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Showing the way, always the way, this is the way
-Glamator the Spotted Hyena

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:
Gold: Gold is a primary resource. You will need it for everything you plan to do. If there is a Black Market to buy other resources from, the gold-type resource is what's used as currency. If a game has only one resource, it's likely this one (if not, it's power).
Lumber: A secondary resource; it's not as important as gold, but usually is needed for specific purposes (such as paying for upgrades or buildings). It's not that rare, but in the later stage of the game, everything will require Lumber. Some games have more than one Lumber-type resource, with each resource usually having a specific focus (for example, wood is needed for buildings, metal is needed for units).
Power: A resource that is rarely found on the map, it's more likely to be produced by specific buildings or units. Power is different in that you do not build a stock of it (usually). You have a power supply, and a power demand. If the demand ever exceeds the supply, bad stuff happens, varying from lowered building speeds, to some structures or units entirely ceasing to function.
Population: Population is a cap on your growth, typically functioning as an Arbitrary Headcount Limit. Like Power, it is usually provided by certain buildings or upgrades, rather than being harvested from the map. If demand exceeds supply, you can't build more units. Existing units may or may not die.
Uselessium: Any resource you have no use for, usually because either you're at the wrong point in the Tech Tree (too low or too high), or you're the wrong faction; shows up only occasionally. Only factors into Trade.
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.
Almost every RTS has some sort of Resource gathering, but here's some examples of the different types of resources:
The original Warcraft is the Trope Codifier for the Gold- and Lumber-type resources. Gold, the primary resource, is obtained from gold mines, which contain finite supplies of gold, have a clear maximum collection rate, and collapse once they have been completely drained. Lumber is used to build Archers (or Spearmen, if you're playing the orc campaign), Catapults, and buildings. There's also a Population-type "resource" which extends the Arbitrary Headcount Limit, and is acquired by building more farms or burrows.
Warcraft 2 had a second Lumber-type resource, oil, which was found in water and used almost exclusively for naval units and upgrades (And unlocking the final tier). It was useless until you reached a certain level of technology.
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 friendly 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.
StarCraft The Trope Namer. Minerals would be gold and Vespene gas would be lumber.note If you play well, you will likely constantly be hearing the phrase, "You require more Vespene gas". Both resources have a clear maximum collection rate per site. This difference from Warcraft - where wood has a extremely high collection rate limit - results in a drastically different tempo. Finally, the Protoss and (sort of) Zerg have Power resources. All Protoss buildings must be built near pylons, and shut down if the pylons are destroyed. Zerg buildings must be built on creep, which spreads out from hatcheries and creep colonies; however, losing the creep source doesn't hurt the buildings.
Zerg larvae are used to produce all Zerg units and they spawn from the main production buildings once every 14 seconds or so.
Population is also a resource in Starcraft. Each race has a standard Population cap (Terran supply depots, Zerg overlords, Protoss 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.
Starcraft II kept the same formula but changed a few details: Vespene geysers are no longer infinite (depleted geysers gave a quarter of the normal output), Zerg can boost their larva production from three to seven via micromanagement, and campaign-only automatic Vespene gathering. In addition, Zerg buildings now die slowly if their creep source disappears, making creep into a true Power resource.
Command & Conquer: The Tiberian series uses Tiberium as a Gold-type resources. The Red Alert series used "ore" as its Gold; another variant, gems, functioned exactly like ore, only it was worth more money. Generals uses "supplies", mainly found in supply docks and occasionally as UN crates scattered around the battlefield, but also acquired via special support structures that serve as the only late-game source of income once the aforementioned supply docks are depleted (as they do not regenerate). All series have Power. Helicopters and other VTOL are able to land anywhere, but still needed a pad to rearm most of the time.
Red Alert 2's expansion, Yuri's Revenge, though no different, gives you the Grinder, allowing you to turn units, or civilians whom you have mind controlled, into resources on demand.
