Oil is not well

[Death's Toe]

Originally posted by Venger
I like that I may not have resources in my Civ, but oil should be somewhere on my continent. This isn't some tiny island, it's stretches the entire length north and south of the map.

Question - if oil doesn't appear right away, can it be "discovered" on your land at a later date? That would be pretty cool, and actually somewhat in keeping with reality.

Also - Germany produced massive amounts of synthetic oil during WW2...

Venger

Resources do show up randomly. Infact, I think when one resource is exhausted, it shows up somewhere else.

Also, I'd like to know how you qualify your statement about 'massive amounts of syntetic oil'. If you mean that they had a lot, then how do you explain all the grounded air-craft, and abandoned tigers and panthers?

[Solver]

I do see the whole resource model as a very fun one, and oil is certainly on the list of my likes. If I do, at some point, discover that I got no oil, I am left with several interesting options. If the civ who has the oil is an ally, I can use my diplomatic skills to get what I want. If that's an enemy, well, I should amass cavalry, and take at least one of those damn cities.

Also, look at this so. Say, many civilizations have got oil, and it's a modern world war going on. You can largely shake somebody's situation by trying to cut their Oil supply. Have your aircraft bomb the roads that come from Oil sources, pillage those, leave him with no Oil, and then kill his Cavalry with Tanks.

It has to be said, the resource system makes it slightly tougher to play an isolationist in Civ 3. Isolationists in Civ 2 would feel themselves fine on a middle-sized continent, left there to develop a number of cities filling in the continent, have Settlers marching over the place and improving everything that can be improved, and researching in peace, while dedicating a number of cities to build an army, should the enemy come with an invasion attempt. In Civ 3, this is not the case, as you need those resources, and thus you need overseas colonies or contact with other Civs. Isolationists in Civ 2 rarely did at all build a transport ship to leave their continent, and had little business with other civilizations.

[Zizka]

FRomage. Thanx. My apologies as well it gets frustrating arguing the same point over and over

Newbies. No I am no newbie .. I was 16 hour a day guy in college.. LOL I dont have that much time now. (everyone awwww.....)

DOn't get me wrong folks in understand the LOGIC of strategic resources. I just dont like teh Be all and end all of oil as an uber-resource for almost 10 units IIRC.

Re peaceful civ. I play all styles but i found playing peaceful civ to have the following problem. I engaged in no wars.. all game (just to see if I could do it) and I had no oil. This promptly my the modern era made me quite weak as i wa sunable to secure a supply (only 4 count 'em 4 .. sources ofr standard map w/ 6 civs left). Despite high tech .. lost of cities i promptly became to favourite luncheon meat for my neigbours. AI satrst making ridiculour demands. I cannot even build proper DEFENSIVE units like mech infantry all for want of oil.

That or a variant of the same has happened in almost 1/3 of my games. I have found this frustrating.

have made wars in other games for oil (only to have the *beeping* thing dry out 10 turns later..arrgh ..). Thats fine but teh frustration for me comes from playing a good soldi, enjoybale game only to find your self over teh old proverbial pork barrel..

Z

[Zealot]

Originally posted by Zizka
That or a variant of the same has happened in almost 1/3 of my games. I have found this frustrating.

have made wars in other games for oil (only to have the *beeping* thing dry out 10 turns later..arrgh ..). Thats fine but teh frustration for me comes from playing a good soldi, enjoybale game only to find your self over teh old proverbial pork barrel..

Z

Zizka has a really good point guys! We don't want to use our time of play to get frustrated! We want the game to amuse us! Of course fighting for resources is fun and challenging, but think of that game where the Aztecs had all the oil in the map (4, right?).
If you're playing a MP game, and an opponent gets all the Oil, can you figure out what's going to happen?

1. the holding civ will extort all other civs until...
2. all other civs unite against the civ that has the oil...
3. since that "holy" war was engaged, that civ will definitely be destroyed

Now, who wants to be this "fortunate"?

[dr.charm]

I love the strategic resources, but what I would like to see is a synthetic oil refinery as a minor wonder.

To make things more balanced, I think that only the city that builds the wonder can now build oil dependent units (yes, not realistic, but better balanced I think).

Oh, and I'm sorry but Nazi Germany's synthetic oil production was not large *at all* as another poster pointed out.

And as for wars fought for oil, it could be argued that Japan attacked the US in December of 1941 because of oil. In fact, I would argue that.

Cheers,

Dr. Charm

[dr.charm]

Hate to reply to myself, but I just had another thought. A synthetic oil refinery would/should require coal in order to build/function.

Cheers,

Dr. Charm

[Shiva]

Originally posted by dr.charm
Hate to reply to myself, but I just had another thought. A synthetic oil refinery would/should require coal in order to build/function.

Cheers,

Dr. Charm

That makes some sense. You would have to have a seperate source of coal ( not the same one that used for rail building) and the refinery would convert it. Not a bad idea at all.

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Kramer
I think a real-world solution to the problem exist. Ethanol. For those that don't know, ethanol is a form of alcohol which is often considered as a cleaner burning alternative for Gasoline. The most interesting part of the Ethanol solution would be that it wouldn't require Oil. Ethanol is generated with vegetable matter --typically corn.

Now this makes things interesting -- players would be able to make an ethanol refinery in a city, then that city (but not ones connected to it by roads) would be able to make gas-powered units. The down side should be loss of food -- I'm thinking an ethanol refinery should consume about 4 food. It should be a signifigant hardship to run an ethanol refinery, players should still consider oil a great benefit, and it should be worth fighting over, but it shouldn't kill your game if you just can't get your hands on it.

