A more relevant storyline for global issues today

victornielsen

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 11, 2016
Messages
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Hello CivFanatics

I think something that could make Civilization very interesting is if they made a new game/expansion where environmental issues are important, and the happiness mechanics could change, so you could win by having the happiest civilization with the least production or something (ref. the happy planet index) and have new buildings that reduce your waste and your CO2 emissions. It could make the game really interesting. Some civs could choose not to care about the environment, and they will have a productions boost, but some long term problems like sickness and stuff. It also makes it possible to make the late game more interesting.
Do you agree?
 
Was it civ 3 or 4 that had pollution linked to both global and local population, as well as certain buildings? I like that aspect, you can build cheap coal-powered factories and put up with pollution (polluted tiles not being workable until cleaned) or expensive wind farms and not contribute towards it.

What made it better was that as well as local effects all civs suffered from effects of global pollution, so even if you had a clean policy you could still suffer from pollution if others civs didn't and raised the global situation. Tie that in with diplomacy and you could have some interesting situations of civs putting pressure on others to change their ways.
 
all civs suffered from effects of global pollution, so even if you had a clean policy you could still suffer from pollution if others civs didn't and raised the global situation. Tie that in with diplomacy and you could have some interesting situations of civs putting pressure on others to change their ways.

Local effects like Factories adding +1 or +2 (can't remember) unhealth were not relevant IMO. It could be cool however to have a building when finished you would have to choose a tile to pollute totally (becoming useless), with nocive rejects, and as an upside adding quite a few production to your city.

Of course it would be cool if you could cumulate those local effects with global ones, but I think that global ones would work better with local ones for some reason. Because if you have only global, better not care at all : if this is managed like Civ2,3 or 4, pollution turns plains into deserts everywhere on the globe, so that everybody is affected : the global production is lowered, but the relative powers stays the same, which makes it irrelevant.

It could be relevant if effects like "plains turning into deserts" would be more local, like water levels being polluted if you use too much fertilizers for example, with health consequences. (factors) Or proportionnal. The sum of ecologic effects, beside making tiles into waste, could be totalised into Health a la Civ4. "Global warming" would act as so : the more you pollute, the more you have downsides. If you don't pollute at all, you may still have downsides from your neighbours, however more limited.
 
IIRC Civ 2 had a global warming mechanic.

Honestly I think it's lame - there is still no conclusive evidence that anthropogenic CO2 is actually raising global temperature - and if it is, why is it always construed to be negative?
The science is at best dodgy and the predictions are just based on unvalidated mathematical models that so far have almost entirely been proven wrong. The literature is 'peer reviewed' by people that have a vested interest in keeping the human global warming theory going. I.e. despite the best intentions of the scientists involved it is a collaboration of yes men - you cannot produce quality science with that culture.

If you look at human history and civilisation - there has always been collapse during cold periods and ice ages, in contrast warming periods have always coincided with growth and prosperity.
The little ice-age of late antiquity is interesting to research. It's thought that a combination of volcanic explosions and meteor impacts may have triggered this event around the year 540. It is also very curious that the bubonic plague of justinian which crippled the Roman/Byzantine Empire struck just 2 years after this rapid cooling event. Compounded by crop failures and a decline in agriculture, the entirety of classical civilization which still hugged the Eastern Mediterranean Sea up to the beginning of the 7th century was unable to resist the Arab conquests and quickly disappeared.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-famine-political-upheaval-ancient-world.html

In contrast when the medieval warming period started it gave birth to the medieval societies of Europe that gave rise to the modern world. Farmers were even settling in Greenland. Earlier during the Roman warming period, they were producing wine in the North of England.

If you want to add a climate change phenomena to civilization I think it is great but it should be a global cooling event and be caused by volcanic eruptions or meteor strikes as a random event option that can be selected by players for a more player-vs-environment game in addition to player vs AI
 
Civ4 also had global warming. But i said "global warming", i was refering here to a change ingame due to pollution. It could be as well a global cooling, or a global pollution of any sort. I hadn't realism in view there, only game interesting mechanics.

However I think there is well a global warming nowadays. Al Gore demonstrated it quite spectacularly.
 
climate change may be designed in a such a way so it would cripple advanced civs more, so backwards ones had a chanse to get to the top.

