Pollution Strategies

Posidonius

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I've gotten over being mad about the Pollution Bug and started to figure out how to deal with it. Just like deduced by Darkpanda, getting to a certain number of Future Tech's is the trigger, in my case at Prince level, that's 188 FT's.

I ran several tests, some of them for multiple iterations. Here are some notes kept during the several tests i ran, in case you wish to understand the methodology or want to see what events solved which problems. Also, there are some odd musings sprinkled throughout these notes, some "what-if" ideas suggested by various phenomena, and those might be useful to general Civ1 play. One is a possible plan to allow you to charge-up Settlers while they are being carried on a boat, and i think it should work, and could be pretty useful in a scenario with far-flung islands.

In the last post of this thread, i've put together all the lessons learned and compiled a list of strategies for managing and manipulating the Pollution Bug. I believe that with Darkpanda's wizardry and my practical experiments, we can consider the Pollution Bug finally and truly "nailed".

As promised, here's a SAV from 2017 AD in my previous (soiled) game, just before the wave of sludge starts. Give it a play if you care to, it's a Civ1 file of the CivWIN species, thus a SAV file and not SVE.

President Titus of the Romans:

Starting at 2017 with 186 FT's. At this point, have Railroaded the entire world, and 4 Settlers are nearly done irrigating the last Forests. All hills irrigated (including coal hills), and all forests irrigated, except deer forests. Just realized that converting horse plains into deer forests yields more food, so that's what the Settlers are starting on next.

The world is set to maximize scientific learning, with 3 landlocked enemy civs kept in three little zoos, solely for the purpose of trading with them. I give them decent leeway to build a big city, but keep them low on shields. To make sure they don't build nukes, i always hold off on the Manhattan Project until the very end of a game. And to maintain my grip, a steady stream of diplomats checks out the enemy every few turns.

Last time i played this game, didn't know about the Pollution Bug, and when things went rancid in 2020 i tried a restart to 2000, then went on a spree bu(y)ilding a full slate of Recyc's and Massies. That didn't work. So i did the same restart but also sold off all of my Factories, Mfg Plants, and all Power-Nuke-Hydro improvements to lower the shieldcounts. That didn't work either. Finally i gave up and decided to salvage the game as best i could. Restarted to 2017, had a revolution, and took out the three remaining enemies by 2020.

That military win ended with 3,383 civscore. And it bugged the hell out of me. The top of my HOF was a game i did from April 2011 to June 2012, a long-form game i was pretty proud of, ending at 3,384 civscore. Yes, this one missed First Place by one point. 1 frickin' civscore point. One. Grrrrrrowwwl.

Oooo that really stuck in my craw. Didn't even know i had a craw until then. Got determined to blast both those 3,38x games down (and off) the HOF list.

For years now, all my games end with maxxed Peace, Wonders and SpaceShip, a baseline of 720 civscore. Only two other factors remain to manipulate: citz and techs. Decided to try a game where i ruined the records for both of them. That's my current game, started last November. Put it on hold this Spring when i learned about the Pollution Bug, in the nick of time too. Now, i'm almost ready to pick it up again, armed with a ton of info from Civfanatics.com.

When i found this website, it was a real eye-opener on a game i've been playing about 8 hours a week for many years. So i re-read the manual i'd printed out in 2003, and then read the FAQ here. It's like one sentence in the manual is three paragraphs in the FAQ. Now i know that happy citz are +2! Now i know how to manipulate parades to pop a city whenever i want to. Now i know how to railroad a fish. Wow, that one could make my main game really explode. I recall that at one point in the scenario, i had 107 Settlers and in a mature civilization it should only take five turns to throw out 40 Transports, so we're looking at about 15 turns to RR most of the edible fish, then another nine turns for a handful of Settlers to finish the job.

I never knew that sentrying a unit in a city gets a whole 'nother move when awoken. I routinely moved units who had landed in a city on a ship by re-awakening them, but i figured that was an undocumented feature, not a cheat. If you're running a whole empire, surely you can arrange to have a limo meet your Diplomat when he steams into port, right? The point is that a whole bunch of things became clearer while running these tests, some tweaks to my usual range of tricks, and new tricks that i'm not sure i'd use, and other, completely new, tricks became apparent once you know that Tab A fits into Slot B.

So... in 2017 here, there's 111 cities and i'm building a bunch of Aqueducts which i sold a while ago, to save coins to support more science. It was an experiment, and yes, now i know that you have to keep your Aqueducts standing. Having a city not go from 19 to 20 because you sold their Aqueduct is not a happy feeling. On my own, i had just started to make the connection between parades and pops, and had known for a while that you can prevent unexpected pops by selling the city's Aqueduct. If you pick up this SAV, you might want to plow cash into Aqueducts right away. I did.

On with the experiments!
 

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Test 01:

Continued as normal, pollution went nuts, about 12 new Pollutions per turn by 2031. Got up to 210 Future Techs. Sun steadily got brighter, would have gotten Global Warming soon after 2031. Sun icon appeared shortly after getting to 188 FT's.

Here's how the Tech/Pollution sequence went in this test:

2017: Future Tech 185 - FT186
2018: FT187 - FT188
2019: FT189
2020: FT190 - FT191
2021: FT192 - Pollution - FT193
2022: FT194 - P - FT195
2023: FT196 - P - P
2024: FT197 - FT198 - P - P - P - P
2025: P - FT199 - P - FT200 - P - P - P
2026: P - P - FT201 - P - P - P - P - P - P
2027: FT202 - P - P - P - FT203 - P - P - P - P
2028: FT204 - P - P - P - P - P - FT205 - P - P - P - P - P - P - P
2029: P - FT206 - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - FT207 - P - P
2030: P - P - FT 208 - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P
2031: FT209 - P - P - P - P - P - FT210 - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P

Thus, the FT/Pollution occurence sequence by turn is:

2-2-1-2-2-2-1-2-2-1-2-02-02-01-02
0-0-0-0-1-1-2-4-5-8-7-12-10-11-13

Feels like rnd(2^x/2, x=0, x+1) for the first 10 turns. Wonder if the algorithm has a governor built in as a maximum exponent, or if the exponential progression continues forever. I only played it far enough to tell what was going on. One poster here says that the pollution continues to expand up to about 1/2 of your number of cities. I didn't wait long enough to see that.

In any case, the result is quickly unsustainable. 12 new pollutions each turn means you have to maintain a fleet of 48 settlers (and enough boats to run them out to islands). Remember, i do not use the "Fast Settler" cheat. And even then, you'd still end the game with 12 + 12 + 12 polluted squares, for -360 civscore, wiping out the benefit of 72 FT's.

Not to mention, those 48 (minimum) settlers would take away about 80 civscore as unrealized potential citizens on Judgement Day. Pursuing this strategy would bring in 260 more points in civscore, going from 210 FT's to 262. If the pollution rate does not continue to grow after 2031 AD, this 48-settler strategy yields -180 civscore points. If pollution grows beyond 12 newly dirty squares per turn, then there is, again, no way to outpace it with FT's at +5.

But i did find out a few interesting things.

First, pollution hammers some cities more than others, far more than would be statistically random. The pattern seems to pollute cities with a high shieldcount but without BOTH Recyc/Transit. But i know from playing this game last year, that pushing cash and caravans into a full count of 111 Recyc's and 111 Massies does not reduce pollution, it only makes it more truly random. This suggests a possible strategy: intentionally leave a few cities dirty, to attract pollution. That way, your K-P settlers don't lose time traveling around to the next cesspit. If you can cluster 48 settlers around only 3 cities, that almost makes the problem deal-with-able.

Second, the Hoover Dam helps quite a bit, to protect a whole continent from the early stages of the Pollution Bug. A hydro plant is worth its weight in gold for preventing pollution, so in my future games it may be worth it, to place new cities next to mountains and rivers on purpose. The sheer amount of new pollution per turn means that it will eventually wash up onto the shores of whatever continent has The Hoov, but not until it gets completely out of hand. Again, keeping three cities as cesspits on a separate landmass might mean you never have to keep a Settler on standby in Hooverland.

Third, if you anticipate pollution, you can begin to "charge up" your settlers. Always suspected this, and reading posts here has confirmed, that a Settler unit stores up its efforts in itself, not in the square where it's been working. Instead of putting a Settler on sentry waiting for pollution, order it to build a Fortress on a mountain square for 3 turns, then move it off. Then, when sludge does crop up, the settler cleans it up right away!

Fourth, even though your Demographics Report shows 00 Tons of pollution, you get the Sun icon next to your Main Lightbulb. I had never seen it before, at first i thought my nice citizens had given me a cookie. But no, it's the Sun and it gets brighter as the Bug ramps up. When it gleams brightest, you get Global Warming. That's bad. I haven't gottten GW for years, but if i recall correctly, it changes some of your grasslands into plains.

Finally, the "bad luck" counter shoots up once the Pollution Bug gets going. Every single turn, there's a fire or a pirate attack somewhere. That's another reason why i'm rebuilding all the Aqueducts i sold off earlier.

The next test will be to restart at 2017, let the FT's run up to 188 then shut it down to zero bulbs. Will it freeze the Bug at 0 new pollution per turn, or will it still run wild just because the tripwire has been tripped?
 
Test 02:

The Plan in Test #2 is to get up to 188 FT's, then zero the Science, and see how the Pollution Bug behaves. Maybe, it's stuck at rnd((2^0)/2) = 0 as long as it's at 188 FT's? Or maybe, it's going to continue as in Test #1 just because the trip-wire has been tripped? Or maybe you have to be at 188 + 1 FT's to trip the wire? Keeping a watch for the Sun, and anticipate bumping up Lux and Tax. A sporadic diary of this test follows:

2017: Stopped building so many Diplomats. Started many Aqueducts. Disbanded Settlers not from NONE. Since a RR'ed deer forest is 4food + 3shields, am foresting all the horse plains, which are 3food + 4shields. Nine horse plains left, then will be at maximum food. Rates set at 30Lux-20Tax-50Sci, yielding: Income -274 and advances at 1.7 per turn, 51Happy-48Cont-00Unhap (1 citizen unhappy in the whole world), Civscore at 3948. Next turn, should hit 188 FT's.

2018: Went from 186 FT's and half a rack of bulbs in 2017 to 188 FT's and a quarter-rack of bulbs, and in 2018 the Sun icon did not appear. Have 111 cities, 45 Aqueducts and 61 more under construction. Treasury is at 13,168 gp. Gold -310.

* First step: convert all Specialists into Elvises. This moves me to 55Happy-45Cont-00Unhap (still 1 citz unhappy worldwide). Some Taxmen were made into Elvis, so gold is at -402 gp.

* Second step: sell all Universities and plow that money into Aqueducts. Had 110 Uni's, bringing Treasury up to 30,768 gp and lowering the income deficit to -68 gp per turn. Eliminating Uni's and checking the Demographics page shows my Literacy went from 100% to 80%.

* Third step: buy all missing Aqueducts. Drops Treasury down to 19,512 gp.

* Fourth step: adjust the Lux rate. I'm not ready for madcap parade days in 2019, until all these new Aqueducts come online in 2020, so i want to lower the Lux rate to 20 if i can, and max the taxes. Putting Lux to 20 is still too much happiness, but dropping it down to 10% would send a couple cities into disorder, and that's unacceptable.

