"This source of iron has been exhausted"

[Sinterklaas]

In vanilla Civ 3 I just got the following message: "This source of iron has been exhausted". Now I've suddenly lost the only iron source on my island...

How often does this happen? And will the iron source "respawn" elsewhere or is it gone for good?

I'm asking because I'm playing a map that I made with Civ3Edit and while making the map I deliberately made resources scarce so that players have to fight or trade to get the resources they need (everyone having plenty makes for uninteresting gameplay). But if these scarce resources are going to disappear forever it will severely spoil the game, especially because I made certain resources (like uranium and aluminium) so scarce that it might result in all players not being able to build nukes, Aegis cruisers, tanks, airplanes, etcetera.

 

[Sinterklaas]

Oh, and if resources do disappear and reappear elsewhere, is there a way to stop that process and make them static for the entire duration of the game?

I made the map in such a way that there is (for example) a big desert with lots of oil but hardly any oil elsewhere on the map and I did the same with a jungle island full of rubber resources. That way every civ has plenty of one (or more) resource(s) but is lacking others, forcing them to trade.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

Most resources can and do disappear, albeit relatively rarely. Horses and Rubber do not exhaust, however. Any resources that are exhausted will 'spawn' in another suitable terrain tile. I believe this can be changed in the Editor (at least, it can in the Conquests Editor) - edit the Scenario Rules and change the Disappearance Chance value to 0.

 

[vmxa]

Not sure if it is zero, make it whatever the Horse value is (400?).

 

[Sparthage]

Horse is 0. Its appearance is 160.

 

[timerover51]

You set the disappearance value to "0" to keep a resource from exhausting. In Civ3, the strategic resources that exhaust are Iron, Saltpeter, Coal, Oil, Aluminum, and Uranium. The strategic resources that do not exhaust are Horses and Rubber, both of which are grown. Iron has the lowest likelihood of exhausting, while Oil and Uranium have the highest likelihood of exhausting.

 

[gozpel]

I did use the trick of pillaging my own iron after upgrading my whole army, then just have 3 workers close until I needed it again for another upgrade. If it's not mined it doesn't go away, but IF you mine it, it can disappear the next turn, if you're unlucky.

Stupid idea in the first place, to lose your iron by random factors.

 

[Diviner]

This is why I set disappearance ratios to 0 in my mod. Not too realistic as the number of resources are constant, because disappaerance means appearance elsewhere instantly. Oh and it is very frustrating in gameplay terms.

I think I had one time when the very next tile received the missing iron

 

[Sinterklaas]

I believe this can be changed in the Editor (at least, it can in the Conquests Editor) - edit the Scenario Rules and change the Disappearance Chance value to 0.

I've taken a look in Civ3Edit and for iron it says the following:

Appearance Ratio: 160
Disappearance Probability: 800

It looks like there is a much higher chance of iron disappearing than reappearing. If I change both values to 0, will that cause the iron static, i.e. never to appear of disappear?

Iron has the lowest likelihood of exhausting, while Oil and Uranium have the highest likelihood of exhausting.

Are you sure? In the editor the disappearance probability of oil and uranium is lower than that of (for example) iron and coal.

 

[Diviner]

Oh the editor is so underdocumented and misleading...

Appearance ratio determines only the number of resources created on the world. It is proportionate to the number of course, I don't know what is the specific ratio.

Disappearance ratio is behind how fast resources disappear and reappear. It does not change the number of resources you see, because it is determined at the creation of the map.

Firaxis names are misleading. There are whole topics on the Creation & Customization sub-forum that describe the rules and labels and what they REALLY mean. You will surely find answers on these ratios too.

You may need to explicitly search for that of course or use one of these sticky topics that describe the rules
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=188315
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=210035

 

[Sinterklaas]

Ah, "appearance" as in "presence" instead of "to be created"...
More questions:

- When you change the rules in the editor, do you change them for the entire game or only for the specific scenario you're working on? I'm still looking for a way to change the city names in such a way that in every game the Romans will found Rome as "Roma" and the Germans will found Nuremburg and Cologne as "Nürnberg" and "Köln". I prefer some native names over the English translations.

- And is there a mod that adds more government types to the vanilla version? The choices are rather limited. I want to be a constitutional monarchy, police state or try out my kleptocracy idea (lots of corruption but you can hurry production by bribing people, hehe).

 

[Diviner]

Ah, "appearance" as in "presence" instead of "to be created"...
More questions:

- When you change the rules in the editor, do you change them for the entire game or only for the specific scenario you're working on? I'm still looking for a way to change the city names in such a way that in every game the Romans will found Rome as "Roma" and the Germans will found Nuremburg and Cologne as "Nürnberg" and "Köln". I prefer some native names over the English translations.

- And is there a mod that adds more government types to the vanilla version? The choices are rather limited. I want to be a constitutional monarchy, police state or try out my kleptocracy idea (lots of corruption but you can hurry production by bribing people, hehe).

Well these are clearly off-topic in general discussions. Next time, you should open new thread in the Creation & Customization sub-forum.

The answer for your first question that this is possible...
...if you do not care about hall of fame and scores
This is simple. You need to edit only and only the rules and save a specific biq. Then you can play it in the Civ-Content/Scenario (whatever) menu.
OR
...if you wish to override irreversibly the standard game rule file
It is the civ3mod.bic in the main Civ3 folder which needs to be overridden (in case of conquests it is the conquests.biq in the Civ3/Conquests folder). It is read-only by default so you need to disable it first. And I highly recommend to back up the original file before you do anything. Now the normal game completely absorbs your modifications, HoF and scores will also be there.

For your second question, search the mods in the Creation & Customization forum. And if I may ask lower the amount of off-topic questions please

 

[Sinterklaas]

Sorry, I just didn't want to spam the forum by opening a new thread for every question I had.

I'm going to try making the resources static now. Thanks everyone!

 

[dominatr]

you can lower the disappearance rate of the resource in the resource tab in civedit.

i apologize if someone alrady said it, but TLDR fo me.

 

[Optional]

Once I did a small test about when resources disappear, that would be a handy read as well: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=329362

If it's not mined it doesn't go away, but IF you mine it, it can disappear the next turn, if you're unlucky.

You probably meant roaded instead of mined, as resources need to be connected to stand a chance of disappearing.