When do resources deplete? Tested

[Optional]

I let only 2 interturns pass, but because of the 1 in 1 disappearance probability I had set in the editor, the iron should have disappeared immediately in the first interturn if it could at all. So I'm sure at least this particular iron resource did not stand a chance of depletion.
You probably haven't got the saves relevant to this from your game anymore, have you?

 

[Bartleby]

No, I don't. I'm not even sure which game it happened in. It was definitely c3c but I dunno the patch level.
I do remember thinking at the time "hmm, never seen that before."

edit to add:

Never seen it since, either.

 

[wolf_brother]

Wow, just wow. The incredible genius of the Firaxis programmers continues to boggle the mind of us mere mortals

 

[Turner]

Another thing to try is roading the tile before the resource appears, and then pillaging the road before it's found. There have been questions in the past about that as well.

I would also change the disappearance property to something like 80%,and unroad it after it's been discovered as well.

I'm curious to see how those two situations play out.

 

[da3dalus]

Wow, just wow. The incredible genius of the Firaxis programmers continues to boggle the mind of us mere mortals

Indeed. Maybe we could fix their little mistakes IF they would deign to release the fabled source code. (I'm sure I'll be dead before THAT happens).

 

[Bartleby]

I made a test and my colony delpeted after three turns:

before building colony in 3850 BC:

after building colony in 3850 BC:

Iron depletes in 3700 BC:

 

[Optional]

I had let only 2 interturns pass in my test, but now that I'm seeing this, I picked up my save again, let another interturn pass and also got the colony + iron disappear. So the same result.
I'm not sure why a colony would prevent a resource from disappearing the first 2 turns but not after that, but since the game works with disappearance chances of 1 in 100 and smaller this might not make much difference in the actual game. I mean it might be fine to assume that a resource available through a colony behaves the same way as any other resource after all.
I'll do a bit more tests with smaller disappearance chances, but I might not come to any sort of reliable conclusion, because testing with settings like 1 in 800 that the game has is practically impossible.

 

[pimserplink]

While playing as Sumerians yesterday I watched one of my iron colonies deplete in the early MA. Adjacent to but not due to expanding borders. My defending pike was left fortified over a dead end road in the middle of nowhere. I had plenty other iron, but the depleted iron resurfaced not far away within Persian borders (where none was before). My same pike arrived there via RoP just before Xerxes' worker.

I wonder whether instead of 1 in 1 probability of disappearance, it may be 1 to 1? Thus 1/1 might really be 1/2; 1/800 actually 1/801, etc? A tiny sample could erroneously indicate otherwise, especially if you reused the same save with the randomness off.