The answer for Step #4 is to drop Lux from 30 to 20, then for each city with a surplus wheatstalk, make enough Elvises into Taxmen to drop them below 50% happy hippies. Only had to adjust Specialists in about a dozen cities, 20% Lux makes the whole populace 52Happy-47Cont-00Unhap. Adding some Taxmen brings the budget to -19 gp per turn.

Finally, Step #5: max the tax rate to 80%. My maintenance costs stay at 2,379 gp; this will jump up as sixty-something Aqueducts come online in 2019. But my income erupts explosively, from 2,360 gp to 9,530 gp, going from a budget deficit of -19 to a surplus of +7,151 gp! I thought i remembered that there was a ceiling of 30,000 gp in the Treasury, but found out that's not true within a turn. Use it before ending the turn, or you lose it, the Treasury rolls over to zero, and some city is going to lose an improvement.

2019: Many parades and anti-parades, a few cities popped, a slew of new Aqueducts and i shouldn't have worried about them all being store-bought... the sequence of events for a city's start-of-turn actions has the improvement purchase coming before the decision about whether or not to hold a parade (and thus pop a citizen that same turn).

Being fully Aqueduct-ed will protect all the cities from fires. Almost all new builds are Barracks, to protect from Pirates. At the start of 2018, pirates attacked a city that doesn't even have ocean access, only a 1-square lake. I mean really now, for f'k's sake, can there really be a pirate fleet on a pond deep inside a highly developed Democracy?!? Now THAT'S a bug. You'd think that at least one of the 188 Futuristic Technologies i've discovered would have made piracy on such low seas an idiotic career choice.

Built 2 Mfg Plants, thus sold 2 Factories for 200 gp each, but that is a pittance in the income for 2019: moved from 18,727 in the Treasury to 26,011 gold. From here on out, money is only a theoretical concept, not something i have to think about. Have 110 useless Libraries sitting around, so that's another 8 Grand.

Future Tech bulb-rack did not advance from 2018 to 2019, so i'm still at 188 FT's. No Sun icon has appeared. No pollution cropped up. Now am ready to jump up the Lux rate, and revert the Taxmen created last turn back into Elvises. 30% Tax gives a surplus of about 1,000 gp per turn, 20% Tax is a deficit of -212 gp. Might as well go with 20% since i have 24,000 in Treasury and still have 110 Libraries to sell. That's 80% Luxuries, so it'll be madcap paradetown in 2020.

When i sold all the Uni's, went down from 100% Literacy to 80%. Selling the Libraries drops it down to 64%, but swells the Treasury to 32,261 and makes my budget deficit only -104 gp per turn.

2020: Parades even in cities i forgot i had. All that Aqueduct building paid off: rose from 134,770,000 to 137,240,000 in one turn. Did a run-through of all cities to make sure that everyone is eating every single square of surf and turf that can be eaten. Final irrigations completing, and should be only a few turns away from the first round of horse plains becoming juicier deer forests. Still no Sun, and no pollution. Since money is no object, building a wave of City Walls next, to protect against floods. Treasury 29,767 and budget at -139.

2021: No Sun, no pollution, Treasury 29,621 and budget still -139. Civscore 4,036, and in the demographics page, my per capita income is at 3,542 which is the highest i've ever seen by far. My approval rating is rising nicely, from -4% in 2018 to 0% now. Took over one of Boston's squares to railroad it for them, and my budget went down to -196 gp, from the lower value of 111 trade routes. It's better in the long run, i have to remember that. Went up to 139,790,000 population.

2022: Still no adverse pollution effects from getting to 188 Future Techs. Jumped to 140,780,000 population, gold -184 per turn, Treasury at 28,822.

2023: No Sun, 141,160,000 population. Gold -298, Treasury 28,524. Pops are slowing, getting towards maximum citizens. Six turns into this test, and it's looking like having 188 FT's is not a problem. Can reliably shut down the Science to zero, and the resulting parade-pops are quickly maxxing out the cities. Only 3 cities left who can grow: Opporto, Ulundi, and St Helena.

2024: All 3 cities popped, now the only way to increase citz is by disbanding the couple remaining Settlers not of NONE, and by switching horse plains into deer forests. Still no pollution, and no Sun icon.

2025: Coventry can pop, several more deer forests should be ready soon. Still RR'ing foreign squares and handing them back, one at a time.

2026: 141,800,000 population. Gold -333 per turn, Treasury 27,084 gp.

2038: 143,960,000 population, believe that is the maximum i can get without taking over the 3 last enemy cities. Finished railroading all enemy squares and backed off so they can reoccupy them, making them the best trading partners they can be. All horse plains were converted to forests, and Every Single One Of Them had deer underneath. Have been getting up to 106 Barracks, 110 Aqueducts, and 54 City Walls (20 more underway) to protect against fire, pirates, and floods. That project seems to be working: only earthquakes afflict me now, and only rarely. Barbies spawn every 10 turns, but they appear only as a red flash on the North Pole, then disappear.

In 2 turns, the game will give the 20-year warning, so would have 6 years to build and launch a SS. Since i don't need parades anymore, can drop back on Lux and plow cash into a SS, since Treasury is still at 17,314 gp. Manufacturing prowess is gargantuan, so not that much cash would be needed anyway. Should be able to launch in 2045 with a 15.2 year flight. I usually launch in 2044, and seems like i land early. As long as i'm only testing, not playing for real, will wait until 2045 this time and see if a 15.2-year flight lands by 2060.

Test #2 proved three things so far:

* Getting 188 Future Techs (Prince level), and holding there does not activate the Pollution Bug.
* Can get to max pop quickly with parades, once the Science is zeroed.
* Once at max pop, you can generate gold pieces at a frightening rate.

Buying a SS Module from scratch is 2,560 gp. If you've got 1 shield to start with, it costs 1,276 gp. If you're earning +7,000 gp per turn, you can buy all 12 Modules in 2 turns. If you've got a big Treasury you can build the whole thing in one turn.

12 Modules + 16 Components + 39 Structurals = 67 cities needed to build SS parts. They're all in various stages of whatever they were building already, so the highest current builds switch to the Modules, the next 16 furthest-along switch to Components, and scrounge up 39 places to build an 80-shield Structural. Buy 'em all, and you got a ship, Kirk. Ravaged the Treasury from 17,314 down to 4,934 gp, so just about 12,000 gold made a SS appear in 2039. Budget is +6,832 gp per turn, so who cares? Will have 15 turns to wait while the SS flies, and more than enough cash to fully build out any city who wants their University back.

Just before SS lands, jack up Lux, pump 4 NONE Settlers into the last city under 10 citz, and pull everyone off of non-gold mountains (make everyone Elvises).

2043: Buying 7,000 gp worth of improvements every turn, ready to launch SS in a couple turns. Started trying the road-on-water trick, and it works. Built a RR on a fish, the big question was whether that's 4 food as well as 4 trade? Yes, it is so, and that's a huge number of happy citz in the end, if played out fully. In a future game i'll try this trick, which should be worth, on average, about 50 extra citz, (half happy) for +75 Civscore! 50 more raw trade-arrows can mean a buttload of diamonds/gold/bulbs, when processed through the Mktpl, Bank, Library, and Uni.

2044: Giddy by parade fever, Mauritius popped when it's fish got railroaded. Up to 144,340,000, and as further testing i was able to not only land a Diplomat on the North Pole, but a Settler as well. Believe i had tried that before once, and thought i couldn't land anything but a Diplomat. I remembered wrong! Ho-Ree Crap, maybe that trick can be combined with RRing a fish, to create 13 new cities on Tundras at the Poles. They'd only grow to 4, but that's 52 citz, half happy citz, meaning 78 Civscore points.

2045: Launch!

2050: Budget +7,249 per turn. Have a Settler RR'ing a citysite on the North Pole, RR'ing two fishes in that site's reach. 20Lux-80Tax-00Sci. All Elvises turned to Taxmen. Continuing RR'ing the oceans around Mauritius, getting strange shorelines appearing on RR'ed squares. Americans discovered Combustion, so i may have to incite Boston and wipe out their civ, we'll see if they start any trouble.

2053: Took Boston, wiped out Americans, it was an open-face subversion for 2x (1640 gp), and grabbed all of the US Treasury: 1,766 gp. Next turn, will try to build a city on the North Pole.

2054: Nope, no good... you can build a RR on the North Pole, but you can not found a city there. Pity. But the other scheme is working great, jumped up from 144,340,000 to 146,550,000 in one turn.

2055: Up to 154,450,000 population, an increase of about 8 million people in one turn.

2056: 162,190,000, increased almost another 8 million in one turn. Civscore 4,229.

2057: 167,820,000, up by 5.6 million. Civscore 4,276. Went to 60Lux-40Tax, budget still +1,526.

2058: 170,520,000, jumped 2.7 million. Civscore 4,317.

2059: Have timed it so that the last Wonder, Manhattan Project, will be built in the next-to-last turn. Two reasons: first, so no other civ, no matter how weak i've kept them in their little zoo, can surprise me with a mushroom cloud for breakfast. Second, and most important, so i can use the shield carrying ability of Caravans until the last minute. Just finished building the last Mfg Plant, and the cost to complete a slew of them was less than half when you can give each city a starter kit of 50 shields.

Turned all Specialists back into Elvis, since i don't need money anymore. Noticed that even though i have Science set to 0%, if i have a Scientist in a city, then they make lightbulbs. Have 3 Taxmen, since you can only have 8 Elvises in a city.

Population got up to 171,500,000, and Civscore is 4,345. Now, the moment of truth. The game will end next turn one way or the other, either by retirement or landing on Alpha Centauri.

2060: The SS had a flight time of 15.2 years, and launching in 2045 worked perfectly. Landed in 2060, bonus civscore +200. In previous games, i had launched in 2044 "just to be sure" and always seemed to land early. Apparently, that extra 0.2 year of flight time does not matter. Good to know.

Final Civscore 4,545 (Wond +420, Peace +100, Tech +940, citz 2,885). Tops in my HOF, with a rating of 272%. Heh, i can do better ;-) Knew that this test run of a former game would not top 5,000. But now i think i know how to push it over 6,000.

For the next test, need to know just how far beyond 188 FT's it can be pushed, and how many turns you can stay pollution-free at each FT level.
 
Test 03:

The idea here is to nail down exactly when the pollution starts, how fast it ramps up, and whether it is possible to plateau the pollution occurrences by stalling FT advances at various levels.

Start at 2017, 186 FT's. 30Lux-20Tax-50Sci. Mad rush for Recyc's and Massies, next level of builds is caravans and Nuke/Hydro plants.

2018: 188 FT's. Move to 30Lux-30Tax-40Sci to ensure that only one FT is built next turn. This swings the budget from -344 to +888 gold. Treasury 10,369 gp, so building more anti-pollution improvements.

2019: 189 FT's. Sun icon has not appeared. Shutting down all Science to 30Lux-70Tax-00Sci, changing all Scientists into Taxmen. Bulb-rack towards 190 FT's is almost full, so can grab 190 any time i like. This turbos the budget to +6,552 gp.

2020: 189 FT's, no Sun. All cash going into Recyc, Massies and Nuke/Hydro.

2021 - 2024: still no Sun, no pollution. After five turns, believe that 189 FT's is safe. Moving to 30Lux-60Tax-10Sci to grab FT 190. This makes the budget +5,077 and advances 5 turns. Since bulb-rack is almost full, 190 will come next turn.

2025: Still at 189, moving to 30Lux-50Tax-20Sci. Sheesh.

2026: Got FT 190, bulb-rack is 7/8 full. No Sun icon, no pollution. All cities completed Recyc's and Massies and Nuke/Hydro. Backed off Science, to 30Lux-70Tax. Budget up to +6,105.

