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{{trope}}

 

In [[Real Time Strategy]] games, the player needs to acquire resources in order to build anything. The number of resources to acquire and the means to acquire them vary from game to game, but overall there are five types of resources:

How exactly these resource are gathered varies. Sometimes your basic [[Worker Unit]] will go back and forth from the resource node back to your base, giving you a bit of resource each time. Other times the player may need only to capture the resource node with units and/or build a building on top of it gain a constant flow of the resource. Occasionally, the game allows you to trade one resource for another in some way.

 

 

{{examples}}

 

Almost every RTS has some sort of Resource gathering, but here's some examples of the different types of resources:

 

 

** ''Warcraft 2'' had a second Lumber-type resource, oil, which was found in water and used almost exclusively for naval units and upgrades.

** ''Warcraft 3'' also has another minor tertiary resource - corpses. The most obvious way to get them is to kill ground units or creatures, but the Undead can also produce them at Graveyards or in Meat Wagons, and carry them around in Meat Wagons. They're primarily used by the Undead for raising Skeletons and Carrion Beetles, healing Ghouls and Abominations, and for the Death Knight's [[Animate Dead]] ability. They're also used by the Night Elf Warden's Avatar of Vengeance, the Human Paladin's Resurrection ability(only friendly corpses), and the Tauren Spirit Walker's Ancestral Spirit ability(only Tauren corpses).

*** Earlier in development (as shown in several previews years before the game came out), corpses were supposed to play a far greater role in the undead economy, but this could never be properly balanced, so they were scaled back to the limited use seen in the actual game.

** Zerg larvae are used to produce ALL Zerg units and they spawn from the main production buildings once every 14 seconds or so.

** Population also show up in Starcraft. Each race has a standard Population cap (Terran supply depots, Zerg overlords, Protoss [[Construct Additional Pylons|pylons]]), independent of each other. If you can acquire a [[Worker Unit]] of a different race, you get an entirely new population cap to work with that applies only to that other race's units.

** ''Red Alert 2's'' expansion, ''Yuri's Revenge'', though no different in the only-Gold-and-Power-type-resource paradigm, gives you the Grinder, allowing you to turn units, or [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|civilians]] whom you have [[Mind Control|mind controlled]], into resources on demand.

* ''[[Dune II]]'' required you to mine Spice, which is what makes space travel possible, and is thus the most valuable substance in the galaxy. It also uses power produced by Wind Trap buildings. Being one of the grand-daddies of modern RTS, this is a possible [[Trope Maker]] - and the [[Trope Namer]] of power resources.

** ''Dune 2000'' used the same resources. ''Dune II'' essentially set the mold for the ''Command and Conquer'' series (also by Westwood), with the aforementioned minerals or tiberium replacing spice.

* ''[[Settlers of Catan]]'' runs on this: It's possible to change 4 units of any resource into 1 of any other, meaning a player can, for example, build a road starting out with 8 sheep. Since you are actually trading with unknown NPCs, it will be a normal road.

* This is a fairly common [[Euro Game]] mechanic. For instance, ''Stone Age'' requires lumber, brick, stone, and gold to build things, and requires you to set aside two of your tribe for a turn to increase your population.

* ''[[Sins of a Solar Empire]]'': Gold and Lumber. "Income" is needed for everything, including bribing pirates and [[Black Market]] purchases. Of the two kinds of Lumber, troop production requires more Metal, while research requires more Crystal.

** Also Population, requiring you to research various levels in fleet and capital ship crew 'supply' in order to support additional units of various types.

*** In general, Microsoft-published RTS's tend to follow a pattern: Food from farms and fishing boats, wood from trees, gold/wealth from mines and caravans, and stone/metal from mines. Also a population cap that is boosted by constructing houses.

** The Orks also have population, as you need to build more Waaagh! banners to increase the Population cap on your army. In the ''Soulstorm'' expansion, the Sisters of Battle have a "Faith" resource generated and stored by specific units and buildings while the Dark Eldar harvest Soul Power from dead foes and allies ; both enable the use of powerful abilities which consume the resource. The Necrons offer an interesting variation on the trope, as they use requisition as a Power-type resource, each listening post built over a strategic location improving the speeds at which units and buildings are built (up to a 100% bonus for 5 listening posts) and power pays for ''everything''.

** It should be noted that the proliferation of resources helps to avert [[Most Annoying Sound]]: rarely are you in a position where you can't build ''some''thing, even if it's not what you originally came for. (Of course, to compensate, there are plenty of other things that make annoying sounds, such as when you bump up against the top of your resource cap.)

