Ok it bugs me every game. The amount of coal on the map is always so ridiculously disproportionate to the amount of coal on the planet.[URL="http://coal.ca/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&It emid=56"]
I don't know how to balance this... it's not my job, but oil is fricken EVERYWHERE and I have to beat my neighbor silly for like 3 scraps of coal...
I concur. Coal is ridiculously common, hence why it was so prolifically used in the industrial revolution.Originally Posted by Waez
Well, I only use it for Factories in my main cities, so 1 deposit of 7 coals is enough for a game. The ironclad is pretty useless at the moment. I hop some of the new units require coal...
The problem is, if you have coal, you always have too much. Ironclads are worthless, making Factories the only relevant item that uses coal. Even so, there are no production penalties to losing you coal, so you can cheat the system by trading for all of your coal, build up factories, and then not care when all the coal goes away. I think it would make a lot more sense if coal was distributed more across the world, but in slightly less quantities.
I've always worked on the assumption that the factories don't work anymore when coal isn't available, like units can't fight properly when their resource isn't there any more. Is that wrong? Hmm, this offers whole new perspectives, cool.
In reality coal was crucial in economic development and a key ingredient of the industrial revolution. I wish the game reflected that historical reality. In other words coal should give real benefits that would last into the modern era i.e China is using plenty of coal at the moment and coal is the main source for their energy over there. Question is how can you implement this in the game?
@tfordp yes they do work even if you don't have coal, you just need to have it while you are building the factories.
I think the game would be more interesting if all resources had a cap of 5 and average of 3.5 per tile so it would be 2 to 5 per tile. having so many of the tiles being 5,6 or even 7 of that resource takes a lot of the fun out of trying to expand for resources.
I get the impression that the amount of coal compared to the amount of oil differs from map to map but is never balanced... well, can live with that. It's kinda challenge to handle the available resources...
Definitely coal needs to be more useful. A while back I suggested a train station building that also required coal. It should be a strategic resource that, instead of being used to build units, helps build infrastructure.
Perhaps after the naval overhaul, ironclads will be useful, but unless they add other coal-eating units, that will still be the most worthless resource...
While we're on the subject of resources, I agree coal is so rare that I can have conquered an entire continent and have only one vein (granted it's usually 4-6). While it certainly does feel like a strategic resource, the rarity of it makes competition that much harder if it's, say, directly in the middle of another civ.
For early-late game, factories are absolutely required for your major cities so coal becomes an indirect asset to military production.
On the other hand, older resources such as iron and horses seem to, for whatever reason, lose their use in later eras. While I'm not in favor, per se, of requiring iron or horses for later use, I would like to see perhaps a special bonus.
For instance, once per turn you may deplete one product of iron for a hurry up production of some building. Depleting one horse allows a unit to move twice its movement within friendly territory for one turn. etc, etc.
I'm surpised about the factory still working after losing coal. I had assumed this wasn't the case.
In that case, I would like that to be brought into the game. Factories shouldn't work if you don't have coal to run them, at least in the industrial age. Maybe in the modern age they can run off other resources.
And yes it is a shame iron becomes worthless almost instantaneously in the industrial age. I would like to see that being necessary for certain infrastructure and units or buildings. For instance, railroads? maybe it could use up 1 iron for each connection between cities?
Actually, I just saw the flaw in that plan...(people could build railroads all around their country without connecting cities and thereby retain the quick movement for 0 iron).
I don't know, it just seems iron should remain relevant throughout the game. Am I wrong? Am I wrong?!
There had been talk before of modern units requiring iron in addition to other resources. Destoryers, Battleships, Submarines all require large quantities of steel. Tanks, fighter planes and bombers... The issue is modern mining practices made it pretty difficult to come into a shortage of iron. The only iron shortage I know about in the WW2 era is China, when they were encouraging citizens to melt down whatever they had into pig iron for the war effort. There's just so much of the stuff all around the world people argue its disingenuous to demand Iron strategically in the Industrial age.
They're still better-than-average tiles for the rest of the game. And horses give you Stables and Circuses. Iron gives you Forges... There's benefits. It's just weird looking at your stock of 60 horses and 40 iron and thinking how worthless it is.
My thoughts exactly. I was thinking that the coal requirement for train stations would become nil once electronics is introduced. I also feel like the timing of railroads is a little late in the game. Having destroyers, stock markets and infantry on the same level doesn't quite balance right. The first part of the industrial era needs work. Hence the new "Great War Era" or the 20th century era, whatever it is going to be called, is going to be a really good thing.
It would be fine in my opinion if later buildings and units required strategic resources in a slightly more complicated way. You have the whole Ancient, Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Eras to get comfortable with how they work. Why not require them more aggressively in the late game?
Radio Tower = 1 Iron
Factory = 1 Coal
Battleship, Tank, et. al. = 1 Iron, 1 Oil
Train Station = 1 Iron, 1 Coal
Airport = 1 Oil, 1 Aluminum
You could suggest the Train Station require Aluminum, not Coal, after Electricity's teched, but that's too weird. What it is is what it is, and you wouldn't want players to have to keep track of changing costs for buildings they already built.