2027 - 2031: finishing Walls and Barracks for disaster protection, no Sun icon and no pollution. After five turns, we can assume that 190 FT's is safe. So, moving to 30Lux-50Tax-20Sci.

2032: Again, should have had enough bulbs to get a FT, but nothing came.

2033: Got FT 191. No Sun icon appears. Dropped back to 0% Science.

2035: Still no Sun, no pollution, adjusting to 40Lux-60Tax-00Sci.

2036: Endless parades, a few pops, still nothing bad at 191 FT's.

2038: Still OK five years later, so moving to 40Lux-40Tax-20Sci.

2039: No lag this time, got FT 192 immediately (rack was nearly full). Back to 40Lux-60Tax-00Sci, no Sun icon appeared.

2041: Treasury was pegged at 30,000 to start turn, so that is the limit. As begin-turn activities went on, built/sold several SDI Defenses, then message saying that Bas couldn't support its Barracks, and it was eliminated! When ready to start movement phase, Treasury had dropped to 2,686 gp. Must have rolled over and Bas was caught when it was at 0. Sux.

2044: Still no adverse pollution effects after 5 turns, so adjusting rates to build another FT.

2046: Got FT 193.

2047: No Sun, no pollution, Treasury now at 30,000, uh-oh!

2048: Treasury looped around again, Caracas lost Barracks.

2051: Still, no bad pollution, adjusting rates again, this time to 40Lux-30Tax-30Sci.

2052: no advance, switching to 40Lux-10Tax-50Sci.

2053: Got FT 194. Bulb-rack almost full.

2054: No Sun icon, no pollution yet!

2055: A few more parades, still no Sun or pollution. Adjusting to 50Lux-50Tax-00Sci.

2059: OK, this test is done. Game will end next turn, and i don't want to chance having this test entered into the HOF, which it would be because the civscore is 4,101!

Reached 194 Future Techs with no adverse effects, by moving forward one FT every 5-6 turns. In Test 01, pollution started after FT 192. The difference here is that i'm fully built out with Recyc's, Massies, and Nuke/Hydro plants in every single city.

Reviewing the notes above, i completed all the anti-pollution improvements in 2026, so that's got to be the starting point for the next test.
 
Test 04:

How far can the Future Techs be pushed before the sludge starts to pour? The first test got to FT 192. Second test proved that 189 is safe forever. Third test got to 194 without any trouble, but with a full build-out of Recyc's, Mass Transits, and Nuke/Hydro plants. In that test, reached 190 FT's when the full anti-pollution buildup was complete, and long before 2058 there were Mfg Plants in every city with shields of 5 or more. So it was a full planet's worth of production, 6 FT's past the theoretical Pollution Bug trigger, and i was still protected. Just how far can the armor of RC+MT+NHP protect you? Let's find out.

In the first test, pollution was hammering cities which were not fully protected. Is it possible, that the Pollution Bug is nullified if there is simply nowhere for the sludge to legally take hold? That seems unlikely, since when playing this game last year, i do recall dropping huge cash into a spree, buying Recyc's and Massies, and that did not work. BUT... at that time i did not know that Nuke/Hydro plants were important anti-pollution devices, even in cities where there is no respectable production. Learned that on this website. Thanks again to darkpanda, for decompiling the exe and picking apart the algorithm governing pollution.

To answer this, the fourth test here will restart at 2026 of the Test 03, when all the pollution protection was in place. Plan is to ramp up to 194 FT's right away, pause and watch, then creep further along the FT track, adding another one every 4 turns or so. When the Sun icon appears, we know it's gone foul.


2026: 111 cities. 111 Recyc's, 111 Massies, and Hydro + Nuke + number of cities on the Hoover continent = 111. 30Lux-70Tax-00Sci. 190 FT's. Treasury 15 gp, but budget is +6,165 gp per turn. All Specialists are Taxmen, and should plow all income into building Barracks, then Aqueducts, then City Walls to protect against disasters.

Have 111 Hives (granaries), so there will be no famine. Have 111 Temples, so no volcanoes. Have Medicine, so no plagues. Need 14 Aqueducts to be fully protected from fires. Need Barracks in all cities which touch water, then will be safe from pirates. Need City Walls in all cities on or touching a river, then no more floods. That leaves only earthquakes, which no man can dodge.

Why go so hard for anti-disaster protection? Because in Test 01, the "bad luck" in the scenario shot up in lockstep with the Pollution Bug, until there was a disaster somewhere every turn. In this test i want to hold all other variables steady, and don't need some random fire burning down a Hydro Plant and mucking up the testbed.

While this anti-disaster building program progresses, need to edge up to 194 FT's to catch up to the level in Test 03. Have about 6/7ths of a bulb-rack now. Should take a few turns to get all protected, so want to aim for about 1 FT per turn.

Went through all cities, making sure that everyone's building what they need ASAP, sold off now-useless buildings, Treasury stands at 1,501 gp. Adjusted the rates to 30Lux-50Tax-20Sci. This makes the budget +3,969 and gives advances in 2 turns. Should get one FT in 2027? There was a 1-turn lag in the last test, between turning on the Science and getting a FT. But in this scenario, i got FT 190 this turn, so there should be no lag. Should. The game thinks i had bulbs piling up for the last couple of turns.

Finally, most Settlers are nearly done foresting the horse plains, and started RR'ing enemy squares for them, must be disciplined and only do 1 at a time, or they'll shrink and lower my trading income!


2027: Crap, no advance this turn. Filled the bulb-rack to the brim, and just for luck I converted a big city's Taxmen into Scientists.

2028: Got FT 191, and though the advances are reported at 2 turns, the bulb-rack is full again.

2029: Got FT 192, left a little less than a half-rack of bulbs. Will need to adjust rates to get another FT next turn. Put all home-continent Taxmen into Science, and went to 30Lux-40Tax-30Sci. Advances 1 turn, budget +2,229.

2030: Got FT 193.

2031: FT 194.

2032: FT 195. Now, time to back off the Science, wait, and watch. Went to 30Lux-70Tax-00Sci. No Sun icon, no pollution. Still adding bulbs, since the home continent has all Specialists as Scientists. This puts me at +5,997 gold and advances at 29 turns. Hopefully, having a few Scientists continually adding bulbs will avoid the 1-turn lag when i need another FT, which should be in 2036, if all keeps well at 195 FT's. Have about a quarter-rack of bulbs at present.

2033: Looks like i added about 1/10th of a rack of bulbs, still nothing bad happened.

2034: Another 10% of a rack, another 6,000 gp. By now, i know that something bad happens when you let your Treasury roll over 30,000, and have just dropped about 5,000 into finishing the Colosseums in every city. Don't know if i need them for anything, but it's a nice finishing touch to a city. The real problem is that 74 cities have nothing to build, so they're building SDI Defenses to flip for cash... cash i do not need anymore. 35 Colosseums on the way will need about 140 gp in maintenance, but i'm still earning too much money. I could plow money into a SS, but i have no intention of letting this test game finish, so why bother adding a thousand more clicks to my chore?

Finally, the time has come to plow trade-arrows into Luxuries, not because i need to, but because i don't want too much money. 50% Tax puts the budget at +3,400. 40% Tax means about +2,000 gp. 30% Tax makes me +942 gp, and 20% Tax gets me down to -302 gp per turn. Treasury is currently 7,433. If the budget is soon to be about -450, that gives me plenty of room to absorb 200 gp for each SDI Defense, and there should be several of those per turn from here on out.

Setting the rates at 70Lux-20Tax-10Sci gives me that very sustainable -450 budget, a ridiculously happy populace forever, and most importantly, it puts the FT advances at 4 turns. That means avoiding the 1-turn lag for advances when you turn Science on/off (we assume), and 4 turns between FT's should be ample time to notice any effects, and my current half-rack of bulbs means i should get FT 196 in 2036, or four turns after FT 195. Perfect.

Now i all i have to do is coast and watch for the Sun and pollution. Ahhh, easy street. Fast turns, nothing to build or buy. In fact, i should use the SAV file from 2035 as the starting point for the next test. Everything is set up perfectly.

2035: 31 parades and i watched 'em all 'cause i like Beethoven's Ninth, and anyway it's good to be seen by your peeps, out there leading, even if it's an afternoon sipping champagne in a grandstand luxury box, watching majorettes prance by. As predicted, budget is -439 and i've jammed about 95% bulbs into the rack. Also as predicted, selling some SDI's kept me positive on overall cashflow, starting the turn at 8,750 gp, or +1,317 gold pieces from last turn. So i built a couple Mfg Plants from scratch, 1,280 gp each. Might as well, since i'm here to test pollution, ought to push the industries as far as i can. Treasury 6,190.

2036: Did not get a FT advance! Filled the rack, so should be one in 2037. This SAV file is the best one for starting the next test.

2037: Got FT 196, then keyboard commands stopped responding, mouse works fine, will quit and restart to see if that perks up the keyboard. Ended up with a half-rack of bulbs, advisor says 4 turns per advance, let's let it ride and see what the actual advance rate settles in at.

A restart worked fine for reviving the keyboard.

2038: The bulb-rack is almost full.

2039: Still at 196 FT's. No Sun icon, no pollution.

2040: Got FT 197. Over a half-rack of bulbs, the advisor still says 4 turns, but it was 3 turns.

2041: Rack almost full, still no Sun or pollution.

2042: Rack full, even with a negative budget, selling SDI's has the Treasury up to 9,504 gp.

2043: Got FT 198. Rack about 70% full, Treasury up to 10,927 gp.

2044: Rack full, Treasury 11,099 gp. Still no sign of pollution, so letting the Science run as is, looks like a FT every three turns.

2045: Bulb-rack still full, no advance this turn. Budget -322, Treasury 12,421.

2046: Got FT 199. Rack is 3/4 full.

2047: Rack looks full, Treasury is still creeping upwards, now at 14,614 gp. That rate is sustainable, looks like i won't roll over 30,000 before the game ends at 2060 AD.

2048: Full rack, still no Sun or pollution.

2049: Got FT 200. Treasury at 15,689 gp. Rack at 3/4, and STILL no Sun nor pollution.

2050: Full rack.

2051: Same, no advance.

2052: Ditto.

2053: Got FT 201. Rack down to 10%, Treasury up to 18,894 gp.

2054: Rack up to 85%.

2055: Rack looks full.

2056: Full rack, no advance.

2057: Still no advance, adjusting to 70Lux-10Tax-20Sci. Advisor says advances are at 2 turns. Budget -1,492 gp.

2058: Got FT 202. Rack at 90%, and had better end this test here, to prevent an unwanted HOF entry from a half-baked game.

As a final test, sold the Hydro Plant in Senegal and ended the turn. There was no pollution, even with a chink in the anti-sludge armor.

So that's Test 04. Utterly remarkable, this test was. Passed 14 Future Techs beyond the theoretical trigger for the Pollution Bug at FT 188, but nothing happened. No Sun icon appeared, no "bad luck" earthquakes, and zero pollution. Two things were different here than in Test 01: first, had a full build-up of anti-pollution improvements as FT's got to 190. Second, only crept forward on the FT track once every 3 - 4 turns, instead of jamming 2 FT's per turn.

To isolate the speed-of-advances variable, the next test should be a restart of 2036 in this run, when all buildings were completed and FT is at 195. Adjust the rates for balls-out Science, start cramming FT's 2 per turn, and see if the anti-pollution scheme holds.
 