** [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[Rise of Legends]]'' has timonium as a Gold-type, Wealth (for the Vinci and Alin) / Energy (for the Cuotl) as Lumber-types, and Population. Timonium, wealth and energy have the same income cap found in ''[[Rise of Nations]]'', and the most common way of increasing wealth/energy income also raises that cap. There's also "Research", which is used to improve certain aspects of the player's nation, and the Vinci-only "Prototypes", which can be used to either give a general improvement across the whole army, or buy a special unit and improve units related to the special one. Both are acquired from specific buildings.

** ''[[Total Annihilation Kingdoms]]'' was criticised for having only one resource (mana) and thus doing away with the interesting energy/metal tradeoff system from the original TA.

** Specifically, losing a unit refunds half the point cost immediately, and the remainder is restored at fixed intervals over the course of ten seconds. This can result in bizarre waves: taking out several heavy tanks, only to be met with several medium tanks (which is all that the player could afford immediately), then several heavy tanks when those are destroyed, though less than the original wave (since the points from the medium tanks have yet to be refunded).

* ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'' uses credits as a gold resource. While planets have ores and minerals (called resources) they affect the production output and generation of credits, but are not a resource themselves.

* In the ''Cossacks'' series, there is gold, wood, food, stone, iron and coal. They are all Lumber-type except gold, which of course is Gold-type. They also have some Power-type aspects, in the sense that all units 'eat' some of your stockpile. Gunpowder units consume small amounts of iron and coal, and if it runs out they can't fire at all. If you run out of gold, your army officers and all ships mutiny, and if you run out of food there's a famine.

* ''[[Warlords Series|Warlords Battlecry]]'' features four different kinds of resources (Gold, Metal, Stone, and Crystal), with each race needing different proportions of each (to the extent that some races had little use for one of the resources), making all four Gold, Lumber, and Useless, depending on which race you play as. For example, the elven races tend to use a lot of crystal, while more barbaric races tend to use a lot of stone, and the civilized races use a lot of gold. Resources are also produced somewhat differently than in most other games: your hero (and some units) can convert resource mines to your control, which then give you a steady stream of resources. This stream can be increased with some upgrades or by loading workers into the mines, and mines can (but rarely do, unless you're fighting against the Swarm) run out of resources, after which they will trickle resources at a greatly reduced rate. WBC also has population; each building you own increases your population limit (most buildings by 2, though some races have buildings which do nothing but increase it by 3, like the Orcish hovel and the Dark Dwarf supply depot), plus 5 for each level of your Keep, plus some more depending on your hero's stats.

** Starting in ''Civ 4'', it is possible to know about a resource without having the technology to actually use them. This particularly common in IV, where Uranium is known upon the discovery of Physics (a late Renaissance-Era tech) but not actually usable until you discover Fission (a late Industrial-Era tech), turning Uranium into Uselessium for an entire tech level. (Having said that, you ''want'' Uranium, so knowing where it is can aid in your long-term strategic plans. This is even more important if you're in one of those matches where [[My Rules Are Not Your Rules|the AI magically knows where all the strategic resources are, from the first turn on up.]])

** ''[[Colonization]]'', set in the American colonial era, has numerous available resources, reflecting the way a continent will have areas rich in different resources. Most of the resources translate into gold, and require specialists to take full advantage of them. For example, cotton can be grown on certain types of land, with some squares especially rich in cotton. The raw materials can be sold, but are worth far more if there is a specialist available who can convert them into finished products, such as a weaver who can convert the cotton into cloth. There are also specialists who make gathering the resources more productive. Population is tied to religion points, as increased religion points will entice freedom-seeking European emigrants. It is also necessary to employ statesmen to raise rebel sentiment, without which independence cannot be declared, and the game cannot be won.

* TBS series ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]]'' uses a whopping seven resources, with gold as, well, Gold, and with lumber, ore, gems, crystal, sulphur and mercury as Lumber. Gold was the easiest to get, generated automatically by cities, gold mines and certain items and skill, with upgrades to cities increasing that city's income by a maximum as small as 250 in Heroes 1 and 2 - from 1000 to 1250 - or as large as 9500 - from 500 to 10000 with the Grail building in Heroes 3, 4 and 5. Lumber and ore are both secondary resources, gathered at a rate of 2 per day from ore mines and lumber patches, and also by certain items. Gems, crystal, sulphur and mercury are all tertiary resources, produced by their respective mines, or, in the case of mercury, in labs, at the rate of 1 per day, and generally required for higher-level buildings and units. Certain town buildings also increase income of different resources, and any resource can be traded for any other in a marketplace, with the price becoming more favourable the more markets you control.