Settlers of Catan has no single Gold-type resource; all five resources are Lumber-type, and all construction nominally requires at least two different kinds of resources. It's possible, however, to change 4 units of any resource into 1 of any other by trading with unknown NPCs, meaning a player can, for example, build a road starting out with 8 sheep. Wood and brick are the most important resources in the early game, but become Vendor Trash in the late game. The Cities and Knights expansion introduced three more Lumber-type resources needed for advanced improvements. The genius of the game is that while You Require More Vespene Gas at all times, you are cruelly punished for hoarding resources whenever somebody rolls a 7 (which, in a two-dice system, has the highest odds of being rolled).
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.
Age of Empires had various resources, each with a different purpose and each blending "Gold" and "Lumber" related purposes over the series lifespan. Food was primarily a "Gold" resource, paying for all your standard units and Age advances, but in earlier games also paid for their research upgrades. Wood and Gold (coin in Age of Empires III) paid for "archaic" and "advanced" units respectively, siege units, and most upgrades. Stone featured only in the first two games and was mostly used for defensive buildings and their upgrades. Each of these things were harvested from various exhaustible resources around the map, though Food could be harvested from rebuildable Farms, and AoE3 made Farms and Plantations a slow but infinite source of Food and Coin, respectively. Population is also in effect, being increased by building houses, though some nations have their population cap full to begin with as a perk.
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.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 1 & 2 have requisition, a Gold-type resource which is generated by command centers, and further gained by capturing strategic locations, and power, which is gained by building power plants. Unlike most examples, power works mostly like a Lumber-type resource (it's used to pay for stuff, along with requisition. More power plants increase power input, but there is no power output other than the cost of units and upgrades). Strategic Points gave a steady stream of Requisition, which could be enhanced by Tech Tree upgrades and by building and upgrading listening posts on the point itself. Over time however, a Point would decay, and give much less Requisition. A decayed point captured by the enemy would return to it's original levels.
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.
In Dawn of War 2, power is a Lumber-Type resource. Some lower tier units only require requisition.
Additionally there's also a minor tertiary resource called Fury (or WAAGH or whatever depending on the faction), this is built by the deaths you take or inflict and it's used to charge certain special abilities or buy special, powerful units.
Dawn of War 3 has requisition and power as before, obtained by capturing resource points and building generators on them respectively. It also removes the Fury/equivalent resource in favor of Elite Points, which accumulate at a fixed rate throughout the game and are used to call in special units.
Rise of Nations: Similar to Age of Empires, but Up to Eleven. You begin with Food, Lumber, and Wealth, gaining access to Metal, Knowledge, and Oil as you advance in age. Knowledge is a hybrid-Lumber-Power resource, acquired through Universities, and used for Age-relevant researches and, late-game, missiles. The rest of the resources are used to build and upgrade various units, as well as upgrade resource-gathering rates. It also features Population (increased through Military Research), and Power in a mutated sense: you have a Cap on your maximum income-per-minute, per resource, and need to expand it to take full advantage of all your resourcing nodes. Rarely are you in a position where you can't build something, even if it's not what you originally came for.
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.
Nether Earth predates Dune II and features resource gathering, although here, you use the resources to produce robots directly. Once a new in-game day begins, you're granted with a set amount of General points for producing any robot part you want, and, if you've already captured several factories, several part-specific points. Given how many points you actually need to produce an army that could pull off a decent fight, saving up on Generals this way might be a nice idea.
Another pre-dating RTS examples would be Herzog Zwei and its' little-known big brother Herzog, which accumulate money for you each half-a-second. However, while in Herzog, you just received less cash depending on how far you were from your homebase, its' sequel actually allows players to control his incomes by capturing (or, by skills bad enough, losing) a certain number of bases on the map. Therefore, one might consider it a slightly simplified variant of Nether Earth's resource generation.
Total Annihilation uses two, Energy and Metal. Metal is a Gold-type resource, while Energy was both Lumber and Power. Both have an input and an output (constructing creates a drain on Mass/Energy, rather than taking the cost out all at once), as well as a limited reserve that players begin to use up if their output surpasses their input. Some units and buildings constantly add to the output; if you run out of Energy, defensive structures stop working and some units lose some weaponry and special abilities (such as cloaking or energy weapons like the Commander's D-gun.) Further reducing the turtleyness of the game, the remains of defeated units can be harvested for Metal. This gives the game a slightly different feel to the economy as, instead of simply gathering and hoarding resources to build units and upgrades, the player is instead balancing the input and output of their economy, gathering enough to build and operate what they need, while using it fast enough to keep from wasting it.