Test 05

Remarkably, the 4th test suggested that the Pollution Bug can be defeated by doing a full buildup of Recyc's, Massies, plus either Nuke or Hydro power in every single city. There still remains the possibility that the success of the previous test was due to the slow rate of Future Tech advances, which were running around 3 or 4 turns per FT. In Test 01, where things went crackers, i had gone from FT 186 in 2017 to FT 210 in 2031, or 24 advances in 14 turns. This is the thing to test now: keep the full buildup of anti-pollution and anti-disaster buildings as the constant, and change the rate at which i pile up the dangerous Future Technologies.

I could start this test at 2017, and re-do all the work to get the RC/MT/N-HP improvements built, and i should be able to do so faster now that i know what i'm doing. Or, i could start this test at 2026, when all that stuff is finished, and start back into a program of building anti-disaster improvements and bu(y)ilding the dozen remaining Mfg Plants. But, i already know that the SAV save-file from 2035 has a game where all the hard work is done. There are only 25 turns left before 2060, but that should be plenty of time to run this test, which is simply to let Science run wild, very wild.

Here is the chart of FT's and pollution by turn in Test 05:

2036: FutureTech 196 - FT197
2037: FT198 - FT199
2038: FT200 - FT201
2039: FT202
2040: FT203 - FT204
2041: FT205 - FT206
2042: FT207 - FT208
2043: FT209 - FT210
2044: FT211
2045: FT212 - FT213
2046: FT214
2047: FT215 - Pollution - P - FT216
2048: SUN1 - FT217 - FT218
2049: P - P - FT219 - P
2050: P - FT220 - P
2051: SUN2 - P - P - P - FT221
2052: FT222 - P - P - P - P - P - FT223 - P
2053: P - P - FT224 - P - P
2054: P - P - P - FT225 - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - FT226 - P
2055: P - P - P - P - P - P - FT227 - P - P
2056: P - P - P - P - P - FT228 - P - P - P
2057: FT229 - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - FT230 - P - P - P
2058: P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - FT231 - P - P - P - P - P
2059: SUN3 - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - FT232 - P - P - P - P - P - P - P - P

Here is the grid for FT/P occurrences by turn:

02-02-02-01-02-02-02-02-01-02-01-02-02-01-01-01-02-01-02-01-01-02-01-01
00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-02-00-03-02-03-06-04-11-08-08-15-15-15

As pollution rises, it cuts down trade in my squares, slowing FT advances. Pollution seems to roughly double every 5 turns. In Test 01, where i did not have the full anti-pollution build-up, pollution roughly doubled every 3 turns. Thus, the formula which darkpanda gives in the "Pollution Bug <-- NAILED" thread can be manipulated but not globally, only on a city-by-city basis, and can only be stretched so far.


Here are the turn-by-turn notes from this test:

2035: Changed all Taxmen into Scientists. Treasury 6,390 gp. Adjusted rates to 30Lux-20tax-50Sci. Budget swooned down to -1,484 gp, but have 2 SDI's coming next turn and 110 underway! In the last test, had a -450 gp budget and kept growing the Treasury by 1,000 per turn by selling SDI's. So, in theory, i should be OK and not run out of money. Have a full-ish rack of bulbs and advisors report that i'm at 0-turn advances, so who knows what the actual rate is? Just have to try it and see.

2036: Got FT's 196 and 197, held 1 parade, and 33 anti-parades. Sold 2 SDI's, Treasury ended up as 5,281 GP. Built 2 Mfg Plants for what should be the final tally of 81. Don't want to hold back on the production, after all i'm trying to stress-test this anti-pollution scheme. Budget reports -1,500 exactly, and still the advances are at 0 turns. And pleasantly, adding 2 more FT's has not made the Sun icon appear, nor created any pollution. So far, so good. Bulb-rack at about 85%.

2037: Got FT's 198 and 199. Sold 2 SDI's so Treasury is at 4,173 gp. No city pops, budget holds steady at -1,500 and rack o' bulbs is about 45% full. Just for something to do, running a Diplomat up to the North and South Poles, to land and reveal the few squares still hidden, which could not be revealed by a Tranny at sea. And, slowly RR'ing enemy squares for them, to someday make more trade-arrows for all my 111 cities.

2038: Got Ft 200 and 201. 4 parades, 2 SDI's built/sold. Treasury 2,856 and budget at -1,445. Bulb-rack about 10% full, so should expect only one FT next turn. Looks like i should get 7 SDI's next turn, so worries about the Treasury will lessen. I could step back from 50% Science for a turn, to make some money and parade-pop some cities, but bulbs roll over, so am loath to relax my full march into the Future Technology history books, unless it becomes absolutely necessary.

2039: Got FT 202. Sold 7 SDI's to make Treasury 2,531 and budget now -1,459. Rack is nearly full.

2040: Got FT's 203 and 204. Sold 11 SDI's, so Treasury is at 3,185 and budget -1,502. Rack is, again, nearly full. Looks like 6 SDI's coming next turn. The program of RR'ing enemy squares one at a time seems to be paying off in higher trade when they re-occupy the improved squares. Have found a good system for doing this, using 2 Settlers and 1 Diplomat:

Turn 1 - Move Diplomat to an undeveloped enemy square and use the Diplomat Sneak to bring a Settler onto that square. Move the Diplomat away for safety. Move second Settler to a nearby hill or mountain square and order it to build a Fortress.

Turn 2 - Move Diplomat further to safety and order it to sentry. Order first Settler to build a road in the undeveloped square.

Turn 3 - Wait.

Turn 4 - First Settler finishes the road, but can't move. Awaken second Settler from Fortressing and move it to the target square, then order it to build the railroad. It finishes the RR immediately, and if you click once on it, then it will be able to move next turn.

Turn 5 - Move one Settler to a hill or mountain square and order it to build a Fortress. Move the other Settler to safety and give it a no-orders pause for 1 turn. This lets the enemy civ reclaim the improved square.

Turn 6 - See Turn 1.

This sequence means that you only take an enemy square offline for 4 turns to perform a task that should take 9 turns, and you let them exploit your gift before they lose another square for the next 4 turns. The enemy city should drop by 1 citz right away, but after that they should be treading water at the worst, and the enemy civ will steadily increase in population and trade-worthiness.

If i have 140 million people in 111 cities, all trading with one key enemy city, then building one railroad for them can mean hundreds of trade-arrows for me. When filtered through my 111 Marketplaces, 111 Banks, 111 Libraries and 111 Universities... one single railroaded square can turn into 100 civscore points on Judgement Day.

2041: Got FT's 205 and 206. Sold 6 SDI's, Treasury at 2,866 and budget is -1,495. Rack is nearly full.

2042: Got FT's 207 and 208. Sold 6 SDI's, Treasury at 2,580 and budget is -1,462. Improvement in budget is certainly due to RR'ing enemy squares then giving them back. A boost of 33 gp for a single RR'ed English square, when the Tax rate is set to 20%, means a Very Large boost in Science. Rack is half full.

2043: Got FT's 209 and 210. Sold 10 SDI's, Treasury at 2,882 and budget is -1,462. Rack is nearly empty, so should expect only 1 FT next turn.

2044: Got FT 211. Sold 5 SDI's, Treasury at 2,125 and budget is -1,502. Rack is about full.

2045: Got FT's 212 and 213. Sold 9 SDI's, Treasury 1,386 and budget at -1,455. Rack is full. Unfortunately, after buying some units to clear enemy squares for RR'ing, Treasury is down to 988 gp. Looks like 6 SDI's coming next turn, but can't count on that to maintain Treasury. Have to bump up the Tax rate to 30% for a turn. This puts budget at -215 and advances at 1 turn.

2046: Got FT 214. Returned rates to maximize Science.

2047: Got FT 215. Pollution near Heliopolis, which is on the Hoover continent. Pollution near Simbel, also in Hooverland. Got FT 216. Heliopolis and Simbel were 2 of only 4 cities with 30 or more shields. No Sun icon appeared, and adjusted grazing squares to lower all cities below 30 shields.

2048: Sun icon appeared, like a dark chocolate cookie portending doom. Got FT's 217 and 218. But no more pollution, so maybe dropping cities below 30 shields helped? Treasury 2,817 and budget is at -1,504, rack is about 15% full.

2049: Pollution at St Louis, then Thoth, then got FT 219. Pollution at Pittsburgh. Shield-counts for the three polluted cities are 22, 27 and 27. The wisest thing to do now is keep on running just like i am, keep records, and let the pollution progression play out. That way, i can more accurately identify what should be tried in the next test.

2050: Pollution at Gaza, got FT 220, pollution at Pittsburgh (again). Dropped P'burg down to 20 shields, and a couple more high-production cities went lower as well.

2051: Pollution at Birmingham, Milanium, Cairo, then got FT 221. The Sun icon has lightened up to a medium brown, and it only took 3 turns to go a shade lighter. Getting low on gold again, had to adjust to 30Lux-30Tax-40Sci. Treasury 1,291 and budget -299, advances 1 turn (rack is full).

Keyboard stopped responding again, likely something screwy with the crappy VM i have to use to play CivWIN. Doing a save-restart. It worked again.

2052: Got FT 222. Pollutions: Memphis, Simbel, Cairo, Thoth, Mozambique. Got FT 223. Pollution at Benin. Bought a Settler from Zulus, so Treasury is at 1,161. Budget -282, rack 90% full. Nice thing is that all these new Settlers i buy from enemies are coming to me as Settlers of NONE, so they don't cost me any shields or food.

2053: Pollution at Ponentum, Bas. Got FT 224. Pollution at Intombe, Pittsburgh. Treasury 1,971 and budget at -170. Rack is full.

2054: Pollution at Memphis, Coventry, Oryx. Got FT 225. Pollution at Gaza, Alexandria, Cremonium, Armana, Cairo, Crete, Perth. Got FT 226. Pollution at Gary. Bought a Settler from Americans, so the Treasury is down to 2,941 with budget at -177, rack half full. Keeping up with the K-P as best as can be done, civscore is +1130 for Tech but -210 for Pollution.

2055: Pollution at Washington, Rome, Heliopolis, Alexandria, Sudan, Rhodes. Got FT 227. Pollution at Surinam and Luanda. Americans switched to Republic, giving me a nice boost in trade income, but pollution keeps gnawing away at my own squares. Treasury at 4,287 and budget is -225, and the bulb-rack is full.

2056: Pollution at Thebes, Coventry, Dover, Philadelphia, Cremonium. Got FT 228. Pollution in Brisbane, Pretoria, Peoria. The Sun got a little brighter.

The shame is that when i got up to around 210 Future Tech's, i disbanded several Settlers of NONE, thinking that maybe i was safe from the Pollution Bug after all. But now i find myself needing money to buy Settlers from Zululand and America. Oh the indignity of hubris, haha! Should have kept them around; they didn't cost anything. Really should have run them out to the minor continents, stationed on sludgewatch and charged them up by building an aborted fortress.

At this point, no sense getting more money since game ends in a few turns. Treasury is at 4,859. Adjusting tax rate to 10% puts the budget at -2,648 but that's too low to run 3 more turns. 20% Tax means -1,464 so i should be able to move to 10% in 2058 and jam the Lux full to make happy hippies. Pollution is knocking off 340 from the civscore, which is horrendous, and that cancels out 68 FT's. Went to 40Lux-20Tax-40Sci, adding more Lux to bring up the scattered cities who still can pop with a parade. Pity there, if it weren't for the polluted squares dragging down food, several cities could have popped again. Rack is full of bulbs, advisor calls it 1 advance per turn, so should get about 4 more FT's.

