Deep Sea Mining

[Timberdoodle]

Hey everyone,

I’m a long time fan on the Civ series and I’ve been lurking on these forums for a little while. Thought it was about time I got involved, thanks for making this such a welcoming place!

So I came across a video on deep sea mining earlier today, and I thought it would be such a good theme for Civ. Just thought I'd share. ( Video here for those who want to watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vgRQAtPSMU).

In short, hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor are home to a vast number of undiscovered species. They also spit out precious metals like copper, gold and zinc which can be used for modern electronics. So there's a battle brewing between those who want to protect the unique ecosystems and those who want to mine the materials.

I've always found exploration to be my favourite part of the game, so it would be pretty cool to be able to search the ocean floor in the late game for hydrothermal vents. If you find one you could then have the option to study and protect them for science and culture, or mine them for precious metals (and maybe an empire wide production bonus). With Geothermal fissures and volcanoes already in the game, it seemed like a natural fit.

While they’ll probably never exist in game, I thought it might be fun to discuss. Anything else you would add on theme of exploring the deep ocean?

Thanks for reading!

 

[criZp]

Yeah, I guess that could be cool.

 

[Sostratus]

The Rising Tide expansion for Beyond Earth was centered around the ocean- having cities, improvements, resources there. If we look at the future era of civ6, I could almost see an ambitious modder adding something like that in.
Although AFAIK the deep water resource to be extracted is the oil/gas/hydrocarbon deposits down there. Removing bulk quantities of metals from the deep ocean is almost never going to feasible over just mining more on land - although if we ever get to the point where we can breach into the earth's mantle, i suppose you could find a way to scoop out the unlimited slurry of metal there...

 

[Timberdoodle]

Oh, interesting! Yeah, it's not an area I know much at all about. Being able to breach into the earth's mantle and gather the resources there would be a tremendous feat. It's amazing to think of the staggering amount of metals and material down there that we just can't access. (Yet!)

Cool, thanks for clueing me in. I've never played Beyond Earth and I wasn't aware of the expansion. I used to play Civ V all the time years ago and I got back into the franchise with Civ VI a year or so ago. I definitely need to go back and check out Beyond Earth and the expansion at some point soon too.

 

[Jarms48]

Sure, I wouldn’t mind seeing more types of advanced aquaculture and sea farming, or even mining in the Future Era. It probably won’t be seen very often due to the late nature of the game but it would be interesting. Maybe even allow water cities like BE Rising Tides. Which could be a late game remedy to severe Global Warming.