Elemental Forums
I haven't seen any horse resource for weeks in my random maps for week. Coincidence or did they get messed up somehow ?
Wild Warg resources are a bit rare too, but I recently I see them in about half my campaigns. I play only Kingdoms, so wargs don't matter so much to me.
I've seen a few Horses resources on the map, so they are there. I have even been able to exploit them (add horses to my resource cue).
That being said, the random distribution of resources does have a lot of feast and famine though. These days, I've always had a food resource nearby, a Shard most of the time, but anything else is luck of the draw. I once had three arcane temples within 5 squares of my Sov at game start...
I'm guessing that the way resources are spread on the random map is to make it so you actually have a reason to go to war.
I have plenty of food but no metal, where as Procipinee is starving and has mountains of metal, I wonder If I should take her metal....
Or if you're a pacifist you can trade, but the 4x rule of thumb is that might makes right.
In my last game, I buy them from Altar, who seems to have some.
Resource scarcity in general is... annoying. Right now I have metal thanks to a ventri mine from my Adventure tech because except for Gilden, no one else seems to have any, and I have explored most of the map. 
Agrre with everyone above me. I had to make a 2nd city on the opposite side of the world map from my capitol to be able to harvest/farm Wolves for my mounted troops. I'm sure some of your maps may have had a horse resource or 2, somewhere... maybe. I base this on the fact that out of 5 games now, this last game I played was the 1st one that I found wolves in... so I'm guessing you and I have been extremely unlucky. And of all 5 games, only 3 of my games had a horse resource in it. ( that i couldnt use cuz i'm empire through & through)
Yeah, I've seen horse resources too.
One game, in this patch, I even had a city with TWO horse resources within the influence of one town.
or they can just make a building that consume a ton of food as substitute if you can't find a natural one (that doesn't consume food)
Yes, I think the scarcity of some resources opens up for more interesting choices and diplomacy options.
Also, getting all resources available early in the game would hurt replayability. Each new game should be different imo.
Right now I dread the idea of playing in anything bigger than medium because I would surely end all my games like: "I have stuff, my opponents have stuff and in the rest of the map, we will be lucky if there are more things aside from Shards (which will be also few by themselves)". Because it will only mean "I have to wage war against my opponents because there is no other resources but theirs and I'm forced to cross all the damn map to wage war upon them, crossing totally empty map... except for the bandits and spiders that spice up the landscape.". I already have that in medium and for that, let my enemies start near me and lets have war from turn 1. ¬.¬
To have reasons to explore and expand is nice. Specially if it means we can lessen our "Lets rush the enemy because there is nothing else to do in the map. Except kill bandits. And spiders. Add bears and darklings too.".
I agree with your last paragraph. It's the frequency of resources on normal which worries me. They are not suppose to be so scarce in that setting. That or the description should be changed.
i'm looking at horses with 2 shards nearby.
there's a pioneer from one of the other factions standing next to the shard... and not building a settlement (great! for me anyway).. because i've parked a stack of 3 heroes nearby whilst waiting for me pioneer to walk all the way there? (should have updated the design to 4 moves before i sent that one!)
Feast of famine! I think it's fine. Makes games interesting. Besides who has all that gold for horses?
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