Why can't I build knights anymore ?

[Pizza]

How come I can't build knights anymore ? I was building knights, I have iron and horses, then the English declared war on me and suddenly I can't build knights anymore.

[Catt]

You don't have iron.

Actually, you do and you don't. You either previously had a second source of iron which recently depleted and disappeared from your territory, or you were importing iron from another civ and the deal lapsed. You have one local source of iron located in the mountain NE of Smyrna but you are exporting it to the Aztecs in exchange for dyes. That Aztec dyes-for-iron dyes deal has run its course, and if you open diplomacy with the Aztecs and terminate the deal, you'll immediately be able to build knights in your cities. Until you do so, you're exporting your sole source of iron to the Aztecs (you can get the Aztec dyes for your Economics tech - Adam Smith's is already built so no reason to deny the tech to the Aztecs - you can pay 18 gpt to the Aztecs for their dyes - or you can use your luxury slider on F1 by bumping it up to 10% and costing you 26 gpt to get more happiness than a dye offers).

In any event, the reason you can't build knights is that you have no local source of iron but will have one if you end the deal with the Aztecs.

Catt

[gunkulator]

This brings up an interesting question: If I have 2 sources of iron, trade 1 away and then the other is depleted, which do I lose? the trade deal or my local iron. It sounds like you lose your source first before the trade deal.

[Tall Stranger]

I'm fairly certain that you lose your local one first. The game tries to prevent you from breaking a deal unnecessarily.

[vmxa1]

Yup, the deal will be keep, which is what Catt said.

[MotownDennis]

Which is why I'm reluctant to trade any strategic resource when I have only one extra. Not that I WON'T do it, but it has to be a darn good deal.

[gunkulator]

I'd go ahead and trade anyway. At worst, you'll get your resource back in 20 turns. Any city currently building Knights, Med Inf, Factories or anything else needing iron will still be allowed to finish. You just can't start any new builds

[MotownDennis]

Not an ideal solution when you're in a hot and heavy war.

[bobbo008]

i know if the AI has two sources and they trade one, if you destroy one source, they still trade the other one away. a human could always cancel that agreement if the scenario happened to him/her however.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by gunkulator
I'd go ahead and trade anyway. At worst, you'll get your resource back in 20 turns. Any city currently building Knights, Med Inf, Factories or anything else needing iron will still be allowed to finish. You just can't start any new builds

Yes it can still make sense, in the proper situation. The thing is you need to have a through understanding of the game to KNOW when it is ok.

I submit that if you did not already understand the mechanics of the lost iron, you MAY not be there just yet.

[Kuciwalker]

I simply removed resource depletion. It's just annoying.

[spy14]

It's a good idea but seems to happen way to regularly - in the real world we're often told some resource field or other is about to be depleted, only to find that new and more efficent extraction methods save it.

[MotownDennis]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I simply removed resource depletion. It's just annoying.

Awww c'mon. You need ANOTHER advantage against the AI?

[Apocalypse]

He likes to make things easy for himself.