2057: Got FT 229. Pollution at Salium, Gaza, Ponentum, Philadelphia, Atlanta, St Louis, Tuscanum, Armana, Solana, Perth, Luxor, Nasser. Got FT 230. Pollution at Pittsburgh, Liverpool, Shrewsbury. Budget -1,471, Treasury 3,123 (bought another Zulu Settler for no good reason, they won't help me now). Rack is about 95% full. Looks like 5 new SDI's coming next turn, so will jack up the Lux this turn. Going to 60Lux-10Tax-30Sci. Budget -2,646, advances 1 turn. Civscore is -470 due to pollution.

2058: Pollution at Washington, Memphis, Ulundi, Heliopolis, Birmingham, Dover, Brundisium, Cremonium, Chicago, St Louis. Got FT 231. Pollution at Nasser, Lisbon, Liverpool, Surinam, Gary. Looks like 8 SDI's coming next turn for 1,600 gp, Treasury is 1,460 and budget is -2,648 so should be able to pay for everything, depending on the timing. Chances are good enough to stay at 60-10-30. Pollution guts the civscore for -590. To be sure, invested 244 gp in four cities close to building SDI, which will get me an extra 800 gp in the final turn.

The bright spot is that the disaster protection i invested in is paying off! In Test 01, was getting beaten up by disasters every turn, but now there's no place for a disaster to take effect. Don't mind the floods very much, since people can be replaced by parade pops. And a fire only takes one improvement, and it's usually the lowest one: the Barracks. But piracy really hurts, emptying out the foodbox.

Stealing into enemy territory and giving them RR's also turned out well. The Zulus went from Despotism to Monarchy, Americans went from Despotism and 8 citz to Republic and 10 citz. The English went from 7 citz to 9, under the Republic.

2059: Warning message says that "Scientists alarmed at Global Warming"! Then the Sun icon went from brown to yellow. Pollution at Rome, New York, Cuprum, Brundisium, St Louis, Numidia, Thoth. Got FT 232. Pollution at Bet, Perth, Brisbane, Kinshasa, Lisbon, Gary, Macon, Ghana. Finishing here with 1,311 still in the Treasury, 60Lux-10Tax-30Sci and a full rack of bulbs. Income is 1,159 gp and costs are 3,818 gp. Pollution -700 to civscore.

Investigated Zimbabwe, the last Zulu city. They had a +9 surplus of food with an untouched RR+Irr plains. What held them back was stuffing the capital with 6 Militias and Phalaxes, drawing off 6 shields per turn. I wouldn't have attacked them, but of course they didn't know that. They finished with 6 citz under the Monarchy.

Investigated London, last English city. They got to 9 citz under Republic, and had 2 each of Musketeers and Riflemen, which ate up all their 4 shields. +3 food and a good assortment of improvements gave them pretty good diamonds, coins and bulbs. 3 Elvises and 4 happy citz, with Library, Aqueduct and Colosseum. Odd thing is the English foodbox is low, even though they had a Granary, so they must have only built the Granary recently, or maybe they had one of the disasters which i avoided.

Investigated the last American city, Boston. 11 citz, 5 happy and 5 Elvises. I was alerted a few turns ago that they got Combustion, but like the English, i had choked off their shields, so they had 4 shields which were all eaten up by having 4 Riflemen in their garrison. Had a well-built city: Library, Courthouse, City Walls, Aqueduct, Bank, University and Colosseum, but a bunch of corruption holding them back. Should have built a Palace instead of a Courthouse! Now i know how they got Combustion: a very thick mass of bulbs, but still couldn't do anything with it, with no surplus shields. If the Americans had only built a Palace, they would have mustered up another four citizens. Food was +4 and a 60% foodbox, so only the corruption was holding them back. Oh, that and my ring of Mech Inf's, keeping the Americans in their own little zoo.


So what did i learn in Test 05? First of all, completing the full build of anti-pollution devices lets you amass an extra 23 Future Tech's before you run into trouble. Yes, these cost money, but you don't get points for gold on Judgement Day, so spend it when you can. There does seem to be some benefit to setting the Luxuries high, like 70 or 80%, but it only helps a very small number of cities. For the large majority of cities, 40% Lux is enough.

The first two pollutions appeared in 2047, after getting FT 215, before i got FT 216. In 2048, the Sun appeared and got FT's 217 and 218. In 2049, three pollutions and FT 219. In the turn before the sludgefest started (2046) i adjusted the rates back to 50% Science after a 1-turn dip into higher taxes to keep the Treasury solvent. It seems like the proper thing to investigate is whether FT 215 is truly the trigger for the Pollution Bug, when all other anti-pollution measures are in place.

Thus, next test will start at 2046 and drop Science rate to 0%, stalling me at FT 214.
 
Test 06:

Restarting at 2046 of the previous test run, with FT's at 214. Let's see if 215 was truly the trigger.

2046: Reset rates to 60Lux-40Tax-00Sci. This gives me +902 on the budget, and since there are so many Scientists inside each city, the FT advancement rate is still at 4 turns. The rack is still full of bulbs, so went visiting several of the largest cities, converting their Scientists into Elvis impersonators. This makes the FT rate 5 turns, which is a bit more comfortable.

2047: As predicted, a lot of parades and i got FT 215. But, before getting FT 215, there was one pollution, at Pittsburgh. So apparently the trigger comes at 214 or earlier. No Sun icon appears, expect that it may come next turn. Bulb rack is half full, advances at 5 turns, but what i want to see now is if the rate of pollution can be arrested at this low level, or if, since the trigger is pulled, if it just starts to snowball. Therefore, went around to all large cities and dropped the Scientists into the entertainment industry. This makes the FT rate 11 turns. That would be OK if the rack was empty, but since i've got 12 turns to go, had better drop some more nerds. Got it down to 23 turns for a FT, or 11 turns from now, with my half-rack.

2048: Sun icon appears. Pollution at Bet. Jumped population by 2 million. Bulbs grew by more than anticipated, so pulled Scientists out of several more cities. Rate at 33 turns now, and rack is about 60% full.

2049: Pollution at Pittsburgh. Again, bulbs advanced much more than expected. Making more entertainers, now the FT rate is 127 turns.

2050: Pollution at Heliopolis. Appears that the bulb-rack is under control, only advanced a little this turn.

2051: Pollution at Bet. Again, pollution is hitting the high-shield cities first, but so far is stalled at one splooge spot per turn.

2052: Pollution at Simbel.

2053: Pollution at Oryx.

2054: No pollution. Sun icon has brightened, i didn't notice when.

2055: Earthquake in Simbel knocks down Granary. Pollution at Alexandria and Pittsburgh.

2056: Pollution at Heliopolis.

2057: Pollution at Oryx.

2058: No pollution.

2059: No pollution. Bulb rack about 98% full, Treasury got up to 26,336 gp.

The chart for FT and pollution occurrences by turn:

2046: FutureTech 214
2047: Pollution - FT215
2048: SUN1 - P
2049: P
2050: P
2051: P
2052: P
2053: P
2054: SUN2
2055: P - P
2056: P
2057: P
2058:
2059:

The grid of FT/Pollution by turn:

01-01-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
00-01-01-01-01-01-01-01-00-02-01-01-00-00


A good test. I had been wanting to run a test like this for weeks, and finally got to the point where i could. A great big question to answer: can you control the acceleration of pollution by clamping down on lightbulbs? And yes, you can. Holding the FT's made the Sun brighten far more slowly, and pollution stayed low, averaging about one splotch per turn. Still finished with -40 civscore for pollution, and it would have been worse if there had been new splotches in the final two turns.

The main lesson here is that the Pollution Bug does not snowball out of control when the tripwire is tripped. Instead, you can control how much pollution you get. Might only mean an extra +5 civscore, but the whole idea here is maximizing civscore, and 5 points left on the table is not maximization.

Hit a splotch this turn with a charged-up Settler and it was immediately clean, proving the value of charging them up while they wait for sludge, or wait for a boat to carry them to sludge. Now if only i could charge up a Settler WHILE it's on a boat, then that might be a very, very useful trick to learn. Maybe, if there's a 12-move shipping lane and you have 5-move Trannies, stop and build a water-road on the two squares each 5 moves along the route? Then, every time a Settler-laden ship ends on those spots, tell the Settlers to RR, then move them off the next turn. That way, every Settler lands with 2 turns of work under its belt? Must try that someday.

The bulb-rack bears special attention, even though it was rated by the advisor for a new FT every 155 turns, the actual bulbs piled up 2x or 3x times faster than that. If you want to stop Science fully, you must make sure to fully stop the Scientists, all of them. The nerds are busy bees, and can build you a dangerous Future Tech while your back is turned.

A very enlightening lesson was how the pollution hammered certain cities, just as noted in Test 01. In this test it was much more specific:

Pittsburgh: 3 pollutions
Bet: 2 poll
Heliopolis: 2 poll
Simbel: 1 poll and 1 disaster
Oryx: 2 poll
Alexandria: 1 poll

All of these cities have Hydro power, but i don't think that's the trouble. The worst-hit city had only 13 citz, while others had 17-18, so size is not the factor. No, the magnet for sludge is the city's shield production. In the order listed above, they have production levels: 27-32-37-30-32-27. In fact, these six cities are 6 of my nine highest. The other three are tied with P'burg and Alexandria at 27 shields: they are Cremonium, Thoth and Cairo... all of those are names i know very well from the last test, where i let FT's run high. They got hammered too.

At this point i can make a prediction with high confidence. I predict that if i start this same test over, and immediately sell the Mfg Plants in Pittsburgh, Bet, Heliopolis, Simbel and Oryx... that the following cities will get spooged hard: Alexandria, Thoth, Cairo and Cremonium.

On to the next test!
 
Test 07:

In the last test, a certain set of high-shield cities got hammered by pollution, which was apparently triggered before 214 FT's. The plan here is to try to duplicate Test 06, but manipulate which cities get splooged. We're starting at the same place, 2046 AD, with the identical SAV file used before. The difference this time, is that the Mfg Plants of 5 high-shield cities will be sold off and their citz moved off of mountain squares. The prediction here is that the Pollution Bug will choose 4 other cities to hammer: Cairo, Thoth, Cremonium and Alexandria.

2046: FT's at 214, the bulb-rack is full, no pollution yet and no Sun icon yet. I expect both of those the next turn. I want to follow the same plan: adjust rates to 60Lux-40Tax-00Sci, make all the Scientists into Elvii, but will leave a few Scientists alone, to make certain that i get to FT 215 soon. Sold Mfg's in Pittsburgh, Heliopolis, Simbel and Oryx... can't sell Bet's Mfg this turn because they just built/sold a SDI. This makes the budget +926, Treasury 2,957 and advances at 99 turns. Let's go.

2047: Ah crap, didn't leave enough Scientists. No FT, no Sun, no pollution. Put a few back, advance rate now 43 turns. Plenty of parades this turn, though.

2048: Got FT 215. But no pollution and no Sun icon. Hmmm. The rack is completely empty. Let's see what happens next turn, when i put a few bulbs in there.

2049: Pollution at Thoth. But still no Sun icon. Thoth's back yard cleaned up right away by a charged-up Settler. The rack looks about 10% full, perhaps a little less.

