What's your favourite resource

[couerdelion]

Here’s a big random question to find out what you think is the most important resource in the game. I suppose it’s simply a question of which resource you will go most out of your way to acquire because its benefits are so significant that you do not want to be without it. Or perhaps it’s something that is very rare? Maybe you like the Pyramids so much that you have to have stone - and we all know that stone is a rarer commodity than uranium on this planet.

While writing this I figured that the obvious answer was going to be Copper so there’s a slight change in the thread to exclude the military strategic resources of Horses, Copper and Iron.

I’m still thinking about my favourite. At the moment it is between Corn, Pigs and Fish.

Feel free to name your top three though if it is too difficult to select one.

[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.

[couerdelion]

I guess my thinking here is that corn is easy to improve to 5/0/0 and 6/0/0 if fresh water access or after CS. But this gives +2 health with a granary

Fish gives 5/0/1 minimum and +1f with lighthouse but it only gives +1 health to inland cities.

Pigs gives a straight 6/0/0 (or 5/1/0) but only +1 health.

[JackRudd]

Stone. Yeah, I'm a Wonder freak.

[proviisori]

Yarrr! I like me GOLD!

[DaveV]

The problem with seafood is that the AIs love to pillage it, so you have to have a strong navy to protect it.

I really like grassland gems: one less commerce than gold, but the worker can feed himself. I usually need happiness more than health, so +2 happy with a forge is great.

[Blake]

IVORY!

Best resource in the game. But I guess it's a military resource... however being a campable happy resource multiplied by marketplaces (always a popular build for me) makes it very nice, the only problem is the ivory camp resource yield itself is very bad, right down there with Sugar plantations. However plains ivory city sites and grassland ivory are pretty nice tiles.


Just for a quick military applications thing.
Ivory > Iron > Copper > Horses

Anyway excluding Ivory for military applications, I'd probably have to go with Corn, Pigs, Wheat and Fish. I'm also very fond of grassland gems, especially non-jungled.

[AshenPlanet]

.

What about deer?

It almost always comes in a forest square, which the camp won't remove giving you an additional +1 prod.
It's also the best square to be working at 4000BC before you get your first worker out to help you get that worker or settler you start making at the begining of the game come out sooner with +1f and +1p from the forest.

After deer, I gotta say gold.

For military, I'd rate horses > oil > copper > ivory > iron > aluminum > uranium.

.

[Nacht]

But deer is almost always surrounded by bad terrain.

[Krill]

Uranium.

[Krill]

I so love playing MP games where I just cottage everything, and by turn 20 I have about 7000 gold saved up. You c an just spend the next ten turn launching 5 nukes a turn. Turning an opponents land into green smog is really vindictive yet enjoyable thing to do...

[Arrian]

Hmm, hard to argue with Blake's analysis of ivory... it is a solid choice, because it's got both luxury and military applications.

In terms of strategic resources, Copper, Iron and Horses are obviously all in the running (probably Iron, Copper, then Horses). Clearly coal and oil are also important, but typically if you have the early ones you're in good shape to go get the later ones.

In terms of healthy/happy... the best ones are the ones that give both a good yield and are doubled by early buildings. I'd probably rather have health than happy, because Hed Rule can deal with lack of happy.

-Arrian

[ben04]

Yet ivory only grants you one unit. Compared to horses or chopper that's not important.

In vanilla the resource I'd go to war for were horses so that once I got cossacs I could conquer the world. Unfortunately cossacs now are rather medium UU.

the most important resource in the game are those you have around your capital though. Those with which you get your economie rolling. The gold or the corn near your capital.

[Smellycowsquid]

Iron. For Praetorians. And horses.

[Krill]

Blakes point is that with a quick beeline to construction you have cats and elephants. Those two units alone will kill anything in the anc or classical eras short of praets stright up. You want a city? Nothing is going to stop you taking it with cats adn eles when the best unit your opponents can build is an axe or a spear (technically swords are preferable to axes, but you still need axes to fight off other players)