Perfectly put.
This is lacking in nearly all 4X games these days - in Civilization IV (my personal favourite) by the end game, everyone has the same Tanks, Planes, Troops and Ships - all of the diversity is sucked out of the game. Obviously this is going to be different with Elemental as we can design our own Troops, but it could so easily slip backwards.

Two methods can be employed to prevent it - provide lots of options for a fewer number of resources or provide a handful of options for a greater number of resources.
For example, if you only really have access to Iron and Horses, being able to continually advance your Iron Working and Animal Husbandry techs to provide greater and greater benefits would allow you to thrive. If you gained access to Mithril ore you'd be able to make comparibly better armour, but having - say - level 4 Iron Armour be equal to level 1 Mithril Armour would achieve a level of balance and not penalise a player for being placed on the opposite side of the map, while still ensuring better resources are sought after.

I also like the idea of many resources, if it is implemented in a way that doesn't cause too much micromanagement playing on a huge-size map.  This also goes for optional resources, happiness resources, etc.

I think there could be tons of separate happiness resouces, not just wine, but also furs, spices, etc.  Ideally each each city to benefit a little from having enough of that resource, but no extra benefit from a surplus, so might as well send it to another city, or trade it away.

In the "twilight honey" example, I would really, really prefer that such special resources be things that the unit (OR A HERO!) just happen to carry along and benefit from if they have it.  Only basics like iron for armor should be required to build a unit -- otherwise it could get too tedious designing bunches of units that are identical except for the presence or absence of one or another of the bonus resources  (hint, I got bored with the ship-designer in GalCiv2).

For that matter, I wouldn't be heartbroken if they made it possible to build some hard-to-research units without the resource -- having it just means units build faster or get an extra bonus.  I think the devs are going in a different direction, but maybe they could let us build an iron-armored unit even if we don't have enough iron, but its armor would be poor-quality.

There are three general types of resources: food, industry, and luxury.

Food

I believe that the game currently abstracts food well enough that additional resources of that type may just clutter the game. As such they may be able to be done without.

Industry

As Frogboy suggested there should be a small amount of these resources automatically generated by any settlement. This is justified in my mind in that the "quality" of mineral or material deposits can vary greatly. There are many examples of this. Like the difference in the ease of production of pig iron by the iron ores of Hematite vs Siderite, the usefulness of shale vs granite for construction, and lastly, the difference between Maple and Cedar for ship building.

These lesser sources of the final resource will get you what you need but you will need to process the source more to achieve similar results. i.e. It would take longer to produce a particular structure or item...

Some industrial resources that may be included are as follows:

• Timber
• Iron
• Copper
• Tin -----> Considering the technology level I believe that tin should be included b/c of its requirement in bronze for weapons and durable goods which were very common...
  
• Stone
• Marble -----> Give a prestige bonus for construction with the resource or something...
• Cotton
• Some hair bearing animal. Considering the fantasy nature of this game "sheep" may be a bit mundane....
• some animal for mobility i.e. horses...

Luxury

These should be resources that increase happiness of populace or prestige of country. These resources should not be generated automaticaly. Either you have them or you don't...

Some luxury resources that may  be included are as follows:

• Gold
• Silver
• Silk
• Dye
• Spices
• Gemstones

This all would be unnecessarily mundane for a fantasy game so I propose that there exists a special building, "Alchemy Lab?", that allows resources to be imbued with differing types/combinations of mana for differing effects. This way if a player wants to make Mithrialian Longswords they wouldn't be mining "Mithril" but rather take, for example, Iron, Silver, Air Mana, and Earth Mana and combine to make the mentioned material.

It would be great to be able to make these materials fully customizable by the player but I fear that would greatly complicate trading b/c two players could make the same material and call it different things or how would the AI value such combinations.

Overall, I think this method for handling special materials would add strategic depth and lend to the uniqness of each kingdoms units, structures, and overall game play.

I would personally like to see caravans and trading ships used to their full potential. Im not turned off by your proposed system, Draginol, i think that it could definitely work, but at a loss to the importance of international trade. I would see no real point to trading with other nations if i just got that resource, no questions asked... I would rather see a huge abundance of resources strewn across the map, but they can become exhausted (they have a set number before they are gone) since the swords would become a resource themselves after their creation this could work. I like what Rishkith said about pirates and black markets. Id like to see "black caravans" coming into my ports with small quantities of iron ore (or if im lucky, finished swords!) for my nation because my Nation A didn't have the fortune of getting as many iron resources as Nation B.

[Edit: Theres supposed to be a picture here but its not showing up as of now, just to clear up any confusion]

So the totals for the nations in this circumstance are as follows:

Nation A: 100 ore

Nation B: 1300 ore

Nation C: 700 ore

However, Nation B, being the largest would possibly have large ammounts of corruption, and might be more prone to those resources being stolen and brought to my ports or cities, for a price of course. Some of the mines might eventually become exhausted, but the swords that were created might be able to be harvested from battle sites.

The same would work for mithril, adamantium, etc. and so Nation A might get lucky and get some of those resources. I could see this idea also working for pretty much any resource that made its way into the game: Horses, spices, gems, etc. Resources with low numbers would become extremely valuable and worth would change from game to game, providing more diversity. Wouldn't it be prestigious to control the only spice in the world?

All I want is for a realistically based, yet reasonably balanced game. Id like to see specialized nations that might not be able to build that many swords but have very powerful horsemen armed with wooden spears. It would provide for different kinds of strategy such as robbing caravans or hiring pirates/raiders to do it for you. I don't know how or if this would work, I was just jotting down my ideas. Thanks for listening.

