Resource depletion

[miloII]

What are the factors on resources becoming depleted? If I mine the square does this use the resource more efficiently or does it use it up faster.
I have experienced a lot of depletion with coal, iron and oil. Or is it all just randomized?

[kmj]

My guess is that it's random; but I'm fairly sure the moment it's depleted somewhere, it's "found" somewhere else. So if your civ is fairly spread out, you should have a decent chance of finding it again when it gets depleted. Either that, or another civ might suddenly have some that it's willing to trade.

[Special_K]

I to think it is random. I have also had resources randomly appear in one of my tiles long after I had discovered the resource.

[cort]

well, its so terribly RANDOM that if you reload to a saved game just before pressing the "end of turn", it does not deplete any more..
same thing with the "cities joining other civs"..

[Didymus]

Originally posted by kmj
My guess is that it's random; but I'm fairly sure the moment it's depleted somewhere, it's "found" somewhere else. So if your civ is fairly spread out, you should have a decent chance of finding it again when it gets depleted. Either that, or another civ might suddenly have some that it's willing to trade.

Yeah, well the other civ might not have roads to the resource. I have seen this happen, where Rome (a very small civ in this game) had four sources of rubber, but none were connected to his trade network. Very aggravating.

Mostly, when I have a resource, I use it like mad, building units and improvements [or railroads] like there's no tomorrow. (Mining iron makes no difference, btw). How much a resource is used is irrelevant to the chance of depletion, so get the most out of it while you can.

Also, consider (if you have the gold) upgrading units during any window of opportunity. If you have Saltpeter from a trade treaty,
rather than building cavalry, move your knights to a city with a barracks and upgrade them (20 gold per). Remember the Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared.

[Special_K]

Originally posted by cort
well, its so terribly RANDOM that if you reload to a saved game just before pressing the "end of turn", it does not deplete any more..
same thing with the "cities joining other civs"..

Really, thats an interesting piece of information. Apparently the random number seed is reset every turn. This means that you can use the reload trick from civII for things that happen between turns like the end of anarchy etc.

[nlmalph]

Apparently the random number seed is reset every turn.

I'm almost positive it isn't, my first game I wanted to see the different goodie hut results, so I tried doing reloads, it was the same every time unless I did something else to generate a random event first.

Not sure why this would be different with resource depletion, maybe something else was happening to change the seed (was a reload a turn earlier, and the user's actions were slightly different).

[Stretch]

I had iron deplete on me and I went back a turn to the autosave, and it stil depleted. I went back two turns, and it still depleted at the same time. Am I high? Are others seeing it be random?

[saracen31]

Pretty sure the random seed is generated when the game begins. So if you quit Civ III and start it up again, you'll have a different seed. Don't know why this would be any different for resource depletion than other things like goodie huts.

[CygnusZ]

In the editor we can see that there is an appearence "Ratio" and a dissaperence "Probability"

For example.. Horses have an appearence ratio of 160 and a dissapearence probability of 0
Here's a full list (Appearence first, disssaperance second)

Horses 160 0
Iron 160 800
Saltpeper 120 800
Coal 120 400
Oil 120 200
Rubber 120 0
Aluminum 120 400
uranium 100 100

Note that none of the luxury resources are assigned a value at all! And that bonus luxuries cannot be altered. So, the question what exactly is meant by "appearence" has yet to be discovered.

Hope this helps!

[Madine]

I believe luxury resources wouldn't have a value because they all appear from the start of the game and never are depleted.

One time I had a source of iron appear one turn and disappear the next.......must have been a pretty small deposit

And I believe appearance has to do with a resource spontaneously appearing.

[ChrisShaffer]

From today's chat about the AI:

*Soren_Johnson_Firaxis* Congestion: there is a ratio for resources and luxuries which is set by the number of players in the game. There is always at least one resource per civ and there is never more than one luxury per civ. The "commodity" resources (wheat, gold, etc...) basically just fill up the rest of the map.

[treedom]

Is that transcript up yet? I can't seem to find it anywhere....

[Awender]

Originally posted by Stretch
I had iron deplete on me and I went back a turn to the autosave, and it stil depleted. I went back two turns, and it still depleted at the same time. Am I high? Are others seeing it be random?

It worked for me as well. I think that the wonder weapon "Reload" is working only for battles. For others it's quite consequent.

Example: I had the English declaring war on me. Reloading and offering them all my stuff did make the happier.... nevertheless they declared war on me next turn
All my stuff was: techs (3), 250+ gold, 1 city near the english border, sum per turn, luxuries (1), all maps. I never had war before with them and always kept the treaties.

[Special_K]

Originally posted by Awender


It worked for me as well. I think that the wonder weapon "Reload" is working only for battles. For others it's quite consequent.

Example: I had the English declaring war on me. Reloading and offering them all my stuff did make the happier.... nevertheless they declared war on me next turn
All my stuff was: techs (3), 250+ gold, 1 city near the english border, sum per turn, luxuries (1), all maps. I never had war before with them and always kept the treaties.

With some more experimenting I think the same set of numbers is used for everything, so if you have something bad happen between turns reload and do something that uses up some of the numbers such as getting a goodie hut or fighting a battle.

For example: Last night I captured a city and then went on to the next turn. The city defected because of culture back to the other civ. I reloaded and ended my turn again serveral times and each time the city defected. Finally I reloaded woke up a few of my tanks and attacked a few more units that the other civ had lying around and then ended my turn. This time my city didn't defect over to the other civ. I have had similar things happen w/ cities defecting to me and then reloading because something bad happened somewhere else.