Resources, or lack thereof

[Tall Stranger]

I will admit to being of two minds regarding resource scarcity.

On one hand, by inserting a major element of luck into the game, it can make survival, particularly in the early game, very difficult. This fact can render the "official" difficulty level somewhat meaningless. With the right resources near you, an Emperor game could be much easier than a Monarch game with no iron.

On the other hand, there are a couple positive game play aspects to this scarcity. First, it helps contribute to the development of KAIs and can thus make the end game more challenging and interesting than it usually is. Second, it tends to force players to change their strategy in response to the misfortune of not having a resource. No saltpeter? Forget about doing a cav rush and an early domination win. No coal? Gonna make the industrial era very unpleasant and a space ship victory much tougher.

What's the solution? I don't know, but I think it revolves around a fairly simple question:

How important is it that every style of play/ preferred manner of victory be possible in every game? If you honestly want to be able to win via conquest/ domination or SS every time, then the strategic resources need to be more common. My only comment then is that they're not really strategic resources then.

I think I come down on the side of making strategic resources fairly scarce. Will this mean that, in some games, I'm going to get wiped out early? Sure. If the Celts are next door, happen to build their capital on iron, and take a shine to my territory, it's gonna be a tough, tough game. I LIKE that. I enjoy having to rethink my entire approach. It makes the game a challenge.

As for being able to purchase them, I'd be interested in seeing if there's a way to change the way the AI values them (and thus trades them) without opening new exploits.

[Harovan]

Gosh, it's all about AIs. How boring. Have you ever heard of Multiplayer?

[Harovan]

By the way, it is not even about Killer-AIs. It is about piss poor, resourceless AIs. The human player will get all resources he wants. It's your beloved AI that remains without resources. And it's the human player, who gets sick of the game very soon, because it's streamlined to hell. Every game from A to Z an epic fight for resources. No more diplomacy. No more trade. War, war, war. There are better war games on the market than Civ3.

Bring back the butter!

[asleepathewheel]

from what i've seen, it just makes one or two decent ai's with the rest being patsies and speed bumps. At first I liked the redistribution, but I'm getting tired of it. I don't understand how I can have 10-15 cities and not have iron, horses and one luxury.

[Tall Stranger]

There's no need for hostility. I'm not attacking you, I was just trying to think through the problem. I was not aware you were talking about MP, since you did not mention it in any of your posts on this thread. In fact, based on your comments, I thought you were complaining that peaceful builder games were not possible with the new resource scarcity. (That's what I thought you meant when you talked about "peaceful expansion and trade" in one of your earlier posts.)

It may very well be that the current resource situation makes MP very difficult. (Since I don't play MP, I wouldn't know.) From what I've heard, though, there's usually not a whole lot of "peaceful expansion" in MP.

At any rate, it sounds like the best resource scarcity for MP is quite different than it is for SP. Maybe there'd be a way to have different appearance rates for the two.

If not, well, no offense, but there are a whole lot more SP players than MP players. Editing may be the only reasonable option for you to enjoy the game.

[Tall Stranger]

From what I've seen, there are more killer AIs in C3C than in PTW. I think part of this is the fact that an AI with lots of resources is able to overrun and eliminate those, as you put it, "piss poor resourceless AIs", making them larger and more powerful.

I could be wrong. It's only based on the relatively limited number of epic games I've played so far. (A dozen or so.) Even so, I personally think having to figure out how to win without saltpeter is a fun challenge. It gets back to whether you want to be able to win in your preferred way every time.

[Harovan]

I'm not hostile. At most passionate.

Peaceful builder games are not possible anymore, unless extremely lucky. At least in the industrial age, when coal becomes a necessity you will be screwed. Since there's usually less coal on the map than civs, trade is not an option, because nobody has a surplus. It's war time.

As for MP, I'm not talking about peaceful trade here. But MP is far less attractive, if you success is based on the luck to have resources than on your skills. It's not that you can archerrush a human player as easy as an AI. If he has horses and iron and you don't, you're dead.

Being back the butter!

