What is a fair number of gold mines on half a large map?

I have gotten by with as few as one gold mine on a large map but it does force me to rely on summoned army stacks.  I have taken out an AI Sov Empire and got his 4-6 Gold Mines and that usually did the trick for me.  Ofc, this was on Ridiculous setting and yes it was ridiculous but hey I knew upfront what I was likely to be in for.

What was more ridiculous was the enemy Sov not even trying to fight me once I began bringing the fight to it(almost typed him...lol)  Note that it declared war on me, wrong thing to do as I attack.  It did a miserable job and then its Sov refused to stay in its capital with its capitol army stack once I had it down to 3 towns... go figure...  I take the capitol then end turn, AOI is now mine and then attack Sov with one Bodyguard unit = dead sov ... Permanently. 

Your milage may vary...

This many (small map)

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/3504/elemental1286753676.jpg

I had one enemy that had 5 gold mines on one city.  I didnt have 5 in my entire 14 city empire.  When I saw it, I knew I had to have that city for my own...this doesn't help the discussion very much...I'm going to say 20.

The answer to this really depends on several things:

1) Number of AI and the difficulty setting.  Higher difficulty settings give the AI more resource nodes near their start location.

2) Which map.  Some of the maps have more land mass that aren't mountains or forest.

3) Which half of the map.  Related to 2) and also where AIs are spawned.  Sometimes just about all the factions spawn on one half the map which means that half is resource heavy and the other is fairly barren.

Those things aside, I have still have no idea... never counted.

1) The difficulty set to 'Easy' with 1 AI opponent.

2) What do you mean 'which map'? It is a large random map, since the only map option available (that i can find) is size.

3) The AI spawned on the other half of the map, which i have not explored due to contested land bridge in the middle.

The secret is (it isn't really a secret) they are not random maps. Play enough games and you will start to recognize them.

edit: that said, the distribution of resources IS random

oh, ic, so that's what the little map name thing is for!

22 cities (can't afford any more): 1 gold mine - 250 turns in, large map, found no others except owned by AI civs. Whatever that Adventure tech was that spawns 1 gold mine (Whoot!!!!), spawned it on the border of an AI civ who expanded and owned it 6 turns later. Sadly they are my allies and in-laws, part of the dowry I guess. Makes the game extraordinarily tedious. Save 6 turns, buy champion a sword, save 6 turns, buy champion a cuirass.... you get the idea. If it wasn't for the, like, 24 guys named Viy parked in various cities, I would be well and truly bankrupt.

Question for the all-knowing Gyb; so maps are not really random, are the starting points (assumed yes)? You have already explained resource distribution, which brings up question 2: are the number and/or type of resources fixed? Are they 'pemanently fixed' wrt map size and distribution level or are they sedmi-randomly generated? Thanks. 

i believe the starting point are set for the official factions, but if you create your own then you get a random start point.

I can't speak to any size except for large since I've never really played the others, but assume they are similar.  There are I think 4 large maps (it's 3-5 can't remember exactly).  Each map has approximately 20 starting points (I'm guessing/estimating here, but there's around twice what is needed for 1 game).  Any faction can be spawned at any starting point in any game.  All resources are completely random and so are goody huts, with the exception that they are concentrated around where factions start and each one having a fertile land, gold mine, and lost library near by.  Also as I've mentioned higher difficulties give the AI more resources around their starting location but the types are random.  For example, I had one game where 3 AIs were really close to me, one had 3 Arcane resources in their first city, one had 4 material resources, and the other had 3 lost libraries (they also had fertile land, and an assortment of some other stuff).  Ridiculous AIs also get more goody huts than a player does.

All of this can be proven/learned using the Ctrl+U cheat to reveal the map.  Just start a game, reveal map, repeat.  I did that a couple dozen times on large maps which is why I know this stuff.  Haven't bothered with other sizes.

Note: Ctrl+U many times will ruin the sense of exploration and "discovering the world" if you're like me and can easily remember/recognize maps.  I still thought they were random when I started and then it was too late.

Thank you - won't use the Ctrl+U function because I do like the exploration bit. However, next time I start a game with a map that looks like a spiral galaxy.....

Don't mind cheats for the AI on higher difficulties; combine that with an actually competent AI and you really get a run for your money.

personally I don't mind the randomness.  Like Xia, I was playing on a pretty larege map and my Tarthian neighbors had a city with 4 gold mines in one city.  I had 4 gold mines in my entire kingdom.  Needless to say.  That city was mine.

