CIV 4 should have an eye on the ecological aspect of the game.

A normal game of CIV 3 has a lot of forests and jungle at the begining
and nearly no at the end of the game.
MAybe there could be something like a eco-check system.

Say a forest counts for one point and a jungle for two.
The game counts all forests and jungels and addes their worth.
This number counts for 100%.
Lets say you cut down a lot of jungle and forests the game still counts the worth. When you reached 80% the chances for an ecological disaster begins. If you cut down more wood it will increase.

You can replant your forests to avoid this desasters. (You cant replace jungle because it is a very unique eco-system.)

Any comments?:lol:

I agree. The thing that I don't like about the Civ 3 pollution system is that you can't bring down the pollution level, you can only stop it from getting worse. Forests and jungles should slowly reduce the global pollution level.

I don't like the idea of points for forests and jungles, but the forests and jungles bringing down polution would be great!

I think Civ would benefit from the concept of erosion. Hacking down all the forest and jungles could severely damage your habitat. This could be combined with your point-system. Say, if all the forests around a mountain are hacked, the erosion and the mudslides would cause the tiles next to the mountain to degenerate in time..

I would like forests and jungles to play more of a role, but not as you stated it. The point system seems to be a little to complicated and wouldn't be very effective, but their should be some pros/cons of planting/cutting down trees.

With the discovery of Medicine, Jungles should increase research and health.

the map should be a dynamic multi-variable cellular automation...
taking into account biodiversity, biomass of flaurs and fauna, terrain elevation, dificulty of the terrain, atmosphere, surface and subsurface water & folw, plate tectonics, and anything else you can think of.... then just have it setup to read those variables and from that decide what terrain type it is most similar too and show that graphic.

it would be the perfect middle ground between the terraforming in civ 2 and SMAC and the unchanging terrain, except for global warming, in civ 3. this way you can, you do change the terrain but since cellular automations are inheriently chaotic, you could try to change things but the actual long term effects, like in the real world, are complex and unpredictable...

I like this concept - perhaps it could be related to natural disasters. It'd be a nice touch and add extra depth to the game. It'd be interesting to combat forest fires, flooding, hurricanes, etc. We could also use that "evacuate" function people have been proposing in these situations.

Originally posted by Shyrramar
I think Civ would benefit from the concept of erosion. Hacking down all the forest and jungles could severely damage your habitat. This could be combined with your point-system. Say, if all the forests around a mountain are hacked, the erosion and the mudslides would cause the tiles next to the mountain to degenerate in time..

For one thing, all or most jungle tiles should be desert once cleared, since the soil underneath jungles is notoriously bad for farming. Thats why slash and burn agriculture is so terrible: after clearing a certain patch of jungle, the resulting terrain only supports farming for a few years, then the farmers need to move on and clear even more jungle. And if I recall correctly, rainforests don't necessarily get very much rain inherently, its just that the lush foliage traps moisture and keeps things very humid, altering the weather in the area.

If a large area of jungle couldn't be simply cleared by a horde of workers to result in nice fertile terrain, there'd be a lot less incentive to clear the entire jungle. It would only make sense to clear areas near coasts, rivers, and natural resources that you wanted.

Maybe we could build nature reserves as well - these should be areaas of forest or jungle taht are specially designated and can't be chopped down. They could generate extra income (eco-tourism).

I agree with Judgement. The result of hacking out jungles should be grassland for maybe a few turns followed by desert. However, this should depend on where in the jungle you have hacked. If you are clearing the middle of the jungle, then jungle creep could be introduced. I also would like to see two desert types: the standard type in Civ3 and Dune desert. Dune desert would be either nonproductive (food wise) or very difficult to change.

I also believe that terraforming should come back--along with engineer units. One of the cool aspects of Civ2 that I miss in changing mountains into mole hills (i.e. grassland) and glaciars into parks. This could offset the problems created by early deforestation and jungle elimination.

