My Rant about Strategic Resources

[pcasey]

I don't like strategic resources at all. They strike me as nothing more than a delibrate game mechanic to force players into mid to late game wars.

If you, for example, are unlucky enough not to get coal in your empire, and you can't trade for it, you're going to war, no ifs, ands, or buts. You simply can't survive into the modern age without RRs.

The problem I have is that its a mechanism the game designers threw in to make me play the game the way they think it ought to be played.

I happen to *like* playing pacifist empires. I enjoy it. I play all 4X games that way. Sometimes on a lark I garner a huge tech edge and conquer the world/universe/whatever with a legion of technically advanced troops, but usually, I like to just farm my patch of dirt and defend my frontiers.

If I *wanted* to fight mid to late game wars, I could go ahead and declare them. As it is, this is a piece of game artiface to force me into military conflict.

I should be able to play the game the way I want too, as opposed to having the game force me into a box of what the designer thought *ought* to have happened.

[HalfLotus]

Simcity 3000 is a great game.

[Padmewan]

HalfLotus:

As a newcomer to Civ (I played SMAC before) I think the resources thing is great, and very realistic. Think about the Persian Gulf War... how important is oil to our national security again?

[Quurgoth]

One word: D-I-P-L-O-M-A-C-Y.

Trade those precious techs. Trade gold/turn. Trade lump sums.

Better yet, make sure you've got good relationships with at least a couple civs throughout the game... because odds are, at some point, you'll need them.

I'm without rubber in my current game, and it's costing me a precious tech every 20 turns to keep myself rubberized. It's a great feature, IMO.

[vmxa1]

It can be very debilitating if you fail to have the required resource, but it adds a lot of fun and strategy. Trying to scheme of a way to get that Oil or whatever you need makes it more intense. I had a game where I had no oil and had just finished a war. I did not want to go back to war and I wanted to be able to upgrade to mech inf. I studied the map and tried to come up with a trade, no dice. Then it hit me. I could scurry a few infantry to this open spot and fort them, send a few workers and make a road. Send calv past them and do it again and get a settler created and drop it in a spot that over lapped their city and an oil field was now in my border. I rushed (cash) a temple and expanded and another well came into my realm. No fighting was required. I was able to upgrade and then make tanks. This was very rewarding to me, I used my head for something other than banging on the table. This was done on a new land mass that I had just a few cities, so exploiting those gaps was great, no stepping on to any ones kingdom, no threats.

[jbrians]

Re: My Rant about Strategic Resources

Originally posted by pcasey
I don't like strategic resources at all. They strike me as nothing more than a delibrate game mechanic to force players into mid to late game wars.

Strategic resources are the single greatest innovation from Civ2 -> Civ3.
They do cause conflict late in the game (not necessarily war), but that makes the end-game much less boring.
-Brian

[Bad Ax]

I think the major problem with the resources is not in their existance, but rather in their implementation. I agree with pcasey here. The resources, and the artificial method of their placement, makes true pacifism impossible. Additionally, at lower scalar difficulty levels (where human far outstrides AI in tech -- this is chieftain for some, monarch for others), the resource system makes the game frustrating and all but unplayable. Why?

1) Resources have too few instantiations. They don't appear nearly frequently enough in the game to even simulate the real world.

2) Resources cluster. This is obvious to anyone who looks at a map, especially for luxury resources. However, I have far too often seen 4-5 iron or coal within a 3-square radius.

As a result, if you gain a tech advantage which is dependent on a given resource for its benefits, you often have to do without because the resource lies in somebody else's territory. This means you have to either go to war over it, or surrender your tech lead by giving an enemy knowledge so that he can trade the resource with you. Only, because of the rampant AI tech trade, that all nations will rapidly gain the technology. Thus there is NO advantage in gaining a tech lead unless you are also willing to kill people.

Even on a philosophical level, this is confusing... how does a nation develop steam power without a source of coal, or iron working without a source of iron? How can we develop refining technology when we don't have oil? Furthermore, if we need these things, why can't we just steal them from primitive civs? Offer to take some of that worthless black rock off their hands...