** Each faction inherently biases towards a certain rare resource in most games, meaning that the others quickly fall to the Marketplace as Uselessium. Unfortunately for Heroes 1, there was no marketplace and the bias was worse than ever, but hindsight is 20/20.

** To make this worse, recources present on the map are determined [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|through a process of simulated geology]]. While you can pick a starting area with favourable mineral analysis, you can't really predict what you're going to end up short on. And many resources and commodities (particularly food and clothing) can end up rotting or being otherwise contaminated before you get a chance to use them for their intended purpose. This is somewhat (but not entirely) [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|offset by the fact that there are multiple resources that can be used for most jobs]].

* ''[[Dungeon Keeper]]'' has just Gold as its gold-type resource (used to build and maintain rooms and pay minions' wages), which must be mined from the ground. Some maps have mineable diamonds, which never run dry and can be mined for infinite Gold.

** Even better (for those new to RTS, at least) is that "Supply" is generated by buildings, you can have as many as you want (within the total building limit of your base), and it's also found in crates in random locations on the map.

*** Naturally, there ''is'' a trade off. A building that generates supply takes up one section of your base. In games where you can build as much as you want, this wouldn't be a problem, but ''Halo Wars'' limits your buildings to the number of building spaces your base can support (maximum of seven). So, while Supply is infinite, builing too many supply-creating buildings cripples your ability to turn that supply into units, effectively making you wealthy but undefended.

* ''[[A Kingdom For Keflings]]'' has, for building parts, 3 base resources (Stone, Lumber, and Magic Crystals) that exist in both depletable clusters and infinite tiles at the edge of the map and 1 base resource (Wool) that exists on Sheep at the bottom of the map that replenishes up to 10 per sheep tile over time. Each of these can be refined once (Cut Stone, Planks, Magic Gems and Cloth) and again (Brick, Carved Wood, Magic Powder and Silk) for more advanced building parts. Some buildings require Keflings, the population of which can be increased by getting more Hearts by completing certain quests and placing them in Houses.

* The original ''Spellforce'' has '''seven''' resources: Food, Wood, Moonsilver, Lenya Plants, Aria (sort of magical water), Iron and Stone. Different forces used different resources, which meant it encouraged combining multiple Light or Dark races; Elves, for example, could access some of their more powerful units by paying Iron, but lacked the ability to gather it for themselves, and could use the Forester building to [[Game Breaker|gain an infinite supply of wood]].

* ''[[Company of Heroes]]'' has three resources: Manpower, Fuel and Munitions, but only two follow this trope. Manpower is gold and Fuel is lumber (used for vehicles and advanced buildings), while Munitions are used for special abilities like airstrikes and throwing grenades. However, Fuel and Munitions are gathered like gold (owning the territory where the resource is located increases the rate at which you gain that resource), and Manpower was gained proportional to the amount of the map you controlled: the more you controlled, the faster you'd gain Manpower.

* The ''Deadlock'' games have every subtype. Gold ("credits") and Population are self-explanatory. Most of the resources are Lumber type, including wood and iron/steel/endurium/tridium (which all do the same thing, just increasingly well). Food and Energy double up as Lumber/Power: Lumber, in that they're storable resources, and Power, in that they're upkeep resources (for population and buildings, respectively). Electronics and Anti-Matter Pods are Lumber, but only higher in the tech tree. Finally, there's Art Pieces, the universal "useless" resource, which have some small effect on morale, but are otherwise best sold off.

* ''[[Dark Reign]]'' has two resources, taelon and water. You collect water, which, when the building's silo is full, is sent off-world and converted into credits. Taelon can be used to top-up power generators; however, a lack of taelon won't disable a generator - it'll merely cause it to run at half efficiency. Therefore, building twice as many generators allows you to ignore taelon altogether.

* ''[[Earth 2150|Earth 2160]]'' has four resources: metal, water, crystals and energy. Their roles vary by race: ED uses water and metal, LC uses water and crystals, UCS uses crystals and metal, and all three use energy. The first three are either Gold or Lumber based on side, while energy is Power. Aliens need water for ground units and crystals and metal for air units.