Absolutely. Thing is people mostly assume climate change to be the modern 'anthropogenic global warming'. Gamewise this is probably largely a waste of time to implement - by the time you get to the last age of the game, its close to finishing and in most cases the outcome is already decided. Thus one could argue having a whole new part of the game built around pollution causing global havoc is probably not worth the effort.

I do think though that a player vs environment option could be selected at startup (similar to random events but much more challenging and game influencing).
Here is where you have your big Krakatoa eruptions in the medieval era, global cooling, population decline, plague and barbarian hordes etc.... That way you would have a real medieval period - one that properly represents that staggering of technology between the classical era and the renaissance. And yes you could have an algorithm which directly punishes the most powerful civilisations the most. I.e. largest cities - worst hit by plague, attacked by barbarians etc...
It certainly would make the world a more threatening place to conquer. One complaint with Civ 5 is that has too much emphasis on early diplomacy and trade. Ok certainly there was a lot of this in ancient history but diplomacy makes the world already function like a global village right from the get go. For instance it doesn't seem right that I should be able to make friends with Atilla the Hun or Genghis Khan... Or be able to talk to every player once I meet them in a standard Pangaea map on turn 50
 
Redaxe, yeah exploration is too easy in the game. maybe units should not be able to heal outside of home territory (before some tech) or get scurvy killing them like in the New World scenario. barbs also should be more determined in hunting the players' units, not just roam around. So the home continent wont be fully explored until say industrial era.
 
I definitely like the idea of environmental events; I know random things like that aren't welcomed by a number of players due to to inhibiting a dom victory by 200 turns on Diety (or whatever the current obsession is), but they could be switched off.
 
IIRC Civ 2 had a global warming mechanic.

Honestly I think it's lame - there is still no conclusive evidence that anthropogenic CO2 is actually raising global temperature - and if it is, why is it always construed to be negative?
The science is at best dodgy and the predictions are just based on unvalidated mathematical models that so far have almost entirely been proven wrong. The literature is 'peer reviewed' by people that have a vested interest in keeping the human global warming theory going. I.e. despite the best intentions of the scientists involved it is a collaboration of yes men - you cannot produce quality science with that culture.

If you look at human history and civilisation - there has always been collapse during cold periods and ice ages, in contrast warming periods have always coincided with growth and prosperity.
The little ice-age of late antiquity is interesting to research. It's thought that a combination of volcanic explosions and meteor impacts may have triggered this event around the year 540. It is also very curious that the bubonic plague of justinian which crippled the Roman/Byzantine Empire struck just 2 years after this rapid cooling event. Compounded by crop failures and a decline in agriculture, the entirety of classical civilization which still hugged the Eastern Mediterranean Sea up to the beginning of the 7th century was unable to resist the Arab conquests and quickly disappeared.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-famine-political-upheaval-ancient-world.html

In contrast when the medieval warming period started it gave birth to the medieval societies of Europe that gave rise to the modern world. Farmers were even settling in Greenland. Earlier during the Roman warming period, they were producing wine in the North of England.

If you want to add a climate change phenomena to civilization I think it is great but it should be a global cooling event and be caused by volcanic eruptions or meteor strikes as a random event option that can be selected by players for a more player-vs-environment game in addition to player vs AI

Well not just global warming, but also like ressource use, people dying from stress, inequality, diseases and other global issues. I think Civ 5 is a bit too "get as many people as possible and produce as much as possible", and IRL that is not sustainable, so there should be some kind of incentive in the game to try and make a sustainable civilisation. It doesn't have to be proven by surviving for a tiring long time, but it could be a victory of making the most sustainable civilisation or something. It would give civilizations that are behind an advantage. It is more challenging and it is also a valuable lesson to new players.
 
The problem with Civ 2 global warming / pollution mechanic is that it made the game boring as hell.

