Random Map, No Iron/Crystal?

It is possible to fight without these resources. It isn't easy but it is possible. The late game you are going to want to secure these resources for yourself, and you will possibly have to trade with the AI for some of these resources in the mid-game. You are going to have to design troops that use a minimal amount of these resources and you can definitely compete.

Most of my starting positions do not have these resources, but I do acquire quite a few when settling my other 2-3 cities. Now if you don't have any of these resources even after you have settled 2-3 cities (or don't see any), then you may have a problem late game.

If it is the worst case scenario that parrottmath mentioned try going for something that doesn't require alot of iron usage. My heroes tend to carry me without any need for lesser troops when they have a strong focus on magic. But if you are ALSO short on shards...well...better luck next time. 

Mage Champs.

I think that's awesome -- so many games are uber-balanced...

It sucks big time to be a disadvantaged nation that has to buy its resources since it can't produce them for itself, but such is life... what a boring world it would be if everyone had the same advantages and resources, all the time.

Try to think about it from the opposite side of things -- if you started out with all of the world's Iron deposits, you'd have a definite advantage over your foe, right?  You might even be able to leverage those abundant resources to make you tons of gold, and then use that gold to rush production and buy other resources.

Guess in the model you described, it really gives you a reason to hate your peaceful, crystal harvesting neighbors, huh?  Think of how accomplished you'd feel when you finally took one of those crystal quarries by force... and why?  Because **** them, that's why.

What a fun game that would be!

Actually my last game there it was really difficult to find and hold onto an iron resource, though I eventually managed to find some outlying and set up outposts to mine it.  Ended up building the Iron Works which further improved my advantage.  Although the AI did have iron they kept scrapping over it so they didn't have a reliable supply.  It was so bad they ended with metal resource in negative numbers most of the time (don't ask me how that's supposed to work...)

No crystals and no metal means its leather clad soldiers playing the Mace to Face game!  Mace it to win it! 

It's a post apocalyptic world, and yet you expect to find every and all resources right in your back yard?  It should be scarce, it should have wars fought over who controls it.

RedeemerAZ, FE has a lot more randomized variation in setup conditions than any other TBS game I know.  Some people love this.  Others hate it.  Personally, I'd like to see more control of it given over to players on an advanced map configuration screen, but as it stands, what you see is what you get.

As you are seeing, random resources make that I usually choose between 4 types of unit-design:

- No resource- Cheap units. The best unit u can design without using crystal/metal. This is the body of my army.

- Elite. The best unit that uses big amounts of both. I usually wait untill fortress are developed, and I have enough resources.

- A bit of metal. Like sword+shield (around 7 metal), leather the rest. To improve the cheap troops, but without too much cost.

- A bit of crystal. This one is more rare, as usual crystal is more scarce, and slow to collect. But it  might happen. In your situation, you might train mages (with staves) for long range, that only require crystal, and cheap units to tank and defend your mages.

You can trade metal with AI, you can pay in influence, wargs or other resource you dont need.

Finally, prepare a cheap army, and meanwhile search where is that only iron mine, then plan an attack to get it.

 This is the good of the game: to force yourself to adapt to a new situation. It is like design a Sov with full Fire Magic, and then you can't find fire shards....

My last game, I played on sparse resources.  there was only two iron mines that I found on the entire map.  I had one.  but it was basically the battle ground for about 15 to 20 turns.

I only had two crystal mines, but they were pretty far from my starting city.  I basically didn't get any crystal until almost half way through my game.

With the lack resources, I was basically limited to spearman in leather through the better half of the game.  Juggernauts with spears are pretty cool though.

I'm basically running this in my LP vids.  No iron, no crystal, only a few shards and one horse stable.

Horses+spears = good enough hopefully.

MAces don't require resources.  16 damage and no resources.  I know that -4 int and bashing suck, but it's probably your best bet.