Uranium

[MrSparkle]

Originally posted by julian barker:
So Spaceman Spiff,

What about NON. Settlers/units that depend on NON for resources after 80?+ cities built. Is that common knowledge?

NON means that they have no city supporting them. This is good becuase they go around do whatever they are designed to do without draining the resources of a city.


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I am disrespectful to Dirt! Can you not see that I am serious?

 

[Andu Indorin]

On Uranium:

Hard to say anything for certain when it comes to Uranium. In the game I'm right now, I have twenty uranium caravans that I'm holding in reserve for my final push to maximize future tech points. No specific geographic pattern emerges from an analysis of their home cities; some are north, some south, some are central. However, they do seem to be appearing in pairs.

In general, I have found that Uranium appears only in games in which I am using a large map; they never seem to appear when I'm playing on the regular/ medium-sized maps.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about Uranium is its tendency to appear in the Trade Adviser menu; then, when you go to the city listed as a supplier to put in your order, it's no longer available; and returning to the Trade Adviser menu, it's no longer there either. Even more frustrating is switching to freight when its listed in the City Menu, and next turn the only available commodity is hides!

Since its only 1920, I'll keep an eye on this and see if I can figure anything out.

Oh yeah, I seem to recall that I once managed 3000 out of long distance Uranium caravan; but that was long time ago, and I may just be remembering the figure wrong.

 

[BlueMonday]

Uranium is very rarely found in civ 2, but its revenue is higher than any other commodity in the game. By the twentieth century nearly every city above size ten demands it but there are few producers (1%-2%). Once I was able to trade uranium between two size thirty-five cities with super highways on opposite ends of the world. The revenue was above 2500 gold.

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"Bad chemicals and bad ideas are the Yin and Yang of madness"
-Kurt Vonnegut "Breakfast of Champions"

 

[Pedro]

I hope I don't get into trouble by linking to Apolyton, but as you can see on the tech tree
( http://apolyton.net/cgi-bin/civ2/db/review.cgi?ID=484 )
Uranium becomes available when Nuclear Fission is discovered. By then some of your cities will change their supply and demand to uranium.

 

[Andu Indorin]

Uranium update:

Well, I am to 1960 now, and I may have found another variable involving Uranium. Once I started building the Manhatten Project, Uranium supply definitely seems to increase. Prior to the Manhatten project, I was averaging around one city with Uranium appearing every other turn since Nuclear Fission. Since I started and completed the Manhatten project, the average seems to increase to one city with Uranium appearing every turn. Given many players avoidance of building the Manhatten Project -- myself included -- this may help explain why Uranium does not seem to be around.

 

[MrLeN]

Just another reason to have wonders in the game

MrLeN

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Where there is money, there are liars!

 

[vladmir_illych_lenin]

I don't think the Manhatten project has anything to do with it. If it did, it would say it on the Civelopedia. If it is true though, that means it would apply for other resources, which is unlikely.

 

[Andu Indorin]

I'm up to 1990 now: and the correlation, so far, holds true. In fact, in this game, the Uranium market has bottomed out! I have more cities capable of producing uranium than those that demand it.

I'm still inclined to say that the Manhatten Project does have an influence; but only based on this one game. V.I. Lenin: the Civilipaedia should have something on this in it; but if it did, would the mysteries of Uranium still be a question. (i.e., the Civilipaedia could have much more in it of "practical" knowledge than "historical" background.") If you get a chance: next time you're in the position to build the Manhatten Project w/o fear of a preemptive first strike from an opponent, double-check my hypothesis. ... It is, after all, only an observation based on one game where I've had the luxury of building the Manhatten Project without fear of retaliation. Yet I think there is a correlation between the two. In the next game I play, I may be tempted into parleying Uranium, through the use of Freight, into scientific advancement, at the risk of a preemptive first strike -- can I make the Manhatten Project help give me SDI and Stealth before they acquire Flight?

 

[Kev]

Looking at a large-world, Deity game that I'm playing, I have to agree that the Manhattan Project does increase uranium trade. As it stands now, I am very hard pressed to find a city that does NOT demand it, and I have over 25 cities that produce it. Looking at saved games prior to the Manhattan "blunder" of the world, trade in this element is not nearly so keen.

I've tried to home the uranium freight at my science city and airlift it around the globe. The best I've done so far is 2,234 for a single freight. Keep in mind that this was between two of my own cities (of course, I have the world in hand which is why I even bothered with the Manhattan Project).

The funny thing is, I have a bunch of cities that produce AND demand uranium. That seems weird.

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Diplomacy - the art of
saying "Good Doggie"
until you can find a rock

 

[Valendur]

Sorry I didn't check time stamps to see how recently this thread was active, but I found it because I was also curious if it was simply a bug in a certain version that had been fixed.

I have played 3-4 games of Civ2 recently and am currently in a large map Prince game. It's 1913 or so, but I'm at future tech 30, so I figure if it's tech based I should have gotten it a long time ago. Also, all wonders have been built (not all by me). I'm in the [clean-up the enemy] / [(settle|terraform) the world] stage of the game. This means I'm building a lot of cities and a lot of freight to get trade routes for the new cities. While I don't really care if the new city demands what I can produce or not, pretty much every city demands Uranium and I can't remember ever seeing it produced.

This does not mean I haven't seen it produced (in a game I played 15 years ago or so), just that I can't remember ever seeing it. That also means I'm not seeing it in my recent/current game(s).

Does it have something to do with the difficulty level or is there a patch that fixes this issue? The version I'm playing now is v1.06 27-Mar-96, running in a VM on Windows98SE.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

The mechanics of supply and demand have been researched in detail at Apolyton years ago. For some commodities supply and demand are very imbalanced. The most extreme case is Uranium which, perhaps by design, is in high demand and short supply. Most of the times you have no suppliers. When you do you should build it right away as it will not last long. Typically you get Uranium supplied by small cities near deserts.

 

[BaconLad]

Subjectively speaking, I've always felt that Uranium becomes available during the "clean up" parts of my games, i.e - when I'm settling the last remaining tiles.
As this is late in the game, the tiles are usually among the worst in the game.
So when I have Uranium available, it's usually in a small/new city next to or sometimes even on mountains, desert, tundra etc...

 

[starlifter]

Ali is right, its understood how, mostly due to Samson's work in 2000/2001.
You can control certain commodities, and clear (unblock) them.
However, suffice it to say I don't bother, its not worth the micromanagement in most situations (IMO).
The reason is that in all end games I've played since about 2000, Uranium is useless for strong Democracies, as it is capped by the 2/3 rule, even between own cities. This if especially true if you are tech gifting the key civ. Ditto for end game oil, gems, wine, spice, gold, etc. in most cases.

Uranium would be useful between low trade arrow cities, for example in Communism. The trade computation is so small in that case that the Uranium bonus would likely not cap.

Does it have something to do with the difficulty level or is there a patch that fixes this issue? The version I'm playing now is v1.06 27-Mar-96

No, its not difficulty level. There is a patch, but its not for "lack of enough uranium" .

Update with patch 3, which will give MGE 5.0.4f, 26 March 1999. Its in the Downloads section.