It would be really cool to see the developers giving it a second chance, thought. The dynamic of the possibility of "everyone losing" (global warming kill us all) VS "only one civilization wins" (geopolitical primacy) makes for very interesting game dynamics :)
 
The most recent expansion of civilization added new mechanics related to the diplomacy and cultural victory conditions, so it's likely if they have another it'll add mechanics related to the domination and science victory.
Tourism, trade routes, and the world congress were the features implemented in BNW, and I have been trying to think of a mechanic that could affect science victory, and here is the answer. Global warming, climate change, or a pollution mechanic in general would be an effective system to in some way make science victories more interesting.
The clear way to affect domination victories is through some sort of revolution/nationalism mechanic, by which dead civs could return to life or even become entirely new civs; and with a pollution mechanic enhancing science victories, both new mechanics could fit in well with the recurring theme that each installment is moving forward in time, with vanilla's opening crawl representing the ancient and classical, GNK the medieval and Renaissance, and BNW the industrial and modern,
Nuclear weapons could have a realistic backlash besides diplomatic, and industrialization could have a downside. The nine civs that could be added to affect the new revolution and pollution mechanics could be ones that have historical and modern relevance to the issues as well as some random ones with significance in general.

I think, if Firaxis decides to keep taking our money with a new expansion rather than CiVI, the pollution mechanic proposed would be perfect for enhancing science victories, one of the two left rather uninteresting, and Revolution mechanics would be perfect for enhancing domination victories.

I'd say my proposed civs would be Israel/the Hebrews, Australia, Switzerland, Haiti, Nubia, Venezuela, the Philippines, Ukraine, and Malaysia.

Almost all of the civilizations could interact with the revolution mechanic somehow, with Switzerland, Australia, and Venezuela probably being the primary civs to deal with pollution mechanics. Another thing that could be implemented in relation to the pollution mechanic is something that allows industrializing empires to experience a special kind of golden age, perhaps after the first factory is built, but then at the end of this golden age to experience some kind of backlash having to do with terrain features; IE, deforestation, aridification, or something to do with bodies of water.
 
Another thing that could be implemented in relation to the pollution mechanic is something that allows industrializing empires to experience a special kind of golden age, perhaps after the first factory is built, but then at the end of this golden age to experience some kind of backlash having to do with terrain features; IE, deforestation, aridification, or something to do with bodies of water.

most of deforestation occured long before the industrial revolution
Spoiler :


desertification is also a much earlier phenomenon, produced by primitive tillage and watering, e.g. destroyed Sumer in early 3th millenia BC.
 
From your signature I can tell you also have experience modding some of the very concepts so far discussed on this page.
So, since it's true that the effects of human civilized lifestyles have played out on the environment since the dawn of human civilized societies, wouldn't it make for an even more relevant and useful game mechanic, from a design standpoint? Pollutive effects could occur from the very start of cities and improvements being built, and then could ramp up drastically during the post-industrial era, helping to add a more game-long pact to science victories, another way the victory is lacking compared to others. You build guilds early, you war early, you make CS allies early, so why is there no early way to build towards a science victory besides basically teching, which is relevant across every victory type?
 
From your signature I can tell you also have experience modding some of the very concepts so far discussed on this page.
So, since it's true that the effects of human civilized lifestyles have played out on the environment since the dawn of human civilized societies, wouldn't it make for an even more relevant and useful game mechanic, from a design standpoint? Pollutive effects could occur from the very start of cities and improvements being built, and then could ramp up drastically during the post-industrial era, helping to add a more game-long pact to science victories, another way the victory is lacking compared to others. You build guilds early, you war early, you make CS allies early, so why is there no early way to build towards a science victory besides basically teching, which is relevant across every victory type?

science victories are really boring but maybe because late game is boring.

generally punishing players for being first is considered a bad game design. i heard devs had a concept of dark ages but scrapped it.

pollution mechanic could allow for a sort of trade-off, i.e. the player can develop really fast but in this case deferred effects on enivronment and society arise. so the player would plan when to "accelerate" and how to deal with consequences... it may feel like a driving simulator.
 
Would give a new use for banning luxuries in WC. Maybe your people give you a personal quest to get whales or ivory banned in WC, and then you can have new improvements built on each- whale watching and safaris (only unlocked after ecology or something). I guess you'd have to change how banning in WC works. Maybe it counts as a different (unbannable) luxury.

Could perhaps also ban certain civs' luxuries for humanitarian purposes, like how blood diamonds are bad but other diamonds are not. I think there should be a penalty for NOT doing these things though- it shouldn't stay as just a way to screw another civ.
 
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