Metal??

When it actually spawn in the map generation and/or you are lucky in your Adventure research' spawns.

Lately initial resource spawns seem to be quite scarce. There used to me more stuff in the maps.

You can always pick Naturalist for your custom Sovereign and start with an iron deposit.

After several dozen games through the last few patches, there seems to a hierarchy to resource node spawns.

1. Food.

2. Materials.

3. Shards.

3. Tech.

4. Diplomatic Capital

5. Metal.

5. Crystal.

5. Mounts.

6. Gold.

It also seems like about 65 to 75% of resources end up in clusters, the rest are single free floaters. I'm playing on GIANORMOUS maps though, so it may account for the map size when it chooses how many nodes to spawn.

One would say that metal should be more important than Diplomatic Capital or Tech.

Pretty lame that I researched that Diplomacy spider spawn tech and it didn't spawn anything, of if it did, I don't know where.  Super glad I chose that tech.

Can you increase resource spawns by researching something under quest?  What do you need to research to get more metal?

I don't think Crystals get spawned without the Tech research. Been a few games now. where without the Tech, no crystals, thus no advanced armored troops...

In my current Game i had 3 Food Tiles (5 food each) 1 Tech 1 Crystal right next to my starting position (is 1.09u).

But there wasnt any Metal or Gold on the Map until the tech started to kick in and spawned them (usaly just outside your own into the enemy terretory (or vise versa)

i don't mind not being able to get metal some of the time; you can build pretty decent archers and light infantry without it. and there are always (or should be) the alternatives of recruiting monsters and using summons instead. however, in my case i almost always have access to ventri metal before a real war gets started. symptomatic of one of my biggest gripes with the game: having to research the entire tech tree before the game really gets going.

Bards provide a bonus to Metal, which in turn increases your population spawn rate since groupies, rabid fans, etc. flock to your empire to hear their Minstrations.

Oh, wait, that's another game...

In my games, i run across decent food, a single gold mine per map, tons and tons of crystal, and no metal or mounts, ever. So its been solid leather and pointy sticks for a couple games now. Although i always go leather and pointy sticks anyway, but still. Metal and mounts should be rare, but not that rare. After the whole world is settled and everyone is done with thei tech tree, there should be at least ONE metal mine, somewhere on the map.

I'd like to see some smart resource node distribution during map generation... (this should have been done for the launch of the game, but to make good, do it for 1.1 and I'll be a happy gamer.)

Materials seems to be wood and other non-metallic production materials so it makes sense to me to place these node near or in Forrests.

Metal nodes should mostly be placed in or near mountains mostly and to some lesser extent hills.  (Where mines usually get built)

Quarries inear Hills and Mountains.

Crystal in caves , caves could be in mountains, Hills, shore lines, and im not that familiar with deserts and plains so I don't know if those make sense.

Fertile land in nondesert plains, in the fringe between swamp and plains or swamp and hills or swamp and deserts.

Mount nodes - wild mounts need food so it makes sense to only place mount nodes near were wild mounts could feed on wild growth (ie. Fertile nodes)

Shards, Tech, arcane, Diplo Capital nodes I consider to be ruins that get rehabilitated, so that could be placed without terrain restriction.

I don't know does any of this make sense to anyone else?

Lastly please stop clumping nodes and distribute them more which by itself would encourage more conflict.  Today in the real world, most conflict between nations is more about natural resources than any difference in ideological belief systems, mostly for propaganda purpose those beliefs are spouted to sell the moral value of attacking someone to take something but the reason to attack is really that something that is taken. 

It is worth it to me to take the trait that guarantees a mine nearby.

It's a waste of a pick, but you have to do it.

If you don't randomize your resouces, the map designers did a good job at placing resources in interesting and sensible locations, I think.  Then you don't end up with no food and three lost libraries,

I think metal needs to be easier to find as well.  All of the game art shows warriors in beautiful, shiny armor, wielding shiny swords.  This is supposed to be a high fantasy war game, not a survivalist game.

In other words, I want to see more of this:

And less of this:

Oh I think it spawned in my current game, thank you for your time spent researching that tech!

Haha, well at least someone got some use out of my time and energy.

darn that internet linked beta - who knew what bugs it could cause...