2050: No more pollution, still no Sun, rack is about 15%. That's unexpected: seems like the Sun depends on your whole civ's total industrial production, and pollution depends on the Sun. In the last test, shields counts were: Heliopolis 37 (now 15), Bet and Oryx at 32 (now both 13), Simbel 30 (now 12), and Pittsburgh at 27 (now 11).

2051: No pollution.

2052: Still nothing bad, rack about 40% full, rated at 35 turns per advance, so is definitely filling faster then the advisor claims.

Let me take a moment and add up all the industrial output of the entire civ... 358 + 323 + 245 + 247 + 177 + 95 = 1445. So before reducing those 5 cities, it must have been 1445 + 22 + 19 + 19 + 18 + 16 = 1535. Is 1500 the trigger for the Sun?

2053: Earthquake in Philadelphia topples the Bank. Doesn't that just figure... have 7 Settlers from NONE all charged up and waiting for pollution, and someone forgot to invite pollution to the party. No Sun, the rack is about 50% full. As noted in the last test, the bulb-rack should be filling up at 3% per turn, but instead it seems to be about three times that rate.

2054: Nothing bad.

2055: Pollution at Alexandria. Cleaned it up immediately, no Sun, rack about 75% full.

2056: So far, two guerilla uprisings... but at the North Pole where they can't hurt anyone but themselves. Rack about 85% full. Three turns left, and have an urge to put some more Elvises to work in the labs, just to goose the Sun out of hiding. Will resist this urge.

2057: Nothing to report, besides the rack being 95% full.

2058: Pollution at Cremonium. Cleaned up quick, rack is 95% but my bulb icon is still light blue, not yet yellow, like it should be with a rack almost full.

2059: Ends with budget at +945, Treasury at 26,699. Bulb-rack almost full with advances on paper as coming every 35 turns.


Answered the main question for this test, since the 3 instances of pollution were all right where i had predicted: Thoth, Alexandria and Cremonium. This verifies the theory that shield counts are the primary determinant of *where* pollution will occur. However, a new mystery emerges: the absence of the Sun icon. In the last test it appeared the turn after i hit 215 FT's. In the test before that, the Sun appeared the turn after i hit 215 FT's. In one test, i was jamming on Science, in the other one i had quieted the Science down to a trickle. So the speed at which you approach FT 216 is not the primary factor for the Sun appearing.

Will do a quick test from 2055 in this series of saves, to plow into FT 216 and see if the Sun pops out... set larger cities to nerds, advance rate drops to 8 turns, rack about 75% full.
2056, rack near full.
2057, no advances but bulb icon turns from blue to yellow.
2058, pollution at Cremonium.
2059, EQ in Kinshasa knocks down Barracks, finally got FT 216, but still no Sun icon.

OK, try it again, but this time use the Sci rate and not the nerd army. Tax 10%, Sci 30%. Rack 75%.
2056, EQ in Kinshasa destroys Aqueduct, got FT 216, rack half full.
2057, got FT 217, rack 25%.
2058, pollution at Cremonium, rack full.
2059, pollution at Milanium (25 shields), got FT 218. Still no Sun icon!

And one final try, let me raise the nerd army from the ranks of the Elvii AND go to 30% Science.
2056, pollution at Alexandria, got FT 216.
2057, AHA! The Sun appears, then got FT 217, rack again full and main bulb is yellow.
2058, WTF? The Sun disappeared again. I didn't know it could even do that. Pollution at Cremonium, got FT 218.
2059, got FT 219, pollution at Dover (20 shields) and Milanium.

Well, that is just screwy. What the hell just happened?? I didn't think the Sun could ever disappear once it popped on. Wow, every time i think i'm closer to understanding something, it starts doing completely different things.

At any rate, i think the question is answered here: with total civ-wide production at 1445 shields, it is not impossible to get the Sun to appear, but it IS very difficult... now i know how they felt at Fatima a century ago, when you just can't count on the Sun staying in one place.

NOW, the only thing left to test for, is the exact value of the Pollution Bug's trigger when all cities have Recyc + Massie + Nuke/Hydro. It should be 214 or maybe 213 FT's.
 
Test 08:

Want to find out one more thing, with full RC+MT+N/H builds in all cities, is the trigger for pollution FT 213? Maybe FT 214? To test this, i'll use the SAV from 2045 in Test 05, where i've just gotten FT 213. Then drop Science to absolute zero. Total industry for my civ should be at 1535 shields, so i won't be protected from the Sun like in the last test. That's good. When it happens, i will want to know about it.

2045: 60Lux-40Tax-00Sci, all Elvii. Rack is full, hope this works to squelch advances, or i'll have to do all this clicking over again with a restart in 2044. Treasury 988, budget +1,011 with FT 213.
2046: 30 parades, no new Future Tech.
2047: Pollution at Simbel. No FT, but continuing is pointless, if there's pollution with only 213 FT's.

Soooo, try again, this time using the SAV from 2044.

2044: Same plan, this time have FT 211. Rack nearly full, so will just keep a few cities with Elvii.
2045: Got FT 212. Dropped all Science to zero. Now, just coast and see if there is any pollution at all.
2046: All well.
2047: Pollution at Simbel. Deja vu. Apparently, 212 FT's is over the line.

Soooo, try again, use the SAV from 2044 and zero all Science right away.

2044: FT 211, rack almost full but main bulb icon is yellow, not bright yellow. Count of shields worldwide: 400 + 341 + 266 + 261 + 177 + 96 = 1541.
2045: No pollution, no FT's, budget looks good, saving game here. If 1500 turns out to be an important number in the civ-wide shieldcount, this would be a good save-file to have.
2049: All is well.
2050: Pollution near Heliopolis.
2051: Sun icon appears.

By now, i'm seeing the pattern. The switch from Science to Luxuries means parades, and that means cities popping, and the civ grows from 141 million to 143,420,000. This must be a factor, maybe combined with the 1500+ shields produced. 397 + 341 + 265 + 261 + 177 + 96 = 1537.

2054: Pollution near Heliopolis cleaned up.
2055: The Sun icon disappeared again!
2059: Time to end. 397 + 341 + 264 + 261 + 177 + 96 = 1536 shields. For some reason, the main bulb icon went from low yellow to bright blue, so that moved backwards as well.


Now, i want to re-do this entire series of turns, and see if the results are similar.

2045: 60Lux-40Tax-00Sci. Bulb rack almost full, main bulb icon is dull yellow. Pop: 141,580,000.
Treasury 479gp, budget +1,012. Civ-wide shields: 397 + 341 + 264 + 261 + 177 + 96 = 1536.
2046: Pollution at Heliopolis.
2047: Sun icon appears, dark brown. Pollution cleaned by a charged-up Settler.
2048: Sun icon disappears. Shields: 1536. Pop: 143,420,000.
2050: Main bulb icon drops from yellow to bright blue. Pollution at Heliopolis, cleaned up right away.
2054: Earthquake in York topples Mass Transit.
2055: Pollution at York, cleaned up immediately.
2059: End. Shields 1536, rack unchanged, main bulb icon bright blue, Pop 143,420,000.


Seems that pollution triggers the Sun and cleaning it up shoos the nasty Sun away. Had no idea that was possible, but there it is. Also had no idea that your main bulb icon could go backwards from yellow to blue, but there it is too. I don't think the actual number of stored bulbs changed, only the way the rack was feeling about itself and its prospects for personal growth.

FT 211 turns out to be the razor's edge, BUT only in this particular scenario. These were 14-turn runs, and averaged 2 pollution splotches in that timeframe. A similar test produced 1 splotch at higher FT's but lower global industrial production. Therefore, there is no absolute cutoff point between an unpolluted world and an only-slightly polluted world. It's a fuzzy boundary with edges made of randomness. No single fits-all numerical value of FT's.

Therefore, there must be a balance point which can be exploited. No civscore for industrial output, but you can choose the level of pollution you are able to deal with. You can manipulate global production to increase your civscore, by bringing in more +5 Future Tech's. At least, that's the current theory.

Thus, Test 09 has to be a series of 14-turn runs, where the only thing which varies is the global industrial output.
 
Test 09:

As far as i can tell, the only thing i have yet to learn about pollution is the relationship between the FTech Pollution Bug and total global industrial production. The Plan here is to make some runs using the 2045 SAV file from Test 08. In two runs through 2059 from that SAV, there was:

1. Pollution in 2050.
2. Pollution in 2046 and 2050.

The Plan is to run another 14-turn test from this SAV to use as a third example, a good control-batch for the experiment. Then, run a few tests at each of various global shieldcount levels. Start by selling the Mfg Plant in filthy Heliopolis!

Here's the baseline: 211 Future Tecnologies, 60Lux-40Tax-00Sci, budget and treasury are non-factors. Population 141,580,000 with the parades all done, the bulb-rack almost full and main bulb icon at low yellow. My shieldcount worldwide is 397 + 341 + 264 + 261 + 177 + 96 = 1536 shields.

2049: Pollution at Heliopolis, on a mined mountain, so shields down to 1535.
2050: Sun icon appears, and Main bulb icon changes to blue. Pollution near Heliopolis. Put 2 un-charged Settlers on both pollution splotches.
2052: Earthquake in New York destroys Aqueduct.
2053: Sun icon brightens to light brown. Finished cleaning pollutions at Smellyopolis.
2054: Earthquake in York, Mass Transit destroyed.
2055: York rebuilds Massie, gets Pollution for their trouble.
2056: Cleaned up pollution at York.
2058: First turn with no pollution, thus the Sun icon disappears!
2059: Finish. Still at 1536 shields.

Results were similar to the previous two runs from the same SAV file: 2 unprovoked pollutions at Heliopolis in 2049 and 2050. Also 2 disasters, one of which provoked pollution.


Now, try the same run but with lower total industrial production...

2045: Put spare Settlers into foresting, since i got tired of building unplanned Fortreses on mountains. It seems that a Fortress on a mountain only takes 4 turns, and i only want to charge them up for 3 turns, and keep forgetting them while i'm watching the Sun and Big Bulb. Takes 15 turns to forest a plains, so that should be enough time to not forget them... and these run-throughs only last 14 turns, so that's perfect.

Oryx has 32 shields to start the scenario. Want to keep Heliopolis as the "dirty city" at 37 shields, since i know all about pollution in that neighborhood and have Settlers nearby for that very reason. Sold the Mfg Plant in Oryx, dropping the town to 13 shields. That puts my civ at 1517 shields, now let's see what happens for a few runs.

2046: Pop up to 143,250,000.
2047: Pop to 143,450,000.
2049: Pollution at Heliopolis, again on a mountain so total shilds drop to 1516. Cleaned it up immediately, back up to 1517 shields this same turn.
2050: Pollution at Heliopolis. Again, cleaned it up right away.

The main bulb icon changes to blue. 2050 is an "inflection point" turn where the game automatically offers me a save at the beginning of the turn. Now i know that the change in the bulb's color is not due to the Sun or pollution, but rather it's just a regular periodic reassessment that the game does on every inflection point, most drastically at the 1 AD point.

2057: Earthquake in Marietta, Cathedral bonked.
2059: End. Results were same as previous runs from the same SAV file: 2 unprovoked pollutions at Heliopolis in 2049 and 2050. Only this time there was no Sun icon, because no pollutions were allowed to persist through an end-of-turn sequence. So this time, 1517 shields was the same as having 1536.


Second run of exact same test...

2045: Same routine, drop to 1517 shields, pop at 141,580,000.
2047: EQ in Bas, Cathedral killed.
2050: Pollution at Heliopolis, immediate K-P cleanup. Main bulb goes blue.
2054: Guerilla uprising at North Pole.
2057: Pollution at you-know-where. Cleaned.
2059: Finish. Very similar results: 2 pollutions, 1 disaster, 1 uprising.


