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Topic: a clarification on exhausted mines

king_of_nowhere
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Joined: 2014-09-15, 18:35
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Posted at: 2014-11-03, 22:16

the barbarian help text says that an exhausted mine still produces goods 10% of times. I've seen it happen. Then one game with atlanteans, I needed quartz but had no granite anywhere; I figured the same mechanism of 10% would apply, so I made a crystal mine on gold. However, even after over one hour, not a single quartz was mined.

So, what's the deal? Do ony barbarian mines have a chance of producing after running out? Or maybe the mine will keep producing after being exhausted only if it was active at some point? Or maybe it requires at least to have empty ground beneath, which my crystal mine, being on gold, had not? I'd appreciate the answer cause I'm experimenting working empty mines as a self-inflicted extra difficulty against AI (it's working, btw: for the first time ever, one ai player had better troops than I did).


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wl-zocker

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Posted at: 2014-11-03, 23:33

It does not matter whether a mine has worked before or whether it is built on wrong, or empty ground or ground that contained the correct resource.
This mechanism also works for the Atlanteans, but the chance is only 5%. Furthermore, the program is rather long (a complete cycle lasts at least 195 s) and complex (because three resources are mined). The miner needs to be successful twice in a row to produce quartz.

Putting that together, the chance of producing exactly one quartz in one hour is 3600s/195s * (0.05)² = 4.6% (when it has always enough food). Since a cycle can be longer, the chance is probably even smaller. You can find the whole program in tribes/atlanteans/crystalmine/conf, if you want to do your own calculations. There should be some documentation in our wiki or somewhere in a forum (I am quite sure I have explained that already).

Are you playing build-18 or the current trunk? In trunk, there have been some significant improvements to the AI, so you might try that out.


"Only few people know how much one has to know in order to know how little one knows." - Werner Heisenberg

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DragonAtma
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Posted at: 2014-11-04, 03:34

Personally, I would raise the odds of an empty mine producing goods. Remember, even if it's raised all the way to 25% chance, that's still a lot less efficient than a non-empty mine. Of course, I'm just one person; others may disagree!


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2014-11-04, 19:22

wl-zocker wrote:

It does not matter whether a mine has worked before or whether it is built on wrong, or empty ground or ground that contained the correct resource.
This mechanism also works for the Atlanteans, but the chance is only 5%. Furthermore, the program is rather long (a complete cycle lasts at least 195 s) and complex (because three resources are mined). The miner needs to be successful twice in a row to produce quartz.

Putting that together, the chance of producing exactly one quartz in one hour is 3600s/195s * (0.05)² = 4.6% (when it has always enough food). Since a cycle can be longer, the chance is probably even smaller. You can find the whole program in tribes/atlanteans/crystalmine/conf, if you want to do your own calculations. There should be some documentation in our wiki or somewhere in a forum (I am quite sure I have explained that already).

Are you playing build-18 or the current trunk? In trunk, there have been some significant improvements to the AI, so you might try that out.

Thanks, that was most helpful. Do you also know what's the production rate of imperial exhausted mines? I'm using the build-18, I'm waiting the next "official" build to update.


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wl-zocker

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Posted at: 2014-11-05, 00:27

All mines (of all tribes) have a chance of 5% to be successful when they are actually empty. Only the deepest mines of the Barbarians have 10% (for some reason).


"Only few people know how much one has to know in order to know how little one knows." - Werner Heisenberg

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einstein13
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Posted at: 2014-11-22, 11:27

I've tested the "empty mines" on last game. 5 Hours of gametime and about 230 gold produced from nothing. That is quite big and small amount of resources...


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DragonAtma
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Posted at: 2014-11-22, 11:41

Keep in mind that that 230 gold cost you enough resources to get ~2300 (barbarians) or ~4600 (others) gold from nondepleted mines.

Or, if you prefer, ten (barbarians) or twenty (others) mines would produce about as much gold as one nondepleted mine -- assuming, of course, that you have enough infrastructure to fully support ten or twenty mines!

That's why I support raising the rate for "empty" mines; even if it's up to 25% chance, it's still highly inefficient. As for the text itself, it says that it's only the main vein is exhausted; the text probably doesn't need to be clarified, but that can be done if needed.

Edited: 2014-11-22, 11:42

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einstein13
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Posted at: 2014-11-22, 11:54

In old Settlers 2 game you coudn't get more resources than were on the map. So the game ended when you killed all the soldiers on both sides. Here you can play forever. For me that is huge step. I know that I spent lots of resources on that economy and I could have more soldiers, but for me it is enough. All the games I played ended before resources are left. That so I don't think that it is important to improve the chance. face-wink.png

If you make a map (I have one idea for that) where will be literally NO resources, and it will be not playable- we can think about the improvement/ face-wink.png


einstein13
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Fantastory
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Joined: 2020-04-21, 08:27
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Posted at: 2020-04-22, 17:49

Is the performance of exhausted normal mines, better than exhausted deep mines? The normal mines needs rations and the deep one needs snacks. Or does the deep one work faster having more miners?

Edited: 2020-04-22, 17:49

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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2020-04-22, 20:01

Moin Fantastory and welcome to the forums face-smile.png

Exhausted shallow and medium mines produce ores with a 5% chance and the more expensive deepest mines still have a 10% chance. The speed of mines is independent of whether they are empty or not. Therefore when using exhausted mines, shallow mines are the most cost-efficient and medium mines the least. Hope this helps face-smile.png


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