I really should make this my sig.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
There you go with the "don't like it - change it in the editor" attitude. Yes, JT doesn't like it. Neither do I. If each of us would change in the editor what he doesn't like, any sane game discussion on the board would be impossible.

I thought you'd get it.......I never take that attitude and sided mostly with that part of what JT was saying in the other thread, as you did.

[Tall Stranger]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I'm not hostile. At most passionate.

Cool. I'll stick some smilies in so that no one thinks this is turning into a flame war.

Peaceful builder games are not possible anymore, unless extremely lucky. At least in the industrial age, when coal becomes a necessity you will be screwed. Since there's usually less coal on the map than civs, trade is not an option, because nobody has a surplus. It's war time.

And if you don't get iron or saltpeter, warmongering is very difficult. Not to beat a dead horse, but your comment demonstrates that you only want to win one way. I think it's good that, in some cases, you need to switch directions and win a different way.



I'd also point out that, while the number of coal spots on the map is less than the number of civs you start with, some civs WILL be eliminated, often early on. This helps balance things out somewhat.

As for MP, I'm not talking about peaceful trade here. But MP is far less attractive, if you success is based on the luck to have resources than on your skills. It's not that you can archerrush a human player as easy as an AI. If he has horses and iron and you don't, you're dead.

All the more reason to have different settings (if possible) for the MP and SP versions.

Being back the butter!

I really should make this my sig.

If so, make sure you write "Bring" not "Being"!!!

[Grond]

Well I'll detail my current situation to you. I'm Greek on a large pangea map, I'm in the center and get off to a great start. No iron. Fine I go to war and take some iron. No Saltpeter. Ok this isn't good, the Sumerian's are leading and are right next to me and have 2 sources of Saltpeter. I make 2 terrible trades for Saltpeter to an AI thats already ahead of me and make nothing but cavlary for 40 turns. I declare war and try and go take the Saltpeter and enlist the help of the Byzantines who are in 3rd by giving her the techs I gave the Sumerians. I make nice progress and take half a dozen cities and right before I get to the Saltpeter the Byzanties waltz in and take it. I sign a peace treaty and go into pure research mode and with the help of a scientific leader get ahead of everybody. I get industrialization but no coal. Who has every single coal source on the planet, the Sumerians. I have no desire to try and play the whole game without railroads so I get Rifleman and I actually have rubber which along with horses are my only resources. I go to war and discover why I was able to get ahead of him in research, he has been in pure military mode. Hordes of Cavalry swamp me and I lose all the cities I took plus one of mine and almost lose my rubber but thanks to heavy drafting fend him off and then push him back with artillery. I change governments and switch into pure military mode and knock him out of the game with the help of AI's that declare war once the heavy fighting is over and grab most of his resources except for the one coal I made a beeline for. So now its pretty much me and the Byzantines who are ahead me in technology and resources and took advantage of their role as parasites to build a lot of Wonders including the Hoover Dam. We are so far ahead of everyone else that Diplomacy is next to useless at this point. I decide to stay in military mode and go for tanks but when I get combustion I look for Oil and lo and behold the only oil on the whole freakin planet is few squares away from Constantinople. To some it may seem like the scarce resources are adding strategy but to me they are so scarce that it is actually limiting strategy. You can't play a game with no Saltpeter, no Coal and no Oil so my decisions are actually being made for me. I feel more like I'm working at a data entry job then playing a strategy game. Now if some people like it that way and feel its more challenging then thats fine but give me an option to set resource levels so I can play a game that is more enjoyable for me.

[Harovan]

DrSpike: Point taken

Tall Stranger: It's really pointless to continue this discussion, as you seem not to understand my point no matter what I say. No, I don't want to win always the same way. I want options, a choice in every game. In SP, all we know, the AI cheats. It knows all resource spots from the beginning and no matter what you do, will occupy them first. Fine, if there are abundant resources, I have two options. Either I play nice and buy the surplus, or I rush the AI with inferior units, mostly succeeding because it sucks tactically. If there are less resources than civs, I have only one option (which is the same as no option), and that is war. This has nothing to do with wanting to win always the same way. You can't build railroads without both iron and coal. You can't build factories without iron. You can't build Frigates to protect your ships from pirates, which the AI builds now in a fairly large amount. Same goes for ships that require oil, even transports. Neither of these cases has necessarily to do with offensive warfare. May be I could live without one resource. But it's the standard now, that you lack nearly every resource in the higher levels unless you are fighting wars for every new resource. And since it's every game the same ****, it has nothing to do with a fun game. It's a boring game.