Now a third run....

False start: forgot to sell the Mfg Plant in Oryx, and got pollution at Heliopolis in 2046.

2045: OK, did everything right.
2049: Pollution at Messyopolis.
2050: Pollution at Messyopolis.
2057: Pollution at Messyopolis.
2058: Pollution at Messyopolis.
2059: End. No disasters or uprisings, but four pollutions all at Heliopolis. All cleaned up immediately, so the Sun never appeared.

Results are clear: there is no difference in pollution or disasters when the industrial production is dropped from 1536 to 1517.


Now, try another set of 3 runs, this time lowering the civ-wide shields even further.

2045: Same preparation as before, only this time i want the total shields down to just over 1500. Selling Mfg Plant in Oryx is a drop from 32 to 13, or -19. From 1517, i want to drop 15 or 16 shields. Without a Factory or Mfg Plant you do not get the 50% shield bonus from a Nuke or Hydro Plant. Thus, sold the Mfg Plant in Gaza, which was at 25 shields, drops the burg to 10. Now, my part of the planet is at 1502 shields.

Shields are 363 + 341 + 264 + 261 + 177 + 96 = 1502.

2047: Pop up to 143,420,000.
2050: Pollution at Heliopolis.
2057: Pollution at... yes.
2059: Finish, 2 pollutions and no disasters.

Second run:

2047: Pop to 143,450,000
2050: EQ in Aten destroys University. Pollution near the old familiar place.
2057: Pollution ditto.
2059: EQ in Atlanta knocks over Aqueduct. End, 2 pollutions and 2 disasters.

Third run:

2050: EQ in Aten, boom Uni. Pollution Heliopolis.
2057: Pollution Helly.
2058: Pollution Helly.
2059: End, 3 pollutions + one disaster.

Done with this scenario, and results are just about the same for 1502 shields as for 1517.


Next, the interesting test: try the same exact thing, but reduce the civ-wide production to under 1500 shields.

2045: Same as before, only now also remove a citz in Oryx's field who was eating a mountain. That's a -3 to shields, bring my civ to 1499 total.
2049: Pollution at Heliopolis.
2050: Pollution at Heliopolis.
2057: Pollution at Heliopolis.
2058: Pollution at Heliopolis. As an experiment, not swiffering it right away.
2059: EQ in Liverpool kills Barracks. Experiment results: Sun appears due to uncleaned cesspit at Heliopolis. Ends with 4 pollutions and one disaster.

Second run:

2050: Poll Heli.
2057: Poll Heli. Experiment with the Sun again, by not cleaning up Heli.
2058: Sun appears, cleanup at Heli.
2059: Sun disappears. Ends with 2 pollutions and no disasters.

Third run:

2050: Customary pollution.
2055: Uprising at North Pole.
2057: Poll Heli.
2059: End, 2 pollutions and one uprising.

Fourth run, simply because #2 and #3 make #1 look like a statistical outlier.

2046: Poll Heli. Can't clean it up this turn.
2047: Sun appears.
2048: Pollution cleaned.
2049: Sun does not disappear.
2050: Sun disappears, then get pollution at Heliopolis. Cleaned up this turn.
2055: Poll Heli.
2057: Poll Heli.
2059: End, 4 pollutions.

OK, learned enough from this scenario. Results are equal to the 1517 and 1502 shield-count trials.


Finally, drop the civ-wide shields down farther, while leaving Heliopolis alone, and see if total industrial production has anything to do with it, or if it's just Heliopolis which has a bug up its butt.

2045: Sold Mfg Plants in Oryx and Gaza as usual, but this time left the citz in Gaza alone, bringing me down to 1502 shields. Then sold Mfg Plants in Simbel going from 30 to 12 shields, and in Bet, going from 32 to 13 shields. That's -37, so my civ is at 1465 shields.

2049: Pollution at Heliopolis.
2050: Pollution at Heliopolis.
2056: EQ in Simbel, Uni destroyed.
2057: Poll Heli.
2059: End, 3 pollutions and 1 disaster.

Second run:

2049: Poll Heli.
2050: Poll Heli.
2057: Poll Heli.
2059: End, 3 pollutions.


OK, there's a lesson learned. In an earlier test i got no pollution when the civ-wide shields were dropped under 1500. This was not the important factor, as it turns out. The important factor in that result was bringing the industrial production of Heliopolis itself under control. Global population doesn't matter, total worldwide production doesn't matter, it's just a city-by-city and turn-after-turn iteration of the addPollution() function. To prove this, will run a trial where only the Mfg Plant in Heliopolis is sold.

2045: Set everything else up, could not sell Heliopolis' Mfg Plant this turn because they just flipped a SDI for cash, so the "already sold something this turn" bit is set.
2046: Sold Heliopolis' Mfg Plant, going from 37 shields to 15.
2059: End, zero pollution and zero disasters.

And just to be absolutely certain that i have nailed down the one variable which causes pollution in this scenario, will run the same trial once more.

2051: EQ in Perth destroys Colloseum.
2054: Uprising at North Pole.
2056: EQ in Atlanta, SDI destroyed, haha.
2059: End, and again no pollution.


And there it is. By holding all but one of the variables steady, we find out which one really matters. Was getting pollution only in Heliopolis because only Heliopolis was capable of spawning pollution.

The times when it spread further were under higher Future Tech loads, or under the wicked influence of the Sun icon, which is both created by pollution, and seems to foster further pollution. Overall, this series of tests is just the first data point. At 211 FT's, with all RC+MT+N/HP improvements, you get pollution at a city over 36 shields, but none at any city under 33 shields.

With some careful testing, this range could be narrowed further to become precise, but there doesn't seem much point to spending the time doing that. The balance point in this scenario will not be at the same point for another game, where the landscape and trade-arrow distributions are different.

Additionally, learned that the "bad luck" value which governs disasters and Barbarian activities does indeed move in tandem with the potential for pollution. Often had 3 incidents in a 14-turn span, which is far more than usual. So it seems there is some central byte somewhere in the AI which keeps track of how the game feels about your civ. Might as well call it the "luck byte".

Wonder if that's the same byte that tells Napolean to call me "disrespectful". Oh yeah? I'll SHOW you disrespectful, Short Stuff! Just wait until i get my hands on Toulouse!
 
Now to put it all together:

Civ1 has a mathematical limit on Future Tech's, based on your chosen Difficulty Level, but it's a really soft fuzzy limit. Darkpanda provided the algorithm for this. But that's only a formula for figuring out the /possibility/ for sudden unexplained pollution near a city which is not otherwise producing any smokestacks. In my case, playing at Prince level with 7 civs in the game, that's 188 FT's (256 minus 68). In practice, the limit is about 195 FT's.

But, if you have built the correct set of improvements in your cities, this limit can be pushed back by about 20, to 215 FT's in my case. That's +135 civscore over the mathematical limit, about an extra 15%. These numbers only apply to Prince level, but the strategies below apply just as well to any difficulty setting. I would expect that getting a 15% boost to the FT component of your civscore is a rule of thumb, possible at any difficulty level.

The calculation determining whether there will be sludge this year is performed for each city, at the start of every turn. The number of FT's counts against you. That city's shields count against it, your difficulty level counts against you the higher it is, and the presence of a Recycling Center, Mass Transit, and Nuke/Hydro Plants count in your favor. Plus, there's a randomizing factor thrown in just so we don't get too comfortable.

Because of the randomization, we can't talk about a specific combination of numbers which will always cause a splotch of pollution. But we can generalize the question down to a balance point, where there will be a predictable 50% chance of pollution in one given city in any given turn if all other factors remain constant. At Prince level, this worked out to be about 35 shields at 215 Future Techs for a city with RC+MT+Nuk/Hyd.

But the important concept is that it's only a probability, and it's only relevant to that one city. You can maximize Future Tech's and still harvest the same number of shields civ-wide, by having more cities with a lower industrial production in each one. Is some town building too slowly for you? No problem, as long as you hold off on building the Manhattan Project until the very end of your game.

Until then, you can just use Caravans to carry shields from one city to another. Tell the target city to build the Wonder, add the Caravan, then put the city back to what it was doing beforehand. Your rival civs can build nukes as soon as you discover that Wonder, so you really should be holding off on Manhattan until the last minute anyway.

So that's Pollution Bug Strategy #1: Make more cities, closer together, with lower production in each city but the same number of shields across your whole empire.


The second strategy is to protect your cities. As the number of FT's you amass grows higher, the greater the probability that pollution will strike smaller and smaller cities. Every city needs all three of the anti-pollution buildings: Recycling Center, Mass Transit, and either a Nuclear Plant or a Hydro Plant. Nuke or Hydro plants are the same as far as protection they give, but Hydro costs are lower over time, so i favor them. But even if a city only produces 3 shields and you haven't bothered to build a Factory there, they still need a N/H Plant. At this stage in the game you should be swimming in gold pieces like Scrooge McDuck. So don't skimp on the protection.

That's only half of the protection scheme, however. As the Pollution Bug ramps up, some bit of code in the game links it to the frequency of disasters striking your cities. If you have 127 cities, then there should be no place for Barbarians to spawn except on the barren Poles. You should already have a Temple in every city, so no reason to fear Volcano disasters. Same for Granaries, so you will not get hit with Famines. To get to this point, you must have discovered the Medicine wonder, so you will not get the Plague.

You must build an Aqueduct in every city to protect against Fire. You must build a Barracks in every city which touches ocean or lakes, to protect against Pirates. Finally, you must build City Walls in every city on or near a river, to protect against Floods. That only leaves Earthquakes, and trust me, as you ramp up the Future Tech's, you will see more and more EQ's, and there's nothing you can do about them except hope that they don't knock over a Hydro Plant somewhere.

So that's Strategy #2: Protect your cities from pollution AND disasters.


The next thing to consider is how you're going to deal with any pollution which does crop up. You can keep an army of Settlers sitting around waiting for black spooge, but that negates the whole reason for ramping up FT's: maxxing civscore points. Settlers eat food and that means fewer citizens in your empire, which means fewer points on Judgement Day. The key to solve this problem is to bribe away Settlers which other civs create. Early in the game, if they are sufficiently far away from one of your own cities, a newly accquired unit will join your side with a hometown of "NONE", which means you don't have to feed them and they don't cost a shield every turn to operate.

Later in the game, if a rival civ is hopelessly smaller than yours, then it doesn't matter if you have a city 2 squares away from the enemy Settler, just bribe them and they'll come into your service as a unit from NONE. This makes it very useful to keep an enemy civ alive in a little zoo surrounded by your Mech Inf's, with a Diplomat nearby just behind your defensive ring, to capture any Settlers they might whelp out from time to time. It's like keeping chickens... you just give them a patch of scrub to bicker over, then come by every morning and scoop up the eggs.

Just make sure you don't do something stupid like use a Settler from NONE to found a new city in 220 BC, because you'll love having that Settler in 2020 AD. I use them exclusively for set-and-forget work, like building Mine+RR on mountain squares. Once there's no more development work for them to do, set these special Settlers to work building a Fortress on a mountain square. Count the turns, and 3 turns after you set them to that fruitless task, pull them off. They are now "charged up" by the work they were doing, and if you put them onto a polluted square to K-P it, they will finish the job immediately.

