Finding Resources\Placing Cities

[Nick-oh]

I'm new to this forum so perhaps this point has been raised before. (Though I can't find it anywhere)

What I want is for a bit of plain old luck to be introduced into the decision of where a city is founded. As CivII is now, you scout around a bit looking for a spot with lots of resources, even though with the technology of the time, there is no way you could even locate, let alone utilise, these resources.

Realistically, a city is not founded on the site of resources that will be useful 3000 years in the future.

I mean, at the begining of a game, just because a square has oil in it, why should I be able to see that? It's 4000 BC how could my guys know there was oil under the ground and even if there was what would that mean to them? So what if there's a whale off the coast, that's not much good if I don't even have boats with which to hunt it? Building a city near these resources is purely coincedental and CivIII should reflect this.

What I would like to see (or more to the point not to see) is that specific resources are not visible to the player until they have both the means for locating it, and some reason for wanting to.

[UltraSonix]

Another Melbournian!

quote: ...specific resources are not visible to the player until they have both the means for locating it...

This is an excellent point, so perhaps when you discover specific techs, then the map'll reveal a few more special resources. The only problem is that often cities aren't built according to where there are special resources, just rather where there is a nice mix of terrain for future developement (eg a few hills, mostly grassland, costal). And it'll be impossible to stop this...

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Adm.Naismith]

If we are looking for historical realism, we should consider that proper city are... succesfully village

Other threads here are about rural population, villages and cities developement, so I think we could mix these argument very nicely.

So, you don't need to chose very carefully where do you found a city, because it simply start to develop everywhere there are some basic needs sactisfied:
- enough food (local or by trade)
- local climate good enough to let people survive
- resources that are useful for the age development (e.g. wood, iron, salt...)

As for "raise and fall of civ" we should consider the "raise and fall of cities": many of them raised to the stars and went back to the dust because resources, climate, military relevance, government choice, and so on changed after centuries.

For human player, I agree with Ultra we will end to chose the easy way: a place with a mix of terrain for future developement.

OTOH, if we accept a Civ model where we can simply try to develop city in a chosen area, but not under complete control (some kind of rural growht from villages, largely controlled by computer) we can have a lovely toy to play with.

To better clarify, supposing we can have an algorithm that will take in account know natural resources, available food, life condition (war area, chronic disease area, local climate), etc., we (as human player) can have the power to plant "seed" into wanted City zone (seed example can be military campment or fort, roads, totem or sacre monolith) we can have the "cristalization" (you know, like cristal aggregate into a proper chemical solution) of a small city.

Of course, if we "plant seed" where general condition aren't good enough, we can't have a city, while we still have some kind of control over where to build a city or not (no one city will be founded without a wanted "seed", just to avoid cities "popping" everywhere if player don't want them).

When a small city is founded, then the common Civ rules apply (enhance, manage it, etc.) but an immmigration/emigration model will be active over the still working "background" of food available, resources, etc.

Developing a city now become a need, to counteract other force that can drag your town population in favour of better one, and to attract more population from rural and from other civ cities.

Now you can be a civ emperor with a good ability to manage people, not a deity who play with his/her puppets.
(Ok, so you feel better as a god: take two of these pills after every lunch. Next! )

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[rremus]

Certain resources must be searched for. This is obvious for oil and coal. If we wanna add some micromanagement, here are some sugestions:
1. Geological explorer unit. Has an 'explore' command, that reveals subterran resources in a square.
2. Exploration budget. Percent from of global income is invested in exploring for resources. Based on how much you invest, the game reveals you resource locations within your territory. With nessages, like: 'Pheasans have been discovered near Rome'
3. My favourite: The game could reveal to the player the location of resource on a probabilistic manner. Each time a unit enters a square, the chances of revealing the content of that square hidden resource are increased for that player. The idea is that if you wander more in some area, some of your men might accidentaly discover something.

[Shadowstrike]

This could actually be kinda fun.....

