What is the most valuable Strategic Resource?

[ErikM]

Originally posted by planetfall
Most valuable is oil. Without oil you will not play in the modern era.

If you want to test value of oil vs XYZ, create a scenario with '0' occurance of oil && XYZ and see which hurts your gameplay more.

You can work around and play a decent game with about any other resource, but not without oil.

Without Iron, you may not be able to make it to the modern era.

As for oil and other modern resources... The game can be won before tanks, not to mention aircraft and other contemporary military toys, come into play.

[planetfall]

Without Iron, you may not be able to make it to the modern era.

Why not? If no Iron exists for ALL civs!!!!

As for oil and other modern resources... The game can be won before tanks, not to mention aircraft and other contemporary military toys, come into play.

True, thus you voted for Horses or Saltpeter?

PF

[Mace]

Originally posted by planetfall
Why not? If no Iron exists for ALL civs!!!!
PF

You might be able to get into the modern era without Iron, but how good would your civ be?

[Last Conformist]

I did get to the modern Era as the #1 civ without Iron (only to lose at the UN ...) in my one and only Warlord game way back when CivIII Vanilla was new. Really annoying to be Persia and never get a GA because I couldn't build Immortals and and didn't get the right wonders.

Despite that, I did vote for Iron. Lacking it basically messes up your entire civ from the mid-Ancient till the end of the game.

Number two would be either Coal or Rubber. Lacking the former messes up you infrastructure in the late game, and missing the later leaves you with a joke for an army post-Replaceable Parts.

[Solomwi]

Definitely Iron. It's the only resource that's crucial from the ancient age to the modern age, or at least late industrial. It doesn't have the "cringe factor" the turn before it appears that Coal, Rubber or Oil do, but that's mainly because when Iron comes up, my games still have plenty of unsettled territory, and if I don't have any right now, I'm confident I can acquire some when I actually need it. In C3C, TOW Infantry makes rubber less valuable, since it is now possible to have a decent army without it, though you do have to wait until the modern era. Don't get me wrong, rubber may well be my favorite resource, since it lets me build marines, but that's different than most valuable.

My ranking would go as follows:

Iron
Coal
Horses
Saltpeter
Oil
Rubber
Aluminum
Uranium

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
I did get to the modern Era as the #1 civ without Iron (only to lose at the UN ...) in my one and only Warlord game way back when CivIII Vanilla was new. Really annoying to be Persia and never get a GA because I couldn't build Immortals and and didn't get the right wonders.

Despite that, I did vote for Iron. Lacking it basically messes up your entire civ from the mid-Ancient till the end of the game.

Number two would be either Coal or Rubber. Lacking the former messes up you infrastructure in the late game, and missing the later leaves you with a joke for an army post-Replaceable Parts.

Could you trade for it? I have had resoure deprivation before, but It only lasts until I find an AI willing to make a deal.

[vmxa1]

Often the AI will not have hooked up excess Iron and then if they do they are not always willing to trade it. It can be done though.

[Last Conformist]

Mad Bomber: The AIs resolutely refused to sell me any Iron. Not getting any RR was a royal pain.

[vmxa1]

No iron by the time of Steam is very stressful, that is for sure. I take it you had no place to capture any.

[timmy84]

I'm gonna say oil. For some reason, its always the hardest to find (even though in my current game, I'm the Middle East of the world), and my war machine doesn't start up until the mordern era (I'm a late bloomer).

Uranium seems to be a pointless resource. Unless you want nuclear plants or subs, or you have no problem angrering every civ (in which case, its the most important to your war machine). However, my civ has finally become complety self reliant (All I need to do is secure some furs and I'm set for all resources).

[DrSpike]

Uranium is handy if you like Spaceships.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by vmxa1
No iron by the time of Steam is very stressful, that is for sure. I take it you had no place to capture any.

The only reasonably nearby sources were the territory of my biggest neighbours, the French. Today, I'd laughed at the numbers and gone bashed some frog-eaters, but, as said, this was early in my CivIII career and I dared not attack a bigger civ.

[The_Unforgiven]

definitely iron, facts and rails

[Lunacy]

I want them to add coffee beans as a strategic resource. In the modern era that should make your civ much more hyper and industrious though you would be facing the risk that if the resource suddenly disappears your whole civ would sink into anarchy ;-)

Lunacy

[LodeRunner31]

Hello out there. I'm somewhat new to this forum but not to the game. I'm normally just a lurker.

Anyway, I normally play a builder style game. Recently, however, I'm trying to become a better war monger as capturing cities gives you more to build! So, in a game over the weekend, I picked Rome and started up a game.

Not a great start location, right on a flood plain so of course I got hit with disease while building my first settler. Guess I should have moved my settler in the first turn. Well, the map ended up being a pangea map and I was isolated on a large isthmus, with no iron and no horses anywhere close by. Lots of mountains and hills, but no iron. I decided to keep playing anyway (you know, for the challenge). It didn't take too long for everyone to start lining up to take shots at me and soon I found myself at war with half the other civs. I managed to hold them off until gunpowder...then, no saltpeter. Ctrl+Shift+Q.