3.17 Global Warming Mechanics

[Woody1]

It's because having power give a 2 while the coal plant itself gives another 2 . So even if you built a hydro plant it would still add unhealthiness.

Ah, okay, I didn't realize that power alone gives +2 unhealthiness, even if it is "clean" power. Thanks.

 

[Jeckel]

Very nice, thanx for the explanation.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I did some testing of GW myself and the results... my god the results...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6988842

 

[Refar]

So from your experiment Recycling Centers do not help ?
Because it says they remove Building , i would call it a bug.

 

[jkp1187]

Why is that a bug? Why would recycling plants have to eliminate GW effects? They certainly don't do that in real life. Personally, I've always thought RC's were overpowered as it was. It really made building coal plants a no-brainer. There really was no reason to NOT build coal plants before -- they were cheap, coal was plentiful, and the only negative side effect was pretty much eliminated with the recycling center. Now the choice isn't so clear.

I am only into the first game I've played under 3.17 that went beyond the renaissance era. So far, at least two superpowers and several minor powers are tooling around with industrialism and now nukes. I have not experienced a single round of global warming yet. I have plenty of factories and industrial plants, but instead of going for coal, I went for fission and am building nuke plants everywhere. (And no, I haven't experienced a meltdown either.)

 

[Plinko16]

I have to say, I've had GW happen in a game maybe once or twice though I generally win a Space Race game. Yet, some players seem to find it a constant annoyance.

I am guessing that those with frequent GW issues also play with additional Civs over default for the map size? Based on the mechanics, adding more Civs would naturally increase GW odds since there would likely be a lot more unhealth buildings out there earlier in the game, plus more pressure on forest/jungle tiles earlier in the game.

 

[jkp1187]

I have to say, I've had GW happen in a game maybe once or twice though I generally win a Space Race game. Yet, some players seem to find it a constant annoyance.

I am guessing that those with frequent GW issues also play with additional Civs over default for the map size? Based on the mechanics, adding more Civs would naturally increase GW odds since there would likely be a lot more unhealth buildings out there earlier in the game, plus more pressure on forest/jungle tiles earlier in the game.

Perhaps. I suspect that a coal plant spam hurts a lot, though.

FWIW, in the above-described game, I am playing on a standard map with 9 civ (+2 from default).

 

[Refar]

Why is that a bug?

Because GW is caused by bad health from buildings and Recycling Plants are clearly said to eliminate bad health from buildings - so either the description or the mechanic has to be broken.

My vote is on the mechanic, because - reality aside (Where recycling as widely aknowledged for beeing helpful in fighting pollution in many different ways) - if the Recycling centers do not stop pollution, then there is nothing in the game that does.

And it is not the question of just the 2 from coal plants. Factories add 2 to 4 depending on your ressources, Labs, Drydocks, Foreges and what ever else...
Also, you not experiencing GW your self does not meant that it does not occur - you only get notified if it strikes your land.


Somthing i keep wondering here is... With Firaxis beeing all that green and a really PITA about enviroment pollution and nukes - both are very bad things, no doubt - but why keeps the stupid AI then choping every single forest it gets it hans on, and why does it throw nukes like crazy

 

[mungbean]

Somthing i keep wondering here is... With Firaxis beeing all that green and a really PITA about enviroment pollution and nukes - both are very bad things, no doubt - but why keeps the stupid AI then choping every single forest it gets it hans on, and why does it throw nukes like crazy

This is why I am in love with assigning diplomatic penalties to AI behavior if you are going to have the GW mechanic. Only way it seems you could get the AI to stop. (In theory this could also happen due to self-interest, but you have the prisoners' dilemma problem.)

Eric

 

[jkp1187]

Because GW is caused by bad health from buildings and Recycling Plants are clearly said to eliminate bad health from buildings - so either the description or the mechanic has to be broken.

I have very good reason to believe the fact that Recycling Centers (or any source of positive health like aqueducts or hospitals) doesn't affect the negative unhealthiness calculation on Global Warming is what was intended by Firaxis. I think that, in principle, this is a good decision. It may be that it has gone too far in certain respects (it's silly for drydock or labs unhealthiness to contribute to global warming, and I think that those should be removed from the equation,) but generally I think it's good for a very simple in-game reason that Blake himself made in one of the Polycasts last year: there is almost no reason why anyone ever should build a hydro or nuclear plant when the negative effects of coal are so easily overcome (either with Recycling Centers or use of the Environmentalism civic.)