One idea to add ecology to the game could be to make different terrain types being interdependant.
For instance, you won't find grassland if there is no forest or mountain or at least hills nearby, which would keep and canalize the water which is needed to irrigate the grassland.
There would be a certain probability for a given tile to change it's nature, if some pre-conditions are no longer met: Say if a grass tile needs at least 5 forests in the circumference of 4 tiles in each direction, the chopping of the fifth tile could make the grass tile become plains. The higher the number of plains, the higher the chance of grass tiles to become plains as well, and so on.
There could be a certain probability for forest to start growing on unworked tiles, so that the above effect could be reversed "by nature" - of course you could try to reverse it by manually planting forests as well.
You could even add atmospheric components to the system:
Say, the map is divided into 16 different parts, and for each one the system (randomly) creates a main wind direction, let's say west winds for a given part. Now, if there would be mountains at the west, and no or only one major river just at the east, there would be quite some chance that the western part of that division of the map would be rather arid. So, you would have the mountains, then maybe some desert, followed by plains and slowly becoming grassland at the eastern part (if you look from west to east).

There should be some aspect of the game to represent the fact that a large portion of the population now seeks rest and relaxation outside of the city once they have the means to do so. This could be done by say forests and jungles providing happy faces and increased commerce after you research Automobile.

I always thought a large city surrounded by nothing but grasslands that have mines on them would lead to a very depressed population, while ones with natural forests, jungles, mashes (think everglades) and rivers would lead to increased happiness and tourism revenue.

Wow, there's a lot of great ideas here. There are too many proposed models that I like to throw my full support behind any one of them--maybe a combination of all of them could be worked out--but you all have thoroughly convinced me that they need to pay more attention to ecosystems. :goodjob:

These are some seriously good ideas. I really agree that say, in the modern age, forests/jungles (mountains??) should provide happy faces. Perhaps this could be adjusted so that its the ones ouside the cites' needed cultural area (those first two squares around) are the ones for this, though. Like corruption there could be a radius effect for each 'virgin' square. Better if not developed at all, or just road instaed of rail? More happiness effect in cities which have a higher excess income (that which gets sent to the treasury)?
Just bouncing some ideas out there.

When you cut down a rain forest it should be a flood plain for 5 turns, and then turn into desert

DIFFERENT TERRAIN TYPES, DIFFERENT FARMING
Unlike what happens in previous CIV games, you just can’t clear out a piece of jungle and cultivate the land for eternity. Farming depends mostly on the type of soil. Jungle or rain-forests soils are very sensitive to the changes introduced by INTENSIVE farming and will be able to support large farms for only a couple of years. After that the soil becomes exhausted and the land dries permanently.

It is believed that many meso-american kingdoms disappeared due to the consequences of the overuse of jungles for farming.

Furthermore, the complete clearance of jungle areas as you see in CIV would have a tremendous impact on global ecology.

Therefore, farming in equatorial regions should be different from farming in other regions. The food yields from jungle squares should be lower than other squares, since horticulture (a “lesser” type of agriculture) is the major way of obtaining food in jungle human communities.

Hey Eddie, good going, "dredging" up this old thread in line with some current interests.

I rather like the simplicity Tae's initial suggestion might introduce to keeping some percentage of forests around. If the game employs some kind of simulation of climate (as it already does by at least putting jungles near the equator and tundra near the poles), then it could generate an oxygen factor (if nothing else) relating to forests and jungles. If you cut down all your trees, you are going to have oxygen depletion. Realistically, it should also cause soil degradation, erosion, and other more far-reaching climate changes as many here are pointing out. But at the very least, a simple count of forest tiles could be maintained. As forest levels go down, global warnings could be issued about eco threats to the atmosphere and climate change. Other areas next to forests completely removed should degrade as has been pointed out.

In the early world, most land should be forested as so much of the early world was. Most farmland would have to be created by clearing forest, and would happen along rivers and coasts first. For a long time, farmland would mostly need to be right next to fresh water and not in the middle of a forest or jungle. Later on, as tech improves, farmland with irrigation would creep further away from water sources. The balance would be to not create too much farmland and keep enough forest around, both locally to support your farming tile ecosystem, but also globally for climate and atmosphere maintenance.

Also, I love the idea of national parkland being established around and in cities as well as regions in the countryside with happiness/immigration/culture benefits to encourage civilizations to keep some wilderness around. The current Civ model encourages the horrible raping of every last tile on the earth which is like some grim sci-fi futuristic movie where everything is stripped, ugly, railroaded, and industrial in the end...a world no one would enjoy living in, if they even could live in such an ecology. A game like Civ should encourage good ecology and civics and not permit or encourage such an outcome for the planet.

