Adventure tech and resource spawning?

I heard that the resources have to spawn within a certain distance of your capital. So once the surrounding area around your capital is well covered by your territory, then you can research exploration.

In my recent game (1.1) i got just 1 farm in that tech tree and a few other useless things, so all in all, it is not something i would be bothered researching at all in future, it is a waste of time, honestly.

In answer to 2.:

I think they pop up the next turn after you get the tech.  At least for me, I research it and next turn I see the pop-up on the side (red exclamation mark (!) ) telling me where the food resources are.  However, it only alerts you if they are inside your influence, and you can only see them if you have explored the territory (as in, it'll tell you something is there in the black unknown, but you can't do anything with it until you reveal it).

I believe Mystikmind is correct about resources spawning in a certain radius from your capital (or cities).  I'm not sure which cities, but I imagine they'll be spread out, not just spawning around your capital city.  But they should not spawn on the other side of the world (where your enemies are).

For 3... I'm not sure of the order, but when you research them, one brings (I think) only food, then only metal, then only crystal resources or something like that.  I don't know how many of those resources spawn either.  I think gold mines spawn too when you get the metal-spawning tech, as they've popped up in my territory.  And I've gotten 2 food resources at least, as far as I can remember.

Thanks for the replies.

Now, if I build new cities and then expand my territory, will more of these resources pop up in the new territory + cities once the territory covers the spawning tiles, or is this an one-time-only event that's only limited to my existing cities and territory at the moment of discovery?

My understanding of it is that the resources only spawn within your territory near your capital.

Because the resources are randomly generated only inside your territory at the time you research the technology, any resources that may have potentially been generated if your territory was larger will never appear.

However, i do not know if there is actually any specific benefit in waiting until your territory is larger, i am only assuming this to be the case. It is possible the random resources generated are not more prolific with more territory?

Edit: In other words if your territory is larger, the resources are more widely dispersed, but if your territory is smaller, the resources are the same in number but less dispersed. (My guess is that this is not the case, and smaller territory is actually a disadvantage. Those resources that could have potentially spawned if your territory was larger are lost forever, and certainly will not appear later when your territory expands)

I'm going to test this. I'm going to do two games (one actually). I'll save at like 5 cities and then research Exploration til the end and see how many resources pop up. Then I'll revert to the save prior to the research, then build 30 cities and then see if it makes any difference.

If new resources are limited to one-time-only-at-discovery spawn only within your territory, that needs to be changed. It should be like Civ, where you discover a new tech that reveals resources but it reveals that resource ALL OVER the map, regardless of territory, cities, or distances.

Don't forget to run the exploration tech turn several times for each. I am not certain how random it is, so one try might give you 3 farms, try again exactly the same reload and get only 1 farm or 4 farms! who knows?

In that case, what you have are hidden resources which are present from the start of the game, and yes this is the traditional method as opposed to random resources that pop in during the game. Random resources that pop in during the game is more of a new concept, so i think i do prefer it, although it certainly could be done better from what it is now in Elemental! The traditional way definitely has more interesting strategic influence on the game - who discovers the tech first can see the hidden resources before the other guy can etc etc.

except for the food resource, each tech will reveal one resource.

NOTE: the ai can research this tech as well and it will spawn when he doe sit so if you see one suddenly spawning for no reason, thats where it came from.

The mining tech can reveal a gold mine, or clay mine or ore mine, ventri if your lucky.

channeling will reveal a crystal mine, there used to be an adventure tech to reveal a crystal mine - not sure if it still does that so you might have the opportunity to spawn a second crystal mine.

When it comes to the resource revealing techs, strategically these are really good if you've explored the territory around you and the ai does not have something you want. They can help fill in the gaps to keep you competitive against the ai if they are ahead of you and you really need metal badly to put out those armoured units.

Whether it spawns a resource or reveals a resource that is already there is really irrelevant when it comes down to the final fact - suddenly it is there and you can see it. The dev's have stated that due to the nature of the way cities operate withing the game structure it is better to spawn the resource rather than suddenly reveal it otherwise you would have all sort of "?" items dotted all over the landscape which would be unknown resource icons. Sort of immersion breaking for me if all those icons were there.

The manner in which they have done it does not make the first player to learn harvesting suddenly make all these resources appear over the entire map structure. "I was gonna build my house there, suddenly the ground open up and bees poured out of the ground - I HATE THOSE CHANNELLERS MESSING WITH MY GREEN LAWN".