It takes 4 turns for a non-charged Settler to clean up pollution. But once they're charged-up, you can tell them to go sentry near a big dirty city, or ferry them to be stationed on your islands and mini-continents. The more charged-up Settlers from NONE you can make, the more you can afford to put them in out-of-the-way places where it'd otherwise take 2 turns to ship one over in an emergency.

Cleaning up pollution immediately, the same turn it spills out, has great benefits for you. Obviously, you avoid the -10 civscore penalty per polluted square. But even more important, now that your civ is hyper-saturated with Future Tech's, if you leave just one single polluted square overnight it will cause the dreaded Sun Icon to appear on your dashboard. The Sun is created by pollution, and seems to exacerbate pollution frequency, though i'm not convinced that is more than coincidence yet.

What i am certain about is that the Sun has brightness levels, and when you get to the end, Global Warming, your whole planet is irrevocably screwed. Land squares change type. Some tundra may become newly eatable plains, but many grasslands will turn into less-yummy plains as well. One thing i have not tried, and it may be worth looking into, is whether tundra at the Poles changes into plains during Global Warming and can now have new cities founded on them? Some day, i should try and see if there's any way to manipulate Global Warming to my advantage. Doubtful, but one never knows until one tries, right?

You can send the Sun away by having one full turn sequence with zero pollution on the ground. I learned how to turn the Sun on and off at will, once you get to a balance point between FT's and industrial production, but it's not something you want to deal with unless you're completely confident that you won't incur Global Warming before your target date for winning the game. Better to be ready for pollution and be able to squeegee the ooze immediately.

And that's Strategy #3: collect free Settlers all game long, then turn them into quick-response HazMat teams once you start your final push towards ending the game.


Now think about what causes pollution and what you need to fatten up your civscore. Once you've built all the anti-pollution and anti-disaster improvements, what do you need shields for? We'll assume that you're here to maximize civscore, so are planning on a Spaceship win with all the trimmings: +100 Peace, +420 Wonders, max FT's, and high population. So the only thing you need now is a Spaceship with 12 Modules. As soon as you build that, you don't need shields any more, for anything at all. Production does not add to your civscore, but can take points away, by teasing the Pollution Bug.

If you have 100+ cities and 12,000 gp, you can build a SS in one turn. I did. As soon as you've done it, you don't need Factories or Mfg Plants anymore. In fact, selling 40 Mfg Plants can pay for the SS all at once. While it's on the way to Alpha Centauri, your only tasks are breeding your people like rabbits and piling on Future Tech after Future Tech. Shields, at this point, are only a hindrance. The lower you can push each individual city's shields, the higher you can push the FT's for +5 civscore each.

So take all your citz off of mountain squares and make them fishermen, or turn them into Elvis or Scientists. Sell all the Factories, sell the Mfg Plants. Set all the cities to build SDI Defenses to flip for cash, so you can set your Tax rate lower and plow more trade-arrows into Luxuries and Science. The further you can lower your shield production, the safer your cities will be. Convert horsey plains into deer forests, going from a 3-wheat + 4-shield square, to a 4-wheat + 3-shield square. Win, win. Irrigate all the hills and the deserts to wipe out mines, and reassign citz from deserts to water squares wherever you can.

Too much money also is not helpful, since when you top 30,000 gp your Treasury rolls over to 00,000. If that happens during the accounting phase of a start-of-turn, then you'll lose an improvement in some city somewhere, as unsupportable when your wallet rolls over. During a big selling binge, if you need to bleed off some cash, it's easy. Just go to a city where they earn 1 or 2 shields per turn, tell them to build a Mfg Plant, and buy it outright. That drains off up to 2,560 gp. Then of course, sell it next turn when they build it.

There is Strategy #4: when you don't need industry, let it go. Shields are not points.


Even at minimum shields, there will come a point where the FT level outweighs all your protections. Your highest-shield city will be the canary in your coalmine. Station a charged-up Settler next to it. When you get your first pollution, you now must evaluate your Settlers of NONE. How many do you have and how well can they serve your high-shield cities? Remember that once discharged, a Settler needs 1 turn to move and 3 turns of recharging, or 4 turns to tackle another sludged square.

A polluted square is still -10 civscore, even if it's being cleaned as we speak. If you can't finish the game with zero pollution on the ground, then you've wasted a lot of time. If you have plenty of charged-up Settlers and are close to your Alpha Centauri landing, then you can push the Future Tech several more ticks and get up to 2 or 3 pollutions per turn. If you've still got 15 years of spaceflight and only a handful of Settlers, you can only push the FT's another 1 or 2 ticks to keep the pollution frequency down to 1 splooge per 2 turns, or 1 per turn.

You can not un-learn a FT, so you can never make the pollution rate lower, but the good news is that you can arrest the rate at whatever level you're comfortable with, by reducing all Science to zero. Adjust the Science rate to 00%, but you must also convert all your Scientists inside all of your cities to Elvii or Taxmen. And i do mean "all". If you leave some Scientists alive and your Finance Minister tells you: "Don't worry, we won't discover another FT for 40 turns," he is lying to you. You will get that unwanted camel-back-breaking FT in 13 turns, not 40.

The idea is that when you get your first pollution, you should assume that it is at a rate of 1 splotch every turn. It depends on the particulars of your scenario, it might actually be a rate of one pollution per 4 turns, but don't take the chance on that assumption. The rate will roughly double for every five FT's you add from here on out. You might just have been lucky the previous 4 turns, due to the randomization factor in the addPollution() algoritm.

At this time, you should be near your target date for finishing, or if not then you'd better start planning now. Put together a competent plan for ending the game soon, and with no pollution on the ground. You might have some advance warning, in the form of increasing Earthquakes and Guerilla Uprisings. Or you might not have any warning at all. There is a random factor at work.

In any case, if you have all protections and minimum shields, the point when you get your first pollution is where you have bent the framework of Civ1 just about as far as it will go. Grab your final citz, jack up the Lux and end the game.

And there's the 5th Pollution Strategy: Plan Ahead. When you get the first black ooze, you should already know much pollution you can deal with, thus how far you can push the FT's.


A variant strategy for #'s 4 and 5 above is to make one city your "dirty city". In this scheme, you go about the de-industrialization program described in #4, but with a difference: leave one city alone. Let it keep the Mfg Plant and eat the mountains. As long as it has the full anti-pollution rigging (RC+MT+N/HP), it shouldn't make smokestacks internally.

Having a Dirty City does good things for you: with a set of four Watchmen Settlers, you can continually keep pollution under control and the Dirty City will draw sludge to it, away from other cities, meaning that you don't have to keep moving your Settlers to where the trouble is... you already know where the trouble is going to be. And since the "addPollution()" algorithm is applied only once per city, once per turn, you know that there will only be one splotch to deal with, at the most.

In this case, your second-highest shieldcount city becomes the canary, and when that 'burg gets splooged, you know it's time to wrap things up, shut (or slow) down the Science, and plan on ending the game soon.

Why would you do this? A couple reasons. First, by keeping tabs on the frequency of pollution occurrences at your Dirty City, you can tell how deep into the shtistorm you are wading, giving some advance warning before it affects multiple cities at their lower de-industrialized shieldcounts. Second, you can monkey around with the Dirty City by moving citz off of mountains and deserts, and mark the progress of the Pollution Bug turn by turn as it slowly marches towards your cleaner cities, in lockstep with higher Future Tech's.

The Dirty City strategy helps you do #5 above: Plan Ahead. If you have two canaries in your coalmine, one healthy and the other sickly, then you can use them as timeline markers. Perhaps use the frail bird's death (i.e. 1st splooge at the Dirty City) as a signal flare to launch the SS for a 15-year spaceflight, and when the healthy bird keels over, you know it's time to put into motion your final moves to maximize the civscore, or zero out the Science completely.

And a final word: if you use the Fast-Settler cheat, then you can clean up an infinite number of pollution splotches every turn, the only limit being the thickness of the skin over the blisters on your clicking finger. I don't use this cheat, because there's no game anymore. It is impossible to lose, ever, at any difficulty level, when the only limit on development is movement points expended going onto un-roaded squares. All you have to do is build a single regular road, and then get all the irrigation and mines and RR's for free? That's not a game, it's just homework.
 
A few random notes:

After 8 elite citizens, you are seeing what are generally known here as "phantom taxmen". They add a point to your final score, but collect no tax revenue.

I find it curious that you are running up against so many disasters. I have run the technology very high and have several cities vulnerable to pirates. I hardly ever see them. Same note for earthquakes. I have several cities in or near hills and don't see earthquakes either. I very much doubt that the logic for CivWin would be different regarding disasters. I also doubt that higher risk is a result of advanced tech.

Speaking of disasters, I have run into a couple "exotic" disasters that are not in the manual as far as I know: "scandal" and "corruption". Both have the same consequences as pirates. They clean out the food box and the production box. The countermeasure for both is a temple. That, at least, gives you a reason to keep your temples even if you are not next to a mountain.
 
After 8 elite citizens, you are seeing what are generally known here as "phantom taxmen". They add a point to your final score, but collect no tax revenue.

Aha, i found that term here but had no idea what it meant. I can have more than 8 Specialists in a city, just not more than 8 of any one kind.

I very much doubt that the logic for CivWin would be different regarding disasters. I also doubt that higher risk is a result of advanced tech.

100% agree with you, but that's what i've been seeing. Maybe it's a byproduct of flirting with the Sun, turning it on and off? It must be a coincidence, or something else i'm doing while skirting the pollution boundary. Sure as hell looks like pollution and disasters are running in tandem, but my gut tells me you're right. One thing i noticed is that my Approval in the demographics page stalls at 0% when i push things too far, even at 80% Lux. Maybe that's governing disasters? I don't know, and have no clue where to look for more answers on that.

Speaking of disasters, I have run into a couple "exotic" disasters that are not in the manual as far as I know: "scandal" and "corruption". Both have the same consequences as pirates. They clean out the food box and the production box. The countermeasure for both is a temple. That, at least, gives you a reason to keep your temples even if you are not next to a mountain.

Wow, that brings back memories a decade old! Once upon a time i tried selling Temples when a Cathedral was built and the Oracle obsoleted, but discovered it's a bad idea to go Temple-free. Just like clean underwear, you never know when you'll be glad that afternoon, to have a Temple this morning.

On the bright side, i started a new game and trapped a Mongol Settler on a mountain, so as soon as i kill off the Greeks and Zulus, will have a second scenario with the whole planet to myself. This time, placing new cities carefully so that an oasis square can generate 15 citz by Judgement Day, not just support 3. Keep telling myself that if i can crack 6,000 without cheats, then i will finally allow myself to have some rampant fun checking out jCivEd.

After that, guess i'll have to start playing Civ2! :lol:
 
Wow! Just a word of appreciation for how thoroughly you investigated this and documented it, Posidonius. Believe it or not I read most of it, and found your discoveries and your approach interesting. Well, speaking of homework.. you certainly did yours! Let us know how your ultimate high-score game turns out...
 
Wow! Just a word of appreciation for how thoroughly you investigated this and documented it, Posidonius. Believe it or not I read most of it, and found your discoveries and your approach interesting. Well, speaking of homework.. you certainly did yours! Let us know how your ultimate high-score game turns out...

Thanks for the note, Future Tech limit is solved, so am trying ways to supersaturate a global population in as few turns as possible. Best results so far by using 11 foci and spreading it out in a bubble pattern. Once i get it down to 20 turns, should be able to orchestrate a Grand Convergence of maxxed pop, FT's and full SS, all at the same time.
 
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