Resources, or lack thereof

[Catt]

SR, it is not that one must play without iron, coal, or saltpeter - it is that acquiring a source peacefully is potentially more challenging; I haven't played a "PP" game yet where I didn't get to build factories and RRs even if I didn't have iron and/or coal. Securing iron in the early age can be very tough if you don't have a local source, but mainly, IMHO, beacuse of very immature trade networks in the early age. Later resources seem available, for the most part, for me.

Pehaps I've been unusually lucky, but I haven't run into one of those oft-reported games where there is only one or two coals in the whole world or one or two oils -- I can usually either find an extra source or create one on the market -- and while it may cost me an arm and a leg to trade for one, that's an arm and a leg I didn't have to pay to build and support a military force sufficient to take and secure a supply. Most of my standrad maps games have 5 or 6 coal supplies, 5 or 6 oil supplies, and 3 or 4 uranium supplies.

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
I don't know how this would be the case, as you CAN increase the appearance probability in the editor and come up with something approaching PtW levels, so either they didn't take this into account or there is another reason... Perhaps the effort to encourage less war-driven strategies was the impetus for the extra scarcity, as I mentioned above....

Yes, you can. But if something else in the code unexpectedly resulted in greater resource scarcity, why would Firaxis revisit the editor values? I'm just reporting what I've seen -- that the resource scarcity was not a deliberate change made by Firaxis - the fact that the editor values remain unchanged would seem to imply either that (i) Firaxis intended an undelying change in availability, or (ii) Firaxis intended no such thing and didin't realize the change occured (and therefore didn;t compensate by changing editor values).

Catt

[patcon]

Why not make everybody happy?
Some people like huge maps and some like tiny, some like pangea and some like archipelago, some like hot/dry and some like cold/wet, so Firaxis gives the option of making these decisions in the new game startup menu.
Since some like plentiful resources, some like scarcity, some like to be surprised, and some like to try different options. So why not allow these choices when starting a new game? I know you can go to the editor and change all sorts of game parameters, but since Firaxis has chosen to give us some game start options without going through the editor, why not include these options as well.
Something like "Resource availability - high / medium / low / random". I would gladly give up the rather pointless (in terms of effect on game play) option of planet age, if the issue is space on the new game startup screen.

[smellymummy]

i personally prefer this scarcity vs the old model.

scarcity for me means important wars and valuable trading allies. the old model for me was simply isolate myself (asides from tech trades) until cavalry and then game over.

:up: for the c3c resource model/bug/feature

[lethe]

Originally posted by DrSpike
I am also confused as to why they haven't altered it if the change was a mistake. However, the distinction between bug and feature these last few months has often been which side of bed Soren got out of.

Atleast he talks to us. Which is HUGE. And he isn't condescing of his fan base. I played Everquest, and their early community managers seemed to really look down their noses at the losers that played.

Other game developers never really talked to their fans.

[pvzh]

I personally would support C3C model if the calculation of the price of stratigic resource would be changed. Currently, resource cost directly proportional to number of cities and number of units and worker actions allowed by this resource. Thus, if you have rather large empire due to lucky REX or some early wars you have lots of corrupt cities that cannot possibly produce any units, yet they contribute to the resource cost as much as productive cities. This means you have to go to war: purchase of resource if it is available would be too expensive.

In regards to formulae of resource distribution.
The formulae that are listed in civ fanatics are just an approximation. I doubt that they are exactly like that in the code.
You need to held in mind one thing that any resource (stratigic, luxury or bonus) have terrain restrictions (listed in the editor and civilopedia) and spatial restrictions that are not listed anywhere, but you must have noticed them if you generated many random maps.
1. Bonus and luxuries are clastered resources, i.e. there could be 2 cows or 2 ivories in the neigbouring tiles.
2. Stratigic resources do not cluster (have not seen any in Civ 1.29 and up): no 2 irons in the neighbouring tiles.
3. All resources exclude other resources in the immediate vicinity (1 tile radius), so if you have cow it would not be any game (another bonus resource), incence (luxury) or iron (stratigic resource).

Thus adding new bonus resources decreased the amount of usable space for luxuries and stratigic resources. Upping appearance ratios can help only to large and huge maps with above average land.

So there are two things to be done:
1. Take out 1 tile radius of dead space aroud all resources.
2. Adjust stratigic resource price by corruption somehow. For example charge per usable shield output (excluding civil engineers, obviously).

These 2 would take care of unintended scarcity and make trade an option.

