Uranium supplies

[Ace]

It appears that Uranium becomes available in one or more cities every turn somewhere between 140 and 145 cities. In my current game, I started checking occasionally after building city #99 and between 99 and #140, I only got two loads of Uranium, but starting after building city 143 (where I started checking every turn), I got 1+ cities supplying Uranium every turn.

Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[ElephantU]

Interesting, if true. As I recall neither Samson nor Solo looked at number of cities for the S/D calculations. All they found was some terrain and some city size dependencies for Uranium supply, once it is enabled By NucFis.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

The most amount of Uranium supply I have ever seen in a civ2 game was in GOTM55 which was played on my custom map called Butterfly.

While in a typical game you see no cities supplying uranium, or if you are lucky one, in that game I had many cities supplying uranium.

According to my log of that game, I delivered 6 uranium freights between 1750 and 1800 and at 1800 I had 90 cities. Another 4 were delivered between 1800 and 1850 when my cities went up to 108. I delivered more past 1850 but I do not have an easily available city count to match it.
What I do remember is that after a while the demand for uranium subsided.

 

[Ace]

Yeah, the demand for Uranium does seem to subside a bit as the game enters the later stages. Uranium demand is really a pain in the a## because it ties up one of the demanded loads in practically every city and when you finally get a load, its usually from a small city and the payoff is not worth it. The only time I have really gotten big payoffs is by rehoming a Uranium freight to a city with large trade, but that is illegal in GOTMs.

It seems likely that with a large number of cities (greater than 140+), chance will give you one or more Uranium producing city every turn. Someone needs to do some serious reseach here.

 

[ElephantU]

Samson did most of his research in cheat mode using a customized map (all one terrain type, or prebuilt islands). Interesting that you see mostly small cities with Uranium - his research showed the likelyhood went up as the city size did. I guess when you are ICSing the cities will stay small, but it would be helpful if someone had the time to check out number of cities as a supply variable. Perhaps we could get Ming to allow someone to alter Samson's S/D formula posts.

 

[Ace]

Did I say anything about ICSing? Most of my cities range from a large of 33 on down, with the bulk of them in the 20s. I have some overlap but definately not ICS. Of course the newest ones range from size 1 on up...!

I don't have any real data on city size as related to Uranium supply. It just seems like it almost always shows up in the smaller cities. In my current game
I am up to city #155 and the last two turns, three cities supplied Uranium. I don't know (or understand the math here), but it certainly seems that after passing about 145 cities, you will get at least one city supplying Uranium, and as your total number of cities grows, the # of cities supplying it also seems to increase, slightly.

 

[Ace]

A further observation: Uranium seems to like Hills. The cities that provide it all have two or more hills in their radius.

 

[Ace]

Dummy me, I should have reread Samson's work on Supply Demand. Size is relative. By smaller cities, I was refering to size 8-12, as opposed to 20+ size cities. I should have been more explicit, sorry. It occurs to me that the cities producing Uranium are also the later cities built because of the "not so good terrain". I tend toward grasslands with some forests, but avoiding hills masses and mountains, leaving this "marginal" land for later.

Anyway, I have played another 5 turns in my game and I have gotten at least one Uranium supplied each turn, usually 2 and in one turn, four cities provided it. I am more convinced that ever that the number of cities is vital in producing Uranium. Once you get over that "trigger" number, you get at least one Uranium producing city evey turn.

 

[ElephantU]

Of course, when you've got that many cities you're bound to have a few with Uranium as the supply wildcard just based on X/Y coordinates. And since your later cities are on less hospitable land you'll find more of the terrain factors that Samson listed. It is also later in the game so you've got more of the tech triggers.

 

[Ace]

That sounds about right. As to tech, I was well into FT when Uranium started showing up, but I believe that is not related to the appearance of Uranium. It seems to be triggered by the number of cities. The more cities you have, the more chances you have to get Uranium supplied in a few.

 

[starlifter]

In GOTM 68, I got 2 Uranium before Game Turn 80, from small cities. On that map, Uranium is "worthless" though, since even undemanded hides will fetch the same capped price.

 

[Ace]

Hi Starlifter!

Welcome back. You have been missed.