 hammers) gets eaten alive by the “Warlords” chariot (25 hammers) while on vanilla is toast when it meets a crossbow (60 hammers). If your rival has the necessary resources then any uniform army will be exposed to destruction by a cheaper opposing army. Of course, the axeman army can in the early game bring along a spearman to protect against the chariots and this needs no other resources. But the horse archers really need an axemen to protect them and that requires metals.

Now at the point of researching scientific method, you will already have gunpowder troops; perhaps riflemen and cavalry. There’s plenty of time to acquire the oil that you know you will need and you have the units that you need to get it.

Notwithstanding this, by the time oil comes on line, the game will have been influenced by other factors which will have magnified by this stage of the game to such an extent that the relative value of having the oil is small.

One the catapult question, I can’t remember why they changed things from the times when they were just used as bombarding machines.

[ben04]

Chariots are actually very strong if used before the enemy has iron and is negligating spearmen. This works especially good against humain players which often feel that a combination of archers and axemen is a solid defence.

Attack with a 10 chariots early and many you will wn against most players.

Horse archers on the other hand are worth nearly nothing. Perhaps to get into the enemy land and try to plunder some strategic resource but that's it.

[senowen]

I would also agree that horses are not near the top of the most important units. I have played several games where I did not have horses for a good portion of early game, (esp. on Warlords, were it seems that Horses, Stone and Marble are always VERY far from my starting location). I can do without horses until I can build Cavalry, at which point I will attack to get the resource. While not having horses is a pain when it comes to fending off pillaging horse archers, its not terribly necessary to have them. I would much rather have spearmen and axes and/or elephants for the early game.