No horses AND no iron

[zxcvbob]

and none as far as I've explored; just entering the Renaissance era. Most the land near my cities is hills and forests, so that doesn't bode well for oil, coal, etc either. I've never played a game with such sparse strategic resources. (I"m pretty sure I have "strategic balance" selected
)
I'm playing Ramses and I settled on marble, so with all those mines and lumbermills I have been really cranking out the wonders; I could probably build *all* of them if I just focused on that. But I can't upgrade my military, and the barbarians are getting stronger. Guess I better rush to gunpowder.

I'm ready to settle a 3rd city, but there's no place to put it to do any good. It's kind of silly to complete Liberty (plus half of Honor and some Commerce) and just have 2 cities.

This is a weird one.

[mss73055]

It happens at times. I never had iron when playing as Rome. And I've seen a few maps without coal AT ALL.

[TheGaleRider]

Hmm, the Forests might give some Coal, and I have seen Oil on Grasslands. But I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be much desert (considering you started as Egypt, but that's just a start bias)

I've had a continent with no Uranium, and my continent was a HUGE one. I was Japan and I decided to take over America and the Ottomans. I was expecting some Uranium, but no, it's over at Rome on the other continent (which was considerably smaller) and there's like 40 Uranium over there. WTH. Of course, I have an infinite amount of strategic resources other than Uranium.

[Burbot]

It's fairly common to start without access to certain strategics. Pretty rare to not get either iron or horses. I've had decent sized empires with zero oil or coal quite a few times. All of the uranium on a recent map was in a 10 hex radius (made it easy to lock down the nukes).

Iron and horse units can easily be skipped. Pikemen do just fine until gunpowder. Trading and CS alliances can fill the void if you really want some UUs. Conquering is always an option. I took a CS since they had 10 oil and I had none in a recent game.

I like the various situations and scenarios that can arise with random strategics so I prefer standard settings. Though I'm always irked at first when I research iron and not a single node appears. Then I get over it and figure out how I can solve the puzzle. I feel your pain :)

As far as the third city goes. Been there many times, choose an opener and find it isn't optimal as the game progresses. May be more beneficial to grab some Tradition policies if nothing better is available. Maybe the GP is worth it. I've had plenty of games with a Tradition/Liberty mix without closing either.

Weird games are some of the best and can be the most satisfying wins. Overcome adversity.

[Twelvefield]

You could always restart... but then you'll always have it in the back of your mind that you could have finished that crazy map... but then you can! You saved the game! You could come back to it later, after you've had some time to consider your strategy.

Frankly, I like it that Civ will continue to throw new things into the mix, even after dozens of plays. Hundreds of plays (I'm nowhere near that), I imagine there's less unique-ness, but then there will be DLC or a new game by that time.

[madkono]

completed one game, where the only aluminum i had, was from cs's!!!

[zxcvbob]

I'm going to play this out and see where it goes. I founded that 3rd city on the coast next to some crabs. Haven't connected it with a road yet; gonna wait until the population grows a bit. I'm using internal trade routes to send food to my capital and production to my other cities.

My main army is pikes, landsknechts, and crossbows. I just finished gunpowder and built a musket. Chariots are not much good in the hills. I was hoping to upgrade them to knights, but can't do that until I find some horses somewhere. Might keep them just for city garrisons.

Whats-her-name from Austria (the only civ I've met; Mesopotamia map does not lend itself to exploration) has been mocking me about the size of my kingdom. Demographics say I'm in 6th place for land area. I may start putting little cities all over the place just to fill up my corner of the map. Happiness shouldn't be a problem, I've built several happy wonders, and I can put a burial tomb and a pagoda in each one. (I should probably build Oxford first...)

Austria settled on a 1-tile island just off the coast. I wondered why, since on the coast was a better spot. I figured it out pretty quick; she bought a line of tiles all the way across and cut off my access to the Mediterranean Sea. She won't swap open borders, so I'll probably just have to kill her, LOL

[X-Calibur]

hmmm

[5n4k3d0cToR]

Currently playing as Japan, plenty of resources around, but no oil whatsoever. Luckily 'zero' doesnt require oil...thank f*** for that.

