Is This A Bug????

[Tyr]

Took a long brake from Civ but decided to buy PTW after hearing about this last patch.

Started up a solo game of regicide with the "double production" option turned on.

No oddities during the game until I had researched the tech need for modern armor, but could not find any aluminum ANYWHERE ON THE WORLD. According to the manual, this should appear on the map when rocketry is discovered, which I had.

The same thing happened with uranium. I ended up winning the game anyway and explored every single damn tile, and there was not one aluminum or uranium resource in existence, which really made a mockery of my plans and was very frustrating.

So is there some intricacy that I'm not aware of, like certain resources don't appear until a certain date, regardless of which techs have been discovered? Or is this a known bug?

[ToeTruck]

Wow, none anywhere? Did you check with the other Civs? If a city is on top of the resource, the symbol won't appear. You have to right click on the tile and peek at the terrain.

Incidentally, by what method did you win? Without aluminum, Spaceship victory is right out.

- TT

[Jaybe]

To see Aluminum, ROCKETRY must be researched. I made the mistake once of beelining for Modern Armor (Synthetic Fibers), and almost went out of my mind looking for Aluminum when I didn't have Rocketry.

[Tyr]

I won by eliminating all the other Civs, I was way ahead in research, so I had tanks long before they did.

Not only did I have Rocketry researched, I thought to myself that maybe aluminum won't show up in another Civ's territory until they research Rocketry. So I traded them all the techs up to and including Rocketry but still no aluminum.

I didn't look at the terrain below their cities. Never thought of that! But I had three oils, two rubbers, three iron deposits in my territory alone. So what are the odds of all the aluminum and uranium resources only occurring under a enemy city???

They only thing I could think of, is because I did have that "double production" option checked, I achieved the high techs much earlier than usual. So I wondered if certain resources only show up past a certain date regardless of your tech level.

So if this is a bug, how common is it? I'd hate to play 10-20 hours in a multiplayer game, only to discover my plans for world conquest are screwed because key resources just never appear!

[Jaybe]

Ctrl-Shift-M ("Clear Terrain") to see the underlying terrain.
BTW, you can adjust Clear Terrain so that you see civ borders.

[bongo]

Ctrl-shift-m is a must when looking for resources. There are some graphical mods that enhance the visibilty of resources but they were more important in plain civ3. You can also use a spy to see if any AI city has acces to any given resource.

I have never seen a total absence of a resource but I have seen many times that there are only one or two of them.

Remember that the AI will know in advance where resources will appear and often build cities on top of future resources. I see this in all my games.

[Boris Godunov]

It's not a bug...it's a feature, dammit!

[bongo]

[Tyr]

I had to wait until I got home from work to try the ctrl-shift-m.

I did find one uranium that I missed, little green icon on a green background.

But there is ZERO aluminum on the entire map. I even checked the arctic regions.

[Jaybe]

Tyr, did you Start New Game or Load Scenario? If a scenario, you might check in the Editor to see if Aluminum's appearance ratio was askew.

[Tyr]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Tyr, did you Start New Game or Load Scenario? If a scenario, you might check in the Editor to see if Aluminum's appearance ratio was askew.

It's a scenario I made, but not with a custom map. The only edits to the rules where lowering AI tech trading, and increasing the number of civs from 4 on a tiny map to 8.

I didn't mess with the resource options at all. But I'll double check that when I get off work.

[Jaybe]

Aluminum normally has an appearance factor of 120.

[Wittlich]

Well, since you have won (by elimination)...I guess aluminum wasn't very important to your scenario.

[ToeTruck]

Though, Uranium might have been.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Tyr
I did find one uranium that I missed, little green icon on a green background.

You might consider one of the many resource graphic mods in the directory. I happen to prefer Skanky Burns' mod (click Skanky Burns' Resource Labels) which places a small label next to all srategic resources and a small happy face next to all luxury resources -- makes it a heckuva lot easier to find that coal in mountains and saltpeter in desert. There are many others in the directory as well.

Catt