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**opaque** · January 21, 2002, 16:04

I think Rubber is a problem because most industrial units are not available without it. Oil is often very scarce and makes a lot of modern units impossible to build, such as tanks. Oil also runs out very quickly.

**Willem** · January 21, 2002, 16:25

Originally posted by opaque
I think Rubber is a problem because most industrial units are not available without it. Oil is often very scarce and makes a lot of modern units impossible to build, such as tanks. Oil also runs out very quickly.

Unless you change the numbers in the Editor. It can be set so that it never runs out if you want to. I think this whole resource thing should be a preference that people can set beforehand. I don't mind having to build a colony half way across the continent, but it bugs me all to hell if there's none there at all, or I have the only one disappear when I just finish getting into production. So I tend to set my Appearance/Disappearance ratios a little higher than usual.

**opaque** · January 21, 2002, 16:58

Unless you change the numbers in the Editor. It can be set so that it never runs out if you want to.

I haven't messed about with the editor much but if that is possible i'll probably look into it. Thanks.

**Willem** · January 21, 2002, 17:09

Originally posted by opaque

I haven't messed about with the editor much but if that is possible i'll probably look into it. Thanks.

There's a maximum number of 300 for the appearance of a resource. As the help screen mentions, a number of 160 would mean that in an 8 player game, there would be two resources for each player, so 300 would be not quite 4 each. The disappearance of it is based on a probablity for each turn, e.g. a 1 in 1000 chance that it will disappear on each turn, or a 1 in 400 chance etc. If the number is 0, the resource won't disappear at all.

**Arrian** · January 21, 2002, 17:14

2 coal on a normal sized map? Wow. What other settings did you use (temp/humidity/age)? I've never seen it be THAT rare.

I have seen maps with no gems. Just curious, because I have seen many posts discussing maps with very little or even no coal, or some other resource, but have never seen it myself (which I'm happy about).

-Arrian

**Willem** · January 21, 2002, 17:31

Originally posted by Arrian
2 coal on a normal sized map? Wow. What other settings did you use (temp/humidity/age)? I've never seen it be THAT rare.

I have seen maps with no gems. Just curious, because I have seen many posts discussing maps with very little or even no coal, or some other resource, but have never seen it myself (which I'm happy about).

-Arrian

No, no, if the number is 160, then it's 2 per player for 8 civs, so 16 in total. But Coal has a default number of 120, so that's probably about 12 to 14 resources in total, or something like that. Theoretically.

As for the settings you mention, that's different than the Editor settings. And all the luxury resources have appearance numbers of 0, which means that they're randomly placed. You might have none, you might have a whole bunch.

**Random Passerby** · January 21, 2002, 17:42

Luxuries are also different from strategic resources in that they're distributed by continent; on a "continent" map layout, you'll typically see 3 or 4 of the 8 luxuries on the continent(s) of one hemisphere, another 3 or 4 on the continent(s) of the other hemisphere, and then sometimes there'll be a civ or two that started on their own smaller continent that will have one luxury type all their own. Theoretically, some luxuries might be missing because the continent they were picked for was too small or didn't have enough of the right terrain to appear, and since gems are pretty picky as to what terrain they can appear on it stands to reason that they'd be more likely to not show up.

**RickBlaine** · January 21, 2002, 17:54

I was playing a game a while back and got steam power, which is a biggie for me since I love RRs.... And was unable to find a single coal deposit on the entire planet (large map, default settings), even after exchanging world maps with all 7 other civs. Well, there were a few black spots midocean, as well as a chunk of a moderate sized island, but even if one or two deposits showed up there, this seemed to be extreme. Time to reload

**Lawrence of Arabia** · January 21, 2002, 18:52

For instance, if there had been only one source of coal on the map – and it was on another continent – then I’d be pretty cheesed off after playing hours and hours.

Hmm That happened to me. Huge Map, 10 civs. Ive gotten into the Indsutrial age. I Had 1 Iron, 2 Horses, 1 Saltpeter, and some luxieries. Theres only 2 coal in the whole world, and other civs have them and are using them. So i trade electricity for coal. But then my iron resource disappears. There goes my Frigates. Then the saltpeter disappears. There goes my Cavalry. Then the Aztec dont want to trade anymore, not even Iron. There goes my railroads.

