C3C : Strategic Resources Scarcity Sucks!

[Cort Haus]

Shogun, I'd like to change the name of the thread to 'Strategic Resource Scarcity is a Contentious Issue', but it's not possible to change the name of a thread.

Most of these posts prove my point - that this mod turns C3C into a straight wargame, more fun to wargame in than previous versions, but builders might as well stick to PTW.

In Civ 1 and Civ 2 the designers made war mandatory (all AI's would declare war on the human at once). Civ 3 was the first where where peace strategies were an option for the player. These strategies have now been removed from the game, forcing the player into military solutions. Hence I find comments about 'needing strategy' a bit off-the-mark. Yes, it deepens strategy for some, and eliminates options for others

[Cort Haus]

Example of Resource Scarcity

Here is an example C3C game running under the BETA PATCH:

Standard archiplelago map, average settings, Monarch - English.
Currently Industrialising - but RR halted due to loss coal deposit after two turns. :fume:

The start was poor - a narrow northern strip of a continent with no rivers or hills (mostly coast/sea tiles to work with), and Germany nearby.

I used the seafaring abillity to quickly get contact & generate commerce (cheap harbours) and held a tech lead all the game so far. I rexed to about 20 cities, up to the borders of Berlin itself, and nearly all of a nearby continent, and built the Statue of Zeus to allow me to ignore military builds until late Middle Ages. This Rex gave me a respectable land %age, and I recently completed the FP on the second continent.

I had Iron on my second continent, but couldn't access it till astronomy - not a problem, the SoZ was taking care of the military deterrent. I had no Saltpeter - not a problem, I was eventually able to trade some from a backward civ for musket upgrades. I had one source of coal, which I gleefully used for two turns when it went ping.

Now one civ (Persia, on a big fat island) has three coal (not yet hooked up), Carthage has one and they are slowly eating America, who also has one. The other source is in Germany, which leaves England, Babylon, Byzantia and Scandinavia with none.

Hopefully Persia will have some spare coal hooked up to trade for in a while. If they don't I'll probably have to build a lot of Knights (no Saltpeter on the market either) and go and try them out against German Riflemen.

As for the three AI's without coal? I don't fancy their chances, somehow. If you're an AI under these rules, it's get lucky with coal or hasta la vista baby.

[Cort Haus]

mini-map

The English are orange.

[Cort Haus]

trade screen

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[Cort Haus]

The second wonder was Smiths - for the GA, which is a few turns in. Many cities are on prebuilds to switch to factories.

[vmxa1]

Cort Haus I feel for you partner. If you are are saying resources are now rarer, I would probably agree. Are you making a case that there should be enough coal for all civs in the game?

[Donegeal]

It would seem to me that your particular situation would require a more peaceful approach. Knights against Riflemen just ain't gunna work (unless you have stacks and stacks of Treb/Cannon, and even then, it won't last long). In all my resourse poor games I find it best to play REAL nice. I would wait for Persia to connect their extra ones (which the AI seems to put a priority on), trade for it (use whatever you need as it is that important) then rail like a mad man.

[Cort Haus]

I was being kinda sarcastic about the Knights v Riflemen.

It's fun atm, at 1345 - with Replaceable Parts and ToE both 4 turns away. I hope I've got rubber, because good ol' Bismo just kicked off with Cav against my Rifles and Ancient Cavalry

I sacrificed a few Ancient Cav pillaging their side of the border to slow their attacks down - and I've got 2 ivory around the border to defend too.

I brought the workers down to start to build fortresses along the slim 4-tile border.

It's a no-Saltpeter, no Coal civ (me) vs a Saltpeter and Coal Civ(Germany) - let's see what happens.

[Cort Haus]

Yes, vmxa1, I think this discussion is pointing to the claim that no civ can go far without coal, and there's not enough of it to go round.

As donegeal says, offensive options to find coal in my game don't look grand - thanks to the lack of Saltpeter. It's wait for Persia to hook up it's third (already selling second to another AI, grrr) and hope another Ai doesn't get the chance to trade before me, or hope for rubber in four turns and build a ton of Infantry and Arty to use against Germany.