This also created an interesting wrinkle in that the availability of metal on a given map could vastly change the required strategy. Core Prime's entire surface area was metal, meaning extractors could be plonked down anywhere en masses to fuel massive unit production. On the other hand, other maps had only precious few metal deposits, meaning one had to invest far more into energy collectors to fuel the very inefficient metal makers and be far more conservative in what they built.
Supreme Commander is pretty much exactly the same, only it calls Metal "Mass". Also, while units can lose abilities like cloaks or shields when power is depleted, a loss of power no longer turns off automated defenses (except for shield/cloak generators) and units' attacks.
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 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.
Iterations I-IV Sid Meier's Civilization series have three primary resources: Food (Nutrients in Alpha Centauri), which feeds the city's population and increases it when the stockpile reaches a certain point, Production ("Shields" in Civ 1, 2 and 3, Minerals in Alpha Centauri, "Hammers" in Civ 4), which is used to build improvements and units, and Commerce (Energy in SMAC), which goes either to research, your treasury (which can be used to speed up production, and is needed to support buildings and/or units, depending on the version of Civilization), or making your citizens happy (more important at higher difficulties). In addition, in editions after Civ 3, there are strategic resources, which are required for some units and upgrades or otherwise enhance your empire in some way, as well as bonus resources that give you extra Food, Production or Commerce.
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 the AI magically knows where all the strategic resources are, from the first turn on up.)
Starting in Civ 5, Science and Culture are divorced from Commerce and are now produced directly from buildings (making them rather like RTS Power). The Gods and Kings expansion, which reintroduces the concept of religion, adds Faith as a third building-created Power-type resource.
Colonization, a variant of Civilization 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. The resources a colony needs for itself are wood, iron ore and food.
Outpost 2 has common metals as the Gold-type and rare metals as the Lumber-type. Power can be generated by stand-alone structures, but some of the best power plants for-cost are ones that rely on an on-map energy source like geysers. Population isn't a cap here, either. It's the actual population of the base, which grows over time as a geometric growth rate influenced by morale and structures.
The previous installment Outpost utterly averts this, and demonstrates why Tropes Are Not Bad: before discovering nanotechnology you have to manage dozens of resources, a shortage of any one of which put your colony into a slow, irrevocable death spiral until eventually you run out of air and Everybody Dies. And whether a particular mine produces what you need is basically random chance. The recycling center's Multi Purpose Goo will cover temporary shortfalls but it's not generally enough to run a colony on.
In the MMO Space Invasion, Kryptonite is the Gold-type; Spice, Metal and Pig Iron are all lumber-types and Energy is, well, power.
Startopia uses Energy as both Gold and Power, so you can run out of it by overspending or overtaxing your power grid. However, it will recover if you give it time, though you'll be poor. This makes solar flares a goldmine. Your station can make anything else locally, apart from metal ores - if you have enough Energy.
The game also averts No Recycling by allowing you to build a recycling plant (operated by Groulien Salt Hogs), converting garbage into energy. You can also use it to dispose of bombs planted by competitors.
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.
Dwarf Fortress resources come in standard flavors like stone, gems, body parts, ores, and logs, and there are many subtypes of each. Even stone comes in over a hundred varieties, some of which have valuable properties, like flux stones for making steel. Like everything else, the process to make steel from iron is kinda complicated. The trope is currently played straight, however, in that there isn't much functional difference between types of stone save for their melting point when constructing buildings or defensive fortifications. To make this worse, resources present on the map are determined 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) offset by the fact that there are multiple resources that can be used for most jobs.
Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun takes this to extremes, featuring no less than 47 resources. These include the standards of coal, iron and wood (albeit classed as timber, lumber and tropical), but also more esoteric types such as fertiliser, opium and luxury furniture. And God help you if you don't happen to be producing exactly the right blend of these materials at any point...