Sucks

But then again, I had a good first 5600 yrs with my dominance in resources. Of course, since all the nearby civs have impis and Jag Warriors, they dint exactly need thos resources.

**bogatir** · January 21, 2002, 19:26

My current game with just 2 coal tiles is a standard map with default settings.

I’ve played a game in which oil was fairly scarce (4 tiles on the map), but I’m especially curious about games folks have played like my current game – an extremely scarce ‘trigger’ resource like coal, oil or rubber. Especially since those resources appear after quite a bit of gameplay, when you’ve established something of a ‘style’ (like culture-building or tech-pushing) for the current game that having to duke it out for resources might seriously mess up.

I’d never seen fewer than 4 tiles of anything until this game. A couple of games back I had to fight a couple of wars (when otherwise I was trying to be all neighborly) to get my hands on oil that the AI wouldn’t part with. But I was in a sort of ‘stomp first, settle later’ mode in that game, so it wasn’t any disruption to my evil plans.

Actually, I’m also going to be interested to see what the AI does if no more coal pops up anytime soon that it can get its hands on. I’m now a one-civ coal ‘cartel’, and it’s unlikely that I’m going to be trading any coal very soon.

Have any of you played games in which you have sole control of a strategic resource like coal or oil?

Interesting stuff.

**Quokka** · January 21, 2002, 22:06

In my experience Coal has almost always been the most scarce and the quickest to run out once its tapped. In my current game(Huge, Continents, 12 Civ, Japan) with all land uncovered there are only 5 deposits on the map. I have two already, next to two captured English cities that I thought were horribly placed in the middle of jungle until the coal showed. The Romans have 1 for about 3 more turns until I get. There is one more in no man's land between the Romans and Zulu's and then the Americans have one on their continent. I traded for their coal, got it for Physics, so soon I will be the only one with Coal.
Continental Breakdown:
Large: Japan(Me), England(Dead), Rome(Going), Zululand, Egypt,
Babylon
Medium: Iriquois, Germans, Greeks
Small: China, America
Island: Russia
So you can see that even after the Americans cancel the deal in 20 years they will be the only ones that will have coal and they'll never trade it again. Has taken a lot of the fun out of this game. I won't trade it either not for the trades being offered. The Russians have a Silk monopoly but want Coal, Furs and 51/turn for their damn Silk, so they stick with pushing carts thru the mud, no RR. Same stupid requests from the others. I am at 2000+ points and Egypt is the only other one over 1000 at 1200AD. Where do they get off trying to extort someone at least as twice as strong as them?
I am going to finish it as this is my first try as Japan (they Rock) and want them in my HOF for something.

**pauli** · January 21, 2002, 23:12

the strategic resources system just doesn't work for me. i'm thinking about setting it up so nothing requres anything and just letting the strategic resources be bonus resources. ::shrug::

**Willem** · January 21, 2002, 23:52

Originally posted by pauli
the strategic resources system just doesn't work for me. i'm thinking about setting it up so nothing requres anything and just letting the strategic resources be bonus resources. ::shrug::

Well I like them, but not necessarily in the way they've done it. If each resource could only supply x number of cities, instead of one supplying your entire empire, then there would be more of them, but you would need to develop more and more sources as your empire grew. So a shortage wouldn't be crippling, as could happen now, and there'd be much more of an opportunity for trade.

**Solomyr** · January 22, 2002, 01:39

i hope i don't jinx myself, but i haven't had any of these problems. or at least i haven't noticed them. even in my most recent game (Americans, stand size, 8 civs, regent) i had plenty of resources. of course, i had killed off the persians, japanese and helped wipe out the germans for the gult of resouces i had when the game ended. altough, i must admit, it has seemed like all the other civs would like one of my resources...but they don't seem to like it when i trade them it. in some of my older games, civs didn't accept my offer to trade coal or oil...of course, i had crushed them down to a few cities

anyways, i like the idea of having each source only supply X number of cities...has anyone looked? is this possible?

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Impact of scarce strategic resources

Impact of scarce strategic resources

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