Mod suggestion for Strategic Resources

[ElitePersian]

Ok ive noticed a few ppl who are having a problem with a certain aspect of this game: strategic resources. The problem is that certain resources like oil, aluminum, or any other important resource sometimes get distributed unevenly on the map, and if you dont have a hold of these resources when they become available, it hinders you a lot, therefore it becomes hard to take them over from enemies or trade for them.

Well i have a suggestion for a mod concerning strategic resources:

When a civilization doesnt have a certain resource on the map, for example oil, it SHOULD still be able to produce units that require oil, but in VERY LIMITED amounts. Oil doesn't ONLY exist in the middle east for example, there is oil elsewhere, its just more limited.

Here is a scenario that would make this mod interesting:

for example lets say im playing as the Japanese, and the Americans are on a different island and they have all the oil, we are both equally advanced as far as science, however, the americans have a hold of oil, and i dont. Lets say the most advanced offensive unit i can produce at this time is Armor(tank). Now since i dont have oil, i can only produce say 6 of them, so i build those 6 tanks and i go to the americans' continent with 6 tanks (since anything less advanced wouldnt allow me to take over the oil source on their continent). I kill a couple of cities of theirs with my tanks and secure the oil source.
Now if i had to use any other unit that is less advanced, i would not be able to destroy their defenses in the cities i took over.

This balances out the game nicely, and implements the "invasion for resources" strategy.

Someone said these strategic resources should be distributed for every civilization when you discover them, even though that hasnt been the case for most ppl. And if they arent distributed evenly, you can use the editor to fix that. But IMO, i think its good that they arent always distributed evenly, this makes resouces very crucial in the game, and forces you to use the "invasion strategy", or forces you to use more diplomacy.

Rakki also came up with a good idea:
perhaps a better approach would've been to increase the upkeep costs (say triple ?) for units which you don't have the resources to "supply" properly. This would reflect "black market" trading in resources or just that you don't have a convenient big source of oil or whatever, but is instead forced to draw upon little puddles here and there...


So tell my what you guys think of these two suggestions!

[Navyman]

I haven't gottne the game yet because the supreme commander aka my wife hasn't released the requisite funds yets. But regarding the oil resource issue I have a question for those who have played the game.

Does the oil resource appear in ocean squares?

If so, that is a great addition if not, I seriously think that would be an awesome addition. It would encourage players to develop and maintain a strong navy to protect off shore oil wealth.

I have played Civ2 a lot and in many games with huge continents, I could win without making a single naval unit other than the transport or galleon for exploration. With the addition of the offshore oil it would be worthwhile to have navies to protect (and attack) sea lines of communication (SLOCs).

Also, with off shore oil, a civ that is cut off from land oil has the option to out flank his opponents by getting offshore oil.

Imagine a carrier task force protecting a oil patch in the middle of the ocean and another one protecting the ports. mmm.....

Oh yeah, this is my first post so hello everybody. Since I am a noob, I hope I don't ask too many annoying questions.

[BigBopper]

sorry, no ocean resources.

As for the Idea's, I really like the increased cost suggestion. As early as the thirties, sinthetic (sorry my spelling sucks) fuel and rubber was available. In fact it was the sale of sinthetic fuel tech to the Germans by American Corporations that allowed Hitler to even consider war. Oil is cheap and available, or we would be using ethanol, and as for rubber, sinthetic rubber is cheaper than the real thing! and used much more than real rubber.

As for how this is reflected in the game, I agree that maintenance costs should be upped to reflect the cost of using replacement materials. That alone would restrict the size of the army you could have with out the required resource. If tanks cost three, four or even five $ a turn how many could you support without falling behind in other areas?

[Keyser Soze 0]

How about making tech advances called "Synthetic saltpeter", "Synthetic rubber", and "Synthetic coal" (not sure about how to justify the last one)? Make them optional at the end of the industrial age, and have them cost a lot of beakers to balance out their value.

[Ekmek]

gramphos, mercator, and others have been tearing into the bic files. Maybe they can see away to alter a bit the way the resources work.

I'm for a resource model that lets you accumalate units of resource x and you can save or trade amounts. As well as units and improvements have a by turn consumption rate. Maybe a little more micromanaging.

Wll not really, you produce X amount of resource Y per turn, we use Z amount of resource Y per turn, we either need more or we have a surplus to trade how tough could that be? and then throw in resource last for # of turns or when you discover a resource it has a set # of resource units (say 200).

