where did all the resources go?

Probably just a bad game. Resources are rarer now but you can still find more than that in most games.

I have to say that on my Large map I encountered this issue a little bit myself.

Explore 1/4 of the map. And found very scarce resources. I was a little disappointed when I explored a little 5-6 squares that were near my most northern city, to find a cluster of 1 Fertile Land, 1 honey bee and 1 berry patch. this in a 3 X 3 square area.  If only those would have been properly scatterer it would of helped a bit.

I'm going to point back to some stuff I said in the past, there needs to be somekind of terrain related city building bonus. Or else, any city that is built with no strategic resource is flavorless. You can make it into wtvr you want and will have no particularities.

Maybe a set of interfacing modifiers. Cities built on plains have +% population, cities built next to many hills/mountains have a +% production. Cities built next to beaches/water have a +% taxes?

This would add another layer to city building and would make people seek specific landscapes to make certain types of cities. When you want to make your ultimate production town, you'll try to find mountains/hills, want a large farm city, look for plains.

As it stands everything is completely centered around strategic resource. Although I wouldn't say I'd like more of them, since they are so powerful. Adding more might just give greater imbalance on who's got the most strategic resources nearby.

 

I am happy with what seems like a reduction in the resources that are available.  I still think a slider that lets us customize the worlds we play in would be a better route.

My last game, I had one fertile land and a shard.  Everything else was really far away.  I found Carrodous within the first 10 seasons and he had fertile land, a wild wheat, and something else.  Needless to say, I made friends with him.  Didn't matter though, he eventually grew tired of me and crushed my little city.  Much more fun this way.

... for some reason i had like 3 food and 2 shards and 2 metal at my starting position. with 1 gold mine 1 food (apiary) 1 arcane lib not too far away

 

well, 1 of the metal is from custom sov. the 2nd shard is probably just luck. don't know where the other 2 food came from. (1 is the bee thingy) think they spawned.

 

strangest thing is that some nearby coastline was revealed right at the start (just the coastline bit that you can't walk on... it's clouds on either side). even stranger is that i hired 1 merchant... only to find another exact same one waiting to be hired a screen away. so i put the 2 of them in the same city

 

so... yes.. luck. and a touch of weirdness.

 

bit more exploring found me yet another apiary, 1 metal and another shard. also saw one of the empire mounts tile.

 

that said.. it crashed in turn 80.. no clue why. a few turn changes before the crash had some strange sounds.... like the sound you get when slapping down buildings. except it's like a clump of them together.

 

i doubt i explored 1/10 of the large map

I dont mind starting out with very little in resources, but as you discover the resource tech, I think more should pop up.  Normally when I do this, its basically nada that shows up.  I usually play on large maps and often just think this is the one area they changed to much.

Resources gained from researching the adventure tech line pop up the following round, typically with an exclamation. The problem is that it can show up anywhere within 15 tiles of your capital city. That's a pretty huge distance.

Typically, I don't research that line (if I can help it), until I've really explored the area around my capital and set up a few extra cities (usually at least 3 in different directions). There's usually something to grab, like a couple food producing tiles, or maybe a mine, or materials node, or another shard.

Then, that way if I research a tech and it's quite a ways out, I either already have a city nearby, or I have the resources to quickly send out a pioneer if needed.

If you research it immediately, you run the risk of not seeing where the new resource popped up, and someone else can waltz in and start popping up cities grabbing these resources you've spent research creating.

 

There is a double edged sword for having an AI close by.. sometimes your researched resources will land close to him, and he'll nab it from you. Then again, I don't remember how many times I've expanded so far that I started seeing resources popping up as the AI researched the tech and gobbled up his hard earned stuff, ha!

 

Asa test, I've started up 4 games.  all in small worlds, i havent seen more that 2-3 resouces period, and thats purly spreading out and expoiring hard core to try to cover as much ground as possible.  I did think there was too many resources previously, but now it's the complete opposite, You have to build a city 20 moves away, to get 1 resource?  Seems wrong.

Girls have picked them, every one?

