The Resource Overflow Bug- Is there any other way?

[SWalker]

But this methode doesn´t work for scenarios and mods that are using the "El Justo-methode" and cut down the trade-net to gain much higher gamespeed.

With that situation - you can freely overload resources in the colonies, as long as any improvments based on them have the "required resources must be within city radius" flag, because the extra resources don't count as being within the cities radius. However it would be ugly, and confusing (you could have many ghost resources in the same city).

#edit
Additionaly you could use ghost resources to make buildings that can only be built in overseas territories (eg in British Cananda, but not there if the US conqured it). Make a resouce and distribute it to all areas of the map, then create a ghost resource with a matching index but don't place it on the map. Only overseas territories (and unfoutunatly unconnected local cities) would have the ghost resource and be able to build buildings/units requiring it. In a senario like AoI where the major powers are already heavily roaded (so their major cities are already connected when the game starts), and if the the resource was only available to those powers (similar to the colonialism resources visibility), then the only way for major powers to get the ghost resource at home would be to deliberatly cut off access to a city.

 

[Civinator]

With that situation - you can freely overload resources in the colonies, as long as any improvments based on them have the "required resources must be within city radius" flag, because the extra resources don't count as being within the cities radius. However it would be ugly, and confusing (you could have many ghost resources in the same city).

Hi SWalker,

thank you for your reply. The problem is, I want to use a highly cut down tradenet (microzones) not only for improvements, but to force the AI to build different units in different regions of the map on the same continent (p.e. : in a WW 2 scenario no road, harbour and airport connection possible between Germany and France, so the German AI is forced to build in the French occupied region units with minor value ( p.e. a French S 35 tank with German emblems on it) to the units they can build in Germany (p.e. a Panther tank). Here the (like you said ugly and confusing) corection for imps with the "resources in city radius" doesn´t work.

 

[CornPlanter]

Setting the palace as a wonder (don´t forget the wondersplash) could do that job.

I was thinking about that, but there is one point: only one civ may have Wonder.

 

[Civinator]

I was thinking about that, but there is one point: only one civ may have Wonder.

This works different with the palace (a wonder with the "center of empire-flag"). Please try it yourself (but as I said, don´t forget the wondersplash).

 

[SWalker]

The problem is, I want to use a highly cut down tradenet (microzones)

Will each microzone have a road network, or will all cities be isolated (no roads)?

 

[Civinator]

Will each microzone have a road network, or will all cities be isolated (no roads)?

Each microzone has it´s own road network.

 

[SWalker]

How are you handling resources like oil?

#edit

If you are not using conventional stategic resources like oil, then the following scheme might help (I have tried to aviod as much uglieness as possible).

Divide up the world into sections, each consisting of a number of micro-zones.
E.g. Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East, etc.

Create one resource for each section. E.g "Western Europe" resource

Lable the micro-zones in each section "Zone 1", "Zone 2", "Zone 3" etc.

Create one resource for each zone. E.g "Zone 1" resource

Place the appropriate section & zone resources in each micro zone.

Make buildings/units require appropriate section & zone resources.
E.g. French micro-zone units require "Western Europe" and "Zone 3"

Modify Section civilopdeia entries to list the zones in each section.
E.g Western Europe - Zone 1: Ireland
Western Europe - Zone 2: England
Western Europe - Zone 3: France
etc.
With links to new concept pages for each micro-zone, which have lists the buildings & units available.

If you use twice as many luxury resources as normal (16), a scheme like this would allow up to 64 microzones, or up to 144 micro-zones with regular (8) luxuries.

Additionally some buildings (or units) could simply have a section resource requirement.

 

[Civinator]

How are you handling resources like oil?

The resource oil is mostly needed to run tanks, trucks and so on. So it generates supply (=money) and you need a lot of supply (money) that you can use and maintain the tanks you have produced.

The (strategic) resource oil is also needed to produce a "supply"-unit by an improvement with that resource in city radius. If you achieve to bring these supply-truck-convoys to the supply depots you have additional supply (reverse capture the flag-option) to operate a huge tank force or fleet.

Of course oil is not only used as petrol, but as a basic resource in the chemical industry, too. But there are such alot of resources around the world that you must have to produce certain products that are not represented in Civ 3, that I think this can be compensated by other resources (in your "oil"-example by refineries as resources and so on, that make much more fun to bomb than to bomb an "oil-drop" on a map) and you are not forced to place an oil resource to an aera, where it never did appear in reality.

Edited:crosspost
Edited again: Yes, your suggestion in your editing is the way I want it. The problem is, that in this scenario at time we have more than 70 strategic resources.

 

[CornPlanter]

This works different with the palace (a wonder with the "center of empire-flag"). Please try it yourself (but as I said, don´t forget the wondersplash).