The intention of the tech is you send out your scouts who work for you in the background and they search the land near your capital until they find the nearest resource and then point it out to you. It does not mean they found all of the food resources in world etc, or suddenly that we understand that bees make food for us to eat

The reason the exploration resources are limited to a radius of your territory around the capital is to stop your resources overlapping with your opponents and vice versa..... and if there are allot of players, with all their resources overlapping, it would get very cluttered, how crazy would that be?? might actually be fun? 

The best thing in my opinion would be to  extend the random spawn to the entirity of your own territory, but then this would put immense pressure on players to delay researching the techs! The solution to this would be to have a random spawn quantity fixed to size of territory and it updates itself every time you research a new technology (any tech). So for example, if your territory at X size gives you X number of random resources, when your territory increases, a number of new resources will spawn to maintain the balance.

Edit: Actually on further thought, there should be landmark achievements that trigger new random spawns. Example..."your territory now exceeds x size" and on each landmark achievement the number of random resources is scaled down until there are no more landmark achievements left that you can achieve for that map size. Also it may not only be territory size to trigger a landmark achievement, there could be some on other ones such as population size.

Some good points here.

However, I feel that there should be a slight change in resource spawning. Instead of 1 resource spawn within your whole territory per tech, there should be new resources popping up at random in your territory AFTER you research the tech. For example, your miners find the first new Ventri mine in your territory using the newly discovered exploration tech. Then, say, 50 or 100 seasons later, another group of miners finds a new vein of Ventri elsewhere within your own territory.

Ditto for food resources. Food is much easily renewable, and the bigger your cities get, the more farms you need to build or cultivate. Or create the need to explore more food sources at random after the food "revealer" tech is researched.

The problem with this is that you have to remember that each player (human and ai) can do this. Not that they will, but that they CAN and if they all open up the techs taht is a LOT of resources that are added to the playing field. There are already random resources spawned in the map in a given area,you just have to explore and look for it. If the techs open up the amount of resources that your suggesting won't that be FAR to many to appear in the map if every player (human and ai) opens up the tech trees ?

Given that you can build multiple copies of the basic resource buildings and empire and kingdom both have a food resource they can build in their cities ( haven't played empire much but i am pretty sure they can build a farm or something) the only resources you really want to fight over as the game progresses are metal ( accessible through tech), crystal (accessible through tech 2 time i think), horses + wargs ( a rare resource) and shards. 

These are the ones you really want to fight over and start a war to get them because you have no way of producing these things without the resource node available on the map.

Anything else is just gravy.

I think elentium is picked up through goodie huts - i have to admit i never sit through a game that long - initially because of the rate of patching but then with the nerfing of magic i struggle through it.

Gotcha. I'm just concerned that there might not be enough food resources though. Even with the "Garden" for Kingdoms and "Fungus Storage" for Empire, these +2 food structures, plus 1 extra food from using both granaries and irrigation system together (50% bonus), it still isn't enough to make many level 5 cities. If food resources give more food, or the gardens are boosted in food output then this probably won't be an issue with me anymore. I like building large cities. Feels more epic that way.

Good point about the other resources. I don't need a zillion metal or crystals though.

My understanding is a little different.  Resources do pop up near your capital, but it doesn't need to be in your territory, it could be in the wilds or even in an AI territory if there is one close enough.  I've had resources appear near my cities that I didn't research.

I like this randomness, but I could see how others might not.

In terms of growing your city researching improved housing is just as important as food if you want to get to level 5.

I think there were some changes in recent patches.

In 1.09, for example, if I used cheat to get all technology in 2nd turn, my 9 tiles radius would get crammed with resources.

Doing same with 1.11 does almost nothing.

P.S.

I guess it was done on purpose, to not disadvantage Altair, since they start with Exploration, and would essentially waste 1st exploration tech, if old rules were present (due to having no city at start).

It is usually in your territory, it has to be a certain distance from your capital city.

I like the idea of the resources being static and when you discover them they are revealed to you. This makes researching the adventure techs and scouting much more important of a strategy.

Say you spend your time researching information or resources while someone else is researching magic. They may have the upper hand with magic but if you find a crystal crag a gold mine and a wheat farm from researching that will make all the difference in the future and will ultimately win the game for you. Right now it is pretty useless to even bother with lost resources and having them appear around your capital makes any meaningful exploration outside of a certain distance kinda a waste of time unless you are looking for other civs. These resources should only appear if you have a unit within three blocks of the resource. So you have to have units moving around your discovered territory as well.