Iron Ore versus Crystal Crag

The MinPerPlayer is an at least this many iron ores per player when the game is created. Say as the game is placing resources (this is where rarity comes in) and you have 4 players. There must be at least 8 iron ores to be acceptable, while there must be at least 4 crystal crags for an acceptable placement. Hence, you should see more iron-ore per player when talking strictly minimums.

Have no idea about the rummaged tag

If you wanted to tweak the balance, you could have a turn 1 random event that spawns more crystal, right?

You need a city for turn based random events to occur, but you can have resource based events occur at start or near start of game.

I believe that means they have zero chance of appearing on the map at the start.

These resources appear (are "dropped") when you clear the relevant Lair, e.g. Ogre Lair, whatever the Knights of Asok Lair is called etc.

If you want to change the mining rate rather than the mine frequency, then you can edit the Iron Mine/Smelter/Foundry improvements in CoreImprovements.XML and change the line where it says

-<GameModifier> <ModType>Resource</ModType> <Attribute>Metal</Attribute> <Value>1</Value> <PerTurn>1</PerTurn> <Provides>+1 Metal per Season</Provides> <UpgradeComparisonID>1</UpgradeComparisonID> </GameModifier>

Change the number in the <Value>1</Value> tags to change the amount you get per turn  (e.g., a value of 0.5 here in the Iron Mine entry would mean that you produce 0.5 metal per turn from an Iron Mine, while a value of 5 would produce 5 metal per turn from an iron mine).

I have no idea about the rarity numbers, but if the current value for the mines is likely to produce no more than 1.5 or so mines per player, then always having many more Iron Deposits than Crystal Crags spawn from map generation would be as expected.

You could also try setting the minimum number of crystal mines per player up to what it is for iron deposits, or dropping the minimum per player of iron deposits down to what it is for crystal mines, and see if that more or less balances out the number of mines.

You'd think I'd remember that.

Thanks for the input guys.

So, considering the MinPerPlayer of Iron versus Crystal, they both have a rarity value of 300, but it always seems that there is more iron than crystal. My hypothesis is going to be that more Iron is being added in order to facilitate the minimum number required as per Parrotmath's explination.

Does the MinPerPlayer have to be a whole number or would the value of 1.5 work? While my initial plan was to reduce the amount of Iron collected from mines, Joeball123 has made it clear that alot of Improvement modifications would have to be done. Therefore, I believe my plan should be to slightly reduce the number of Iron Ore mines available at the start of the game. In theory, this value is a minimum, and I am assuming that this minimum is generally being bumped up higher than the 300 rarity would normal allocate. 

Guess I'll see how it goes.

edit: Took a look at some of the other resources available and the MinPerPlayer values can be all sorts of values. Therefore, if 1.5 tends to be too low (or still too high) I can always change it to 1.75 or 1.25, etc....

Got some tinkering to do.

My ultimate plan is for the AI to being valuing the trade of Iron Ore once again....

I'm interested to hear the progress on this, but I have a question: What size maps are you playing?  In the games I've played so far (mostly normal size maps), I've gotten a pretty balanced number of Crystal Crags vs. Iron Deposits, and usually am harvesting a lot MORE Crystal than Iron, though mostly due to targetting those spots and upgrading those improvements more heavily.  I tend to end up with a lot of excess Metal, but that's just because I don't use the metal as much.

(It really feels like Magic equipment is so much more efficient in terms of research and labor costs - only the fact that Crystal is harvested half as fast as Metal really gives it any kind of balance at all...  though I'm experimenting with modding in a dependence of magical weapons on your ability to craft the mundane version first...)

Actually, it's not a whole lot of work to change the amount of metal mined. All you need to do is change one number in each of four entries - Smelter, Iron Mine, Foundry, Ironworks (don't know if you want to change this or not since it's a wonder).

