All oil gone by 2050

[WarCrimes]

I think there should be an event where all the oil in the world is used up. This way you will have to devise another strategy when going to war instead of using only powerful weapons in the modern era. In our world today, oil will be almost gone by the year 2021.

 

[Tanktunker]

Since you can make oil with crops now, the person who owns Standard Ethanol will be the only one capable of waging a real war.
Makes the game kinda lopsided, doncha think?

 

[Shylock]

Peak Oil isn't about oil depletion so much as oil is harder to get and prices become unacceptable.

But that would be interesting random event.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

I would prefer perishable resources over all oil gone in 2050, that way if an oil resource has never been used why would it just disappear?

 

[Optimizer]

According to economic principles of supply and demand, oil wells will never run dry. As supply decreases, production cost will increase until reaching the same level as the substitutes.

The scale of Civ is far too large to allow total realism. Gameplay should be prioritized.

 

[Chieftess]

Then play Civ3.

(i.e., resources deplete in Civ3)

 

[Ammar]

Then play Civ3.

(i.e., resources deplete in Civ3)

They don't really deplete, they randomly disappear and respawn somewhere else.

Personally, I am still unable to decide whether it's time for Civ to get a quantifying Strategic Ressource, where you might have some oil but not enough. It would be much more realistic, but it would also be one more thing you would have to take care off, which might not might be a good thing.

 

[Duuk]

According to economic principles of supply and demand, oil wells will never run dry. As supply decreases, production cost will increase until reaching the same level as the substitutes.

The scale of Civ is far too large to allow total realism. Gameplay should be prioritized.

In addition, much like with the British offshore oil drilling, when oil reaches a certain price, different methods of extraction become profitable on a mass scale. When oil was $2 a barrel, drilling undersea off the coast of Scotland at a cost of $8 a barrel would have been absurd. Fast forward to oil being $12 a barrel and suddenly you have a profit margin. Fast forward to $70 a barrel and you're making money hand-over-fist.

Eventually it will become cost-effective to extract oil from many more sources than we currently have access to but which are *known to exist*, such as shale and deep-ocean sources. Supply, demand, profitability.

Capitalism FTW!

 

[Duuk]

They don't really deplete, they randomly disappear and respawn somewhere else.

Personally, I am still unable to decide whether it's time for Civ to get a quantifying Strategic Ressource, where you might have some oil but not enough. It would be much more realistic, but it would also be one more thing you would have to take care off, which might not might be a good thing.

If you've ever played "Command:HQ" from the 80s, you know that oil wells produced a finite amount of resources per tick and your usage was limited to what you had on hand. There was literally nothing worse than having your 100 tank division force in Europe stopped dead and able only to defend and not move because your foe conquered the Middle East and Mexico.

Civ4 could EASILY have resource-levels, which would rock my socks.

 

[Shawnosaurus]

Does sound like a nice mod though. If it were balanced correctly I would certainly install it.

Non-renewable resource depletion by volume of use. Oil obviously plus perhaps the mined resources. The mod would be even better if it allowed for the replacement of items requiring these resources to use alternate technologies. Or at the least increase efficiencies and reclaiming materials.

The more I think on this, the more in-depth it seems the mod could get. You could let ethanol replace oil, but like real life corn based ethanol wouldn't help as it uses an equal sum of oil. So the sugar nations and those who maybe build biomass conversion facilities would get the resource.

.

 

[Ikael]

The problem about hte cost vs oil price theories is that in order for such a model to work you need to have an incredibly expensive oil.

That means that while oil itself is not going to end, cheap oil is going to finish, period.
It might become a resouce only used by industries instead of individuals (petrol moved cars), and still, that will cause a massive headache since many other industries also depends on the petrol. End of the cheap petrol will probably mean the end of affordable computers, cheap pesticides (hello new food crysis), and cheap medicines. The oil peak is truthly the test of time that will show what is our civilization made of, and a problem which people should be more concerned about.

 

[Goombaz]

According to economic principles of supply and demand, oil wells will never run dry. As supply decreases, production cost will increase until reaching the same level as the substitutes.

The scale of Civ is far too large to allow total realism. Gameplay should be prioritized.

Thats a really spiffy way of verbally sidestepping the whole apocalyptic rioting and economic insanity that would result from insanely expensive fuel Still, I am not an expert on these issues by any means.

Jokes aside, the thing is, this would be a major boon to whoever held standard ethanol, and would therefore be rather unfair.

 

[kazapp]

That means that while oil itself is not going to end, cheap oil is going to finish, period.
It might become a resouce only used by industries instead of individuals (petrol moved cars), and still, that will cause a massive headache since many other industries also depends on the petrol. End of the cheap petrol will probably mean the end of affordable computers, cheap pesticides (hello new food crysis), and cheap medicines. The oil peak is truthly the test of time that will show what is our civilization made of, and a problem which people should be more concerned about.

Pfft. It's not like an asteroid strike; sudden and unexpected.

Instead I view this as finally ushering in the age of fusion: cheap energy and clean transportation.

 

[Goombaz]

The problem about hte cost vs oil price theories is that in order for such a model to work you need to have an incredibly expensive oil.

That means that while oil itself is not going to end, cheap oil is going to finish, period.
It might become a resouce only used by industries instead of individuals (petrol moved cars), and still, that will cause a massive headache since many other industries also depends on the petrol. End of the cheap petrol will probably mean the end of affordable computers, cheap pesticides (hello new food crysis), and cheap medicines. The oil peak is truthly the test of time that will show what is our civilization made of, and a problem which people should be more concerned about.

Yeah, supply and demand only goes so far. If you have oil at say 100X the value it is now, I would have to imagine it would wreak considerable havoc with a lot of things. Still, as I said before, I am not an expert.

 

[magicalsushi]

Pfft. It's not like an asteroid strike; sudden and unexpected.

Instead I view this as finally ushering in the age of fusion: cheap energy and clean transportation.

When we actually have those things working properly on a worthwhile scale, I'll stop caring about the peak oil problem. Until then - if those technologies ever even amount to anything - I think it's very sensible to pay a lot of attention to the oil problem. Fusion power has been "just around the corner" for a very long time; I hope you'll forgive me for being skeptical. I don't think we have much to lose by being careful with our remaining oil supply until fusion and other miracle technologies have proven themselves.

 

[amadeus]

Mixing computer games and politics is generally a bad idea.

 

[Goombaz]

Mixing computer games and politics is generally a bad idea.

It's funny, you know. I wasn't even thinking in political terms when I made my replies, but I suppose this is borderline political I swear I wasn't actively trying to start a political debate.

 

[Drawmeus]

It could make for some interesting strategic considerations... providing that an alternative comes up. After all, it's not exactly like we're facing a movement back to the stone age as we run dry on oil, it's already practical to do things like (for instance) run the city of Boston from a giant offshore wind farm (the reason it hasn't been put into practice has to do with a bunch of rich state and national politicians not wanting their ocean view from Nantucket mucked up).

 

[commofdoom]

maybe the world you're playing on has a near unlimited supply?

the idea of depleting resources would be neat however.

 

[DisruptiveIdiot]

Come on guys, if discovering a fusion reactor that works and is efficient allows you to create an engine that can send a space ship 2 light years away in a couple of decades, then it wouldn't be at all that hard to assume that by then the world's energy needs were met by non-oil sources.

If anything there should also be a tech that eliminates oil as a requirement for units.