** Similarily, the otherwise forgettable ''Dark Planet: Battle for Natrolis''. Humans use stone (ore) and crystals, the mystical Sorin use wood and stone, while the insect Dreil use crystals and wood. All three races use Energy as a Lumber-type resource, with Humans using the most but having it easiest to harvest, and the Dreil least and hardest.

* ''[[Black and White]]'' offers a combination of many basic types of materials that support each other when gained: To feed your population, you have to produce food for them through either miracle spells or by assigning missionaries to harvest it. The same applies for wood, which is required for construction. To cast miracles, you'll have to spend prayer power (mana), which is generated by your villagers at the worship site...who also need food to keep worshipping. The size of your population and the number of houses they have between them also affects how large an area you can cover in the game. In the end, though, it turns out that lumber is a seriously lacking resource, because you constantly need to harvest it to build more houses, and forests have a nasty habit of running out of trees unless you took up gardening and treated your followers as vermin to be kept away from the rutabagas.

* ''[[Empire Earth]]'' has five: food (the most basic, needed to produce citizens), gold (multi-purpose), wood (for building construction and some military units), stone (for fortifications and some advanced buildings), and iron (for advanced weaponry). All must be collected from specific sources across the map, with the exception of food, which can be farmed.

* ''[[Sacrifice]]'', being half RTS and half RPG, had only two resources; Souls and Mana, though it's hard to tell which resource equates to which type. Mana is generated constantly from areas called "mana fountains"; placing a Manalith on that fountain allows you to draw upon that mana from a distance, so the more Manaliths you have, the faster your mana gauge fills. Souls, on the other hand, are limited- there's only a select amount on each stage, so the whole point of the game is to try and kill off your opponent's creatures (or the various creeps) and sacrifice their souls in order to use said souls to conjure your own creatures.

** Mana would be Power, and Souls would be population. Mana was produced by buildings, or by simply standing next to mana fountains, but required you to be near Manahoars to draw if you were elsewhere. It was used to power everything spell-wise. Souls were very interesting, however, in that they created a fluctuating [[Arbitrary Headcount Limit]] that the players fought over.

* ''[[Star Wars]] Galactic Battlegrounds'' has you collect 4 different types of Materials to construct your base as well as build. Carbon is needed for base construction, Food is needed for Infantry, Ore Crystals is need for Base Defences and Nova Crystals are needed for Heavy Weapons. All of these can be harvested by the same unit, and there are various ways to collect these materials (Ergo, to collect food, you can kill wildlife, fish, etc)

* ''[[Fat Princess]]'' has 3 resources: Wood and Metal for building things, and Cake for keeping The Princess fat.

* Strategy in the ''[[Settlers]]'' series from Blue Byte revolves around careful resource-management (as well as sensible road-building). This series of games is interesting in that some resources are quite easily renewable (you can just plant more trees, and you can farm as much grain and as many pigs as you like) while some (metal and stone) are finite.

* Averted in ''Z''. The game has no resources per se. Instead, a map in the game is divided into territories that are conquered by capturing the flags at the centers of each territory. Control of a territory brings with it control of whatever lies inside, such as robot or vehicle factories. Production for a factory is chosen and units are periodically generated with more advanced units requiring more time to produce. The more territories a player controls the lower the time required for that player's factories to produce units.

* ''[[Brutal Legend]]'' has "Fans", which function exactly like Mana in Sacrifice in that you collect them by placing Merch Booths over them, which sends the fans to your stage.

* The ''[[Total War]]'' series just has a standard currency, e.g. florins in ''Medieval''. This is used to purchase all units and buildings in the game. There's also a number of ways to acquire more money, such as through merchant trade (including "acquiring" other merchants' business), generation of money by farming, mining, and trade, sacking enemy towns, or ransoming captured enemy troops. There's no population limit, but you are limited with how many troops you can order per settlement per turn, and certain settlements only have a certain number of troops of each type that can be ordered, and must replenish from the local "pool" of troops available - representative of the fact that if you recruited a few hundred knights from a particular region, you'll have to wait for either more nobles to come of age to join the military or for more peasants or middle-class citizens to be levied/recruited for combat.

* ''[[Para World]]'' has food, wood, and stone, but also a unique fourth resource called skulls. Skulls are used in some upgrades and in the promotion of units to higher levels, and are gained by killing other units.

* Most of the ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' games have some form of collectible resource, usually Lumber. Occasionally there's even different KINDS of "Lumber". Island of Happiness has FOUR, lumber, stone, gold lumber, and rare ore.

