I didn't know the map was so fluid and I presumed the resources and luxuries were set in stone. Does anyone know about this?
In the epic game,
all Luxury (and Bonus) resource-locations
are set in stone.
Conversely, 6/8 of the Strategic resources may get "exhausted" (= relocated) semi-randomly, subject to the availability of suitable terrain-tiles; e.g. Oil appears in Tundra, Marsh or Desert; so if you have few/no Desert or Tundra-tiles within your borders,
and you drain all your Marshes, you have effectively lowered your chance of acquiring a respawned Oil-resource.
However, Horses and Rubber are the 2 exceptions to the above rule: their 'disappearance probability' is set to zero in the .biq, so once found, they will never be lost (this is another — albeit mior — reason why during the early game I prefer to find/secure Horses, over Iron).
So if there was Rubber in the post-crash reload, but (apparently) not in the pre-crash game, there are only 2 possibilities that I can think of:
EITHER
There
was also Rubber in your territory pre-crash as well, but you just didn't notice it. For example, if the Rubber-tile had no road on it on your first playthrough (either because it had never been built, or because an enemy unit had pillaged it), then it would not have been available/visible in your towns (preventing you from upgrading); but on the second playthrough, if that particular tile
was (still) roaded, then Rubber would be available for upgrades.
OR
Since this is a COTM save (which may well have been modded), it's
possible that the COTM-designer had used the Editor to assign a non-zero disappearance probability to Rubber, in the .biq used to generate the COTM 4000 BC start. So when you reloaded from a previous save, by the time you'd got to RepParts again on the second playthrough, a Rubber-resource had been exhausted elsewhere, and re-spawned in your territory.
A further possible wrinkle to that second hypothetical, is that if any 4000 BC start is generated with the 'Preserve random seed' map-generation option turned OFF, reloading can also produce different (randomly-generated) outcomes from identical move-sequences. i.e. if you reloaded
again, you might not get the Rubber (re)spawning this time round.
I think it's Ctrl+Shift+M that will show you the whole map without cities or improvements so you can determine the location of the resources you can see (i.e., rubber when you have RP). I have often found that a "missing" resource is found under an AI city - and, of course, if there is only one, this means war...
Would also mention that Ctrl+Shift+
N allows you to
customise that 'Clean map' view.
Since Rivers are often obscured by the various terrain-overlays (e.g. Forests, Jungles, Hills, Mountains) I find this function especially useful when trying to determine whether a prospective town-site on such a tile, will
also be on a River (i.e. it won't need a Duct to grow past Pop6) — or when my unit's current attack-direction will (also) provide an AI-defender with the +25% River-defence bonus.