Note that Iron had to be processed into steel, and that coal was used for (among other things) ammunition and glass. Yeah, Vicky has a lot of resources.
The most important resource by far is cash, for the simple reason that it is used for more or less everything — including importing goods if you aren't producing exactly the right blend of materials.
Hearts of Iron 2 has a system with energy, metal, oil and rare materials. Somewhat averted in that the first three were simply consumed in order to create "Industrial Capacity" points (which were used to build units), while oil was consumed by certain units as they moved around. there was also Supplies (that was produced from said IC and consumed by units) and manpower (used to train and reinforce divisions to full strength). There's also money, which is produced by IC devoted to 'consumer goods' and is used to fund spy operations and research teams.
Dominions 3 has a variety of these. Units require Gold and Resources (the former drawn from the national pool, stored, and permanently spent, the latter province-specific, unstorable, and renewing every turn), thus differentiating between cheap but slow-accumulating (low-gold, high-resource) and expensive-but-quick (high-gold, low-resource) units. In addition, magic requires a combination of gems of 8 different types. Beyond that, there's population, which affects gold and resources, and magic sites, which affect magic gems.
A somewhat unique kind of resource are blood slaves, used in the Blood school of spells (concerned with summoning demons and such like). Unlike regular gems, which are limited in income due to your ability to find and defend magical sites of their type, blood slaves can be hunted from the province population by any commander capable of blood magic. The only cost to this is a slight decrease in population and an increase in unrest (which can be offset by lowering taxes). This means that a blood nation can essentially convert gold into magical power, which is completely impossible for any other school of magic. In compensation, blood spells are much more expensive, gem-wise, than regular magic. However, since a late game nation can produce literally hundreds of slaves per turn, ridiculously large armies of demons are commonplace in the endgame, often to the point of the player dispensing with regular troops altogether.
Halo Wars has a single resource for both playable factions called "Supply". It pretty much serves the function of gold in trope-speak. "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, building too many supply-creating buildings cripples your ability to turn that supply into units, effectively making you wealthy but undefended.
Also keep in mind that power is a resourced, played relatively straight. The number of power plants the player has, the higher the player's tech level, determining what units, abilities, and research the player can use. However, each power plant costs more supply than the last, so attempting to reach for the endgame units and abilities too early will leave a player subject to a Zerg Rush by more cost-efficient low-tech units.
For that matter, each base has only limited space to construct buildings, and that in itself can be seen as a kind of population-type resource. The only way to get more maximum building space is to find an secure another (pre-defined) base location and spend supplies establishing a secondary base on it.
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.
Referenced in the Sluggy Freelance "Storm Breaker" arc, in which Torg is thrust into command of a real medieval army and attempts to use his knowledge of RTS games to do so: "All right, have some of the townsfolk start harvesting lumber and setting up solar collectors in case we need to build more swordsmen!"
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 gain an infinite supply of wood.
Spellforce III also has seven resources; only four of these (food, wood, stone and iron) are used by all factions, while the remainder are each unique to one of the three factions.
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.
In the eastern front mod, The Russians use munitions like a wood resource, where all upgrades cost both fuel and munitions. Abilities are free for them and have a longer cooldown.
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, which can be sold for credits or used as a moderately effective morale booster.
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.
Dark Reign 2 only has taelon and uses it as a Gold-type resource.
Master of Magic has three main resources, Gold, Food, and Mana. Gold is both a Gold-type and a Population-type (in the form of your army's wages), Food is purely a Population-type, and Mana could fit either as a Lumber-type (can be stockpiled for casting spells) or a Power-type (must be gathered either by generating it from city improvements such as Temples, or sending magic spirits to claim magical nodes). Cities also have a Production resource, which can either be applied to building city improvements, training units, increasing the size of the city, or generating Gold.
Its Spiritual Successor Age of Wonders had just gold and mana. Whereas another game in the genre, Disciples, had gold and four different types of mana (five with the expansion pack), and you needed the right combination of mana to be able to cast spells.