 

Ahem.

 

You can probably ascribe a good chunk of what you're seeing to simple probability. I've had a few 'scorched earth' games and at least one atrocious 'cradle of civilization' since the patch. Keep playing, it'll even out.

Post v1.09e, a resource devoid world has been my unfortunate experience as well.  I've played every beta version from v.109e to v1.09w.  I've played Many test games where I'd play until I've explored about a 50 tile radius.  It was exceedingly rare for me to find more than one or two resources.  The exception being resource clusters that were already claimed by nearby AI capitals.  Learning the adventure techs has not reliably resulted in resource appearence.  This is a major fun killer for me.  The resources are all about early decision making and oppurtunity.  Their lack leaves a big hole in the game which I haven't been compelled to play past.  I have seriously started over a hundred games of the v1.1 betas, but I can count on one hand the number of games I have played to mid-game. 

I have read nothing form the developers regarding resources.  So now I look to user made maps, with pre-set resources in order to find an engaging world to play on.   The Forge of Souls is a map I have enjoyed, but the player position is always the same, and the AI is sorta of cheated in relation to the players start.  It's about time I started making my own maps, because EWoMs maps just aren't doing it for me.  But I very much enjoy the game.  It's just that the world map totally kills the poiint.

The techs that discover new resources need to find a lot more than just a single resource.  Right now it's pretty pointless as compared to leveling up a warfare tech.

There's something to be said about the 'old' Civ style resource distribution.  They all pretty much fell within the same pattern, and the same distance form each other, the only major difference being what they were.

In Elemental, resource distribution is truly random, with a fudge factor or two for starting locations.  I've been testing some mods, which means I start a few games pretty much back to back, which means start, go a couple of turns, then start again.  There are times there are only two resources near my Sov, others when I have like 3 food, two shards, and an arcane shrine.  What I see is truly 'luck of the draw'.  The one that really made me drool was having 3 arcane shrines within a 5 build radius of my capital.  I'd have loved to have played that one through, but I was trying to fix a mod issue at the time...

To ensure more uniform distribution, another methodology would likely have to be worked out.  The 'work with the hand your dealt' has some appeal in Single player, but in Multiplayer having this level of randomness could prove problematic.

I'm sure Derek and the guys are pondering this at the moment, and will come up with a better implementation soon.

 

I'm for variety which prevents every game from playing out the same way.  But the lack of resources is doing just that.  Every early game plays out the same way.  The only variety which leads to city management decisions, is how much material I initially find in goody huts.  I seek dynamic decision making which provides me with oppurtunistic choice.  I think the game is in dire need of some map scripting improvements which normalize resource distribution to a limited degree.  Not to be quarenteed Gold, and Horses and Libraries and Temples every game.  Just an assurance that there will be Something worth settling for.  Something to drive decision making and city specialization.  

 Food is the new gold mine for me in my games... thankfuly I've found lots of food resources in both 1.1 games I've played, but only 1 gold mine in both games with pretty much all the resource techs researched... yikes.

I usually just keep starting over until i find a somewhat decent land area to start on.  Then I explore some to see what more i can get and do a few quests.  I always hope to get the quest that takes 3 midnight stones and gives yah the 11dam +1speed sword.  Then I look for the closest enemy and take over that city after the work they put in it   Then I travel back and find the perfect spot and start my main city. 

It has been my impression that the same amount of resources are generated despite the map size, or at least it seems that way between the medium and large maps.

In the large map resources are very spread out. When playing a large map I feel lucky to find 2 resources close enough that I can get them with one city.

On a medium map, pretty much every city I build has access to two or three resources.

 

I know shards are supposed to be rare, ideally with only 2-4 of each type per map, so that you want to fight over them, but on larger maps I think there should be a larger spawn of the rest of resources to account for the larger world.