To further the thought a little more, I like the idea of overfarming causing tile or region degradation. Let’s say I cut down a regional forest of ten tree tiles along a river and turn it all into farmland. In a few hundred years, this land begins to degrade into plains and then into wasteland or even desert (depending on latitutde) due to soil erosion and no wind buffer, etc. Tiles immediately along the river might be resistant, as they tend to replenish soils with natural flooding. If dams were part of a tile improvements in the future, then their effects on soil erosion and other environmental factors might have to be considered too.

In order to hope to restore my overfarmed wasteland, I’d have to replant some forests. I probably couldn’t grow forests on wasteland, so I’d have to plant them on my remaining lingering good farmland tiles. After another 100 or more years, my wasteland might return to plains or even grassland. Then I could plant/keep forests in appropriate areas around some farming regions to maintain a balance. It would demonstrate that you can’t just exploit land to do what you want indefinitely, but all changes have consequences. A

I think hills should be able to grow forests, as well as mountains of lower elevation. Mountains could be of different heights. Also, in higher latitudes, mountains wouuld have more snow and less trees. In lower latitudes, mountains would be forested or even jungled. Mountains in jungle regions could be cleared and terrace farmed. So many fun and intriguing possibilities how to make it more complex and like the real world and to make us better stewards of land and resources.

In America right now, due to our overfarming of much farmland and a lack of crop rotation and letting the land rest for a year now and then, we have essentially stripped much of the minerals out of our soils and resulting produce. Those FDA labels on how much Vitamin X and mineral Y a tomato or piece of fruit is supposed to contain are based on studies from decades ago when our soils were in much better shape. We don’t get the same nutrients out of our foods anymore. We might face a future where we are forced to change how we are using our farmlands to keep them producing if we want to remain healthy as a nation.

I'm not sure if I understand Tae's idea 100%...I think what he's suggesting is that preserving forests and jungle could be encouraged by granting score bonus for "ecological civs"

If that's it I don't like the idea...first because players would find other ways of increasing the score to compensate deforestation...second because certain ecological problems should have immediate consequences and those consequences should by itself encourage the player to exploit the natural resources wisely...i guess that's more realistic...in ancient times people didn't know what global warming was, but they probably knew that if they cut too many forests the land would dry up and farming would only be allowed for a couple of years...

Okay, agreed. Like I was saying, a global tally of forests would affect global climate and oxygen or whatever. Local forestry and farming practices would affect local regions in the more immediate way you are suggesting...the greater and quicker motivation to keep your land use in balance.

That said, there are large areas in the world which have no forests, but productive farmland, and I'm not sure how much of those were forested originally..steppes of Russia, high plains in America, etc. Obviously forests or nearby forests alone don't necessarily have the direct impact on farmland, so I'm not sure how the model would best be created. People who know more about ecology could probably come up with it better.

well, as far as I know, the steppes of Russia and the high plains of America are still what they've been for a long time: plains...the absence of trees in those regions is not a result of human action...

the existence of plains all over the world is result of few rain, however the type of soil of such plains or prairies is excellent for some type of crops and provided that plains are irrigated they will be very productive...

I'm not sure if I understand Tae's idea 100%...I think what he's suggesting is that preserving forests and jungle could be encouraged by granting score bonus for "ecological civs"

No thats not the idea.
I just want to encourage the player to keep ecology in mind by threatening them with eco-disasters.
You can go and cut down everything around you but you have to think about it first or suffer a little bit for your deeds. (Or your neighbors...)

Actually there is some thought that the central plains in the US are the result of human action, specificaly native americans. Those plains were forested once a long time ago.

You could well be right, Kayak. Similarly, it's common knowledge that Egypt was once forested and wet not too many thousands of years ago, and has been radically transformed into desert since somehow. Someone commented already somewhere about how Sumeria in the fertile crescent suffered this fate. In fact, I get the impression that early civilizations, upon cutting down many forests early on, really altered a lot of formerly fertile and habitable terrain in many parts of the world, the results of which we still experience to this day without having been able to reverse the effect. We're really getting another wave of that effect with the recent rapid cutting of jungles which is of course sobering.

