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Zee's Strategic Resource Overhaul

It makes me really sad that Firaxis introduced this awesome new resource management feature in GS and then barely utilized it.
It's also been a long-time disappointment that certain resources like Iron and Horses become completely pointless after an era or 2.

This mod aims to fix these shortcomings without completely changing the vanilla experience.


Not every unit has resource costs, and this is for the same reason they don't in vanilla; proper gameplay balance. But the units that do require resources will now require a wider variety of resources and make resources stay relevant in as many eras as is possible. Additionally, the amount of resources required to build a unit will vary based on its relative strength, generally increasing with 'stronger' more impactful units relative to their era.

When realistic resources can be assigned to a unit they will be, but gameplay will always come first over realism for me. This means making certain concessions, like Aluminum as a maintenance resource on aircraft instead of Oil. The gameplay will be much more balanced, even if its slightly less immersive.


You will need to plan and manage your resources.

• Protecting your strategic resources is going to be very important during times of war.
  
• Trade agreements and reliable allies allowing you to freely import needed resources will mean something.
  
• Those new economic cards will suddenly see use.
  
• The city-states you choose to overlord will find you checking supplied strategic resources much more closely.
  
• More focus will need to be made on balancing resources that double as fuel, you may find a blend of coal and oil power plants necessary.
  
• You may also find yourself wanting to shut down power plants if war efforts demand more resources than your infrastructure can handle. (See my other mod for this).

Enjoy the new challenge!

• Horse usage all the way up through the Industrial Era.
  
• Iron and Niter usage all the way up through the Future Era!
  
• No more Oil on Infantry.
  
• With the single exception of uranium, unimproved resources in your territory will provide (1) unit per turn (also helpful for the AI).
  
• Improved tiles will still yield a total of (2) of the given strategic resource.
  
• Fuel conversion ratios more granular, From (4-4-16) To (4-6-10) (a nice side-effect of this is slightly less global CO2)
  
• WMD's uranium cost increased, from (10 and 20) to (35 and 70).
  
• Orbital Laser aluminum cost increased, from (30) to (100).
  
• Corrected vanilla bug that failed to assign resource cost to the aircraft carrier.
  
• All units that require a resource also carry a resource maintenance cost.
  
• In many cases, units will require one resource for construction, and a completely different resource for maintenance.
  
• Constructing a Corps or Army doubles or triples the upfront resource cost respectively, but not the maintenance cost, further incentivizing Corps/Armies.
  
• Resource construction costs are no longer binary (1 or 20), but now fully range from (3 all the way through 20+).
  
• Unique and replacement units receive a resource discount usually ranging
  somewhere between (2 - 4) units compared to their standard counterpart.

Note:
-=- Construction costs are also subject to the timescale multiplier (epic 1.5x, marathon 3x, etc)
-=- So if you are like me and play on Epic, the tech tree tooltips will show base cost, not actual cost, just like with production values.
-=- The tooltip shown in the city build queue will show the actual correct resource cost of building the unit.


Requires Gathering Storm.
This mod is compatible with Steel and Thunder: Expansion.
This mod is compatible with Warfare Expanded: Reloaded Edition (all 3 parts).
(it is generally NOT recommended to use more than 1 mod-authors unit-packs at the same time. It usually results in unbalanced unit overlap.)

Should be compatible with anything that doesn't obviously conflict.
Extra unit mods will need support patches, so if it isn't mentioned above let me know and I'll see what I can do.


You might also enjoy my other mods:
Zee's Properly Timed Eras
Zee's Distance Is A Good Thing
Zee's Fewer Trade Offers
Zee's Normalized Climate Change
Zee's Decommission Power Plant
Zee's Slower Grievance Decay
Zee's Third Party Grievances Reduced
Zee's More Reliable Reactors


If you're feeling generous, you can donate here.
[patreon.com]