Trade Empires has different sets of resources, depending on which historical period and location you choose to play in. In one period of Chinese history, for example, the main resources are: rice, millet, silk, silk cloth, jade, and jade idols. Population centres have an easier time hanging onto their populations if they provide not only a lot of food but a variety of it, together with luxury items. You're stuck with mining jade or collecting raw silk wherever it turns up, but jade carvers and silk weavers are production resources.
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.
Evil Genius has a particularly nasty consequence for not having enough power: your overworked generators will break down at an accelerated rate and eventually explode, leaving you with NO power to defend your base with, no control panels to use to have your henchmen and minions steal money from the world, a possible FIRE in your base... and did we mention you're also short $8000 per generator (with a good money-laundering operation giving you maybe $500 a minute)?
Black & 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.
Galaxy Online has Metal, Gas, Population, and Science, all of which are produced passively over time by structures built for that purpose. Science points are spent to purchase new scientific upgrades without having to decide what you were studying beforehand. Population works just like metal and gas and is consumed for various tasks. One could logically suggest that the population "consumed" building facilities are just committed to working there and not available for other tasks.
Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds has you collect 4 different types of resources to construct your base and build your army. Carbon is needed for base construction and a fair number of units, Food is needed for infantry and workers, Ore Crystals are needed for defensive structures and Nova Crystals are needed for Heavy Weapons, ships, aircraft and Jedi. 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). There is also a trade system in the form of the Starport, which allows you to convert surplus resources into nova crystals, then turn those crystals back into other resources - a useful option when the various forces have polished off the last ore stockpile on the map, but you want to expand into a new area anyway.
Galactic Battlegrounds doesn't just use the Age of Empires engine - gameplay-wise, it is Age of Empires; graphics are different and missions are obviously different as well, but the gameplay is essentially the same, with the only difference being that the Star Wars game has more ranged weapons and flying units for obvious reasons. Because of all this, resources in the game work almost exactly as those in Age of Empires.
Strategy in The Settlers games 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.
Homeworld has a resource: "Resource Units," which is described in the manual as being asteroids, veins of space dust, etc that have been deconstructed on an atomic level and stored away for use. (Plays the role of Gold, obviously.)
Homeworld Cataclysm adds a Population resource in the form of a limited pool of "Support Units", which can be expanded by constructing Carriers and "Support Modules", and restricts the number of ships you can field.
Star Wars Force Commander the only resource that matters is your reputation. Capture enemy buildings, kill the rebels and fight with small numbers of troops and your reputation will rise, constantly request reinforcements and it will fall.
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.
Interestingly, the very first game in the series, Shogun: Total War, has "koku" as a standard currency. In Real Life, koku was never a currency but a unit of measure, sometimes defined as the amount of rice to feed a single person for a year (about 330 pounds). While wealth of a region was often measured in "koku", it normally didn't equate to gold.
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.
The multi-player Real-Time Strategy / Simulation Game hybrid Allegiance has one resource, Helium-3, which is equivalent to Gold. Building stations, conducting research, and purchasing certain advanced ships requires He-3, which is harvested by AI mining ships from special asteroids. Arguably, the game also has a second Lumber-type resource — the asteroids themselves. Every new base needs to be built on an asteroid, which is consumed in the process. Some advanced bases require specific kinds of asteroid, which will get increasingly hard to find and secure as the battle goes on.
"Population" can also said to be a resource in the game — but in the case of Allegiance, your "population" is made up of Real Life human beings playing on your team. With the exception of a very few (non-combat) drones, every ship the team fields will need an actual human pilot. The game automatically tries to maintain balance in numbers and skill between the competing teams, but having a particularly good player on your team can make all the difference.
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.
The affection and respect of the townspeople can in some ways also be thought of as a resource.
Everything is a resource if you think about it. Wool, Mineral, Eggs, Milk, Crops, Fruits, Fish, Mushroom... You can use the edible resources to create food which can be used to raise the affection and respect of the townspeople, or to replenish your energy (also a resource- which you replenish by eating said food, or bathing in the hot springs in some games). The non-edible resources you need to build or expand your farm. Or you can sell off your resource for another resource- money- which is also used to build or expand your farm. Harvest Moon is very resource intensive.
