AU Mod: Resource Scarcity

[alexman]

I just posted this somewhere where Firaxis has a better chance to see it, along with a link to this thread.

Originally posted by alexman

As per the heated discussion in the related AU Mod thread, I would like to suggest a simple solution that requires no bug fixing, but just a simple change in the biq using the editor.

There are two conflicting issues with resource scarcity. On one side, more scarce resources lead to a more challenging game, on average. You have to adapt your strategy to your environment to secure resources. On the other side, the idea of having to secure resources takes away from your options, and forces a certain style of play: war.

So the goal here is to have resources which are scarce enough to provide a challenge, while they are plentiful enough so that they don't force players to fight a certain war or lose the game. So we want to increase strategic options while keeping the challenge offered by scarce resources.

One way to achieve that goal is to increase the appearance ratio to PTW levels of vital strategic resources for peaceful empires, but leave unchanged the strategic resources necessary only for military units.

So the proposal is:

-> Increase the frequency of coal (from 120 to 160 in the editor), which is the first resource that gives the builder real trouble. Iron is also necessary for railroads, but it already has a higher appearance ratio than Coal.

-> Increase the frequency of rubber (120 to 160), aluminum (120 to 160), and uranium (100 to 140), which are necessary for the spaceship.

-> Leave the rest of the strategic reources and luxuries as they are in C3C.

That's a change to 4 resources out of the 8 strategic ones. Leave iron, saltpeter, oil, and horses as in C3C.

Hopefully, this solution will satisfy both sides of this debate. The game will keep its challenge when fighting to secure resources to wage war, while at the same time it will not dictate the only options available for victory.

[nbarclay]

Good point. The question, "Would I rather fight for this resource, or would I rather trade for it?" becomes irrelevant if no one has any spare of a resource to trade. Yes, taking choices away from players tends to add challenge to the game, all else being equal. But all else is not entirely equal when AIs are also hurt by resource scarcity, and we do not generally view adding challenge by reducing choices as a good thing.

Nathan

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
You forget, that the decision of the "experts" here will most likely have impact on whether the bug will be fixed by Jesse or not.

Actually, there's quite a rough review and selection process for any change proposed by the fan community (check the post-release thread). Just because a couple of AU mod changes made it into the standard game does not mean that alexman is calling the shots.

Yes, the opinion of the "experts" here will have an impact (however big or small) on Jesse's decision. That's why you should continue expressing it, just like I am. You make it sound like this whole process is somehow unfair to players who dislike resource scarcity, when in fact their voice is just as strong as anybody else's.

So you probably will impose your understanding of "fun" on every new player until Civ4 comes out.

And what exactly are you trying to do?! Would you not be "imposing" your understanding of "fun" on those players who like resource scarcity? Do you understand Civ3 players more than I do? Am I in the wrong for defending my point of view?


Dominae

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Dominae
Actually, there's quite a rough review and selection process for any change proposed by the fan community (check the post-release thread). Just because a couple of AU mod changes made it into the standard game does not mean that alexman is calling the shots.

Yes, the opinion of the "experts" here will have an impact (however big or small) on Jesse's decision. That's why you should continue expressing it, just like I am. You make it sound like this whole process is somehow unfair to players who dislike resource scarcity, when in fact their voice is just as strong as anybody else's.

And what exactly are you trying to do?! Would you not be "imposing" your understanding of "fun" on those players who like resource scarcity? Do you understand Civ3 players more than I do? Am I in the wrong for defending my point of view?

Dominae

The difference here is, that even though there are enough resources, you still can have your beloved war. I can't have my peace with scarce resource. Now who is imposing what on whom?

To be honest, I'm growing increasingly tired of this discussion. What a horrible waste of spare time. I made my point and am not willing to repeat it over and over again. In any case, it's not my game anymore. It's yours. Do with it, what you want. I'm off to play a nice, balanced, finished and enjoyable game. No, it's not Civ.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Dominae greatly misunderstands me here.

Not really. 1) You want to be able to trade resources when it suits you. 2) You want weak civs to put a fight in the late-game instead of keeling over.

For the first point, I've already argued that if there's always a resource for trade it's not really strategic (your option count is low - trade for the resource). Sure it's "difficult" to trade for the resources sometimes because you need to need to pay for them, but that's more of an economic difficulty than a strategic one (since you'll always trade for Coal no matter the cost). In any case, I've mentioned above a couple ways you can cope with resource shortages without warfare. Yes, these require more work than hitting F4 and putting gpt on the table.