The solution to these problems is to increase instantiation and dispersion. This introduces its own set of problems, however, in that if everyone has a resource, there's no point to implementing them at all. That's why I think the resource implementation would be improved by production caps. If you have an iron source, that's great, but you can only be building 5 units or structures that require iron in any given turn. If you gain access to a second source, then you can build 10. Similarly for all the strategic resources.

This implementation would keep 4Xers like pcasey happy, because they'd have access to the resources they need without having to resort to bloodshed. At the same time, it keeps the resource trade alive, because you might want a few extra horses to build up knights for your next attack, and so you'd trade to help build your military. I think this would keep resources a fun and exciting part of gameplay without making them a source of endless frustration.

Additionally, perhaps it would be appropriate to introduce a new tech called Geology that allows you to see the geological resources (coal, aluminum, maybe oil) before you need them (put it near physics in the middle ages). Iron deposits should be visible with bronze working (metal prospectors run across some of the stuff), and uranium should be visible with atomic theory.

[Allemand]

Some great ideas, Bad Ax.

[9 ECAC Titles]

> If you have an iron source, that's great, but you can only be building 5 units or structures that require iron in any given turn. If you gain access to a second source, then you can build 10. Similarly for all the strategic resources.

Very good idea. This way, trading a resource would be a more complex calculation.

[Matthevv]

Too complex for the AI to do well methinks :-)

What I like about the resources is that because you will probably have to trade for them at some point, you need to have good relations with the other Civs. Also every game plays differently, because you have different resource availability, and have to respond appropriately. If that means that you can't define an algorithm for always winning the game, then that is good.

[Pyrodrew]

I agree with Quurgoth, Matthev, jbrians, vmax1, & Padmewan... resources are FINE. Use the editor if you more. I agree the clump size should be adjusted better for the smaller maps tho.

[Bad Ax]

I completely disagree that resources as implemented make for a more peaceful game. This is only true if the AI is your equal or better in tech, AND you've got something other than your soul to mortgage for them. As implemented, they offer a great opportunity to create serious imbalances, particularly if you're on a resource-poor continent or island in the early to mid game. Even worse, the present implementation is the very reason why we have to put up with a combat system that allows spearmen to beat tanks, just so the unit imbalances don't prove fatal in every game. Spearmen *have* to have a chance against tanks or cavalry, so that a player stuck in a spot without oil or iron can survive through the game.

Independent of this point, the present implementation simply isn't realistic, so I think production caps on resource-dependent units makes sense.

[vmxa1]

Why does the player "stuck" have to survive? Is it not the case that countries without resources suck and suffer and even go out of existence? If one is so unfortunate as to have bad lands and few resources they should die off. Spearmen should not be allowed to let you get by for a long period of time. Thems the breaks.

[Bad Ax]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Why does the player "stuck" have to survive? Is it not the case that countries without resources suck and suffer and even go out of existence? If one is so unfortunate as to have bad lands and few resources they should die off. Spearmen should not be allowed to let you get by for a long period of time. Thems the breaks.

It's my belief that every time you play a game, you should have a fair chance to win. The programmers and retailers believe this too, because people *will not* play a game if they do not believe that *regardless* of the random elements that go into the game they have a reasonable shot at beating it. That's why this implementation sucks. If you start a game on an island, even with good land for production and growth, and your only visible neighbor has even one iron resource and one horse, it can still build 20 knights and kill you halfway through the medieval era. And it will, because the AI thinks nothing of breaking treaties if it's on equal or better footing than you. The programmers fixed this problem by making all units after the ancient era underpowered (crappy response) instead of by increasing resource availability and working out resource limitations in another way (better, more realistic response).

[Allemand]

I was a little dismayed when I saw how the strategic resources had been implemented. There is no way to buy them, you have to barter and then the agreement is too short. It would be better to put a price (in gold) on them and have it fluctuate with supply and demand. More difficult to implement, especially since demand would have to be measured. There would also have to be an inflation factor, because some players like to hoard their gold - the more gold you have, the higher the price, exponentially. Well, this won't be implemented.

I like the idea of having more resource squares, especially on the larger maps, but deplete them when heavy usage occurs. Again, measurements are needed.