[Jaybe]

pvzh, resource clustering is mainly a function of world creation parameters that you specify (achipelego ... pangea, ocean percentage, age of world (3 ... 5 billion years)).

Resource cost in trading is largely related to difficulty level and relative size of civs.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Catt
Pehaps I've been unusually lucky, but I haven't run into one of those oft-reported games where there is only one or two coals in the whole world or one or two oils -- I can usually either find an extra source or create one on the market -- and while it may cost me an arm and a leg to trade for one, that's an arm and a leg I didn't have to pay to build and support a military force sufficient to take and secure a supply. Most of my standrad maps games have 5 or 6 coal supplies, 5 or 6 oil supplies, and 3 or 4 uranium supplies.

Standard sized maps are designed for 8 civilizations. Thus, "5 or 6 coals on the map" translates to "2 or 3 civilizations are seriously screwed". Since the human player will never be the screwed one (he will secure the resources he needs by all means... in the war game C3C that's war, surprise, surprise...), it means 2 or 3 either dead or hopelessly powerless (= de facto dead as well) AI civs by the mid of the industrial age. I don't know if this is a desirable goal. For me it isn't. I loved to play games keeping all civs alive, forming alliances, helping the weaker against the bullies, bully the stronger myself, trading or denying resources and advances, in a word - be the machiavellian bastard. These games are history. PtW was the last fun version of Civ3, sad but true.

Overall I have the unpleasant impression, that for the sake of the AI the last bit of fun is sucked out of the game. And it's not even improving it. Improving the AI would mean "Let's teach it what it can't do well". The Firaxis way to solve this is "Let's take this option away from the human". So the AI can't efficiently place the FP and ends up with rampant corruption and a crappy empire? Let's weaken the FP and impose that rampant corruption on the human as well! So the AI can't effectively use ZoC (Civ2 and CtP style)? Away with it! So people complain about late game tedium? Let's force them to wage wars for resources! An approach like this may make the AI more competitive. But it doesn't make the game more fun, au contraire. And it kills multiplayer (online or PBEM). If you invest six months in a PBEM game and see that you're without coal and can't even trade for it, because there are four sources for six players on the map, you will shout "Hosianna" and "Praise Firaxis". Not.

[DrSpike]

Ralph, I don't disagree with many of your thoughts, but I have to disagree with your timing. All of Civ3 from the beginning has been about making SP more challenging by taking away options from the human that the AI cannot handle properly. The FP change is just an extension of that policy. (although of course, that was the way it was meant to work all along right?

As for resources I sympathise. I hope they change it back closer to the Vanilla/PTW situation.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Ralph, I don't disagree with many of your thoughts, but I have to disagree with your timing. All of Civ3 from the beginning has been about making SP more challenging by taking away options from the human that the AI cannot handle properly.

That's true, but until PtW I still could bear it. The Conquests FP issue made me seriously upset and moved me to a 50% support/50% resistance status. The resource scarcity issue tipped this balance clearly towards resistance. I don't want to rant about the game. I still hope very much, that it's a bug and will be fixed. If it won't, I will uninstall Conquests and ebay the CD away. I mean it.

[Grond]

I still say not getting 1 SR increases strategy, not getting 3 greatly reduces strategy.

[CerberusIV]

I'm not sure it kills MP, certainly not PBEM. It makes it far more important to have an ally who does have the resource and is willing to share it.

One of my PTW PBEM's is 6 players on a standard map with normal settings. It put 5 players on one continent and me on the other with the 2 vacant slots (I have 3 luxs). My continent has NO saltpeter. It may be rare in PTW but not impossible to be short of a resource like this.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
I'm not sure it kills MP, certainly not PBEM. It makes it far more important to have an ally who does have the resource and is willing to share it.

Doesn't work for coal. While railroading, you need the coal for every worker assignment.

[SirOsis]

It is possible to adjust the scarcity in the editor but how about allowing for adjustments from the start screen much like ai aggressiveness. There could be 5 levels of scarcity.

Slim Pickings
Scarce
Normal
Abundant
Lap of Luxury

This would allow for greater gameplay challenges and more variety. It should also appease those who don't feel the current resource distribution is "right".

I don't think this would be very difficult to implement since all that would be adjusted is the values in the editor. However, I don't think that it would adjust the luxury distribution only the strategic resources.

[Grond]

That's exactly what I'm asking for. The current setting would be Slim Pickings?

[DrSpike]

More like waiflike pickings.