Let's say I wanted to change the Iron Mine to produce 0.5 metal per turn. I'd find the Iron Mine entry, go to the section that looks like this:

-<GameModifier>

<ModType>Resource</ModType>

<Attribute>Metal</Attribute>

<Value>1</Value>

<PerTurn>1</PerTurn>

<Provides>+1 Metal per Season</Provides>

<UpgradeComparisonID>1</UpgradeComparisonID>

</GameModifier>

And change the highlighted value so that the block looks like this:

-<GameModifier>

<ModType>Resource</ModType>

<Attribute>Metal</Attribute>

<Value>0.5</Value>

<PerTurn>1</PerTurn>

<Provides>+1 Metal per Season</Provides>

<UpgradeComparisonID>1</UpgradeComparisonID>

</GameModifier>

Do that to the Iron Mine, and now your mines are half as productive. Do something similar for the Smelter, the Foundry, and perhaps the Ironworks, and you'll have reduced the metal production to whatever you want for it to be.

It would certainly be easier to make a change to the MinPerPlayer and Rarity values, but it isn't much work to change the resource improvements.

I usually play on Small or Normal maps. I like packing all the AI close together so that there is alot of interaction between factions. I do occasionally play on Large maps too.

I think you've really summerized the problem very well.

Crystal just tends to pack more punch than Iron does. As such, the player focuses on collecting and using Crystal. Iron sits on the side as it is not used enough, and compounding the issue is that there is more Iron on the maps to have.

I think pulling back on the amount of Iron is only going to be the first step. The second step will be to increase the potency of Iron-use units and spells (the Iron Golem for example could be made to pack way more punch, but require (more) Iron in addition to it's mana component) in order to drive need/want for Iron.

As to changing the Iron intake amounts....you are correct in how easy it is to change the values. I am hoping for an adjustment that requires only slight modification. However, I will be keeping it in mind because if my current plan does not work, I will be changing how much Iron is produced off the existing mines...

I'll keep you posted as to my progress... 

perhaps if some of the later tech options unlocked items like balance short sword, an improved version of the short sword that used more metal it would help lower your dependence on magical items.

edit: and make metal more worthwhile to use.

I suppose another question that I should be asking before I change Iron too much is the following:

Why don't techs along the magic tree (Enchantment, Magical Forging, Arcane Weapons and even Arcrane Armor) have an Iron requirement in addition to their crystal requirement? The Warefare tree techs that mirror weapons/armor have the Iron requirement...

example:

Axe has 2 metal training cost BUT Burning Axe has none and instead has a 3 Crystal training cost. Considering that Axe attack is 8 and Burning Axe attack is 11 (2 of which is Fire), it just seems like one would never go the warefare/iron route if crystal were available to your faction.

Thoughts? Comments? (maybe from SD on this one?)

This is something I attempted to address when I tried to make armor/weapons/training mod.  As has already been stated it should be more of a weapon, then improved weapon design, and then a lightly enchanted weapon, and finally a heavily enchanted weapon.  With this being iron => same iron better design => iron + little crystals => iron + crystal even of each.

I found the thread on your weapons mod today when I was doing a little looking around.  I liked some of the ideas in it, although some of it is beyond the scope of what I want to do.  You said "tried to make", so I'm assuming you haven't finished or maybe gave up on it?  I gave up on one of my Civ 4 mods (Psychic Dwarves for Rise from Erebus, which itself was a branch of FfH), so I know what that's like - sometimes it's more trouble than its worth...

Anyway, I was kind of thinking of something like:

                                                    -> enchanted weapons (small iron / med crystal)
weak weapons => decent weapons (medium iron cost) <                     > better enchanted*
                                                    -> better weapons (high iron cost)
*(medium iron / high crystal) 

I.e. magical weapons would still be the way to go with less metal / more crystal, higher quality non-magical weapons would be slightly better than low quality magical weapons, and that if you wanted high quality magical weapons, you'd need to go down the military and magic trees.

I would love for there to be an item designer like there's a unit designer - unlock base weapon types, and various types of enchantments and then mix and match them, but I'll have to settle for making a whole lot of different items with different enchantment levels.

I'm not sure my text graphic made any sense, but basically you would research enchantments, which would allow you to make like Fire Rings and such.  And you would research Weapons.  And if you had both Enchantments and Weapons researched, you could combine them.  Magic versions will cost less metal, but not 0 metal, in general.

I feel like in the current game, magic weapons are just way better than non-magic, to the point where if you're playing strict min-max, you'd barely even hit the Warfare tree (get the cheap techs and a few essentials, then leave it alone).  I think that the high Crystal cost versus rarity of Crystal is supposed to balance the magic weapons, but I feel like it falls short, and I feel like being able to build a Fire Axe when I can't build an Axe is a little weird...