On the other side, if the civ in question is small and weak, I may not want to weaken it more.

Well, here you've got a decision to make (cool!): bolster your own empire, or keep your allies strong? An option!

---

The one argument that I can sympathize with is this: average-to-strong AIs sometimes end up sucking because they do not have access to Coal, or Rubber, or whatever. Suddenly, your top rival is a weakling (this happened to me in the demi2 game, where Sumeria was ~6 techs ahead, but did not have access to Horses, Iron, or Gunpowder!). But this is mostly annoying for the warmonger: your enemies do not put up a fight anymore. If you're playing a peaceful game it usually takes quite a while for the AIs to exploit each others' weaknesses, and the end result is usually a KAI.


Dominae

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
The difference here is, that even though there are enough resources, you still can have your beloved war. I can't have my peace with scarce resource. Now who is imposing what on whom?

Again we're back to the strict warmonger/builder distinction. Again, my retort is that Civ3 is a hybrid game.

To be honest, I'm growing increasingly tired of this discussion.

Me too!

What a horrible waste of spare time. I made my point and am not willing to repeat it over and over again.

I agree that we've reached an impasse (you and I). I find it disconcerting that you throw up your arms and turn away from Civ3. Actually, not really, since I know this is a trollish pressure tactic. I liked your methods better when you were just spamming (it was entertaining).


Dominae

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Dominae
I agree that we've reached an impasse (you and I). I find it disconcerting that you throw up your arms and turn away from Civ3. Actually, not really, since I know this is a trollish pressure tactic.

It is not. I didn't play Civ3 for 2 months now and am not the slightest thinking of returning to the game anytime soon. May be in summer, but only if it's fixed, which is, however, highly unlikely. May be autumn, may be never.

I liked your methods better when you were just spamming (it was entertaining).

I was never spamming. Save the last 2 days, when this discussion came up, I had left Apolyton almost entirely, posting in other forums about the games I actually play. You can look for the prove in the Community forum. In the time from Feb 20 till March 16 my post count increased by mere 74 posts, while yours grew by 232. Now who has been spamming?

[Tall Stranger]

I have, in the past, been fairly supportive of the current resource allocation. Sir Ralph, you may feel passionately about this, but I find your arguments both offensive and unpersuasive.

Offensive:

First off, I feel your posts fairly drip with the arrogant assumption that "warmongering is mindless and easy, but peaceful victory is hard." What did you say: "those who enjoy more peaceful, geopolitical, strategical [sic] games would be screwed by a game that enforces warfare."? Yeah, right. Nothing strategic or geopolitical about winning via domination or conquest. Just a bunch of unevolved knuckle-draggers, unable to acheive the higher levels of brilliance required to win via political or SS. Spare me. (Just for the record, like most people I'm largely a hybrid player. I play to achieve world supremacy, and win whichever way I feel like. I just found your tone unbelievably condescending.)

Second, I'm quite frankly appalled that you apparently want to use the AU Mod as a tool to try to force Firaxis to change the game to accomodate YOUR idea of fun. You freely admit that you have in the past (and will in the future) change the AU Mod to fit your idea of fun. Since you acknowledge that you won't play AU games with the mod as is, why then are you arguing that this change be inserted into the mod? Because (as you state) this mod "will most likely have an impact on whether the bug is fixed by Jesse or not." In other words, you want to use the good reputation of this mod to force Firaxis to make a change you personally think is necesary. The purpose of this mod is for us to have fun, not to serve as ammunition in your personal crusade against resource scarcity. Such use is entirely contrary to the purpose of the mod. (If I have misinterpreted your intentions, I apologize. However, they seem pretty clear to me.)

Unpersuasive:

You have argued that resource scarcity does not make the game any more challenging, since humans will wage war to get resources, while the AI will not. HOWEVER, what you're missing is that AIs benefit from having an AI neighbor who lacks a critical resource. An AI without iron may have a serious problem surviving next to, say, the Celts with iron. While the one civ is likely to be destroyed, the AI conqueror will gain valuable land, other resources and population to make it a credible challenger to a human. Given our inherent intellectual advantages, the AI needs significantly more land and population to effectively compete with a human. If every AI civ has every resource, you're more likely to get a bunch of small, inefficient AI civs that can be easily defeated by a human (either militarily or in production). In short, weaknesses in some AI civs actually strengthens the overall AI challenge. YES, humans may still wage war to get the resources they need. But they will need to do so against a more capable AI opponent.

