AU Mod: Resource Scarcity

[Harovan]

[ducki]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Ummm... well, if weakened AIs are acceptable, I rest my case.

The AI sometimes behaves as a whole and sometimes as several distinct entities, and we talk about "AIs" as a whole and in general terms.

When talking about resource scarcity, the point I was making, the question I was asked was :

Is it acceptible, even desirable, to have resourceless AIs?

Perhaps a better phrasing would be:
Is it necessary for every Nation to have access to every Resource in every Game? Is it more interesting, more fun, more strategically deep to have a one-to-one relationship between Nations and Resources or to have some haves and some have-nots? Is an AI necessarily doomed to destruction if he is missing a resource? Is it possible for an AI to be competitive and engaging if he is missing a resource? Should every AI be a KAI?
Most generally, how does resource scarcity affect the AI and the AIs(purposefully separate).

That's what I meant to ask, anyway. I just didn't word it well.

[Harovan]

[alexman]

I was wondering if a compromise would we feasible.

A builder needs Iron and Coal for railroads, and Iron is not very scarce. So we should increase the appearance of Coal.

A builder would like to win by spaceship, but if he doesn't have Rubber, Aluminum, or Uranium, oh well, he should be able to win easily by a UN vote.

All other strategic resources are required just for units, which should not concern the pure builder.

So the only resource that needs an urgent boost is Coal. Would this be satisfactory? If not, what others?

As for the AI, I'm not convinced that the strategic scarcity hurts it too much, as long as it can build railroads. The AI relies on quantity of units anyway, and the units that don't require resources are usually strong enough for its purposes. If we want to help the AI, luxuries are probably more improtant than strategic resources, because of luxury slider limitations, but I think that we agree that the scarcity there makes the game more interesting.

[Dominae]

Was it really necessary to erase all your posts on the topic, Sir Ralph?

[pvzh]

I have a "fun" solution for that: what if we would double disapearance ratio and add disapearance ratio to resources that do not have one?

[Dominae]

Originally posted by pvzh
I have a "fun" solution for that: what if we would double disapearance ratio and add disapearance ratio to resources that do not have one?

I was actually thinking of that myself, but as a "serious" solution. Makes the game more random though, so I doubt people would go for it.


Dominae

[alexman]

Sir Ralph, could you please add back your first post at least? And your avatar, of course!

[Krill]

More random=greater strategic choice when they do disappear

[nbarclay]

(1) Having luxuries be scarcer makes the game more interesting, albeit not always (for me at least) more fun. The need for luxuries can even provide a rationalization for late-game wars for those who actually feel a need for such rationalizations. Also, luxury scarcity makes Navigation more important because the first civ to establish cross-ocean trade gets the first chance to set up deals to obtain all those nice luxuries from across the ocean. (Consider the implications if the other continent only has one of something to spare!)

(2) I agree with Sir Ralph that on the whole, scarcity of strategic resources is far worse for the AIs than it is for human players. An AI without iron, or saltpeter, or rubber is relatively easy prey for human knights, or cavalry, or tanks. An AI without coal cannot hope to keep up in production even if it is fairly big and powerful otherwise, and is therefore a lot weaker economically, militarily, or both than it would be if it had coal. Human players can almost always deal with such problems by finding someone to invade and planning a military campaign specifically around the goal of acquiring a needed resource, but AIs aren't nearly as good at that type of thing.

(3) If two or three luxuries aren't available, that can provide an excuse for war without pushing players into wars they really don't want. In contrast, shortages of strategic resources do provide fairly strong coercion for players to fight whether they want to or not, especially if the resources in question are not available for trade. While players who always enjoy a good fight as part of their playing style might enjoy being consistently pushed into fights for resources in game after game, not everyone does. I think the level of scarcity in C3C seriously messes up the balance of being able to choose what style of play you enjoy most. (And note, by the way, that I am definitely not of the peaceful builder persuasion, although it's not rare for me to have games where I decide I've conquered enough territory and want to play peacefully from then on if it is practical to do so.)

Dominae, you say Sir Ralph could go to war for the resources he needs if he were willing. I say, why should he have to? Why should fighting be the only way the resources can be obtained? The game does not force warmongers to stay at peace when they would rather fight, so why should it be common for players who want to play peacefully to find themselves forced to attack someone?

(4) In the real world, I can only think of two times when nations that do not have a strategic resource natively are unable to obtain what they need (especially for military purposes) through trade: (a) if they are cut off by war or embargo and (b) if they cannot afford to purchase the resources. I've never heard of a nation that couldn't build infantry no matter how much they were willing and able to pay because the world did not have enough rubber to go around, or that could not build tanks because the world had too little oil, or that could not build spaceship components because the world had too little aluminum. Thus, while I consider the local and sometimes regional shortages found in previous versions realistic, I regard the worldwide shortages in C3C as highly unrealistic.

Conclusion:

I think the best option from a gameplay perspective would be to leave the reduced availability of luxuries in C3C intact but to increase availability of strategic resources back to PtW levels.

[Harovan]

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman

As for the AI, I'm not convinced that the strategic scarcity hurts it too much, as long as it can build railroads. The AI relies on quantity of units anyway, and the units that don't require resources are usually strong enough for its purposes.

I strongly disagree. AIs that rely only on quantity are dead meat for a human player with a qualitative advantage and sufficient numbers. Knights (or MedInf/trebuchet stacks), cavalry, and tanks make mincemeat of spears, pikes, and riflemen, respectively. That is especially true of the situation with tanks in the industrial era because the cost difference between infantry and riflemen is so much smaller than the difference in defensive capabilties. Certainly, AIs can make up for quality with quantity to some extent (and I've been surprised at how hard backward AIs were to take down in some situations), but is there anyone here who has not salivated over seeing an AI that was vulnerable because it couldn't build modern defenders?

[Arrian]

For the record, I agree with Sir Ralph and Nathan on this one. Not necessarily vehemently, but I do agree.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Krill
More random=greater strategic choice when they do disappear

More random = carefully chosen and planned strategies being thrown into chaos when resources disappear. Having resources appear and disappear occasionally adds flavor to the game, but I would not enjoy it at all if my plans kept getting messed up on a regular basis by having resources move around.

In addition, having resources move around more would undercut comparison games because different players who control the same territory would have access to diferent resources at different times.

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay

AIs that rely only on quantity are dead meat for a human player with a qualitative advantage and sufficient numbers.

The key here is 'sufficient numbers'. I think playing on a low difficulty level for your ability (like those here who argue against resource scarcity usually like to do, as far as I can tell) allows you to get those sufficient numbers.