Lack of resource scarcity

Hate the dry up idea as a game mechanic.  Although I do agree with your overall point that scarcity of resources is really the driving force of nations and right now, there is really no need to war against neighbors, as you have all the resources you need.  Should probably be more scarce or take more resources to produce things.

I'm not sure simply tweaking the numbers will work. Maybe it's just my playstyle or the permanency of armies (if you're careful), but when I get a new resource I tend to utilize it, build a set of units that I need, and then sit on my horde of goldironcrystalhorsewargs. If the influx of resources doesn't match this usage curve, you're going to have stockpiles, no matter what.

I'm hoping that the AI fixes will cause the enemy AI factions to kill my units more.  Maybe a resource management along with gold expenses would be helpful too?  But having the resources be used up will cause our game to go back into the dark ages as many of us like to play super long games.

True. Maybe new resources could be discovered to replace the old in neutral spots (if there are any)?

That would be neat, but it might be a more difficult game mechanic to implement.  Not sure, I have no idea what is difficult to develop and what isn't.  On the surface, I wouldn't think that having the computer use boats would be difficult, but many games have shown that it is.

I think it would be bad the for the AI to mess with resources. 

There should be some really great items you can buy in Act II and III that will cost huge amounts of resources. That way you and the AI can keep using resources in the mid to late game. This is how they are handling mana and gold, why not everything else?

Imho it works great like it is now. I never felt I had an abundance of either metal or crystal, never "too much to use" in the mid-game or late-game if I had done my research in warfare (metal) or magic (crystals).

lol I never actually ever bothered to build a crystal mine... I also usually had more metal then I could spend because 90% of my army was champions and it took forever to get metal armor. Resource abundance was a problem in .77 but so much changes in .80 that we will have to wait and see if it is still a problem. Having mines run out of resources would be a horrible mechanic. We don't need a new mechanic we just need balance, something that is always missing from betas.

I think the system should stay as it is, as once you've amassed a stockpile, you now have a very good bargaining tool to use for diplomacy, assuming the others don't have the same stockpile. And diplomacy should be improved in Beta 2, which should cause us to re-evaluate this at that point.

I'm willing to wait for playthroughs against real AI before forming an opinion about the solution, but any TBS game should absolutely contain potential scarcity causing wars fought over resources.  Resources and religion have been the cause of nearly every war in history.  

Seriously?

Every game I've played both myself and all AI players have been super over-resourced. Everyone has unlimited everything it seems, so it isn't a powerful diplomatic too either. That's on all normal settings.

I do like seanw3's idea of ultra high resource cost stuff as well.

Basically I want a reason to give a damn about my resources, and I'm flabbergasted and a little miffed that you can but I can't.

Nuff said. 

I usually go for research that use the resources I have though, maybe that's why? Anyway, let's see how things develop in beta 2, where army units are hopefully more "viable" compared to heroes.

Agreed. That might speed up my usage.

There should be equipment that uses metal and crystal right from the start.  Part of the problem is that you don't actually start using it until later in the game.  If metal gave you pointier spears or harder shields early on, you might care enough to build a mine before researching metal armor.  Hopefully there will be some basic magic items early on too.

In 0.77 I build 1 crystal mine and 1 scenic location so I can train Drakes and the like.  Anything more than that is a waste of money in location upkeep, at least until very late in the magic tech tree.

Why not just introduce the concept of 'wastage'. As a kingdom/Empire's stockpile of a resource (any resource, gold, horse, mana, etc) grows, it hits a series of 'wastage points' where production of that resource takes a penalty. The justification being that if the civilisation has THAT much of the resource built up, people aren't as careful with it as when it is scarce, corruption creeps in, or just the resource producers get lazier. For example, when the King/Emperor is rolling in gildar, corruption seeps in to leech off the excess. Or when there are hundreds of horses just lazing around in the paddock waiting for a rider, officials are more likely to just take one rather than pay for it since it won't be missed. Excess mana bleeds off and escapes into the world at large, while when your stockpile of metal gets huge the miners get just a bit lazier.

As each point of wastage is reached, the production of that resource slows by a given percentage. It will never get to the point it is producing a negative value (except maybe Gildar), but it would be enough to be felt.

How about requiring units that need mettel/horses have a small amount of Metel/horse upkeep requirement.

That will make resorce nodes usfull threw out the full game not just at the start

Let's wait for beta 2 to make such radical suggestions. 

you'll be using up your resources against the new AI

Ie using up all your X, and trading everything else to get more X (X = metal, crystals, or diplo capital. Possibly mounts)