* ''[[Submarine Titans]]'', an underwater RTS, has Metal for building stuff, Gold for researching technology, Corium for giving energy to your ships' weapons, and "Oxygen" which is analogous to Power. Silicons, an alien race, use different resources: Silicon (their equivalent of Metal), Corium and Energy (their equivalent of Oxygen.)

** Unlike RTSes, however, the only resource ''you'' need (as Mayor) is money. Power, water, and waste management are things you build with that money that are necessary to attract Sims (i.e. citizens), create jobs, and gain popularity. Since population, jobs, and popularity are ([[Video Game Cruelty Potential|theoretically]]) your goal, these "resources" are actually more like the ''units'' in an RTS, i.e. the tools with which you achieve your aim. However, it is true that money works like Gold and power works like Power, as do water (with the proper infrastructure) and waste management (again, with proper infrastructure).

* In ''[[Achron]]'', all the races require 'L-Crystal' and 'Q-Plasma', which fulfill the roles of Gold and Lumber respectively. CESO (the humans) have a resource called 'Reserves' which ostensibly looks like Population (its icon is a small stick-figure person, and all units have a small integer cost), but it doesn't act as a unit cap; Importers continuously generate more and more Reserves over time... its closer to a cap on the number of units you can generate per unit time. The Vecgir also have a power resource called, appropriately, "power". When power demand exceeds supply, vecgir vehicles do not regenerate energy, eliminating the ability to use special abilities like self teleport.

* Initially, in ''[[Space Empires]]'' you had construction points generated by facilities, which were affected by the value of the planet. In IV, this resource was split into three: Minerals (gold), Organics, and Radioactives (lumbers). Population simply generates itself if you have at least one million citizens.

* One of the most infamous issues with the horrid ''[[Left Behind]] Eternal Forces'' can be summed up as follows: men are a gold resource, women are a lumber resource.

* The game ''MULE--I'' on the Commodore 64 and NES has Smithore (a rock used to build the titular robot donkeys that do all the work), Energy (powers said robot donkeys), Food (powers you), and Crystite (a useless gem that can be traded for money.) Buy up plots of land, buy [[MUL Es]], outfit them, buy/sell resources from/to other players, and hope the idiot computer players don't cheat each other blind and ruin everything. Yeeha.

* ''Spore'', in the civilization stage, has spice, which serves as money, and a specific amount of it is needed for building or unit creation. It is gathered steadily over time once you have claimed a spice mine, but the rate at which you gather it decreases with time as the spice in the mine decreases. The mines don't ever run dry though.

* ''[[Universe At War]]'' has gold, or rather "resources" which is collected by little robots slicing up buildings and destroyed robots. It also has power.

* ''[[Gratuitous Space Battles]]'' has three resources in the campaign mode: cash, crew, and pilots. Cash is generally a Gold equivalent, representing the amount of money spent on building each ship, as well as on repairs and upkeep. Crew and pilots serve as a Lumber-style resource; every frigate and cruiser requires a certain number of crew and a single pilot, while fighter squadrons require sixteen pilots per squad but no crew. Cash is produced by factories, while crew/pilots are produced by naval academies. Depending on ship design, different ship types will demand different numbers of crew; for example, a ship heavy on missile launchers and carrier bays will have upwards of four hundred crew, while a ship focused on lasers and shields will have far fewer crew.

* In the DOS-based game The Settlers (also released as Serf City), there are 6 different natural resources. These are Gold, Iron, Coal, Stone, Wood and Food. Gold can only be obtained by mining and must be refined in a goldsmith's shop (uses coal) before being used. Gold only serves to increase the morale of your knights. Iron can only be mined and must be refined into iron bars (using coal) in a smelting shop before it can be used. Coal must be mined and is used for refining gold and iron and also by the blacksmith to make weapons, essential for creating new knights. Stone can be mined or found in natural stone deposits above-ground and is used in building. Wood (obviously) comes from trees and must be milled into lumber in a Sawmill before it can be used for building. Trees do not re-seed themselves, so you need a Forester to plant more. Food comes in three varieties, only one of which (Fish) is found naturally. A Fisherman can catch fish at any nearby body of water. You can also plant Wheat at Farms, grind it into Flour in a Windmill and then bake it into Bread at a Baker's Shop, or build Pig Farms and turn them into meat at a Butcher's Shop. Resource Management is the key to victory.

* A non-videogame example, but the characters in the webcomic [[Homestuck]] must collect resources in order to build weapons and items. It is implied that there are around thirty six types.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]

[[Category:Strategy Game Tropes]]