Well it's very good news then So no additional Wonders are needed, you can just have a Palace giving every city an Ancient Debugger improvement? Thanks a lot

P.S. this method has some side effects. Negative or positive - depends on your point of view and your goals anyway.

1. Every civ can trade with every other civ as soon as gets in contact.
2. Obviously, every city is connected so e.g. no need to hurry harbor in a distant isle city to give it luxury resources thus preventing from rioting. Roads are not that important as well, you can send a settler far away to claim, say, Iron, and you no need to connect it with a road.

This changes playing style a bit


I think about another method, that is, ordering resources in a way that every ghost resource would be either still unusable (e.g. aliuminium in 2500 B. C.) or already obsolete, e. g. Horses in Modern Armors and Stealth Bombers era. It must be like this: Iron gives Aliuminium and vice versa. Chances are, by the time you will need aliuminium, city with Iron will be already connected. Not a sure way but...


EDIT:
the Palace doesn't work. Other cities just have no improvement they supposed to have. I've tried to change a prerequisite for Palace from Masonry to None but it didn't do any good.

 

[CornPlanter]

cannot say if that works as well, but no reason why it shouldn't. Have you tried it?

The problem is, bug works not exactly like it was believed before. I posted the results of my tests (and Swalker explained them in much better way). And considering the real way the bug works, there is no real solution based on just order of resources if you have 33+ luxury/strats.

 

[Civinator]

To simplify the simplifications: Is this correct ?

You can´t have more than 32 luxury/strategic resources without this bug.

 

[embryodead]

The problem is, bug works not exactly like it was believed before. I posted the results of my tests (and Swalker explained them in much better way). And considering the real way the bug works, there is no real solution based on just order of resources if you have 33+ luxury/strats.

Yeah I understand it now, and as Civinator says, I guess you guys are screwed I admit that with the civ3 editor troubles I had thoughts of jumping into Civ4 multiple times during the last 2 months. The idea of pretty much everything being programmable seems quite attractive, even with the fugly 3d...

 

[Civinator]

I admit that with the civ3 editor troubles I had thoughts of jumping into Civ4 multiple times during the last 2 months. The idea of pretty much everything being programmable seems quite attractive, even with the fugly 3d...

Hi embryodead,

you gave so much to the Civ3-community and I´m looking for your new highclass medievial scenario. Please don´t forget, there was a reason, why you returned back to Civ 3. So don´t "jump back" to Civ4 again. If we know the flaws of Civ 3 and can handle them, a lot is won. They must programm desperately for some additional years to get Civ 4 in a lot of concerns to a level Civ 3 still has.

Edited:

EDIT:
the Palace doesn't work. Other cities just have no improvement they supposed to have. I've tried to change a prerequisite for Palace from Masonry to None but it didn't do any good.

Hi Cornplanter,

just saw your edit in post 49 of this thread. I made a test and you are right. I remembered well, that the palace as a wonder is different to other wonders as it can been built by more than one civ. But the palace wonder only gives the additional improvements to the civ the AI considered that has built it first. So only one civ gets the additional airports and therefore this is no cure for the resource overflow bug.

 

[Civinator]

Embryodead, CornPlanter and SWalker,

thank you very much for your outstanding work in recognizing and understanding the "Resource Overflow Bug". Now it´s time to draw the final conclusions from your great work for the normal civmoder from the street (like me).

Please correct me if something is wrong with the following:

1. The maximum number for C3C strat./luxury resources without running in this bug is 32.
2. The strat./luxury resources must be placed in special resourceslots to get the maximum number of 32.
3. For standard C3C resources (1-8: strategic; 9-16 luxury and 17-26 bonus resources ending with tobacco) and maps depending on them, the places for additional strat./luxury resources without the bug are:

a) In the resource graphics (starting with 1): 27,28,29,30,31,32,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,and 58.

b) in the editor (starting icons with 0): 26,27,28,29,30,31,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56 and 57.


4. For C3C maps without the standard resource settings you must look in which slots the strat./luxury resources are placed and use free places including to number 32 in the resource graphics (or 31 in the editor resource icons) and all slots from bonus graphics up to number 32 (or 31 in the editor resource icons) by adding 32 to get the number of the slot for the strat./luxury resource without that bug.

5. All other resources must be bonus resources to avoid the bug.

a) Reported by CasusBelli a total of 999 resources is possible. Edited: Only 256 resources are possible.
b) Dummy bonus resources, that are not placed on the map, can be used to receive the slots for the strat./luxury resources without the bug.

