Small chance of discovering metals when mining

[BeefontheBone]

The 1 in 10000 chance is per worked mine (without another resource, of course), per turn, so it's actually fairly common - I think most of my games I've played to completion have popped at least 1 resource. Sirian and Sulla's RB1 SG popped 5 or 6 IIRC.

 

[BCLG100]

I very very rarely see this happening.

 

[ticktockclok]

Not that rare, really. Lets see, I'm assuming 1 in 10000 per mine. Lets say you have 20 mines. 1 in 500 chance of discovering a metal in any given turn. I suppose depending on how many turns you play, or maybe it varies with gamespeed.

Anyway, you probably should not depend on it.

 

[Canadian Bacon]

If you want rare, try getting a pink tail in Final Fantasy IV. First, you have to go to the correct room in the last dungeon in the game. Then, there is a 1/64 chance that a random battle in that room will be against Pink Puffs, aka Flan Princesses. There is a 5/64 chance of getting an item after the battle (1/64 for each of 5 monsters), and a 1/64 chance that the item will be a pink tail.
Thus, your chances are 0.000019%, or 5 in 262144.

Consistently find pink tails faster than you discover resources from mines in Civ IV, and we can talk about it being broken.




I have personally experienced the resource-finding phenomenom once; I have yet to find a pink tail.

You think thats rare? In Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, 1 out of every 137 million lvl 90 monsters will drop the rarest rune, Zod.

 

[CB Droege]

Interestingly, the vaery next turn I played in my current game, after posting above, I found gold in a mine near my capital.

 

[Stalker0]

Definately rare enough not to play expecting it, and certainly not worth building mines over windmills unless your going for a pure hammer city.

 

[mjs0]

Can I just ask, what is the point of mining a hill that has no resources in it? I mean if there is nothing there what are they mining?

If you want a real world reason, there are many common metals and minerals not represented in Civ that ancient cultures would extract from the ground.
Salt is a good example, lead and tin would be others, as would limestone for building materials.

 

[Reg Pither]

Can I just ask, what is the point of mining a hill that has no resources in it? I mean if there is nothing there what are they mining?

That's a good point, actually, and Willem's answer doesn't actually cover it. If you're not mining iron, copper, gold, coal, stone, etc., what are you actually taking from a 'standard' mine??

Edit : OK, good points, mjs0.

 

[Zekrazey1]

I've found gold at the most horrible moments . The only hill for a city that needed the production at that time and gold appears under it. ARGHAGRHAGRHGAHR. It's even happened more than once! Heh.

 

[Junichiro]

Has happened, I found more iron quite early for my Rome in Earth map, as if that starting position hadn't been good enough as it was (and of course since I wiped Germans off in the beginning of game and Greeks quite early too, I did also otherwise quite well in that game...

 

[Heero Blaze]

In all my games I have never been able to discover a resource that way. I only look for resources that way late in the game when I don't have Aluminium though. It isn't too much of a problem on large or huge maps.

 

[DraconisRex]

When you build a mine, it states that there is a small chance of discovering gold, silver, etc. Has anyone discovered a resource that way? I never have. Anyone know how small a chance it is?

Yes, I have discovered resources that way. I can't tell you how small the chance is, but it's got to be just a few percent at most.

 

[Thalassicus]

Every turn, it checks every mined tile individually and rolls a 1 in 10000. If that succeeds, a resource appears. If you work an average of 25 mines per turn per game, you'll see an average of one resource per game...sometimes more, sometimes less. I've had it happen three or four times some games, and often not at all.

 

[Reignking]

Small chance of discovering this answer using the search function

 

[_alphaBeta_]

Can I just ask, what is the point of mining a hill that has no resources in it? I mean if there is nothing there what are they mining?

I usually only found a city near at least one hill in the workable range. Even if you're building a commerce/gold city, I still like to have one hill to mine. Every city needs to build something. A city with no hammers is in trouble.

 

[ZippyRiver]

Of course it's a rare event. If it happened more often, than it would be broke. I certainly don't want my sweet 17GPT silver sale to the Romans hosed because you have bonus resources popping up everywhere like a case of planet mumps.

At first i though you had the chance of discovering when you build the mine. this event happens afterwards, and was glad to learn that.

I mine every hill. Even hills that I will put windmills on later on. Get those mines down, work them. There have been a number of times that I got a bonus on a crappy desert hill or ice hill because I put the mine there first. He', one game I mined EVERY hill because I was not sure if it had to be worked, or even in a city radus (my workers were bored). That hill on the city corner you can't work? Mined it. Sadly, this did not give any bonuses. I did have 3 resources apprear that game, but none of them where on hills outside a city radius and all were being worked as far as i know. I am not sure if there was one not being worked, and when the resource appeared the govenor moved a worker to that tile. We know how it likes to move em around on ya.

I am not sure about one thing though. You build a mine and have a citizen working it. You have a small chance of discovering a resource. My question concerns the resource itself. I am wondering if the resource is placed with the map seed and working the mine has a chance of finding it, or does each turn a new dice roll get done for every mine to add a resource to the original map seed.. And if the latter, I would be concerned about one of my dice rolls being wasted on a mine that already has a bonus on it. I doubt anyone has see a hill with gems AND gold.

If they are placed with the original map seed, then my mine everything strategy is sound. If you build a mine in 4000bc (I know, can't be done) and you have not discovered a resource by 1000ad, then it's fairly safe to go ahead and swith it over to a windmill if you so choose.

 

[Thalassicus]

They're placed as you go; this is understandable because of the world editor. They don't show up there -- plus, if you recreated/edited the world in the editor, preplaced resources wouldn't all be under hills any more.

 

[BeefontheBone]

They're entirely random - the differing results between tournament games should make that pretty clear.

 

[Esckey]

Only had it happen once and that was today. I actually thought it wasn't possible anymore to discover new resources cause I've never run out of a resource. Big change from Civ3 where I would routinly go through 3 irons and 5 oils(they would disappear and reappear on the same turn practically).

 

[DrewBledsoe]

The 1 in 10000 chance is per worked mine (without another resource, of course), per turn, so it's actually fairly common - I think most of my games I've played to completion have popped at least 1 resource. Sirian and Sulla's RB1 SG popped 5 or 6 IIRC.

This man is right, and if youre mining 40 spots in your empire, then i suppose that's about 1 in 250 of finding a metal in one each turn. You'll pick up most on marathon.