Strategic Resources (Coal)

[CyberGnu]

Well, the empirical chemical formula for wood is roughly CH2O(n).

This means that for every atom of carbon you have you also have to hydrogen and one oxygen.

When you burn the wood without oxygen, this chemical reaction occurs:

CH2O(s) -> H2O (g) + C(s).

The residual C(s) is pure graphite, i.e. coal.

This is of course the ideal reaction... In reality there are lots of other atoms in the wood, most notably nitrogen. It is also hard to make the burning completely free from oxygen, which leads to uneven quality of the charcoal.

Nevertheless, charcoal was the ingredient for gunpowder, as the charcoal is easy to grind into a powder, and the quality of the coal doesn't matter much.

The odd thing with this resource system is the salpeter... Since you extract it from urine, it is not exactly a resource.... Sulphur, on the other hand, being the third ingredient for gunpowder, IS a resource. Looks like the Firaxis people didn't do their homework...

[Kekkonen]

Originally posted by CyberGnu

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.

Did the Babylonians have Refining? If they don't know the oil is there, they might have no reason to build a road to the patch with oil.

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...

... or that they'll sell it to you. But really, if there were 8 squares of oil in the world and all were yours, what would you do? Sell the stuff equally to everyone so that all would live happily ever after (or at least until someone gets nukes), or sit on your oil barrels waiting to research Motorized Transport?

[CyberGnu]

Kekkonen, yeah, he didn't have refining at the time. but that should work to my advantage, as several people have pointed out already...

Anyway, I think it is a problem with the game mechanics... Forcing the player to conduct diplomacy is one thing, but actually making it impossible to go further is something compleely different.

Look, I'm all in favor of more emphasis on trade over war. But this resource system is not exactly well thought out...

Maybe it should be set negative instead. Unless someone actively embargoes you, you should always be able to import oil. An embargo is also a declaration of war.

[Zanzin]

On my map, there are 2 sources of oil. I have one of them, the egyptians have the other.

4 other civs are stuffed though. They all have the prerequisite advances as well, and I've searched high and low for this stuff, believe me.

So, it's weird, I tell you

[Patient English]

Saltpetre

CyberGnu,

When you say

The odd thing with this resource system is the salpeter... Since you extract it from urine, it is not exactly a resource.... Sulphur, on the other hand, being the third ingredient for gunpowder, IS a resource. Looks like the Firaxis people didn't do their homework...

I would have agreed with you at first. When Saltpetre (as it SHOULD be spelt! Americans, sheesh ) was first discussed in these forums, I was under the same impression, remembering my history lessons and King Charles's men seaching houses for "nightsoil" for the King's gunpowder supplies before the English Civil War. I did a bit of research, and it turns out there ARE large mine-able deposits of Saltpetre, usually in bat caves or similar, where large deposits of guano have built up over time. Scattered all over the world, too. Not usually in deserts, though.

So the Saltpetre deposits in the game are justifiable, if you want to be kind to Firaxis. I agree with you that Sulphur would have been better.

Better still would have been a resource of Nitrates. This would cover Potrassium Nitrate (Saltpetre) and Ammonium Nitrate (for making explosives). Thus the resource would be essential for modern weaponry, along with Oil. All of these resources should be artificially create-able, with the right tech.

If you have EVER had (or traded) Horses, and you research Horse Breeding before you lose them, you get to make mounted troops, even if you lose the naturally occuring resource.

If you have EVER had (or traded) Nitrates, and you research Industrial Chemistry (which would require Electricity), then you get to make Gunpowder- or Explosive-requiring units. This would leave a possible gap where you know about Gunpowder, but might not be able to make it in large quantities, sort of like Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Explosives would need other tech as well, of course.

If you have EVER had (or traded) Oil, and you research Chemical Synthesis.....you get the idea.

This would preserve some value in strategic resources, but not make them the game-unbalancing factor they sometimes seem to be.

Remind me, did Firaxis ever float this resource idea in the user groups before they released it? It seems that they should have, anyway. I like the idea a lot, but it's implementation seems a bit flaky.

Could say that about a lot of Civ III it seems to me.

[Fidel]

Originally posted by 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!

haha, you should have formed a low-tech coalition against them

[Kekkonen]

About saltpeter: it's only useful for a very limited time; is there any use for the stuff once Musketmen, Cavalry, and Frigates are obsolte? Also, doesn't the Civilopedia description of Riflemen say something about them not needing any special resources to build due to the realization that saltpeter is everywhere, or did I just dream that up?

[CyberGnu]

PE, while you can find natural sources of nitrates (it occurs as crusts on the surface of the Earth, on walls and rocks, and in caves; and it forms in certain soils in Spain, Italy, Egypt, Iran, and India), in Europe it was actually 'farmed' in saltpetre plantations, or 'nitriaries'. You mix a bunch of decaying organic matter with lime and let it stand in contact with oxygen.

The natural deposits of salpeter should be treated like they were in other civ games... It gives a nice production bonus, since it is cheaper to dig stuff out of the ground than to produce it yourself, but it is by no means necessary.

Again, sulphur is a natural resource, up until the invention of metallurgy (which gives you more sulphur than you can handle as a by-product of the ore roasting). You think that Firaxis could have spent five minutes asking a chemist about this... Or just looked it up in any major encyclopedia.

[Lugh]

PE, I like that idea a lot, of using later techs to gain artificial access to resources. The problem then is, why trade resources (except in the window of time before the new tech)? Why invade for resources (ditto)? What good are embargoes then? I think a possible answer is to limit the usefulness of a source of a resource. Let one saltpeter mine, for example, allow one musketman per city in your empire. The artificial source from the later tech would do the same. If you want more, then you'll have to go out and find some in the wide world. This way whoever has got loads of it in their backyard will still have a tangible advantage.

Unfortunately, on reflection, this seems like it would be hard to implement. It might necessitate a revamping of the whole trading process, as you'd want to be able to trade for a certain amount of a resource, rather than just trade for it period. Still, it would be nice, and would make for better gameplay, methinks...

... maybe an idea for Mr. Patchy-Patchy? If only...

[CyberGnu]

I'd prefer if there was some sort of quality difference. If you have an oil patch you can build regular tanks, but if you don't have oil your tanks are going to have the stats reduced by 2,2,1 or something like that.

IIRC, german tanks in WWII were forced to run on gasoline due to the nature of the oil in bulgaria/rumania. Gasoline is not a good choice of fule for a tank, since it
A) gives less torque than diesel
B) Tends to blow up quite spectacularly

South Africa during the boycott, having almost no access to oil at all built ethanol fueled armored cars. A lot less range than diesel, but it works...

[ken01]

The problem with all your "solutions" to the resource problem is the micromanaging nightmare you'd have.

The key problem is that the resource part of the game makes little historical/reality sense when put to close scrutiny, but if you look at it broadly, then it does make historical sense.

Yes, wars were fought over .... um ... um ... oil and rubber (sort of). But bringing that concept to iron, coal, aluminum, etc. makes a lot less sense.

Especially when you think - what's running all these factories? Water? Steam power my wood? Wheres the wood resource?

Eventually, resources shouldn't be an issue - except oil, since there are synthetics or alternatives for everything. Or, eventually, with modern mining techniques, once rare resources become common (like iron, coal, gold).

Which is especially true for luxuries. Since when are spices a luxury item? I don't know about you, but salt doesn't really do it for me anymore. Plus with artificial flavoring, some scientists/technicians can make a piece of paper smell and taste like prime rib.

[CyberGnu]

Why would having two different tanks increase micromanagement? Especially if the bad one isn't upgradeable to the second (once it is built, it is built, sort of).