Building a Catapult

[merlyn222]

I'm a brand new noob and was unable to build a catapult. It kept saying "requires 1 iron." I had an iron mine that was producing 4 prod, and 2 gold. not sure what im doing wrong. Anybody got a clue for the clueless?

[Meisha]

if you scroll over the land with your mouse it says how much iron is on the tile, also at the top of the screen where your gold per turn and such are it tells you all the strategic resources with a symbol representing each one and how many you have of said resource. im guessing you might have used them up allready. if thats the case you will have to find another iron tile and build there as well. hope this helps

[Taythan]

It could be that you were already using the iron resources via swordsmen etc. Unlike earlier Civ's having the resource isn't enough, resources have limits.

[TheGaleRider]

Like what the others have said, you have probably used all of your available iron. Check the top of the screen and it will tell you how much strategic resources you have available. Find the one that has the iron logo (looks like an anvil) and there will be a number to the right of it. You have either used all of your iron or you have units that use iron in production queue. To get more iron, find iron resources, settle a city near them and make a mine on the iron, ally a city-state that has iron, or trade with a civ. Remember to not go under 0 iron, or all units that use iron will suffer a 50% combat penalty.

[Baneken]

On you top screen there is a list of your strategic resources these are horses, iron, coal, uranium, oil and aluminium.
You need one of these per unit or building that needs a said strategic resource.

So to build a swordman you need 1 iron per unit and to build a factory you need 1 coal per factory and so forth.
Do note that if you for any reason lose your strategic resource all of your units that require it receive immediate -50% combat penalty and your buildings stop giving their benefits.
Railroads however keep working normally even if they require at least one coal to be available for workers.

[Damsteri]

So, you are playing without expansions. They removed iron requirement for catapults in the Gods&Kings expansion. You probably used/traded all your iron and you have to learn more about handling your resources. In the vanilla game iron is very important for wars in classical ERA, because it's very hard to conquer a city without either swordsmen or catapults, and both of therm require iron. It's the reason why the iron requirement was removed from the catapults, so players can capture cities without iron.

[Ghostlight]

This confused me no end to begin. As other have said, if you have a tile producing say 3 Iron, then you can build 3 units that need Iron. At this point your Iron count will show as zero. If one of these units is killed, your Iron count will rise to 1 and you can then build another Iron-dependant unit.

[Parkimetro]

You also have to check if your tile isn't pillaged cause if it is you lose the benefits from that improvment, the same happens, for example, when you are building a circus and your Ivory tile gets pillaged, you will stop creating that building

[merlyn222]

Wow! Thanks everyone! Yes, I had only one iron mine and built a swordsman. Guess I used up the resource. just so I understand... if my mine produces 2 iron and I use it, that mine is done? Meaning I need another mine to build something else?

[Damsteri]

Iron mines have two sizes in normal settings, they provide either 2 or 6 irons. So, you should have at least 2 irons. If you have selected sparse resources from the advanced settings then those values for iron mines are 1 and 3 while abundant gives 3 and 9. There are no units that use two irons. Normally units only use one strategy resources per unit.

[BauerHaus]

The mine is "done" for now, the cost isnt a cost to create its more of an upkeep (sort of). If you find yourself with too many swordsman and really need that catapult you can kill off a swordsman and get your iron back.

Its a limiter on how many of certain era units you can use.

[FerricOxide]

I have had Iron mines produce 4 iron before...

[FerricOxide]

To merlyn: If you ever want to play multiplayer send me a friend request. I don't care if you have DLC or not, I can play without just as well.