My vote is on the mechanic, because - reality aside (Where recycling as widely aknowledged for beeing helpful in fighting pollution in many different ways) - if the Recycling centers do not stop pollution, then there is nothing in the game that does.

I disagree with your assessment here: recycling waste materials costs energy to perform. While recycling may conserve certain resources (and that is a positive,) it is not established anywhere that I'm aware of that large-scale industrial recycling centers actually reduce energy consumption. A recycling center for plastic, for instance, wouldn't cut down on the amount of energy used in transportation. But again, my primary argument concerning the mechanic is for in-game reasons, not RL reasons.

Also, you not experiencing GW your self does not meant that it does not occur - you only get notified if it strikes your land.

Good point. I should probably start playing in debugging mode to see what happens. Does the game record events like GW in text files?

Somthing i keep wondering here is... With Firaxis beeing all that green and a really PITA about enviroment pollution and nukes - both are very bad things, no doubt - but why keeps the stupid AI then choping every single forest it gets it hans on, and why does it throw nukes like crazy

The AI does need to understand those things, absolutely right.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

...
And it is not the question of just the 2 from coal plants. Factories add 2 to 4 depending on your ressources, Labs, Drydocks, Foreges and what ever else...

Actually when a building says + with a resource the us attached to the resource, not the building. So as is my understanding, from having coal or oil don't cause GW.

 

[Refar]

I have very good reason to believe the fact that Recycling Centers (or any source of positive health like aqueducts or hospitals) doesn't affect the negative unhealthiness calculation on Global Warming is what was intended by Firaxis.

Positive health does not affect GW, that is correct - and i agree with you, that it shouldn't. In so far your assesment is very true when it comes to Enviromentalism - it gives you + de facto allwing you to pollute more.

Recycling centers however do not give positive health (+) - again according to the description - they do remove bad health from buildings (-) which is not the same.

So technically the your buildings do not cause after RC is built, would still count towards GW - sounds weird.

I disagree with your assessment here: recycling waste materials costs energy to perform.

Energy cost of recycling+Transport vs Energy cost of Mining/Producing new materials - which must be transported as well... I do see your point however - technically Recycling Centers use energy and hence might contribute to Greenhouse Gases.

However, the game does not have spearate counters for Air/Land/Water pollution - so i see GW as global measure of bad enviroment/pollution.

In so far i could understand counting all towards it (After all population with it energy consumption and personal vehicles is a significant factor here). But i fail to see the logic in not taking actually enviromental friendly measures (again RC its removal, not just additional which would let you pollute more...)

Good point. I should probably start playing in debugging mode to see what happens. Does the game record events like GW in text files?

I am not sure. It does not go into the normal Hall of Fame Log at the end of the game. It might be logged in some of the logfiles however.

But i wouldnt spoil your game by enabling Debug tools - you can just take a look at the map in WB after your game is done - if you see desert in odd places, it probably was GW - and if it's too few too notice, then it's not a big deal anyway.

The AI does need to understand those things, absolutely right.

I think that is actually the core problem here. I.E. on big maps with many opponents you just do not controll big enought part of the world to preserve enought forest and/or avoid worldwide usage of coal...

Kind of realistic - while some countries try to reduce they air pollutions others don't care... I do not play the game however, to get pointed to and about the badness of the world.

 

[Refar]

Actually when a building says + with a resource the us attached to the resource, not the building. So as is my understanding, from having coal or oil don't cause GW.

I think they do, as from how i understand the code, those ressource is added to the Buildings Bad Health... However - the observation about RC not working, does contradict this kind - of. So i might be wrong.

 

[DanF5771]

A city has several separate "Bad Health" categories so the bad health from bonuses is not attached to or merged with the bad health from buildings. Global Warming only asks for pCity->getBuildingBadHealth() and nothing else. Recycling Centers are again handled separately with pCity->isBuildingOnlyHealthy(). This is what I use in my attempt to factor RCs (and Environmentalism) in the calculation of GW (proposal for code here).