Sorry to take this off topic, GFE, but I think it relates a little bit to why metal seems so common...

I think you are right on topic and is precisely the problem that I am looking into addressing. I'm just exploring all avenues at the moment because, I'll admit, I'm not much of a modder and so am willing to take the easiest modding path to correct the over abundant supply of Iron in the Elemental realm. 

One option is to leave the costs the same, but instead, change the attack values of the magical weapons. Make the magical weapons attack total equal that to their warfare counterpart. The advantage then would be that the magical weapon has some magical damage which is ignored by armor in general, but countered by resistances. Of course the better way would be to raise the attack values of the standard weapons in the weapon tree, to match the total attack of the magical counterpart.

The second option is my preferred option. This would imply that lots of iron was not used in making the base weapon, but more was focused on the enchantment.

I would even go as far as creating the combo weapons afterward that have the same iron requirement and crystal requirement as their counter parts. Hence, you can have the high damage and magic damage but need both iron and crystal for the superior weapon.

Well here was the thought process behind why I did what I did for numbers and schema on iron and crystal numbers.  Iron is the base material for your weapon as we have effectively skipped bronze.  This does not take in to effect steel or its different types.  Crystal if I understand the lore correctly is basically just a small rock that holds magical potential that  can be focused into different effects.  So when you have an initial design of say a short sword you could say that it was just a crude sword but as your smiths got better it would then become a well balanced short sword making it easier for your army to hit.  Then by adding a crystal to its hilt it would be imbued with magical effects possibly a faster initiative or a magical damage effect.  Finally the old game of E:WoM had Elementium which was in effect metal that blended equal parts metal and equal parts crystal to make superior enchanted weapons and armors.  So in reality to make superior magic weapons it should take twice the metal cost, to be determined under balancing, to craft as crystals by individual count are less volume than iron by volume.

Good Morning all

Small update.

Don't think reducing the MinPerPlayer from 2 to 1.5 worked.....still seeing alot of Iron Ore sites popping up at the beginning of the game.

Will try reducing it's Rarity from 300 to 250 next.

Edit: Alright...I must of started about 50 new games today in an effort to figure out my catapult mod. During this time I've also been changing the Iron Ore variables, specifically the MinPerPlayer value and the Rarity value.

It seems that the best setting I've found so far is for MinPerPlayer to remain at 2 and for the Rarity to be reduced to 250. Once this setting was in place I needed to ctrl-N 3-5 times in between getting starts with an Iron Ore nearby. Prior to that, with Rarity 300, it was every other game.

So, in conclusion....it IS working. I'm getting less Iron Ore.

At this stage I'm going to have to play several games through....at least until turn 200...and check the AI periodically to see how much they have of Metal and how much they are valuing it.

I recommend anyone who wishes to join me in this testing to simply reduce the Rarity of Iron Ore in your CoreWorldResources.xml from 300 down to 250.

Happy gaming!

Iron is in such abundance... Not really an accurate medieval representation. But it's a game, so whatever.

Anyway, Iron is so abundant compared to crystal because it really REALLY is. Assuming the minimums, Twice as many ore veins would be on the map, and those veins would produce the resource twice as fast as the crystal mines. In a fully developed world 4 times as much iron is being harvested than crystal. And crystal is used in so many wonderful advances, weapons, armor, trinkets, but iron is only used in weapons and armor and one trinket I can think of (braided belt). The only time you would need iron in abundance is in the end game, if you for some reason needed to train huge numbers of heavily armored soldiers, and even then you are most likely to run out of crystal first, because your end tier heavy armor dudes most likely have a myriad of trinkets that brings the total cost in crystal above 1/4th of the iron cost, depleting the resource from the world faster.

That's "assuming the minimums" as you say.  In my experience, there are always more than 1 Crystal Mine per player in a Medium or Large size map (haven't played enough smaller than that to say), so I think it's rarely bumping against the minimum, depending on your map settings.  Anecdotally, in most of my games played so far (that are longer than just opening the game to see if my modding xml worked), I've had more Crystal Crags than Iron Mines.

