I think it's a bug at this point.. Why is Oil so rare?

it seems like the smaller the map is, the more likely oil doesn't spawn. I played 5 games on the largest map, always had oil. (As I like to play with islands and lots of water)

This time though I did a medium sized map, with alot of land... zero oil spawned.

Now that I think of it, I don't think I ever saw oil spawn on land. It's always been on water tiles, which again.. seems like a bug.

The resources are limited yes, and it's definitely something that needs to be changed

As for oil in water.... Do you know what an "offshore platform" is ?

It's not a bug, it's perfectly normal

Rexeit wrote:

The resources are limited yes, and it's definitely something that needs to be changed

As for oil in water.... Do you know what an "offshore platform" is ?

It's not a bug, it's perfectly normal

You mis understand. The fact it ONLY spawns in water is a bug. You do know what oil drills are on land right? Water isn't the only place oil is found. ;)

I've seen it on land before, so it does happen, but not always.

It looks like there's a maximum of two, even on huge maps. I imagine that's to force competition for the space race and not just let someone run away with it (since the other player who owns it could forbid strategic trading to stall their victory).

I've played my first playthrough on a large map, pretty unchanged default map, and I alone had at least 3 or 4 oil, the other civilizations partially also had oil.

So I think it's possible, that it's not only belonging to the map size but to the map settings too.

LadyAthena wrote:

Rexeit wrote:

The resources are limited yes, and it's definitely something that needs to be changed

As for oil in water.... Do you know what an "offshore platform" is ?

It's not a bug, it's perfectly normal

You mis understand. The fact it ONLY spawns in water is a bug. You do know what oil drills are on land right? Water isn't the only place oil is found. ;)

It doesn't only spawn in water, what are you even talking about...

Same... Just put 20 hours into a huge endless map to find there was not one single oil on the entire map. Sucked to end the game without being able to use a lot of the end game units :(

I do wonder what's broken here, I obviously don't think that there's a conspiratorial net of people who descended to lie about resources in a video game, but so far in none of my playthroughs there was any particular lack of oil and I had no problems finding 1-2 per continent plus some guaranteed odd ones at the small archipelagos between them. Hopefully devs are having a look at the root and won't just tweak the spawning in such a way that it will do nothing for people with issues and cause abundance for those without.

DNLH wrote:

I do wonder what's broken here, I obviously don't think that there's a conspiratorial net of people who descended to lie about resources in a video game, but so far in none of my playthroughs there was any particular lack of oil and I had no problems finding 1-2 per continent plus some guaranteed odd ones at the small archipelagos between them. Hopefully devs are having a look at the root and won't just tweak the spawning in such a way that it will do nothing for people with issues and cause abundance for those without.

I'm almost positive its just a bug in the generator when it comes to oil. Being a coder myself, even a ; in the wrong spot can cause something like this.

It is indeed at an unbearable level. To add to that I believe the resource requirements can be rather high to begin with at least when it comes to units. 

I get that it is supposed to make those units feel meaningful but it just makes the map empty. No armies, and what few units there are do not exist past the Industrial era. Would much rather the Civ approach where half the map is armies.

I think it'd be fine if a game-end condition wasn't reliant on oil, but going to Mars requires 3, which on my map last night meant controlling 100% of the resource on the entire planet :(

It'd also probably be okay at least if the resource types for the next age were revealed before you had to pick your culture. Nothing more disappointing than picking a culture and then realizing that you can't build the unique units (or game-end condition) you were excited about because RNG gave you access to a different strategic resource. If you knew beforehand, you could plan ahead and not pick a strategy/culture that relies on it.