 

[jkp1187]

Okay, I finished the game I referenced earlier with a domination win around 1998, again standard map, 9 civs (+2 from default #), prince level, tectonics 60% water map. I made a point of trying not to chop too many forests in the beginning (though I didn't go crazy with that,) and I made a point of not building any coal plants. In fact, I didn't build any hydro plants, either, nuke plants everywhere. I also went for building factories in most major cities, along with Ironworks and a few industrial parks in other places.

I didn't avoid using nuclear weapons, though, and had to fire off at least four or five of them in the final war against the Arabs. So I did start getting some global warming toward the end, but it wasn't crazy, and it seemed more or less consistent with what I expected from having fired off some nukes.

This is in no way a conclusive test -- the Babylonian/German permanent alliance built the Three Gorges Dam, so they both avoided coal plants, too, and while a few other civs (that I ended up vassalizing) had the tech to build coal plants, they didn't have very many cities after I got done with them. The Arabs were surprisingly backwards; the others, such as Koreans and maybe Khmer were not. The French and Aztecs probably didn't get to Industrialism.

It would be nice to see the GW results from a series of reiterated autoplay games.

Here's the game:

http://files.filefront.com/Joao+AD+1998CivBeyondSwodSave/;10920828;/fileinfo.html

 

[viz]

Firstly global warming needs to be a part of the game without doubt, it just need re-working. The current implentation is just not good from a gameplay perspective, nor is it even stightly realistic.

1/ Civs need to know the consequences of actions and inactions. The AI in particular needs to appreciate the effects of nukes, pollution and chopping forrests etc.

2/ I like the idea of a carbon trading scheme through which civs can offload units of unhealthyness to other civs via the diplomacy screen (at a price of course).

3/ I think the biggest change has to be with the feature itself. The game already has a great feature that is perfectly suited to dealing with global warming - Random Events, why haven't firaxis spotted this?

Get rid of the current system and use random events to increase probability of - say - a flood event, or a hurricane event etc. This is a FAR better way to include global warming in the game. Plus it's more realistic and isn't game destroying.

 

[Woody1]

Get rid of the current system and use random events to increase probability of - say - a flood event, or a hurricane event etc. This is a FAR better way to include global warming in the game. Plus it's more realistic and isn't game destroying.

Except, of course, that's not was has resulted from global warming. The past few years have been almost void of any major hurricanes. They're way down, not up. The pseudo-scientists have no idea what the effects of global warming are, so how can we believe Firaxis has any better idea?

 

[viz]

Except, of course, that's not was has resulted from global warming. The past few years have been almost void of any major hurricanes. They're way down, not up. The pseudo-scientists have no idea what the effects of global warming are, so how can we believe Firaxis has any better idea?

Indeed, and the effects of global warming will rightly continue to be analysed and debated. As firaxis have reviewed the feature throughout development (of the entire series), it is going to stay in the game in some form or another. My suggestions are merely concerned with making the feature work better.

Whichever aspects (be it famine, floods, droughts, hurricanes, forrest fires etc) are considered resulting from global warming, they can and should be implemented through the random events system and not through 'random tile roulette'.

 

[Balderstrom]

Do the formulas for GW scale with map size? Or is it constant?
On a Normal map, you will have less pollution as: less cities/less buildings.
On Large/Huge, you'll have more pollution. If the formula accounts for Percentage of pollution (over x# of tiles) instead of total pollution - then it would scale... Otherwise it works for Normal maps, prolly little to no pollution on smaller than that, and too much pollution for larger.

From glancing over the formulas, I'm guessing it was supposed to scale, but since a constant is used for the divisor (20) - it likely doesn't scale properly.

 

[DanF5771]

Hey Balderstrom:
The Defense Value and the GW Value from unhealthy buildings will both be scaled according to map size:

iGlobalWarmingDefense = iGlobalWarmingDefense * GC.getDefineINT("GLOBAL_WARMING_FOREST") / std::max(1, GC.getMapINLINE().getLandPlots());

iGlobalWarmingValue /= GC.getMapINLINE().numPlotsINLINE();

But it appears the contribution of exploding nukes is independent of the size of the planet.