I really think that the number of them appearing is pretty equal.  Increasing minperplayer to 2 for the Crystal Crags is probably a good idea, but it shouldn't affect much, that I can see, on Medium or larger maps.  So really, it's 2 times as much iron as crystal.  And I think that rate is fully intentional and is meant as a balancing factor to magical weapons, since they are otherwise pretty cheap compared to non-magical.

Good Morning all

Another update.

Played a dozen or so games to turn 100+ as I was tinkering with Parrotmaths' wondersbase mod the other day. Noticed that I was getting overall less Iron Ore with the Rarity set to 250 BUT was getting TONNES of crystal. I figured that the must be something in the Rarity relationship...that since crystal was set to 300 that it would now plop more than Iron Ore.

I decided to combat this by reducing crystal down to 250 as well.... and the problem (as far as I can tell) went away!

So.....this probably needs alot more testing, but I currently believe the proper coarse of action to reduce Iron Ore is to:

1. Reduce the Rarity of Iron Ore from 300 to 250
2. Reduce the Rarity of Crystal Crag from 300 to 250.

I also believe that adjusting the amount of iron available is a subpar solution to its overabundance in comparison to crystal, and also support the idea of having more uses for it, including higher-end upgrades to some mundane weapons as well as iron requirements for hybrid magic weapons (e.g. flaming axes as opposed to pure Mage staves), and this in a non-modded vanilla version of LH. I would be interested in Derek's opinion of this.

Update.

Just finished a game with over 600 Metal in the hold....even with the rarity of Iron Ore and Crystal Crag reduced to 250 each. The good news is the Crystal supply worked out very well. I had to work it to get to 150 crystal....and had to do some trades along the way to boot. Hopefully Iron Ore will end up at this point as well.

So, to continue with the mods, SD has graciously reduced the Foundry to +3 metal instead of +4 as well as reduced the Ironworks ot +6 from +8. Both very good changes. To note: I play with Parrotmath's Wondersbase mod so I also have the Large Foundry which I've reduced to +4 from +5.

In addition to the above, I'm also going to add a 5 metal cost to the construction of the Smelter Improvement and a 10 metal cost to the construction of the Foundry Improvement. Both relatively small changes, but the over arching objective here is that an investement needs to be made to improve the quality of equipment needs for a more efficiend mining process.

However you want to look at it, whether it's a 5 turn wait before building a Smelter...or a recoup of 2.5 turns to get your metal back.....likewise either a 5 turn wait before building a Foundry....or a recoup of 3.3 turns to get your metal back....

If on average you have 5 Iron Ore deposits within your kingdom, then you would need 75 Iron Ore to full upgrade them all. Considering my last game I was swimming in metal I think this is will be a good change too.

Ps. I also play with my Catapults mod, which has a metal production cost of 5 metal for the Lesser Catapult and a 10 metal cost for the Greater catapult....and I was still swimming in metal.

Pss. I suppose I should also note that my last game where I was swimming in 600+ metal, I was playing with Binding and was not focusing on military buildup....BUT I also wasn't upgrading my mines normally either.

Another update:

I just don't get why there is so MUCH metal to be had in this game...

Decided to play Gilden and really pushed metal consumption in everything I did. STILL was swimming in it.

So....I'm taking it another step further. In addition to the changes already made, I'm reducing the amount the Iron Mine, Smelter, and Foundry output. Complete list of changes is as follows:

• Added a 5 metal production cost to the Smelter Improvement
• Added a 10 metal production cost to the Foundry Improvement
• Added a 15 metal production cost to the Large Foundry Improvement (from Parrotmath's Wondersbase Mod)
• Added a 20 metal production cost to the Ironworks World Achievement
• Reduced the amount of metal per turn the Iron Mine Improvement collect from 1 to 0.5
• Reduced the amount of metal per turn the Smelter Improvement collect from 2 to 1
• Reduced the amount of metal per turn the Foundry Improvement collect from 3 to 2
• Reduced the Rarity of Iron Ore from 300 to 250
• Reduced the Rarity of Crystal Craf from 300 to 250

Note that the reduction that SD made to the Ironworks in 1.2 changelog is still in effect; collecting at +6 per turn instead of the original +8

HOPEFULLY this will finally fix the imbalance.