Bothersome Resource Depletion

[GreyCat]

*sigh*

don't get me wrong, I love CivIII but there are parts of it that annoy me

the difficulties of *finding* the bloody resources is one that I can tolerate - I'm willing to fight wars with neighbours to get at the resources

but since my roommate and I installed the latest patch - I've noticed an infuriating habit of the game to depleted resources MUCH too quickly imho

I lost something like 3 iron which was okay I suppose (none of the iron on my continent is near any coal so no Iron Works for me)

but losing my only SaltPetre deposit is kind of ridiculous - I've already wiped out the Romans (attacked them to GET the saltpetre and then their coal) and neither the Greeks nor the French seem to have saltpetre...

I'm playing on Regent level (learning my way up - and unlearning old habits from civII along the way) - I can't remember but it is possible that I started the game before we installed the patch - would that make any difference?

also I've heard talk of an editor - would this along me to set the resource seeds (frequency of appearance?) and lower the bloody depletion rate? if so where can I get it?

thanks in advance,
GreyCat

[Willem]

You already have an editor, it came with the game. You can set the resources so that they never disappear if you like, just go to Rules>Edit>Natural Resources and set the "Disappearance Ratio" to "0". You can also set the appearance ratio of a resource, although there's a limit of roughly 3-4 per civ, provided you're playing with 8 civs. The max number is 300, and the way the help section describes it, a number of 160 means that in an eight civ game, there'd be 2 resources per civ. Though not necessarily in their territtory.

PS. If you have the 1.17f patch, you might have the wrong editor. The one sent out was supposed to be 1.15, but 1.17 was sent out by mistake. Any changes you make with 1.17 won't allow the game to work, you need to have the right one. It's around here somewhere.

[Borg Hunter]

Something that was left out: You need to open civ3mod.bic before you can even get to the rules, and remember to save when you're done!

I hated the resource depletion too, that's why after one game I stopped it. It's supposed to add realism to the game but instead is just annoying.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Borg Hunter
Something that was left out: You need to open civ3mod.bic before you can even get to the rules, and remember to save when you're done!

Yeah right, it always helps to start from the beginning. But be sure you back it up first. It can happen that making a small change will corrupt the file.

[duckey]

Just reload a previous save and destroy the road leading to the resource(on top of it) and the game will have to choose another one. Or the game could also choose to overthrow a captured city and return it to the original civilization or give you one back in return. God works in mysterious ways that we don't always understand (a joke of course). It's amazing what events are linked in this game, if something bad is going to happen there is no stopping it(could be bad for someone else and in your favour) you can only change what the effect will be. Be wary, I destroyed a road to iron and the event changed to me losing two cities back to the Germans (I was the lowly pathetic Americans. No offense but other than being a great starting nation they suck). The rich and productive egyptians is the way to go. I currently don't have the game because I had to find a way to study for university classes so I gave it to a friend (heh heh heh) so that he could fail out (always think stragetically one less job competitor).

[sugar daddy]

I think the resource-depletion is a great feature to introduce a bit of variety in the game. There is no greater feeling than going to war and taking that lone source of salpeter on the continent from the enemy...especially after you just lost yours.
But I can only imagine this feeling as I have never experinced a depletion without the immediate discovery of a new source. Is this something you can edit too? And does the AIs resources deplete?

[Todd Hawks]

To clear things up a bit:

Resources disappear randomly whether there is a road connecting them or not.

Everytime a resource disappears, a new one of the same kind will appear somewhere else on the map.

It doesn't matter who "owns" the resource. (AI or you),

[Simpleton]

I agree that resources disappear too quickly. In one game, I just built a road to a saltpeter resource and the next turn, before I even build one musketman, it ran out! That was just silly and I've similar situations occur before.
SIGH...

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Todd Hawks
To clear things up a bit:

Resources disappear randomly whether there is a road connecting them or not.

Are you sure? I was under the impression that a resource had to be being used for it to risk vanishing. I have never had an unused resource disappear on me, and have kept several of these in reserve for thousands of years. Basically I believe that if you don't build a road onto the resource, it stays.

[Mannamagnus]

You're right. Only if a resource is connected it can be depleted.