Wat would be really nice would be for a terrain improvement inrease from 1 resource unit per turn you can get 2 for example. And maybe technology can increase production.

of course this might have to wait for CIVI IV

[TheDarkside]

As far as I can tell, Civ3 dosent have good modding support. Not enough to easily make a change such as that. If it were CtP:2 with it's nice SLIC scripting language, it would be easily possible.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Originally posted by TheDarkside
As far as I can tell, Civ3 dosent have good modding support.

I agree. Given the comments of the Firaxians on here about how they were going to support modders and make wonderful customization tools, I'm really disappointed with the shipping product.

[Leonidas]

Great topic.

There are a number of ways to approach this:

1) Having a "survyer" unit to find resources ala Imperialism style: all resources are hidden from view. You must first build the survyer and scout out the terrain looking for gold, oil, coal, etc.

2) The amount of strategic resources could be set up in the options menu. They could be incrementally increased by certain percentages: 10%, 20%, 30%, etc for general overall seeding. The player would just select the percent of seeding he wants before he plays his game.

3) All strategic resources could be placed on the map in two ways: they all have a few deposits that will last a long time; while other deposits will have a shorter duration. So even though most resources can be found in several locations, the players will never know which deposits they're using will be the "short-term" ones. That means a constant hunt and warfare/trading for more of the resources.

This way, if you're on an island, you might have enough oil and rubber for 15-20 years - enough to build a small fleet to protect yourself and still be able to look for more. They would also be available for trading - but be careful - the oil you are trading may be from the small deposit and it will deplete quickly.

Just a few thoughts

[tulcas]

Though I think that it would be cool to overcome the resource restriction by letting civ's build units requiring the resource at increased cost (simlating the increased cost of synthetic subtances) or in more limited quantities there is no way to go about doing that directly with the editor or through manipulation of the bic files as they currently exist...maybe after the patch. What i would recommend is too either produce units that require different resources at the same cost but maybe have some minor limitations (i.e. coal powered destroyers that have one less movement) or units that require no resources at all but have a higher construction cost. The downside is that if you have to make all these new units and it may be a pain to have to wade through all the extras if you just want to build a standard run of the mill oil powered destroyer....

[ElitePersian]

good ideas, keep em comin

[Yaga]

Resource Usage

Strategic Resources should be, by their very nature, difficult to obtain, otherwise they're not all that stategic.

In a recent game, I pretty much knew I was going to win when, on a "Standard" size map, there were only 3 Oil resources; I had two of them, and quickly built up the necessary armies to capture the other one. By the end of the game, my Modern Armor was beating down the Cavalry and Infantry of my foes with ease.

Still, it made for an unbalanced game. Two things that I've seen occur to mitigate this unbalance I have mixed reactions to: First, having no saltpeter or my own and being bound to the good-will of an AI Civ for it, I was suddenly told that "A new source of saltpeter had been discovered!" In another instance, Aluminium was plentiful whereas Oil was excruciatingly difficult to track down. I don't know if this was just happenstance, but it almost seemed as if the game was making up for the low occurance of Oil by making Aluminium so plentiful.

My suggestion is two fold: First, I think that having a surveyor unit, as suggested above, would be a useful unit. Or, perhaps having 'Surveying' be a skill workers obtain after the advent of "Offshore Drilling." Second, what if the resources that become visible upon the discovery of a civ were plentiful, but small in duration; surface deposits, if you will. They could be quickly used up, requiring careful useage of them, and then either more deposits would be discovered over time, either though a behind-the-scenes game mechanic, or by a worker/surveyor being on that land; afterall, many discoveries of Strategic Resources in our world happen when someone goes to build a road, and lo and behold, there's Oil in them thar hills.

Finally, the AI needs to recognized the value of these resources: I've had civs offer me a pittance for Horses and Saltpeter, then not even bother to go after those resources when attacking me with their pikemen and knights. Considering that I'll bend over backwards to keep the flow of a Strategic Resource coming into my Civ, I would think the AI would do the same.

It's also unclear to me how Strategic Resources affect city improvements. Specifically, how do I generate electricity when I have no Oil or Coal? Will Nuclear Plants run if you don't have a supply of Uranium? I can't build railroads without Iron and Coal, yet I seem to benefit from Coal Plants without the latter, either?

My 2 cents,
Yaga

[ElitePersian]

Yaga, you make a lotta good points....seems like this aspect of the game DEFINATELY needs modding.

We first gotta wait till the first couple patches are released, and then modders will seriously look into this subject.