Approaching the issue from the other direction, just get rid of coal. I mean, if the gist of the OP is that coal is dirt common (pun intended), and we don't actually need it for anything as a strategic resource, then just let cities build factories without it.
Steve you make a real good point, and they've gotta actually DO something with Coal, or drop it from the game. Although considering what coal could become, and the fact that they're adding a Colonial Era... I think the usefulness of Coal should be expanded. I'd REALLY enjoy a train station building.
Given the state of the game right now, SteveG's idea sounds like the best option to me, yeah. Make ironclads use, gasp, iron! You've still got cavalry using horses, but your longswordsman have probably become riflemen. This helps balance Scientific Method against the other end-of-Ren techs too, I think. It feels a little strong to me as-is.
But of course, Zeph's right that all bets are off on how it'll look post-expansion.
Another thing I thought of is that if Factory doesn't require a resource, it's a VERY VERY good building you can build without any kind of restraints. All other buildings like it have some kind of limiting factor:
Water Mill and Hydro Plant requires River, Nuclear Plant requires Uranium, Solar Plant requires Desert, Forge requires Iron, Windmill requires no Hills, Forge requires Iron, Stables requires Horses, Sheep or Cows...
The only Production building that doesn't have some kind of restriction is the Workshop. It seems this is intentional so you cannot build whatever you like within a handful of turns. Without Coal, Factory would have to be nerfed.
Few main problems i have with the resources in this game.
1 is the limitations of only 6 strategic resources. Really?! Maybe we will see more with expansion but i doubt it.
2 is they dont change over time. Early years horses where more strategic, but today they are more luxury.
3 is the resource units and the count by which the devs decided to use. I would have preferred having to extract the resources, and store the resource and then use them when i saw fit. once the mine is out of resources then it closes.
4 resources like steel should be in the game. steel isnt mined but is by combining coal and iron. have a new building "Steel Mill".
To me it is just too simple and coal is a complete waste. As far as Ironclads they didnt even play a big part of history, so i really dont know why they are in the game. I do use them though as i build them and then upgrade to Battleship asap, so i can get 6-7 battleships out quickly. Other than that no use!
I did like having copper in civ 4 to have to mine. Other than that though, what type of "strategic" resource would be put in?
Steel? Maybe, it doesn't seem that much different than iron to be honest.
The extracting/storage of resources sounds like starcraft, which would be fine but one would have to actively mine (or work) a resource to get it, and resources can generally be too far from any city to mine.
Well I wanted an entirely different system that the one we have now. Much like CtoP where tile upgrades were progressive; so basically mines, farms, fishers, etc... where each were able to be upgraded through time from basic to advanced. Maybe with basic you get 2 units of resources per mine per turn added to your stock pile and maybe advanced be like 10, whatever. I just had a different way to do it, which would have been a little more realistic.
That's not a bad idea, sort of like how cIV you could build a small hamlet which would grow as it was worked. I wonder why they took that concept out.
me too. i dont like how new cities can be just as productive as old ones once they get their population up.
I guess they have the knowledge of efficiencies learned from the older cities.
If a city has some kind of benefit to production from being old, how do we explain the US? This is an over-simplification, but a city is as productive as its population and infrastructure. It doesn't matter how long it took you to come about them.
Think so? Have you ever really not built a factory due to lack of coal? I can't say I have. Even if I don't have coal, it's not hard to get it from someone else. The real limiting factor is maintenance. Building a factory in a city that isn't production-oriented is simply a waste of money.
But there is another way to approach this. If coal were a bit more common, then factories could be re-designed to work with coal the same way stables synergize with horses and forges synergize with iron. Give a smaller base benefit, and then an extra benefit for each source of coal near the city.
Last edited by steveg700; 03-26-2012 at 08:56 AM.
Hi,
my mod Petroleum is giving coal a boost with Coal-to-Liquid factories. I didn't change the number of deposits though...
Check it out!
Many great posts in this thread, can't quote them all, but I have a few things I would like to share.
About Coal
I have frequently been in the position of not having enough coal. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but it happens regularly. Thankfully, most of the time I will have access to at least some coal throw CS. And [u]I'm glad it is like that[/i]. Anybody remember in Civ4 how you could sometimes (often!) play a game all the way up to Industrial era only to have NO coal in sight, and then be completely doomed (or at least completely stalled, which ruined the game)? That happened to me a lot, so I'm glad of the new balance. In fact I have to say that I very rarely have Coal in surplus, most games I find my number of cities at least matches the number of Coal I have.
About Iron and the number of tactical ressources
I would like more tactical ressources - and I would like alternate tactical ressources. For instance Copper vs. Iron. In Civ4, Copper was necessary to build some ancient era units while Iron was necessary for others. Now, there is only Iron, which means that without Iron you are seriously screwed. In fact, for me Iron is the new Coal: Every second game or so, I find myself without Iron. Having no Iron is pretty critical when the neighbor comes towards you with Swordmen and Catapult. WTF why can't I even build a Catapult without Iron!?
