I'm not a huge fan of this mechanic for similar reasons.

I was dry of food the last couple games, and researching the first resource node tech (the one that says it gives me food) did nothing for me. Food is critical, and that is pretty well game ending, if you also happen to need to expand for other resources.

You cannot *rely* upon them to provide you with anything. *If* they happen to provide the resource you need, and *if* it happens to be somewhere you can exploit (or better yet, do so without starting a new city) you benefit. Every tech you research makes the next more expensive, and to not get anything for your time/effort has an enormous opportunity cost, particularly if you are fighting an early game food shortage, and are scarce of coin (and therefore ability to develop tech).

i feel as if you should be able to go and research specific resources instead of random ones.  kind of like a king saying i need more, so go find me more gold.  then you research it which is like people going out and adventuring for it and lo and behold they find one close to or within your area of influence.

nothing specific just a random selected resource.

food

gold

materials

iron

crystal

the thing is you may get lucky and get a very rare resource like a an enchanted gold mine that gives you the most gold of any resource.  something like that.

How about techs that allow percentage modifiers?  Everyone can see the resources, but get only marginal (if any) benefit from them until they research the applicable tech.  This solves the hidden resource ~ building block problem.  Which might then allow for a better map script to be used?  Cuz now you can spawn out all the resources before the player positions are set.  Or set the players and then spawn the resources.  Then you can normalize for balance, while still allowing for some wild card variety.  The discovery of early resources fosters exploration fun as players go out and survey the land looking for exploitable resources.  With this survey information they then have interesting decisions to make.

So everyone can see most/or all of the resources at the beginning of the game.  You get marginal yields from some.  For others you get nothing until you research the pre-req tech.  So for Fertile Land, you get a basic yield.  Research agriculture and you get a +N% bonus.  Research improved ag to get another +N%.  Perhaps complete a quest in order for a master farmer to share his soil building secrets, or some of his heritage seed stock (get another +N%).  Build a costly irrigation system to get another +N%.  With N generally being a low value.

I always liked Civ III's approach to this. All resources are spawned when the map is generated. However, if you don't know what a resource is/how to harvest it, you cannot see or interact with it. Thus if you research crystals, it would allow you to see and use crystals, but your opponent would not gain any benefit until they too researched it. Thus you might see someone making a mad dash to fortify an area, and not even know what, if anything, they were defending/harvesting. There could also be a valuable late-game resource (elementium) that you've been walking passed for decades because you didn't know it was important.

Ya when I play I constantly get orchards, gold, ventri, and crystal mines spawning in my territory from the AI researching these techs. Kinda nice but also kinda off. Really need to either change the system to the Civ one or at least make sure they spawn only in your territory. These techs however are a good way to make sure that everyone can get at least some iron or crystal.

Ventri mines could however use a nerf. You can get all the iron you need from just one. You should have to trade for most your iron if you don't start with any.