I'd like to see basic resources, like metals, gold, food, population, wood, produced every turn by every city, with mines, farms, forests acting as bonuses to production.

However, since what sets the game apart is magic, I'd like to see many different types of rare magical resources that are prerequisites for building some units, spells or buildings.  Give us a lot of variety so there are several viable paths to power, but make the individual reagents rare and exhaustible (or only slowly harvestable) so that we end up forced to follow different paths in different games depending on what magical resources we get.

I also think unit numbers need to stay relatively low, to keep tactical battles from becoming tedious and so that having a unit with the incredible magical equipment that you've painstaking assembled makes a real difference.

You're already doing this to a certain extent with the different mana types.  If you start the game sitting next to 3 fire shards, you're probably going to end up using a lot of fire magic.

Why not further use the mana to modify mundane materials to make your magical materials rather than mine them directly?

If its not too confusing, it would be nice to have BOTH lots of resources on the map AND expensive magical way(s) to enchant common materials  -- both "enchanted steal" swords and mithril swords, and then maybe "adamantium" is just "enchanted mithril". 

I agree with this comment wholeheartedly, particularly the first part.  This game is about magic; give us magical artifacts that do magical things, not just increase stat bonuses.  I want tactical teleportation, swords that shoot fireballs, wands that summon watermelon imps, cloaks that make my spies invisible, shoes that let my horses run on water, helmets that let me temporarily control the minds of other units, armor that lets me swim through lava, scantily clad snake-women that turn my enemies to stone with a glance, and, of course, wings that let my pigs fly.  No harm in asking, right?

Resources should not be able to restrict a player from building whatever unit he wants, but should have extremely significant bonuses so that players playing at a difficulty that matches their skill level will have to build units that they can "back" with resources. 

Not to go too far off topic but will resources be finite or infinate?

The problem with allowing each city to produce a set small amount of a material is that, if you build enough cities then the cities will eventually dilute the bonus from controlling the resource.  Especially if 10 cities = 1 mine, hell just build cities to ramp up every industry.  Though, the idea mentioned earlier, of each city having a random chance of producing a single resource seems like an interesting ideas.  Just so, that having a boat load of cities does not allow you to do what ever you like.  If your going to allow cities to produce materials it should really be significantly nerfed compared to mines.

I also really, really, like the idea that units require resources.  I really liked the whole international trade aspect of CIV IV, though I think it could be improved in elemental.  I envision it working just like trading income.  I could give my iron poor vassel a part of my iron income, allowing them to build armored troops and further bringing them into my fold.

To facilitate trade between empires resources should come in two flavors, common and rare.  Common are resources that most people have access to, perhaps three sites/player on a map.  Geographical bunching can ensure no one has all the possible common resources.  Common resources, along with money (or really anything else), can be used to barter for access to other resources.  Rare resources are used to construct special upgrades or other neat extras, not everyone in the game can get access to all of these, but everyone should be able to pick up a couple, perhaps 0.5 sites/players.  Players owning one of these resources could command a premium price for them on the open market or hoard them for the benefit.

While the sites should be pretty rare for any single resource, I think there should be a moderatly large number of resources in game, no less than that found in CIV IV.  What would be really neat is, if we could mix resources to produce new items or quasi-resources.  Perhaps a certain magical ring takes 4-5 different ingredients to produce.

If everyone can make similar items, just some people can do it faster, the game loses some charm. I really like seeing regional units. In other games like Total War and Civ, the elephants resource is rare and only some people can build elephants. It was for more interesting not knowing if you'd have access to them, who else would, and if they were worth fighting over. How would my enemies react if if I found a resource that let my troops gain some sort of lifesteal ability and no one else could? Any type of mount is a good example as well.

There is no reason to be worried about too many different types "canceling each other" out. Because my empire has access to good shields you won't buy any archers? Even if they theoretically 100% cancel each other out somehow it still doesn't matter.

1. Even if they are good counters against each other that doesn't mean other players will have it.

2. It just gives you a stronger incentive to take or sabotage that resource.

How many resources appear on a map is a map generation issue and should be something the player selects an option for (rich, average, barren).

Actually CIV 4 is a perfect example because you could have the Elephant without the resource... from a goodie hut.

Did one elephant really make a difference in your game? Maybe, if used tactically just exactly right... but statistically not likely. Same thing with the slow rare resource. Is building One Iron Armored Knight worth producing instead of 1,000 spear armed infantrymen?

Because we shouldn't be talking slightly slow, we should be talking REALLY slow.

But the point of not shutting it immediately off is for:

1) It is less frustrating not to lose ALL your development (I'm 1 turn away from production and... poof???)

2) You can still put up token resistance if you're unlucky with random resource distribution you discover in the middle of the game. (Or it becomes political through Trade and Piracy)

I've seen a lot of good ideas that don't eliminate the impact of being with out the resource. Warehousing means you don't suffer #1 but you're still gonna be shut out soon. Trade, Piracy, and slow development address #2 but not without potentially a very significant opportunity cost.

As much as I like CIV IV and have played it almost exclusively since release, I have never had this happen. An Elephant from a goodie hut? Are you sure? On what difficulty level?

CIV IV is the best game ever made!

wow! good to see everyone's got a lot to say.

haven't got time to read it all so sorry if someone's already said this.

i'm +1 for MORE RESOURCES.

i say this as resources shoule be as open as possible, if for no other reaosn than this is to be an TBS engine. i'd hate it if we were limited to a few resources (extreme example: gold, mana, wood, metal) as we would then be limited in what we could use in our own modded games. be that those resources or max 4 resources.

i also like the idea that you may have something extremely rare in your kingdom (even if it's all you got) and that people trade for it.

that's the jist before i write too much =P