Dunno. You stated that the previous Black Flames was to gather info for a research you were doing. Thought this very specific mechanic was related to another research you could have been doing, but apparently I was wrong so let's just skip that.
That research was mostly to find out how well I could manage/lead and how much I could learn from failures. It is kind of tied to it, but not officially. Last time you could get everything everywhere, now you can't and some ores are limited to single small deposits, so there's going to be more player/kingdom/town/etc interactions.