[Cort Haus]

I got Replaceable Parts - and no rubber. That's no Saltpeter, No Coal, No Rubber. My 20-city Rex (beating every AI civ) only got me Iron on a secondary continent at 30 (thirty) squares distance as the corruption-crow flies from my capital.

Only four out of eight Civs got Rubber. There was none at all on my main continent (3 civs - England, Germany, Babylon), 2 sources on a 3-civ continent (Carthage, Byzantium, USA), 1 source on a 1-civ continent (Persia), and 2 sources on a 1-civ continent (Scandinavia). So far, Babylon has got the rubber on Carthage's continent - with a lone city bagging the resource under the oh-so-annoying AI cheat - which just got so much more powerful.

All this boils down to 1 civ out of eight - Persia - with both the essential Coal and Rubber.

That's 87.5% of Civs with very little chance unless a warmongering human is playing them. That ain't right.

[Cort Haus]

The F8 says that I have 12% of the land? - that's as near to one-eighth of a world of eight civs as you can get and nearly nothing in strategic resources.

I think part of it is the penalty for being seafaring - you get put on some spindly tip of a continent which apart from being tough under the new FP rules, is also tough under the resource allocation rules.

That's the third game I've tried as the English on 'pelago - and each time they've had the same dry, crappy one-tile-wide sliver of land. It's a shame 'pelago maps are so spindly and not more blobby.

The only question remaining is : should I bother to see this game out?

[Shogun Gunner]

Cort Haus, I see your point after reading your postings. I guess I had not considered the limitations on the fully peaceful builder. I have not seen a game where 1 out of 8 civs have coal and rubber. That does seem a bit extreme.

Of the four C3C games I've played, I've been out in the cold regarding resources in two of them. It has forced me to a peaceful approach and trying to buddy up to a powerful civ. I had not worried about that in the past.... that is what prompted me to post the comment about strategy. I had to change my warmongering ways and try to win via a different route.

Now when I play, I leave every victory option open when setting up the game. I never know which one I might need to utilize.

So, there are pros and cons. However, it seems that your suggestion is a nice solution -- a slider/radio button for resource scarcity like there is for barbarians. Doesn't seem like that would be so hard to do. It would be changing one variable in the random map generation during startup.

[Cerbykins]

Well, has peaceful builder ALWAYS been an option at all difficulty levels? I mean, could we realistically make a go of it at Deity before? (there's probably an AU for it, but this is an area I know VERY little about! )

[vmxa1]

It is not resources I am short of, it is luxs. I have had two games in a row where I only had two on the whole contient in a two contient game.

It makes those markets nearly useless. Once in a while I can get a lux or two in a trade, but them it expires and its get out the fire hoses.

[Dactyl]

One unforeseen consequence of the resource scarcity in C3C is that it can render certain UU's useless. Here's an example. I'm playing a game as the Celts at Emperor level. The UU for the Celts is the Gallic Swordsman. There was no iron in the land I owned so I had to fight my way to it. By the time I got the iron hooked up into my road network, it was 170 BC. One turn later I got Feudalism. That made the Gallic Swordsman obsolete. A couple of turns later, I went to war and won a battle with a Gallic Swordsman. That kicked in a Golden Age, but it also made it impossible for me to build any more Gallic Swordsmen. I had to build Medieval Infantry instead. In short, I only got to build a handful of my UU's. (In point of fact, I would have liked to have been able to build the Gallic Swordsmen for a while longer because of their movement factor.)

The main consequence of the new resource scarcity is that is seems to make it more of an all-or-nothing kind of game. If I'd had a source of iron next to my capital in the game I mentioned above, I would have built my UU's relatively early and I would have rolled right on over my neighbors. The game would have been relatively easy. I also agree that it seems to hurt the AI more because the AI isn't as adaptable. I'd like to see a choice of relative scarcity for resources, like that with barbarians. Assuming that C3C has been well designed and implemented, that shouldn't be much of a programming challenge.

In general, I'm not terribly displeased with C3C, but it is beginning to suffer from the same problems of many software projects. Once a piece of software has matured, it can be dangerous to add new features because of the likelihood of unforeseen consequences. I'm seeing some of this in C3C.