Ethanol as its used now is blended into gas to stretch the amount of gas. You could use straight ethanol but it doesnt have as much stored energy as gas so you would't get the mpg or horsepower of gas. You wouldnt be able to have any sort of high proformance aircraft like we have now. And you would have to have massive amounts of corn or grain. Still its better than nothing.

A better way would be to just have a "alternative Fuels" tech. Make it expensive to reseach so its a pain but its still there for people who come up on the short end of the oil stick.

It could cover ethanol, solar, synthedic oil , fuel cells, soybean fuels or whatever else all under one wing without detracting from the resource part of the game or adding alot of needless complication via micro management.

[Enigma]

I play very aggressively in the early game so that I do not have to worry about resources... by the time saltpeter appears I almost always have one in my territory.

I do think a good solution for people that do not have certain resources would be able to build conscript versions of the unit at 200% cost... you wouldn't be able to conquer the world this way, but you would be able to take a city that has the resources you need.

I like the clumping of luxuries a lot... strategic resources should be in more than one single spot on the map. Resources are the only reason to conquer in the mid-late game (other than destroying other civs) it is funny having a monopoly in 2/3's of the resources there are.

[ken01]

I think the real point (hidden though it is) was mentioned by Solver.

The resource issue is only a problem if the only way you play the game is as a isolationist (aka, SimCiv).

I agree that the resource issue is annoying. I used to stick to my island (I even tried experimenting with smaller and smaller islands) and block out the world. Eventually, I get jet fighters and obliterate every other civ in the world with massive numbers of jets and a couple mech infs.

Now, I have to obliterate them with ground troops. Which is a hassle and a half.

But resources are fun. I won one game against the massive Zulu empire (which controlled about 40% of the map, and 50% of the useful map) because they had a huge empire with few resources.

I also won once as the only civ with coal.

If you're complaining about oil, just imagine having no coal. Your navy getting pummeled by ironclads. Having no opportunity to make railroads, your production is an order of magnitude worse that other civs.

That's why you want to be the first civ with refining. You figure out where the oil is, and get it.

Rather than complain about having no oil, why not make sure you have all the oil? Become a robber baron. That's whant the AI does when it has the oil.

[Zizka]

(shameless bump)

[habitualuser]

Originally posted by Death's Toe


Resources do show up randomly. Infact, I think when one resource is exhausted, it shows up somewhere else.

Yes, they do. Only ran out in a few games... One time Iron ran out and re-appeared in the same spot, and in another game some oil just popped up next to a city, long after i had it's tech.

[Kaesar]

Great thread

I personally think that oil is fine. The fact of the matter is that it is not suppose to be fair. The people that have a problem with oil expects the perfect strategy should always win. I guess oil is the way to make this game unpredictable and challenging. No matter how good you are you can lose. That's how life is and that's how I personally like this game. It's not your normal RTS game with hard numbers so that you can calculate each situation. This game provides an element of luck and if you get really crappy rolls you lose. I then say start a new game and when you finally beat the game on deity/huge/16, you can say you overcame luck as well as the AI. Gives great replay value so you don't actually win everytime.

[Barchan]

Dr. Charm said:

“And as for wars fought for oil, it could be argued that Japan attacked the US in December of 1941 because of oil. In fact, I would argue that.”

Having already argued that in this thread, I'd heartily concur!

As far as trading strategic resources, let's think about that for a minute. I have oil. I can build tanks and battleships. My opponent comes along asking for oil. Obviously he cannot build tanks or battleships. Do I really want to enable him to do so? Perhaps this is why the AI is so reluctant to trade strategic resources. I know it's why I'd be reluctant to trade them.

And, if you are a peaceful Civ, do you really need oil? I don’t have the manual handy, so I don’t know if oil is needed for the spaceship or not, but you can still build perfectly good infantry (unless you lack rubber as well...) and artillery. If you build these in quantity you should be able to mount a fairly effective defense. At the very least, you should be big enough to keep the AI from bullying you around.

As was pointed out, Germany’s production of synthetic fuel was far too small to meet its needs.

As regards Ethanol and other replacement fuels, they probably just wouldn’t be effective enough to be an adequate replacement. Even in WWII, the engines for war machines were high-performance things. As such they required potent fuel to operate at peak performance. One little-known edge the Western allies had against the Axis was more powerful aviation gasoline (aka AVGAS). The Axis generally could not refine its AVGAS at more than 100 octane, whereas the US was refining 120-130 octane AVGAS. The higher-octane fuel meant higher performance for Allied aircraft, and, in an evenly matched fight, every little edge helps.

Anyway, the point is that there are some historical constraints that have to be followed to call the game “Civilization”. If you add too many “what ifs” you might was well go back to SMAC. In the modern age, oil is king. Petroleum products power most of the world’s military machines (aside from nuclear-powered sea vessels that, arguably, would never have been developed without gasoline-powered grandparents). We currently have nothing else on earth that can be as easily stored, transported, consumed and releases as much energy as oil and its derivatives. To suggest that some sort of alternate fuel be developed to make tanks on par with those that run on oil both (a) proposes the introduction of a technology that does not exist and (b) seeks to eliminate the challenge that strategic resources add to the game.

[Fidel]

yes, and that is why i do not think it is a bug if you can finish any unit you started while you had the resource. call it strategic reserves