Natural disaster "resource"

[Foxtamer]

I've been trying to simulate the action of natural disasters using the Natural Resources protocols.

I created "Earthquake" as a strategic resource, with its own icon, with negative values (-3 to commerce and -5 to production). I wanted the earthquake "resource" to appear and disappear quickly (so it wouldn't affect a city for too long).

Unfortunately, the earthquake "resource" just sits on the map and never disappears, no matter what I set the disappearance probability to. I tried setting it high (i.e., 1) and low (i.e., 400 or 999).

Anyone have any guesses what's going on? Has anyone tried something similar?

[W.I.N.T.E.R]

what appearance ratio did u give it ??

[dannyevilcat]

Maybe just rename it "oil" and watch it vanish faster than a bolt of lightning

But seriously, this natural disaster resource is a pretty good idea. I'll be interested to see if you get it working properly.

[W.I.N.T.E.R]

Hahaha, thats a good one- and so uncommon ... "yessss- only one turn to go till I can build panzers... well now it should be time- but where is the unit- and where is my oil reserve gone... oh well no Blitzkrieg for Germany then until the opponent has M1s"

The idea with the natural dissaster is VERY (!) cool - keep it up and pls inform us of your findings

[Sheik]

This is a great idea. Try giving it the same ratio as uranium.

[Foxtamer]

Earthquakes, continued

Well, I have learned a little bit by experimenting, but haven't come to a satisfactory solution.

I set the Appearance Ratio to 100 and the Disappearance Probability to 1.

No matter what the Disappearance Probability, the earthquake remains on the map, as i said, UNTIL I have a worker build a road to it. Then it vanishes EVERY TURN(which I wanted), but re-appears elsewhere in the SAME city every time (which I did not want).

More specifically, the earthquake moves a square over to the square adjacent a sea coast, and then stops moving around and re-appears in the same square every time. This makes me suspect that the earthquake is moving along a line, but then stopped at the coast because I didn't allow earthquakes to appear in coastal waters. I could test this hypothesis by setting an earthquake in the middle of a continent, far from the water.

So, my question now is: do the other resources only disappear if there is a road leading to them? The editor says resources are supposed to disappear irregardless of whether a civ is "using" it. But now I suspect that they only disappear when connected by a road.

My second question is: why does the &$#% earthquake re-appear in the same city every time? It's one thing to have your panzer army interrupted by an earthquake, but it's another to have the earthquake keep nailing the same city throughout history.

Unless there is some special trick I don't know about, I'm afraid this fairly cool idea isn't going to work. It was part of a mod I'm working on, but I'm a beginning modder and hoping that some of you real experts might help me figure this out.

[Willem]

You guessed it, resources don't start disappearing until they're connected by a road. I'm not sure about the same city thing though, it shouldn't really do that, I don't think. I've read someone else had the same problem before, and it sounds to me like a strange bug.

[Sheik]

If you started with no earthquakes on the map would they just appear?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Sheik
If you started with no earthquakes on the map would they just appear?

Only if you set them to appear after a certain tech, which wouldn't make any sense. The resources are placed on the map as soon as it's created. If they aren't there right from the beginning, they won't be there at all.

[W.I.N.T.E.R]

well thinking about other tempests rather than earthquake it would make sense having a few turns with "drought", etc. if the appearence/dissapearence can be reduced to that it would be interesting enough

[Ed O'War]

Foxtamer:

In some of my projects I have noticed that a resource will disappear and then sometime later in the game will reappear in the exact same spot that it disappeared from initially. If the AI is set to have resources reappear some as of yet unknown distance from the original resource in a straight line, then maybe it seems to appear in the same city because it hits the coast and stops (like you mentioned).

For example, say the AI is hardcoded to have a resource reappear 10 spaces in a straight line away from the original resource, going a certain direction, but if it hits coast/sea/ocean it simply reappears on the tile next to the water and stays there because it can't jump 10 spaces to the next land tile. Maybe this is why you're having this weird problem.

Of course, this is all just theory, I don't know if this is how resource redistribution really works.

How many Earthquake resources did you place on your map? Try setting more than one Earthquake resource in different areas of the map and test the effects. Also, let us know what you find out. This could be a great interest to modders if we could figure out a way to manipulate it for mod/scenario making purposes.

[dunk]

Interesting approach to creating natural disasters. Too bad that you have to build a road to it to make it go away.

I wonder if the AI would trade for "earthquake".

[Foxtamer]

Ed O'War

As I posted earlier, I set the Appearance Ratio for the earthquakes at 100. This resulted in a few earthquakes being scattered around, but there are these quirky little problems.

The need to build a road to the resource is the worst problem. Why would anyone do that? After al, building a road to the earthquake would hurt your production and commerce. On the other hand, if they don't, it will sit there forever, as I mentioned.

I tried setting an earthquake near a city in the middle of the continent. I built a road to it, and it immediately disappeared and re-appeared off to the northwest of my city, at a distance of about 6 tiles. So at least it didn'ty re-appear in the same city again.

This problem clearly needs more research. I wish we could find out how the resource seeding actually works in the program, as you said...

M.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Foxtamer

The need to build a road to the resource is the worst problem. Why would anyone do that? After al, building a road to the earthquake would hurt your production and commerce. On the other hand, if they don't, it will sit there forever, as I mentioned.

Instead of an earthquake resource, what about an Influenza one, or an Epidemic? Use a blank square in the resources.pcx file, no graphic, just a magenta background. This will make it invisible on the map, and the only way you'll know where it is would be to look for it manually. If you give it an appearance ratio of 900, with a disappearance rate of 2, it would be impossible to avoid, especially in the later eras.

[Willem]

Re: Natural disaster "resource"

Originally posted by Foxtamer

I created "Earthquake" as a strategic resource, with its own icon, with negative values (-3 to commerce and -5 to production). I wanted the earthquake "resource" to appear and disappear quickly (so it wouldn't affect a city for too long).

This is a good idea, to bad it won't work. I just tried entering some negative numbers, and the game doesn't recognize it that way. It will only calculate them as 0, it won't withdraw anything.

You've given me an idea for a Bounty resource though. It's invisible and available with all terrain types except Ocean. I've given it a random appearance ratio, as well as being the Goody Hut money resource. It gives a 1/1/1 bonus, and has a 50/50 chance of disappearing every turn.

PS I tried it again and it does work, though not the way I was expecting. It will only affect that particular square, not the city in general. So you could have an invisible "Drought" resource on your Grassland and Plains, and that square wouldn't produce any food until it disappeared. However, the city itself won't lose any food.