Resources revisited. (regarding game balance)

I posted a message about the potential imbalance created by resources a week ago. That post did not get any replies. I have since completed two games, on large and medium maps; difficulty being crippling (incredible AI) and painful (genius AI), respectively. The games are on the metaverse under my name. My experiences in both have reinforced my belief that the objections raised in the earlier post need to restated.

Now my position regarding resources is that they are grant too much of an advantage to their respective categories. With medium-level mining technologies, it is not uncommon to get up to about a 50% bonus from a single resource. This level rises even more with further technologies. Since they are empire-wide bonuses, this is a HUGE advantage catered on its owner.

The single most devastating resource is the one that grants the military bonus. An empire's battleship-up ships, with a single developed military resource starbase are worth two or more of an empire that does not have it. In both of my games, after I secured a mil-bonus, victory was virtually assured. In the 'crippling' game I lost perhaps 3 dreads in a huge war in which it was basically me vs the-rest-of-the-galaxy, that is, everyone but the Drengin in the alliance against me. I repeat, THREE dreadnoaughts was all that I lost. Needless to say, the whole war was a tedius affair. With battleships and dreadnaughts costing an arm-and-a-leg, such advantage will win any game.

This would not have been much of a problem, because the alliance-leader, Altarians, already had two mil-bonus resources against my single one. But since they did not defend it, I made these starbases my initial targets, which were destroyed on turn 2 of the war. By turn 15, I had a developed starbase on both. My ships were 150% more powerful than my opponent's.

Add to these an economy and a morale resource, I had a virtually unstoppable economy, with spending at 100% and tax at about 50%, where morale never dropped below 60%. Per-turn income was fixed at about 100bc. Even Saddam did not win elections as easy as I did.

But even if the AI is somehow fixed to defend its starbases tenacously, this wont fix the problem of resources being overly powerful. In that situation, depending on how well the AI plays, it will be impossible to win the game at all.

So, let me humbly suggest: For the love of game balance, please decrease the efficency of bonuses. Exact level can be determined by play-testing, but my call would be at least an initial reduction by half.

Another approach that can be tried would be for resoruces to grant bonuses to nearby systems within a limited radius only. Say, a 3x3 square centered around the starbase.