I suppose maybe they haven't really spruced up the resource generation code in relation to map sizes? How many resources get spit out has undergone a lot of changes in the last few versions. Personally I use a mod to play maps far larger than the ones Elemental usually creates. My experience there is that:

1. You either get screwed for starting resources, and get the bare minimum, which is 1 food and 1 shard.

Or

2. You get lucky. You get the minimum and a random amount of additional spawns within 7 tiles or so.

My basic rule is, if I don't have more than the minimum at start, the game is a throwaway.

If I don't have materials at start, the game is a throwaway.

Tech is really, really, really important in Elemental now. 1000x more important in the scope of the game than magic, So Lost Libraries clusters are also pure gold in 1.1. You can get the same effect with 5 studies or archivists...but you end up with a ton of research cities. And those all take time and resources to build. So I try to squeeze in a LL if I can.

Gold mines are pretty much useless in 1.1 The amount of money you make from taxes, combined with economic improvements, far exceeds what you can get out of the mines. So they're just a perk unless you get one near your starting point, which I never seem to.

Size might have an effect on it, but I am playing small maps. I'm also not crazy about restarting 10 times to finally find An ok start area.

Currently you don't need much more than a good source of food to get started and you are always given a farm.  You can make more or less everything in your cities.  The overland tiles are just bonuses.

Early game, waiting 25 seasons and spending 25 pop just to get the resources you'd get from 1 materials spawn isn't how I want to start a game. That's when it takes you 50 seasons just to start researching.

yes, i am getting sick of having huge sub continents of land in which there is not point in building even the smallest of settlements. i mean, look at russia: it's basically all the bits to the north of the other countries that no one else wanted, but they've still managed to find some useful stuff there. resource distribution is key to getting the settlement distribution right in this game. more and more now i'm starting to wonder if the solution is perhaps a lot more resources, but smaller ones.

I believe the solution is to give player an option to select how rare or common resources are found in a map.

Because there are actually people that like the scarce resources and i am one of them

Also if it helps i tend to realise that when you research the adventure technology of new resources, then new resources seem to appear and it seems that it plays a role of how big area of influence you are covering at the time.

[quote who="Dsraider" reply="1" id="2848947"]Probably just a bad game. Resources are rarer now but you can still find more than that in most games.[/quote]

 

Resources are rarer?  That's horrible, if anything we need way more resources.

 

A problem that I'm running into is I don't have any desire to build more than my capital, because there's just nothing at all out there to make it worth building a second city.  My opening spot usually has a fertile land, maybe a mine or a shard.  After I explore a large distance out from my capital, I find maybe 1 other resource, 100 miles away.  So I build a second city there?  Why build a third, there's no more resources anywhere.  Without the thrill of discovering great, valuable, potential city sites, the game is just not fun.  It boils down to a game where you wander around with your sovereign, killing monsters.  

You can build a city with nothing near by now and have it be profitable.  You can use gardens to generate food and citizens generate gold.  You can use workshops to get materials.  Really resources are much more common because they can be created freely in any city.  I generally have way more research of both kinds now as well as larger armies and more gold without spamming cities.

Well, I know that you can do that.  But putting down cities in an empty world is way less fun.  Exploring and discovering great future city sites seems like a thing of the past.  

 

I think this is all part of my bigger problem with Elemental, it seems like most of the effort is going into the magic, RPG elements, and the tactical combat...and much less into the empire building (which is--no surprise--my favorite).  This is compounded by the fact that terrain doesn't effect the production of a city in any way.  So you end up with a huge map full of nothing, and no reason to place a city in any particular area.

A few more games has me thinking this is probably a deliberate overreaction to the abundance available in prior patches.

 

Previously, ICS was viable and almost necessary to remain competitive (or would be with opponents worth a damn). But cities in Elemental are supposed to be beacons of civilization and hope in a vast wilderness. It's a point of flavour. You're trying to rebuild a world that is, quite simply, already spent. You're not supposed to have a lot of viable options. You'll have a couple of towns founded for reasons of nearby resource availability, maybe a few more at strategic choke points - which aren't likely to grow too much and really serve more of a 'military outpost' function. It makes sense.

 

Of course having the degree to which this occurs be under the player's control would be optimal, but until they write that in I think they've got the right stopgap implemented.