[Re𝕯isia]

Right now I only have 2 iron 0 horses 18 coal 4 alluminium. With over 8 cities stretching a great number of large islands. But my opponents have a vast ammount of resources. I do seem to have a lot of fish though arround my cities.

[zxcvbob]

I went back and checked; I selected "strategic balance" before I picked the map. That option is not available for the Mesopotamia map so selecting the map disabled it.

It's odd that I didn't start closer to the desert -- like maybe in actual Egypt :eyeroll: I'm way up in northern Greece or maybe Albania.

There is a hostile CS that has iron and cotton. I normally try to befriend/ally CS's, but I might have to make an exception. Their city defense is really strong tho', 40 something (that's a lot for this early in the game)

[zxcvbob]

I stole that iron and cotton from the CS by using a Great General, and that let me upgrade my galleass to a frigate and to build another frigate (they are both battleships now.) Eventually I got 2 horses from somewhere -- probably a gift from another CS. I really have no idea where they came from, but they let me upgrade my war chariot to a knight. Now it's a tank. I should see if any of my pikes have enough promotions to make a good helicopter someday, and get them upgraded to AT-guns before those horses disappear again.

I DoW'd Austria and took those 2 cities that were cutting off my access to the sea. I only needed one, but it went so well I kept going. Eventually took *all* of her cities; the last one had the only aluminum on the map.

Portugal discovered me on the very turn that i captured Vienna, so now Maria hates me. The other 2 civs that I've met are Attilla and Genghis, so they were fine with it.

There is half of the map, inaccessible from the sea, that I haven't explored yet, and a tank is the only way to do that at this point. I havent met 2 tiny weak civs yet (they must be stuck in the far corners and being constantly overrun by barbarians), but in a way that's good because I don't have to mess with the World Congress. Killing barbarians and stealing CS's away from Portugal just to torment Maria keeps me pretty busy. :-) And now she has rebels to deal with too.

I have so much gold I literally do not know what to do with it. And even with 5 cities and 6 puppets (some of the puppets are bigger than my capital) my happiness is about 60.

There's an achievement for winning a diplomatic victory without ever having hosted the UN isn't there? I could totally do that in this game if the clock doesn't run out first.

tl;dr version: It's been an interesting game, but I'm running away with it now. No competition at all from the AI's at this point.

[Mortal Wombat]

its pretty common situation - you have to deal with the fact you wont have all strategic resources once you reveal them. just focus your research to units that dont require it and move on, its not that bad. or settle/conquer the land you desire :)

iron and horses arent a huge deal (just build pikes and xbows), the worst not-to-have is probably coal as you cant build factories without it. oil is also bad, but you can always rely on arties and infantry, and aluminium is easy to get via tech. uranium is quite nice and you really need it when your neighbour has it :)

[zxcvbob]

I expect to not have iron or coal -- but usually there is some available *somewhere* and I just have to send a settler out to claim it. The complete lack of horses was just weird. (the horses were all on the totally opposite end of the map, where Attila settled.

One reason I took Autocracy instead of Freedom was for "Third Alternative". Double strategic resources, and +5 food in the capital (Thebes was in the hills with almost no food except what I sent in by caravan)

BTW, do you have to have aluminum already to build a recycling plant? Or will a recycling plant produce aluminum out of thin air? I have plenty of AL now, just curious.

[Burbot]

I believe they made aluminum the exception because it is required for the space victory. Some players go tall and peaceful for space races. Requiring late game conquests to gain access would tend to ruin that playstyle.

You don't need access to aluminum to build the recycling plant. They are fairly expensive and do not provide much. But a small empire with just a few cities could build some and have enough for space parts.

I don't care for buildable resources myself, since it kind of removes the strategic layer of resources. But I can understand why the devs decided to include the recyclers.

[zxcvbob]

I just recently figured out that you only need 1 aluminum to build the spaceship -- but you can only build 1 piece at a time that way. I thought you needed 6 or 7. (You get the AL back when you add each part to the ship; I thought they were gone for good)