I like the model that the Civ world starts with vast regions of forest and jungle with only small areas of grasslands and plains open, and that the great majority of your farmland would have to be carved out of the land by your hard work and planning...and if overextended, would create terrible problems or (nearly?) irreversible consequences. We'd truly start with the hunting-gathering days and little ready farmable land. The only significant or consistent areas which would be ready-made for farming would be river plains, as along the Nile, etc. As we know, these are very fertile, very productive, and not forested due to yearly flooding. Agriculture would start around rivers and slowly spread out into forested lands as necessary. I think nearly all civs should start on rivers, because civilizations with real cities, pretty much began to flourish first around the food sources and transportation they provided.

I like the model that the Civ world starts with vast regions of forest and jungle with only small areas of grasslands and plains open, and that the great majority of your farmland would have to be carved out of the land by your hard work and planning...and if overextended, would create terrible problems or (nearly?) irreversible consequences. We'd truly start with the hunting-gathering days and little ready farmable land. The only significant or consistent areas which would be ready-made for farming would be river plains, as along the Nile, etc. As we know, these are very fertile, very productive, and not forested due to yearly flooding. Agriculture would start around rivers and slowly spread out into forested lands as necessary. I think nearly all civs should start on rivers, because civilizations with real cities, pretty much began to flourish first around the food sources and transportation they provided.

Good idea! I've always thought that irrigation should be a researched tech, not a starting one. About the river starts, Most major ancient civ capitals were indeed on a river.

If we really wanted to simulate climate, temperature, and soil types, think back to something like the SimEarth system. You woudl not control the GAIA like you did in SimEarth, but the model would be the same. With techs you could see wind direction, drift, and temperature zones. These would all converge to determine soil types, ecosystems that can be supported. Biomes would also interact in the cellular automation format suggested above.

Reasonably, in the context of everything else Civ is doing at once, I could expect some simple climate features. Zones of terrain which might host certain kinds of degradation and natural disasters based on random controls and land treatment.

Gradual climate shifts back and forth (overall warming and cooling) would be easy to implement (some tiles in grassland regions turn into plains (or maybe most down to a certain latitude would change and vice-versa). They would also revert at some point. Yearly (or turn-ly) crop yields per tile might vary to reflect different weather patterns over the years. None of this seems too complicated but makes the planet more of a living, dynamic thing. It's conceivable that a city built on grassland and doing nicely farming for a thousand years one day finds itself in wasteland or desert with only a few farming tiles if any left. Much of the population would emigrate elsewhere, then begin to return when the climate shifts back eventually, and your city begins to generate agriculture again. Ecologically ruining/losing the topsoil might create deserts like in Egypt which you would never be able to reclaim (don't let it happen).

Very cool ideas, I like the point system.
Erosion can already be modded into the game. You can make Mountains -> Hills -> Grassland/Plains. You can also set it up to include Volcanoes in the cycle, so that you have a very volcanically active planet where mountains (or jungle, for that matter) suddenly sprout volcanoes. In addition, volcanoes can erode (e.g., volcanoes -> mountains -> hills).

Some related ideas on the ecological plane of thinking:

Old Growth value:
Chopping a forest should give a value in shields related to how long the forest has been untouched. Old growth (virgin forest) should have the full value, with newly planted forest at maybe 1/5 the value, and growing over time. In addition, Forest/Jungle tiles should have tourist value that grows with each 1000 years it has been untouched.

Natural Wonders:
The idea of "landmark terrain" in Conquests is great, but should be taken a step further. Random natural wonders should be placed on maps that have tourism value, similar to a bonus resource.

More dynamic "global warming":
When global warming occurs, more should happen than just tiles losing forest or jungle. Ice caps should melt, and eventually the coastal tiles should rise. There should also be triggers for an ice age ecological disaster that causes ice caps to grow and tundra to encroach on other tiles (grassland would be the logical choice).

More events:
Similar to the very cool volcanic eruption and Black Death events, there could be other events generated in the game, such as drought, El Nino, hurricane/monsoon, tsunami, earthquake, flooded rivers, and positive ones such as overwhelmingly good crops. The evil side of me would also like to see Mad Cow disease, Potato Blight, and genetic disasters caused by too much tampering with the human genome after the discovery of Genetics or a major nuclear conflict. For that matter, a major nuclear war should trigger the appearance of Fallout II-style resources, like mutated cattle, salvageable military debris, and roving bands of refugees.