As to your post.  What would be the most fair is to allow the players to determine the number resources, including gold mines that are available in the world.  By allowing us to customize the world we could choose many different types of games.

Thank you for the ego boost but I'm hardly all-knowing. Just played way too much for a game that is going to fundamentally change within a month or so. And I'm a stickler for documentation (do you own the official MoM strategy guide? Now THERE is a guide!).

Dhraconus is spot on with his analysis, only thing I will add is smaller maps are easier because the AI resource boost gets 'squished' together. I'm lauching a large map for the weekend to just screw around (I normally play tiny/small to learn the dynamics for my guide) and I'm already noticing at 60 turns in only 1 gold mine. On a smaller map I would have 3+ by now.

Yes, I am a proud owner of the MoM strategy guide. Easily the best strategy guide ever. Sits on top of my DOS 486 for the next time I wish to have another go at MOM. Never had the patience to learn then cast the Spell of Mastery, which required another hundred turns or so after everything else was done. The scale of this game promises much, once they get stuff balanced better. I guess one of the problems people are having with Elemental is the relative lack of documentationfor what is quite a complex game - although obscure and complex are not synonyms. That is why efforts like the FAQ are so helpful to the community.

I played MoM last weekend in anticipation for 1.1.  What a gret game, twenty years old and still absolutely a great time.  In my humblest of opinions, one the reasons it is so playable is because it is so unbalanced.  I think games don't have as much character because they try to balance them so much.  I know that it is necessary for multiplayer, but the game loses a lot because of it.  No one can say that the gnolls had a fair shake in MoM.  No economy or mana generation because of they could build hardly any buildings.  Their units were weak (spearman, swordsman, archers, halberdiers, and wolf riders).  But playing them was fun.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed marching around with my paladins or slingers, but every now and then you just have to try the gnolls on hard or impossible.  As part of the group that wants Elemental to be the spiritual successor to MoM, I hope they do not balance the game to much.  It will lose it long term playability.  Also, you need to try cast the spell of mastery.  It is the most fun when there are a couple wizards left and they just go crazy.  They practically rush you to get you to stop.  Focus on spell skill.

As to the post, I still think the direction they are going is making the game boring.  As Dhraconus stated, most of the starting positions are seeded with resources.  Make the resources random and make them customizable.  I want the game to start with me in a completely desolute wasteland.  Spend a couple turns looking for the right place to get going.  Even then, my next city is a 30 places away because that is the next resource.  Right now the game has far to many resources and way to many cities.  I am eagerly waiting for 1.1 to see the changes.  However, if you let the gamers choose the level of resources available in the world when it is created, everyone could have what they want.

I fully agree with making, e.g., number of resources customizable. I want to be able to play the style I want (which requires the ability to customize the Sovereign and 'map') and to have significant differentiation between the races. The key thing, as you note about MoM, is that those choices won't always be the same. Currently with Elemental, one has some capability to customize the sovereign but the 'races' are all different shades of vanilla and I have a hard time seeing much difference between the factions (in my current game, I am playing a kingdom faction with two other kingdoms and three empires. The two kingdoms hate each other and both are constantly asking me to go to war against the other one while the empires just want to marry my daughters). Haven't played enough games to really comment on the maps but they seem to have more effect on the tactical level than on the strategic one.

While I do like the ability to customize units, this could lead to the convergence of units rather than the very different experience one got playing, say, High Elves, Dwarves, Dark Elves and Gnolls in MoM. At the moment it doesn't matter, since I have neither the (in-game) time or money to build units: 200+ gold and 18 turns to build a squad (4) of Longbowman, leather armor, no magic items. In MoM, I used my heroes to lead bands of troops in battle groups. All my battle groups in Elemental are groups of champions. Normal troops are too expensive, take too long to build and aren't effective enough given the first two factors. they also lack the 'character' of HE Longbowmen with admantium weapons or dwarven hammerhands. One thing about champions in this game is that they do not have the cool traits that many MoM champions did (where is pathfinder, armsmaster etc let alone the combat perks). Magic items also suck big time compared to MoM. This might be a justifiable game developer choice as one did end up with hugely powerful tooled up heroes in MoM - and the AI never did. Still, more choice, more variety and cooler items are things that very few gamers will whine about.