 

[SWalker]

Firstly AFAIK, for purposes of the bug icon numbers are irelevant, resource slots are what is important. Knowing Civ, there is probably a maximum number of resource icons, and if we are lucky , it will be less than the 999 possible resources reported by CasusBelli

1: Yes
2: Yes
3: Yes, but I would use slots 49-64 (counting from 1) in order to get a single block.
4: Yes, if I read you correctly
5: Not exactly, it would be possible to have additional resources and not trigger the bug by avioding the other conditions
e.g. (I can think of no practical use for this arrangement), If you placed an overloaded resource (e.g. slots 0,32,64,...) with a different resource under each capital city, and nowhere else, with each resource only visible to that civilization, and made sure that the civs could not move their own capital (no building palaces), and made sure that they could not be forced to move their capital (say with regicide and 0-move kings), then you could stop the bug from occuring.

If anyone can think of other arrangments that would stop the bug (e.g. only one civ can see each set of overloaded resources, and they can only ever build one city), then those arrangments may be of some use in specific scenarios, but it seems that there is no generally usefull solution, and the solutions we have are very specific.

Someone may come up with uses for the bug, since it does something that cannot be done any other way with civ III (extra resources in the city box), and any complex "feature" can potentially be usefull (as well as awkward).

 

[Keroro]

As SWalker has said - the resources.pcx file order is not important at all. It is the order in the editor that matters.

As far as I can see, the easiest way to deal with the bug is to block all strat/lux resources in slots 1 - 32 in the editor, then all other resources must be bonus. Simple enough. If you prefer, you can just make a chart - with 32 columns. Starting top left put list your resources, working down a row, then starting again at the top when you get to 32. Put a S, L or B next to each resource. If any row in the chart has more than one S or L in it then you will encounter the problem.

Possible use for bug:

Resource A (lets say wood) in slot 1, resource B (lets say timber) in slot 33. The colonies cannot be connected to the homeland (no air or sea trade). Wood is only available in the homeland, but timber is only available in the colonies. The colonies will get a ghost wood resource when they have the timber resource, the homelands will not get the timber resource as a ghost because they are linked to the capital. - Limited utility for this I suppose.

Possible solution:

Rather than make the Palace put an airport in each city, you could create techs that are only available to one civ, that allow a wonder (costing 1 shield) that places an airport in each city. This would require 31 techs and 31 Wonders to be added to the game. - The weaknesses of this have been mentioned already.

 

[Virote_Considon]

!

To the drawing board! (again )

 

[WildWeazel]

big bump here, but something came to mind as I was reading over this thread. Correct me if I'm wrong here:

If you're not using the "El Justo" method, it would probably be safe for most mods, and any scenarios with a lot of infrastructure, to exceed 32 tradeable resources if you're careful about how you order them. If arrange the BIQ so that the resources that only appear (or are only useful, at least) in the later stages of the game are in two clusters separated by 32, with the earlier resources in the middle, you limit the effect of the bug to only happen with late-game resources, which is less bad than the alternative because (1) unfair advantages are less unbalancing the later they happen, and (2) by this point in the game, it's very unlikely that you will have unconnected cities with access to tradeable resources- and if you do, they will comprise a very small fraction of world power.

Let's say you have 36 tradeable resources in an epic mod. You order them like so: Uranium, Aluminum, Silicon, Deuterium, (everything else from earlier eras up to number 32), Plutonium, Titanium, Superconductors, Antimatter, (all your bonus resources). Now, if you have an unconnected city with access to Uranium, you will get a ghost Plutonium, and vice versa, same for the other first and last 4. But the chances of this are pretty low, and the usefulness of such a city is probably negligible. As long as your total number of resources is a multiple of 32, the only ghosts you will get from the middle of the pack will be useless bonus resources.

Of course this doesn't mean limitless resources, but you could probably get away with 40 or so, depending on when and for how long they are useful for building.

 

[JSnider]

what I have done so far .. not sure works 100% .. is 32 strat/lux followed by 32 bonus, then 32 s/l again, followed by 32 bonus/dummies. I don't get ghosting of resources, but i do get some weird graphic issues in the luxury box for cities. The first luxury and only the first shows a different graphic then what it should be (e.g. should be game but gems graphic, which is a strat not a lux, shows instead). Every thing else works (maybe) and do not get weird results for disconnected cities. So i think am doing what your are talking about, but get one weird result which could just but a sequencing or assignment issue.

And before ask yes I need the number of resources for the mod trying to get work.

Oh .. do you know if there is a limit (not on the number of separate resources) on the quantity of 1 resource can have ... i.e. if have over a 100 game owned by you would it cause crashes.

 

[Virote_Considon]

From what I've tested, I'm pretty sure the 32 S/L -> 32 Bonus -> 32 S/L strategy does not work

Although I'd be pleased to find out otherwise

The luxury problem you are describing is due to the fact that you have not updated the "luxuryiconssmall.pcx" file found in the "city screen" folder, I think

@Weasel: I've though of doing something like that myself before, but decided it would probably be a little tricky to set up...