Depleted coalmine???

[pagh80]

I have just heard from one of my friend, that his coal was USED up.
Is that right that you can use up your strategic resources?

By the way he has a save game that prove that the specific resource has disapeared, and he got a message about it.

Ohh. and it is a colony coalmine who was depleated.

 

[Gameon]

Yes you can deplete your strategic resources and you don't get any warning about it until it IS depleted. I've also once seen myself to get a new source of saltpeter after a previous source was depleted though...

One of my games went straight to hell because of this. I was fighting the Persians when suddenly my only iron source depleted. So there I was with my few pikemen and knights against the persian invaders... with no ability to produce able defenders as the other known sources were under persian control. He wiped me out with his knights and immortals. Unfair

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yeh, In a recent game I only had 1 coal so to keep it secure I fortified the hell out of it - then it dissapeared a few turns later.
Soon after I'd negotiated a new supply from another country, (at a VERY steep price) a new deposit was found not far away.
What a bummer.

 

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Every resource has a set ratio, which determines how many resource tiles there are per player in the game (you can set this in the editor). This never changes, even if resources disappear. That is to say, if a resource is "depleted", it's popped up somewhere else on the map. This is designed to prevent crucial resources from totally disappearing and effectively crippling military production.

The chance of a given resource depleting can also be set in the editor. If you find this too annoying, just set resource disappearance rate to zero for all resources, and they'll never disappear again.

Also I should point out that the chance of a resource disappearing is totally independent of whether you're using that resource, or how much you're using it.

Dan

 

[AustralianJerem]

Er, Dan, while you're here - what precisely is the reason for them disappearing at all?

 

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

I'm not really sure to be honest with you, but I'd imagine it was designed to represent pockets of natural resources that "dry up" over time.

I know a lot of fans asked for this kind of thing, though most wanted a system that modeled actual usage (i.e., overtax a supply of iron and it depletes faster) but apparently this is really hard to calculate with the interwoven trade nets that players end up with.

Dan

 

[Smash]

the constantly changing strategic resources and the ensuing struggles for them(diplomacy,military,settlement) is one thing Firaxis got right.

 

[AustralianJerem]

Not really - it's just a blind bit of luck that can have inordinate and excessive effect.

As Gameon noted, you can entirely lose a campaign just because a damn essential resource suddenly disappears, completely without warning.

I'm not a game designer, but I am pretty sure that one of the central tenets of good game design is not to excessively punish the player for things he or she cannot control. That does not make a game fun.

I'll be turning this "feature" off.

 

[Proteus]

And, as Dan Magaha stated, you´re able to do so via the editor

I like those disappearing Ressources.
It can happen to the Computer also and cos I own 1/4 of the world there is a good chance, that the Ressource reappears on my own Territory
It also rewards those players, who have more than one Source of a given strategic Ressource.

 

[Dearmad]

no body bothers to read the manual do they?

-sigh-

 

[Parthicus]

I love the disappearing recource thing as well. It gives the game much more dynamics. In one game, my only oil recource was depleted, and so I saw that the French had THREE on one small island - so I had to attack.

Bottom line is, don't ever believe that ONE resource is enough! Get as many as possible under your control.

It would be boring were it there for the whole time.

Cheers,
Parthicus

 

[Pragmatic]

I generally toss a bunch of workers at a strategic resource, to make sure I hook up a road in one turn. Then, I start building whatever I needed that resource for. Then, before I end the turn, I pillage the road out of existence.

Thus, my strategic resources NEVER run out.

I'd also consider adding units that don't need the strategic resource. I'd just make 'em require LOTS more shields. This would reflect the fact that strategic resources are commercially viable amounts, and that it's always possible to find pockets of the resource that just aren't worth the effort for wholesale production. (Not sure if I explained that well....)

 

[Grashnak]

Originally posted by Pragmatic
I generally toss a bunch of workers at a strategic resource, to make sure I hook up a road in one turn. Then, I start building whatever I needed that resource for. Then, before I end the turn, I pillage the road out of existence.

Thus, my strategic resources NEVER run out.

If you read Dan from Firaxis's comments above, you will see that the disappearance of strategic resources has nothing to do with whether or not you are using them. You are wasting your energy pillaging your roads. The disappearance of resources is COMPLETELY random.

Do yourself a favour and just leave the roads alone.

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by Grashnak


If you read Dan from Firaxis's comments above, you will see that the disappearance of strategic resources has nothing to do with whether or not you are using them. You are wasting your energy pillaging your roads. The disappearance of resources is COMPLETELY random.

Do yourself a favour and just leave the roads alone.

Pragmatic is right, although there is a small chance they will disappear while they are connected. What Dan means is that it doesn't matter if you use it to build 1000 tanks or don't build anything that uses oil. But this comment (and the civilopeadia too!) is a little misleading, because it does matter whether the resource is connected via roads/sea/airports to one of your cities.

To prove this, I changed the disappearance probability in the editor to 1 (this means the probability is 1/1=100%). I put oil on every tile on an island that had 36 tiles on it. Without a road connection, none of them ever disappeared. Then I built a city on an oil res. and connected the 8 other oil tiles in the city radius. On the next turn, every connected oil resource (9) disappeared but none of the unconnected ones (27) disappeared.

Whatever the "disappearance probabilty" (default is 1/200) applies only if you connect the resource.

 

[Chieftess]

Yes, coal can deplete. The only two strategic resources that don't deplete are horses and rubber.

 

[DaDoo]

Sumthinelse:

have you tried building road on them, and then pillage the road? Does the oil still disappear after you pillaged the road?

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by DaDoo
Sumthinelse:

have you tried building road on them, and then pillage the road? Does the oil still disappear after you pillaged the road?

If I pillage the roads the oil on those tiles doesn't disappear but since I didn't abandon the city, the oil under the city does disappear, since that counts as being connected.

 

[betheballdanny]

I, too, like the realism of the random depletion of resources.

I would like to see Firaxis work in concepts like a supply chain.

i.e. You'd need iron to allow your swordsmen/knights/... to heal. (I guess, in essense, you'd need it to repair the units' armor/swords, not heal the people.) You'd also need to retain Oil to keep your tanks and planes running.

 

[Sim_One]

If a resource in your territory at one time was connected to a road and then the road was pillaged, that resource can still disappear. If the resource was never roaded then it can't disappear.

Why is this one-year-old thread getting revived?

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by Sim_One
If a resource in your territory at one time was connected to a road and then the road was pillaged, that resource can still disappear. If the resource was never roaded then it can't disappear.

I don't think it works like that. If you pillage all the road connections and remove all airport and sea connections connecting the resource it will never deplete. I tested this thoroughly.