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.)
SimCity uses money and power. SimCity 2000 adds water, but the pumping stations can't get enough water coverage no matter how many of them you have (which is why you use pipelines). SimCity 3000 adds waste management to the mix.
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 (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).
The 2013 release adds some odd complications. Not only is water made an exhaustible (though renewable) resource, meaning you might have to keep moving water pumps in a place with a low water table, there are several optional resources that can be tapped with special buildings: coal, ore and oil. These can be sold for a quick buck or refined and combined in yet more specialised buildings to make increasingly complex (and lucrative) products like plastic, alloy, and computers.
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.
Rock Raiders requires you to tunnel through walls in order to progress as well as mine Ore (Gold/Uselessium) and Energy Crystals (Lumber/Power). Ore is used in the construction of buildings and paths, however it is generally available far more than it is used. Energy Crystals are used for certain buildings and to bring in vehicles. However, Energy Crystals are also used to power active buildings and if a unit/building that cost Energy Crystals is destroyed or deconstructed, the Crystals are returned. Depleted Energy Crystals can be recharged via Recharge Seams.
M.U.L.E. 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 (an otherwise-useless gem that can be traded for extra money.) Buy up plots of land, buy MULEs, outfit them, buy/sell resources from/to other players, and hope the idiot computer players don't cheat each other blind and ruin everything.
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.
Conquest: Frontier Wars has ore, gas and crew, with each species having a higher demand for one of them. There are also 'command points' that limit the number of ships and satellites you can build, forcing you to build more communication structures.
Metal Fatigue has only one resource, heat energy, which is most commonly available from a resource node—in this case, lava pools on the surface of the planet and in the subterranean layer. Worker vehicles simply huddle around the node and draw from it, providing a constant supply of energy points to spend. Players could also build solar panels on a Floating Island to harvest solar energy. Given how even large lava pools could be quickly drained by a dozen workers tapping from it, solar panels eventually prove extremely cost-effective to players looking to build advanced technologies.
The economy in the X-Universe games revolves around the production of wares. Energy is spontaneously generated on solar power plants, and is required in the production of every other ware. Minerals are mined from asteroids and are used in tech factories and military equipment. Bio (wheat, raw meat, etc) is made by bio factories and used by secondary factories and food factories. Food (burgers, MREs, etc) is used in the production of Tech and Military equipment. Secondary factories build mostly non-essential goods, though some Tech factories need them. Tech (microchips, fighter drones, etc) are not used in the production of non-player wares (though they are used by the player to build ships), and Tech typically has some utility, like placing satellites in sectors or defending stations with automated laser turrets. Military equipment (lasers, shields, missiles) built essential equipment for equipping ships. Every race has its own unique Bio, Secondary, and Food factories, and their Tech and Military factories require that race's food. For example, an Argon Particle Accelerator Cannon Forge requires the Argon's Meatsteak Cahoonas, Energy, and Minerals.
Stratosphere: Conquest of the Skies has three types of "floatstones", which you get from mountains of from sinking enemy fortresses and which you use to build up and repair your own fortress. Different types are required by different units, following the usual tech-level progression.
The browser game Ikariam has wood, gold, population, and four "luxury" resources (marble, wine, crystal, and sulfur).
Astro Empires has a bit of an odd system: Credits are required by everything, and are supplied by your Bases' Economy, which increases as you build more Structures (certain Structures give more Economy than normal). Area is used up as you build Structures, and each type of planet starts with a set amount (moons have less, and asteroids have the least), which can be increased using Terraforming and Multi-Level Platforms. Population is also used up as you build, and is increased according to your Astro's Fertility (which can be increased with Biosphere Modification) every time you build an Urban Structure (later on you get Orbital Bases, which give a set amount of Population regardless of Fertility, and don't take up Area). Energy is the last resource that gets used up as you build, and is increased by Solar and Gas Plants, according to your Astro's Solar Energy and Gas stats, respectively (Fusion and Antimatter Plants give Energy regardless of resources). Metal Refineries increase your construction and production speed by your Astro's Metal stat. Crystals are the rarest resource, and boost your Economy for every Crystal Mine you build.