What makes the Iron situation worse is that you have to spend time and science to trudge through other sciences like Steel and the one after that (can't remember the name) which gives you no benefit when you haven't got Iron. That's like penalizing you double or even triple, not only did you waste you time researching Iron Working, you also can't skip Steal and go directly for Musketman. That's a blatant flaw in the science tree, and I think that techs that has as their only benefit a unit that requires a tactical ressource should be side-branches, i.e. can be skipped. Steal is one of them, the one that gives you the Lancer is another (complete waste of time in most situations).
And there are other tactical ressources one could come up with. Apart from Copper, Salpeter for Gunpowder was there back in Civ3, Oil should definitely work in Factories also. Some of the Luxury ressources can double for tactical also - Whales to give oil, Elefants as mounts.
About ressource and map multistep development
The Civ4 towns that developed over time is one of the things I really miss, and would like to have the same with farms, mines, etc. The claim that city productivity developing over time contradicts with the US is untrue, the development took a number of turns (something like 10+10+20 or whatever), and since in modern times a turn is only one or a few years, that is no contradiction with US. Most of US was settled several hundred years ago, with plenty of time to develop into late stages.
Also, instead of some structures just having increased effect with time, one should actively upgrade them. Just like Roads need to be upgraded into Railroads, Irrigation could be upgraded into real farms, and Mines could be upgraded to produce new and better ressources when new techs came along.
Special ressources and health
Someone also brought this up recently, but I really miss the mechanism where special ressources contributed more than just a bonus food/ore/gold, but where Sheep, Wheet and Rice etc. also gave national health and could be traded. Special ressources are so dull currently, there is a great Mod which makes them tradable and give national benefits, but since the stupid thing that you can't earn achievements when playing with Mods, that gives me the dilemma between the two (and currently I choose no Mods) so I would really like to see this an official part of game.
After reading all these post it seems to me that resources like iron, coal, horses and oil really need to be in two different categories. Resources that you need to create a unit and resources you need to operate them. For example, a swordsman requires 1 iron to build. But once built it should not require anything to use. However a destroyer currently requires 1 oil to build. But in actuality it should require iron or steel to build and oil to operate or use. So this leads to this interesting concept that would require a complete rework of how resources are used.
Resources like horses and iron would become resources that produce those resources each turn. These are then stored until they are used to create a unit that uses them. However each city would have a max storage which could be increased with a wherehouse. Once the wherehouse is full, you can not store any more until you use the resources to build a unit. Units would obviously require more horse/iron to build. But once built they would function at 100% even if you lost that resource later.
As for coal and oil. Units like the Destroyer would require steel to build but would require 1 oil each turn to use. If you had 10 destroyers that you had built but then later lost the oil required to use them, they would simply not be usable. You could not attack with them but you could move them at half their normal speed. The first unit to lose the use of oil would be the most recent one built. The last one to lose would be the first one you built.
This would add a whole new layer to the resources. You could then combine iron and silver to make steel. While silver still increases happiness it would also create that specific number of resources. So a silver mine that produces 4 silver each turn would create 40 in 10 turns. You could then combine 10 silver and 10 iron to create 10 steel. Once again you would need to have enough storage for these resources. Building a destroyer would take lets say 30 steel to build but 1 oil to use. You could also store the excess oil that is not used each turn. For example you are producing 10 oil each turn. You have 7 destoyers. You would then be storing 3 oil each turn. You would be able to prioritize what resouces have the highest priority just in case you run out of storage space.
This now adds another layer to ranged attacks. You could then target the storage of resources over the attacking of the actual city. Or target the cities military base where they store their bombers and jets. You could choose what part of the city you want to target your air attack on.
Let me stop you right there. First, a Swordsman unit is not meant to represent the same platoon of men marching around your Civ. If you notice the year ticker, one Swordsmen could be in operation for thousands of years game-time. Obviously these aren't the same men, or the same iron swords. They're "using" 1 Iron in that so much of the iron your Civ can regularly produce must go to this platoon of thousands of trained soldiers in order to keep them stocked with well-maintained weaponry.
Second, if you make the Strategic Resources system too complicated, players won't be able to tell when they can produce what, and why. It'll be harder to see what's making units go into resource deficit as well. This is why 1 unit always only requires 1 stock of a single type of resource (the exception being the GDR which takes 2 Uranium). It's a very simple system, which is why it's a good system.
Third, mixing strategic resources and luxures? There can be entire continents completely devoid of Silver, disallowing any Civ from even acquiring it by trade until they meet the Civs that do have it.
Next you'll be telling me we should have to keep track of how many bullets our Riflemen have with them. This is why supply lines aren't in the game. It's just too messy and too complicated to keep track of. The game is already plenty complicated as it is.
Don't ICBM's take two as well?
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