Splinter Civs:
This may not be the right thread, but we need splinter civs in the game. If your civ is doing really bad things (like pursuing a very ecologically-unfriendly strategy), you should have the risk of some of your cities seceeding and forming a rebel republic. Master of Orion III did a great job with this concept, where a colony in civil unrest would sometimes form an independent empire.

I rather like the simplicity Tae's initial suggestion might introduce to keeping some percentage of forests around.

As interesting and scientifically sound as many of the suggestions have been in this thread, I have to say that as far as game mechanics go that if a change were made, it has to remain simple. Tae's original idea is a good basic one. There should be some penalties for over harvesting of forest and jungle, not only for the civs doing so, but global penalties that the other civs would start to suffer from oxygen depletion and global warming. This could be represented through the unhealthiness measure. Might I suggest that civs responsible for destroying a certain percentage of forests and rain forests receive more unhealthiness than those other civs who are more ecologically responsible. Another issue is how would one go about replanting forests? What techs would they need and how much would it cost and how long would it take? Perhaps a new tech called Conservation could be created to allow for this which would be connected to the Ecology tech. Another concern that I have is how this additional focus on preservation of forests and jungles, particularly jungles, would put civs who start in that environment at a distinct disadvantage, as they take penalities for health if they don't clear substancial portions of their jungle. Maybe with the medicine tech, they would no longer take such penalties, but they would be penalized for a long time until they could achieve this later tech. They would be in a sort of no-win situation, having to choose between not clearing the trees and suffering health penalties and clearing the trees and suffering health penalties. It is something to think about anyway.

There should be some penalties for over harvesting of forest and jungle, not only for the civs doing so, but global penalties that the other civs would start to suffer from oxygen depletion and global warming.
How about decreasing population, city improvements that get damaged or destroyed by nature, (huricanes, earthquakes, fires, killer birds or bees, ...)

They would be in a sort of no-win situation, having to choose between not clearing the trees and suffering health penalties and clearing the trees and suffering health penalties. It is something to think about anyway.
You could balance it out by leaving greater distances between your cities, and enabling the option, "leave the forrests unharmed" in the menu.

I like Tae's original idea. If it has to be playable, it must be simple.
At the mechanics side, it could look something like this:
- all eco-simulation is independent from player - tile scoring should be solved in backgrond, invisibly to player. Player should only receive scientists warning when global enviroment is destabilized and gets worse, eventually statements that it get to the balance again.
- tile scoring system could be more complex: e.g. grasslands, plains, hills +1pt, forests +2pts, jungles +4pts, mines -2pts.
- city pollution should be subtracted from global eco-balance points sum
- health bonuses from aqueduct, grocery, harbor and hospital shouldnt be included into this calculation (as they improve living quality, but don't remove pollution)
- there should be more pollution penalty from population and buildings, but higher health bonus from woods and jungles - not only under enviromentalism
- there should be eco-limit dependant on map size, type, and difficulty level - after global sum of eco-points dropping below that limit, global warming should start. The bigger difference, the faster should temperature rise.
- after reaching successive temperature's milestones, some tiles should be degraded, but eco-limit lowered, so global warming can slow down over time as enviroment stabilizes in new circumstances. Note, that sometimes it might not work, as if too many tiles will turn into desert, the global eco-capacity will drop as well, thus negative balance will be kept.
- there should be UN resolutions added, which would allow decreasing pollution along with production
- there should be bilateral agreements about forests preservation (giving possibility to trade such liabilities for money)

Seems to be complex and difficult, but - note it carefully - all those calculations wouldnt engage player, being totally invisible. Player would only face effects and scientists warning each few turns, that global pollution reached dangerous level and temperatures may rise and so on.

BTW: i like also the idea of happiness caused by woods (or unhappiness caused by lack of them). Total absence of forests/jungles in the city area should cause bigger health penalty as it is now. Both of these ideas can be implemented in game alongside with Tae's concept.

Any fairly-designed nuiance to the game, like environmentalism, should be welcomed as long as the players have a choice to include it or not in a custom game menu. Those who want a less-complex game can have it. Everyone is happy.