Strategic Resources (Coal)

[Bismark29]

I'm in the middle of my first game, have just discovered Steam Power, but can't find any coal!

I have searched the entire map, and none of the other civs have it either. Which begs the question, what can I do? Should I have my workers mine all the hills in my control? Is there a way to develop the land in order to find coal?

Please help.

Thanks

[KrazyHorse]

There's coal somewhere on the map.

[vovan]

Well, there has to be a source of coal somewhere.
Do you have a map oof all land? Tyr searching for coal on enemy territories some more - it is sometimes hard to see, if you have fog of war visible and if there is a mine on the resource square.

See, if you can find coal on the screenshot :

[dexters]

You won't see the resources until you've discovered the technology to use it.

It sort of makes sense. Im sure before the internal combustion engine, most people viewed oil as a relatively useless substance.

[star mouse]

Try using one of the mods that labels each resource so they are easier to find. The coal resources could be under a mine somewhere, with the graphics mods they cannot hide.

[Blunderdog]

Control-shift-M makes things a lot easier. And be sure to double-check jungle squares.

[Stegalin]

wait until you have to find oil in tundras with forests on them...

talk about hard to see. I captured 3 sources and didn't even realize it. Even ctrl-shift-M has its limits.

[dexters]

right click on a suspected terrain and it should tell you what it is.

Unlike most of the game, which tends to be slow to load, the terrain feature loads and unloads quickly so you won't be annoyed by waiting for it.

[Skanky Burns]

Another way to get the coal resource, the Lazy Man's Way, is to sell Steam Power to the other civs. Each and every one of them. That in itself will get you a large amount of money.
Then the next turn, load up your F2 Trade Advisor screen. Listed next to some civs will be coal, all the ones that have a spare source of coal to trade with you. Proceed then to trade for coal, or now search for the coal in their territory so you can launch that invasion.

If you want to actually be able to see resources on the map thought, follow Star Mouse's advice, download a mod that labels the resources (in the files forum)

[Calorman]

Sometimes the resource generation is just screwed up though. One time I was playing on a large map with 8 civs and I couldn't find coal anywhere. I certainly didn't have any and none of the other civs seemed to either. I searched high and low wondering how the hell this world was going to get through the industrial age. Then I suddenly see that Russia has no less than 7 deposits all heaped together in the middle of their territory. Greedy pigs!


BTW: An easy way to locate resources is to use the clean map option (Ctrl-Shift-M) to temporarily remove all the cities and improvements. You can press Ctrl-Shift-M again to put it back to normal once your done.

[Bismark29]

thanks for all the advice. Tomorrow, I'll give it hell!

[CyberGnu]

Sometimes the resource generation is just screwed up though. One time I was playing on a large map with 8 civs and I couldn't find coal anywhere. I certainly didn't have any and none of the other civs seemed to either. I searched high and low wondering how the hell this world was going to get through the industrial age. Then I suddenly see that Russia has no less than 7 deposits all heaped together in the middle of their territory. Greedy pigs!

Yeah, happened to me with oil once. What was worse was that the damn Babylonian only built a road to ONE of them... The rest was in the middle of a useless desert right in the middle of his heartland.

I know Firaxis claims that 'there will be at least one square of resource for each civ in the game', but that doesn't help much when the civ that has ALL OF THEM won't even develop the squares...

*Bah*

Back to playing HOMM3.

[vincentz]

I have noticed that sometimes the AI (or maybe you) build cities on top of strategic resources, hiding them from view to even the most observant player. Right clicking on their cities helps. Once I was playing against the romans and I noticed they had horses (0 extra) to trade with me, but I couldn't find it on the map. Then I took over their city located on top of the horses.

[Evil_Eric_4]

Check the jungles- I noticed that coal seems to appear there most often.
oil should be seen before combustion.
Oil was first drilled in 1880something in my great state of Pennsylvania.they used oil for street lamps back then as well as
a lubricant among other uses.it was hardly a useless substance.
Coal was also used before steam power as a substute for firewood and a type of coal -charcoal- is a main ingredient for gunpowder.
It would be nice to see these things sooner than you can use them to plot future city sites.

[star mouse]

Originally posted by Evil_Eric_4
a type of coal -charcoal- is a main ingredient for gunpowder.

Actually, charcoal is not a type of coal. Charcoal is produced from wood by burning it with insufficient oxygen to burn the wood completely.