I sincerely hope that the game will be fixed with the official (non beta) patch. If not, I will abandon Conquests and either return to PtW or look for a game more enjoyable.

[ErikM]

There is another faucet to this.

Civ III is (presumably) a history-based game. While everyone understands that it is impossible to do an 1:1 accurate representation of history in a TBS game, it is nice when the game at least tries to model history somehow.

With Civ III/C3C I am often at a loss what is it the game is trying to model.

No irrigation without rivers? Come on, there are many more rivers in a real world than on a typical Civ map.

Scarce resources that I cannot even buy? Can you name a single European country in Middle Ages that could not afford to field pikeman because they had no iron? Any industrialized country that did not build railroads because of no coal? Any modern country that cannot field infantry because of no rubber? What the hell do they need rubber for anyway? For condoms?

The whole resource exchange system. So a small country "will be insulted" if I offer them 4 luxuries for their one. Presumably it's fair since in a big country more people will benefit from said luxury. Economics is not about fairness though, it is about supply = demand. If country X is an exclusive supplier of ivory but country Y is their only potential customer, they both should have equal bargaining power. Does USA really pays 4x more for Saudi oil than Switzerland?

Distance-based corruction in Despotism I can live with. But modern governments? Rank corruption?

Cultural flips? Could someone quote me a single example when this happened in history?

Why cavalry is faster than tanks?
How can I build aircraft carriers before researching flight?
How come MPP partners are bound to declare war if one of them is attacked - but are perfectly free to attack each other? Did they model it after Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? Just for reference, it was a non-aggression pact, not mutual protection.

Typically game developers design an AI that is capable of playing their game. In Civ III/C3C case it seems that the game was designed to serve the AI. I am very happy that Firaxis AI is good - but not to the point where I can swallow every ridiculuous game feature because "it prevents exploit X" or "keeps game challenging into the moder era".

[Catt]

I don't know which resource scarcity level I prefer, PTW or C3C.

But SR, I don't agree that C3C's resource distribution demands war. Even when all 8 civs are alive and well come the Industrial Age, less than 8 instances of a resource does not necessarily mean that there are no surplus to trade -- it would not be uncommon for one or more civs to possess more than one source, even when not every civ possesses one source. I've played several "pure peace" or "near pure peace" games in C3C and had to make do with a lack of locally-controlled key resources -- while presenting a different sort of challenge it most certainly has not dictated war as the only tactic to overcome the challenge. That said, there are certainly situations where war is the best choice, just as I'm sure that there are some situations where war will be required -- but I think those situations are fewer and farther inbetween than you're making them out to be.

@ErikM: there are hundreds and hundreds more examples of where civ departs from a realistic historic simulation -- remember that it is a stratey game, not a historical simulation. The designers weren't trying to model history, they were trying to create an engaging game.

Catt

[lethe]

It's all fine and good if the AI actually remembers to connect his surplus. I've seen China hoard 4 rubber, with only one of them connected. If I could I would have sent in a commando team with shovels to connect the rest so I could buy it from him.

In the end I had to invade to get them connected.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Catt
@ErikM: there are hundreds and hundreds more examples of where civ departs from a realistic historic simulation -- remember that it is a stratey game, not a historical simulation. The designers weren't trying to model history, they were trying to create an engaging game.

Catt

Quite. And anyone that posts another will be glared at quite severely.

As regards resources if I had to choose I'd take the vanilla/PTW version, though I wouldn't put this problem at the top of my list. I'm not sure why they changed it though. Perhaps they would consider moving it closer to the way it was before, but tbh as I've said several times here not that many people seem to mind it as it is now.