*Sends units on endless patrols rounds in his civilization*

Hehe... Actually, if you build a city near any resources, (i.e. the resource is in the city radius) they should be able to be found sometime in the next 5 - 10 turns, but never over 10 turns. Never!

[Nick-oh]

My thought was that the visibility of resources would be more or less dependant apon the civs scientific ability to locate that resource; so some minerals, coal for e.g., wouldn't be visible until the discovery of say, core sampling (just an e.g.).

Not that this discovery of core sampling would suddenly show you where all the coal was. This would be a gradual process that occured over a number of turns. Coupled with Adm. Naismith's ideas on population development, the discovery of minerals would be accelerated in areas of higher population and where the "seed" of a city has been planted.

Alternatively, an injection of funds into the exploration budget would increase this process across the board. My favourite idea however would be to contract out exploring responsability to a mining corporation and whenever you need an increase in a particular resource you simply offer this company incentives in the form of subsidies, tariff protection etc.

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Common sense is not so common - Voltaire

[UltraSonix]

quote: Not that this discovery of core sampling would suddenly show you where all the coal was. This would be a gradual process that occured over a number of turns.

quote: Certain resources must be searched for. This is obvious for oil and coal.

I think the game would be made unnecessarily complex if the player had to actually search for all/some of the resources, even though it would be more realistic. It should just be revealed automatically.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Nick-oh]

It would be automatic, just not free.

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"Common sense is not so common" - Voltaire

[Urban Ranger]

quote: Originally posted by Nick-oh on 09-21-2000 05:23 AM I mean, at the begining of a game, just because a square has oil in it, why should I be able to see that? It's 4000 BC how could my guys know there was oil under the ground and even if there was what would that mean to them?

Well Nick, you are partially right. Some resources are hard to find because they are buried deep underground, though in some other areas these resources could be just sitting on the surface. This is the case with copper, iron, and oil too. Eons ago there were records in ancient Chinese history books about people finding this black liquid and used it as a fuel. It is entirely conceivable that the same happened elsewhere in the world.

Of course, what we can have is have some resources sit on the surface and some deep underground, which can't be found until the appropiate civ advancement is achieved. So some dork city in the boonies could all of a sudden become very important because of new finds

We could also have it that so that the extraction of resources at these sites increase with civ advancements and the construction of city facilities (such as oil refineries).

[Nick-oh]

I had considered this Urban Ranger, but didn't think it worth mentioning as technological advance in civ follows a more or less linear advancement apon a (for better or worse) predominantly western model. If the game followed a chinese tech tree, metalurgy and explosives wouldn't come around so late in the game.

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"Common sense is not so common" - Voltaire

[DarkCloud]

To see the resources you should first be required to scout around.
This would be done by a 'prospector' or 'surveyor' unit.
After the scouting is done all age appropriate resources in a block
around the 'surveyor' will be revealed.

[UltraSonix]

quote: To see the resources you should first be required to scout around. This would be done by a 'prospector' or 'surveyor' unit. After the scouting is done all age appropriate resources in a block around the 'surveyor' will be revealed.

The only problem with this is, like I've said above, that it's too much micromanagement for something rather trivial.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[DarkCloud]

It could be run like Imperialisms or perhaps in a resource allocation screen as in CTP.

[Shadowstrike]

Imperialism is a great game, but its longer turns makes any part of its model too complex for the quicker turns of Civ...

Even the simple surveyor model is too hard if you have to do it with more then one unit every turn....

[beyowulf]

quote: Originally posted by DarkCloud on 09-22-2000 09:48 AM To see the resources you should first be required to scout around. This would be done by a 'prospector' or 'surveyor' unit. After the scouting is done all age appropriate resources in a block around the 'surveyor' will be revealed.

Hey, this would be great, just so long as this isn't revealed to rival nations. Though maybe as a nice gesture, you could have this revealed through diplomacy.