Impire uses the three resources Food, Materials and Treasure. Food is the only one gathered as standard inside your dungeon, although it can be converted into Materials at a low efficiency. Materials and Treasure can both be scavenged from invading heroes, while all three can be gathered by sending a group of units on a raid mission, which happens entirely offscreen. Mostly, food is used to build units, materials to build rooms and treasure to buy more unit slots. You very quickly get more resources than you can use.
The Settlers, also known as Serf City in some locations, had several resources. Wood, harvested from trees, was the Gold equivalent since it was needed for practically everything, while actual gold was only needed to increase the "motivation" (and therefore fighting effectiveness) of your knights.
In Clash of Clans, Gold and Elixir are resources needed to create and upgrade things (buildings, walls, mooks, and regular Spells). Elixir is also used to fuel two late-game defensive structures. Eventually you can acquire Dark Elixir, which is used in training and upgrading Elite Mooks and two of the three Hero Units, as well as brewing and upgrading Dark Spells and fueling a third late-game defensive structure.
Boom Beach, made by the developer of Clash of Clans, has four main resources—Gold, Wood, Stone, and Iron, with the latter three filling the "Lumber" position. Gold is used to train and upgrade troops, and is also spent when launching attacks, exploring new areas on the player's map, and when the player sends his or her Submarine (available at medium levels) on a dive for resources. Most buildings are initially created with wood, with stone and iron added at higher levels. (Some buildings available only at higher levels require all three of these resources to build, and buildings that produce resources other than gold don't require that specific resource for upgrades.) The main "Power" equivalent is Power Stones, used to create statues that can boost your attacking ability, base defense, or resource production. There are three types—Fragments, Shards, and Crystals, which in turn enable your base's Sculptor to create Idols, Guardians, and Masterpieces respectively, with the statue's power increasing accordingly. A lower-level statue can be recycled (i.e., destroyed) to create one Power Stone of the next-higher level; recycling a Masterpiece creates 7 Power Powders; each of these makes a statue more powerful for 3 hours of real time. You also have a chance of getting Power Stones when defeating an enemy base (either that of another player or the game itself), and it's also possible for your Submarine to pick up Power Stones from a dive. At higher levels, the Weapon Lab (which allows the creation of prototype defenses that last one week of real time) becomes available; it's upgraded with the same resources as other buildings. However, it requires its own set of Lumber-type resources—Critical Fuse, Complex Gear, Power Rod, Field Capacitor—to build defensive structures. Those resources are also obtained by defeating enemy bases (though, as in the case of Power Stones, most bases won't yield one of these) and occasionally from Submarine dives (only at high levels).
In War Dragons, you need Food every time one of your dragons is ready to be trained to another level. Expanding territory also requires Food as an offering to the dragons to convince them to expand their territory. This means you have to keep upgrading your Sheep Farms and collaborating with your team to keep enough. Lumber is required for upgrading buildings and comes from your Lumber Mills. The trouble is keeping enough on hand to build and train without becoming a sitting target for other players and teams to raid, as your storage only protects so much.
Pharaoh has an extremely complicated resource system, as resources are consumed by population (food, finished goods) or industry (raw materials) or traded (all of the above). There are only four instances of getting the You Require More Vespene Gas message though: obelisks and sun temples, which require vast amounts of granite and sandstone, and libraries, which need papyrus, and a city requesting goods and refusing to accept one unit less.
In Microids' Warrior Kings, there are 3 resources - food, material, and gold. It's actually food that's the most important resource and functions as both Gold and Population in other RTS games. Almost all units require food to produce and some can be bought with food alone, if your food reserves run out completely then most of your units will start starving until they're reduced to a few hit points, food taken from your reserves can be used to slowly heal damaged units and finally the size of your food reserves is used to measure the maximum population. Material acts as the Wood resource in other games, it's mostly used to make buildings and is a small component of cavalry and vehicles. Finally there's gold in the game which is used only for buying high end units and buildings, making this the least important resource. The Imperial faction has one unique resource which is faith. Faith is produced in churches and other religious buildings, it's used to power the miracles that the Imperials can use - such as calling down fire from the skies.
