Now You See It, Now You Don't

[Neal the Neophyte]

I have a pretty decent game going. I'm in a difficult catch up position, but see a way out. Unfortunately, I have apparently run into a game glitch. I established a city with iron available far away from my core cities and rushed a Harbor. I have a harbor in my core cities and all the requisite connecting roads.

The problem is that the iron keeps appearing and dissappearing from my strategic materials list. With the iron I have a chance, without it I may as well quit (no pikemen and no MI, and no hope for Knight). I restarted C3C hoping to see the problem clear up, but it didn't. I know that this is a long shot, but I'm hoping for a fix. Any suggestions?

[vmxa1]

You mean disappearing and reappearing in the same spot intermittenly? If so I have no clue, maybe Gramphos can help, if he is still around.

Is it showing a pattern? Here on odd dates and gone on even or some such?

[vorlon_mi]

Do you get any popups from the Trade Advisor?
"We've lost our source of iron?"

It might be possible that a boat (barb, or AI) is
sometimes blocking the trade route by sea to
your remote city. The vulnerability is stronger
if you can only trade over coastal squares, which is
the case until you've researched certain techs.
IIRC, it's either astronomy or navigation that lets
your trade routes use "sea" squares, as well.

Just a thought....

[Neal the Neophyte]

vmax1:

You mean disappearing and reappearing in the same spot intermittenly? If so I have no clue, maybe Gramphos can help, if he is still around.

Appearing and dissapearing from the listing of strategic
materials that you see when you double click on a city.


vorlon_mi:

It might be possible that a boat (barb, or AI) is sometimes blocking the trade route by sea to
your remote city.

Wow - blinding flash of light followed by booming voice (pretty close to my ear) shouting "OF COURSE"! That has to be it (if there isn't a glitch). There are, in fact, galleys from Germany who is at war with me, and barbarians crusing around between my two harbors. I thought the defined "trade" route was only in ctp, but this does make sense. Enemy ships occuping the only route would block getting the resource.

This has never come up in all the time that I have been playing, and I can't find it covered in the manual, but it makes so much sense that it has to be true. I saved the game, so I will check it out.

Thanks to both of you.

[Neal the Neophyte]

The blocked trade route didn't pan out. I removed both German and Barbarian galleys from the route and still didn't get my iron. Curiously, however, I tried two different replays in which I made peace with Germany, with whom I was at war and who is between me and my city with the iron. In both cases, as soon as I made peace the iron reappeared as being available.

BTW, I also tried going around the German and barbarian galleys and found that I could always do it, So it dosen't look like they had the route blocked.

This one has me stumped. I'm going to write it off as some kind of glitch and dump the game. Turns out that my really good buddies the Aztecs take my iron city anyway with a sneak attack and there is not much I can do about it. Looks like a lost cause.

[vmxa1]

Being able to go around them may not prove much. You can traverse water that the game won't.

One other aspect that could be the problem. You could have been using a trade route across neutral lands and sharing the AI's. This is allowed during peace. but I never tried to discern the rules for it.

[Neal the Neophyte]

Thanks vmxa1, but I didn't even have a road connecting me with the Germans. It should have been harbor to harbor.