You also argue that humans should be able to trade for the strategic resources they need. At the heart of this is the desire to win via SS, since you don't need strategic resources to win via political or cultural. This argument is, quite frankly, absurd. WHY SHOULD THE AI TRADE URANIUM TO YOU WHEN DOING SO WILL ALLOW YOU TO WIN THE GAME????? The fact that you are EVER able to do so is little more than you exploiting the stupidity of the AI. If we were playing MP, and you were capable of building SS parts and way ahead of me in productive capacity, would you honestly expect me to hand you the game by providing you with uranium or aluminum? Of course not. Yet you want the ability to screw over the AI (which does not understand victory conditions) and win by shelling out 50, 100, 200 gpt (which will neither hurt you nor make the AI competitive enough to beat you). Yeah, that's real challenging. At least with domination and conquest victories, you know the AI will forcibly resist your efforts. In this situation, it's stupidly assisting you.

[Harovan]

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I was never spamming. Save the last 2 days, when this discussion came up, I had left Apolyton almost entirely, posting in other forums about the games I actually play. You can look for the prove in the Community forum. In the time from Feb 20 till March 16 my post count increased by mere 74 posts, while yours grew by 232. Now who has been spamming?

Now that this argument has degenerated into a "who is spamming?" debate: I was only referring to your spamming in the last couple of days on this forum regarding resource scarcity (and elsewhere prior to that). And practically all my 232 posts on Apolyton have been on-topic (apart from the last few here); on-topic is not spamming.

Shall we stop this now?


Dominae

[Arrian]

What the hell is going on here?

This is AU, not the civIII general forum or the OTF! Can we try and avoid getting nasty?

Having a strong opinion is one thing, but what's going on here is entirely another.

-Arrian

[Harovan]

[Tall Stranger]

Not everything in your posts, which is precisely why I challenged the substance of your posts as well. As I stated above, if I have misrepresented your intentions in pushing for this change, I apologize.

I would be very interested to hear your why you think the AI should willingly hand you an SS win and how you address my point that some AI weaknesses will usually help create a more robust overall AI challenge.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Tall Stranger

You also argue that humans should be able to trade for the strategic resources they need. At the heart of this is the desire to win via SS, since you don't need strategic resources to win via political or cultural. This argument is, quite frankly, absurd. WHY SHOULD THE AI TRADE URANIUM TO YOU WHEN DOING SO WILL ALLOW YOU TO WIN THE GAME?????

This ignores the fact that Civ is, in large part, a simulation game. Its heritage is single-player, not multiplayer, and the AIs' job is therefore to present the player with an enjoyable game, not to try to win at any conceivable cost.

If AIs in Civ ever start behaving the way human opponents would, I'll probably stop playing because that's not the experience I play for. In human multiplayer games, players routinely do things like deliberately gang up on the leader to stop him from winning. Having AIs do that sort of thing to me in Civ would completely destroy its fun for me. In contrast, what I want in Civ is AIs that behave in a way that is fairly close to how civilizations might be expected to behave in similar situations in the real world. I want them to give me an interesting challenge (with the strength of the challenge depending on difficulty level), but I don't want them going way out of their way to prevent me from winning. Thus, I think having AIs be willing to trade vital space race resources is a good design decision.

Also note that AIs' willingness to trade space race resources almost certainly benefits them more than it benefits us. If AIs refused to ever trade resources another civ could use in the space race, the only way an AI could compete in the space race would be if it had all the resources it needs itself. Further, the AIs aren't all that aggressive about pursuing resources through military means. But when AIs can trade for resources, AIs that don't have all the resources within their territory can compete.

Which just caused me to think of something I'll post about separately so it doesn't get lost amidst this ramble.

Nathan

[Fosse]

I play the AU mod almost exclusivly, and some of my most fun games with the strongest AI opponents and the hardest decisions I've had to make I can attribute directly to resource scarcity.

I'd like to see AU keep it in place, as standard C3C. alexman's compromise is a nice proposal, but I think that it is those late game "peace" resources that are the most interesting to be left without.

For the record, I'm a hybrid (aren't most of us?) who leans builder pretty strongly. I don't even have to have "my" continent!