In Stellaris the various resources are produced by buildings or harvested from natural deposits by population units or mining stations. Energy credits and minerals act as gold and wood, though energy credits are only spent to buy a few specific units or buildings and are usually just used for maintenance. Food is a power-type resource that is consumed by the population. Population is divided into discrete POPs that occupy planet tiles and harvest the tile's natural resources or operate buildings. A number of different "strategic resources" power specific structures, such as Betharian Stone to Betharian Power Plants, Alien Pets to Xeno Zoos, or Zro for Navigator's Guilds. Research is also treated as resources, "research points" are continually collected as a tech is researched, and analyzing debris can add points to a specific tech that isn't currently under research.
In Fallout 4, most "junk" items can provide vital resources for building and maintaining settlements. Weapons, armor, trees, and broken-down settlement scenery can also be scrapped for wood, steel, leather, and other materials.
Caesar III has Denarii as a Gold-type resource, a multitude of other resources (Food, Clay, Pottery, Lumber, Furniture, Olives, Oil, Grapes, Wine, Iron, Weapons, and Marble) as Lumber or Uselessium types depending on the scenario, and Housing as a Population-type resource. Oddly enough, the only resource you need to build most buildings is Denarii (and for the few exceptions, the only other resource is Marble); the other Lumber-type resources are used automatically by the populace, usually to upgrade and maintain the quality of their Housing.
In They Are Billions the resources you have to collect to build buildings and units are gold, wood, food, energy, stone, iron ore and oil.
Cookie Clicker uses cookies as a Gold-type resource. After your first ascension, three additional resources are unlocked: Heavenly Chips, used to buy Ascension upgrades (Lumber-type), Sugar Lumps, which upgrade your buildings' production levels (another Lumber-type), and Magic Points, which you use to cast spells from the Grimoire (Power-type).
The Supreme Ruler franchise has a fairly complex simulation of real-world economics. Basic resources such as coal, oil, water and wood are used both to keep the civilian world running and to produce more abstract refined resources such civilian goods, military goods and power, some of which are also fed back into the economy. Consumption of goods depends on what units are doing; going to war will greatly increase use of oil and military goods and often require a stockpile to be built up beforehand. As in the real world, most countries don't have access to all resources, so the most important of all is cold, hard cash, which is acquired both through taxes and selling resources on the international market.
Minecraft's resource system was a bit esoteric when it came out, but has since been imitated by many other games. Lumber moves to the "Gold" category—in a new game, you almost always have to collect some before you do anything else (infamously, you accomplish this by punching a tree). This lets you make a crafting table, the starting and/or ending point for crafting almost everything else. You also need wood to make most weapons and tools—stone pickaxes and diamond pickaxes both require wooden handles—and torches, which you'll need in abundance unless you like stumbling around in the dark through monster-infested caves. Running out of wood is surprisingly easy, since you usually won't find any underground where most of your other resource-gathering gets done, so this forces you to spend time on the surface chopping down trees, and planting new ones when the nearest forest runs out. Most other materials are secondary, and transition into uselessness later in the game: your first tools will be pure wood, then stone, then iron, and eventually, diamond. Enforced somewhat by collection requirements; you can't collect stone with your bare hands, or diamond with anything less than an iron pick. Emerald, the only currency-like resource, was a late addition in the game, used only when trading with villagers (an optional sidequest of sorts). Villagers also bring a Population-type limitation: you can "breed" them, but only if the village has enough houses (though the game counts a door with one block over the space behind it as a "house," so this is easier to fulfill than it sounds).
Star Trek: New Worlds: the tricorder indicates an abundance of specific mineral using a specific color: Green = Raw Dilithium, Blue = Talgonite, Yellow = Silicon, Cyan = Kelbonite, Purple = Magnesite Ore and Red = Dolamide.
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