A penalty for empty or nearly-empty fields is added, so I guess the chance of extracting the very last bit of resources is very low. I do not know if this has to do something with the peripheric position (I don't think so), it might have been luck that the second mine digged out the resource immediately.
The responsible code is here: http:// bazaar. launchpad. net/~widelands- dev/widelands/ trunk/view/ head:/src/ logic/productio n_program. cc#L1239
A penalty for empty or nearly-empty fields is added, so I guess the chance of extracting the very last bit of resources is very low. I do not know if this has to do something with the peripheric position (I don't think so), it might have been luck that the second mine digged out the resource immediately.