No oil in a WWII scenario?!?!

I just started playing Conquests #9 (WWII in the Pacific) for the very first time. I'm playing the Americans, and on turn 6 my only source of oil disappears (or "is exhausted", I think is the correct terminology). That's bad enough, but the Netherlands and the Commonwealth won't give me one of their extra oils, or trade one to me at any price despite their "gracious" attitudes toward me. I even offered up Honolulu and Los Angeles and the darn Dutch wouldn't part with one of their six extra oil resources. How am I supposed to fight WWII if I can't build planes, tanks, and warships?

My Real Questions:
1. If I had backed up a turn or two by loading an autosave file, is it possible that the oil would not have exhausted, or would the "Preserve Random Seed" option cause the oil to be exhausted on turn 6 every time? Unfortunately, before I thought to try this, I restarted the scenario just to see where the one oil resource had been and lost the autosave files.
2. I've never written a scenario myself, but just out of curiosity, can the random occurrences of resource exhaustion be "turned off" in a scenario? It certainly seems to me that this would be more realistic. It's not like the U.S. was gonna run out of oil during WWII. Maybe the map should have included Texas and those wildlife preserves in Alaska.
3. What's up with the AI trading? Why won't a civ in a locked alliance with me and a gracious attitude toward me be more willing to trade?

Thanks for any answers or thoughts...

I dunno about 1 and 3, but I know that somewhere in the maze called 'Editor' is a disapearance chance- basically, you put in how often a resource will disappear. If it is at 1, there is a 1% chance of it disappearing, and if it is at 100, then it will go every turn.

I think that oil is pretty high, somewhere around 6%. Of course, when it is exhausted, it reappears somewhere else on the map.

Time N Tide said:

1. If I had backed up a turn or two by loading an autosave file, is it possible that the oil would not have exhausted, or would the "Preserve Random Seed" option cause the oil to be exhausted on turn 6 every time? Unfortunately, before I thought to try this, I restarted the scenario just to see where the one oil resource had been and lost the autosave files.

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Preserve Random Seed is off for all the conquest scenarios. However, if you still have it on, as long as you do something different (the 'something' has to involve an event that has some sort of randomness to it), the oil may not disappear.

2. I've never written a scenario myself, but just out of curiosity, can the random occurrences of resource exhaustion be "turned off" in a scenario? It certainly seems to me that this would be more realistic. It's not like the U.S. was gonna run out of oil during WWII. Maybe the map should have included Texas and those wildlife preserves in Alaska.

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It is possible. What you do is go to the resources tab of custom rules, and change the exhaust rate (or whatever it's called) to zero. I don't think it's set as a percent, though. I think it's set as "the resource will be exhausted in average, once per x turns".

3. What's up with the AI trading? Why won't a civ in a locked alliance with me and a gracious attitude toward me be more willing to trade?

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I don't know. What I do know is that AIs won't ever trade you anything there are cities involved. This because the AI is horrible at judging how much cities are worth, so they made it so that the AI would never trade cities.

And welcome to CFC!

EDIT: Oil's rate is 200, I think, meaning there's a 0.5% chance... and there's about a 30% chance that I'm making this stuff up.

EDIT (again): Checked the editor, and what'dya know, I'm right!

EDIT (again again): What I meant by "welcome to CFC," of course, was "nice to see your first post!"

I tried going back a turn (and several turns) when a critical resource is exhausted on several occasions, but that didn't work - it always vanishes on that same turn that it originally vanished.

I didn't know about that "preserve random seed" thing - I'm going to try it.

Quick queston on the topic, is there any way to hack into a game and put it back.

Yeah, it's cheating - but desparation sometimes calls for desparate measures.

Sweetchuck said:

I tried going back a turn (and several turns) when a critical resource is exhausted on several occasions, but that didn't work - it always vanishes on that same turn that it originally vanished.

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As I said before, this won't happen if you don't have Preserve Random Seed on. I'm not sure what default is.

If you do have Preserve Random Seed on, then you need to go back a few turns, and do things differently. For example, attacking a unit that you didn't the first time, that kind of thing.

Quick queston on the topic, is there any way to hack into a game and put it back.

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No.

CivAssist2 can tell you if preserve random seed is turned on.

Just start again, you said the oil disappeared on turn 6, it's not as if it disappeared on turn 106.

Thanks for the replies, and special thanks for pointing me to CivAssist2. I hadn't played Civ3 in a while and I was still using an older tool.

Finals thoughts on my questions:

1. CivAssist2 did show that Preserve Randon Seed was off, so it's my understanding that I could have probably gotten away with loading an autosave file if I hadn't deleted them.

2. I have no intention of creating scenarios myself, I was just wanted to know if the resource exhaustion could be turned off. Maybe I'm just whining, but it seems to me that in a historical scenario of this type, it would have been correct for the creator to turn it off.

3. I had no real intention of trading away major cities, I was just trying to point out that my AI "ally" wouldn't accept ANYTHING in trade for an oil resource even when they had several extras. I understand that the AI is normally reluctant to trade strategic resources (and so am I) because other civs are often "an ally today and an enemy tomorrow", but it seems to me that locked allies should be willing to help each other as much as possible. Maybe the game mechanics or scenario editors just don't provide for these situations adequately. Also, I did find an article on "Trading Reputation" in the Civ3 War Academy. I'm not sure I understand all of it, but it correctly points out that that "Trading reputation has nothing to do with AI attitude", which is demonstrated here by the fact that the "gracious" Dutch refuse to trade oil to me.

And as for Scratcher's comment, yes I did restart the scenario again. After losing the autosave files, my only options were to restart and replay the first 5 turns or continue and play the last 55 turns without oil. Easy choice.

Thanks again...

Tomoyo said:

What I do know is that AIs won't ever trade you anything there are cities involved. This because the AI is horrible at judging how much cities are worth, so they made it so that the AI would never trade cities.

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The AI has been changed since when the game was designed. The ONLY time the AI will trade cities is a part of a peace settlement, in which case they may give or take a city. Other than that, don't bother.

Strategic resource locations should be fixed for this scenario!

Losing a strategic resource by AI conquest is fair enough of course.