All Rise and no Fall

acluewithout

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Saw this on Reddit / PaperRockShotgun.

I thought this was interesting:

In Civilization VI, climate change has been written out entirely, even as we live through planet-wide ecological collapse in the real world. The novel inclusion of natural beauty (as ‘Appeal’) only gives modifiers to growth. Famine is a minor inconvenience in your grand plan, as it was to empire-builders in Ireland or India. While older Civilization games included climate change mechanics (Alpha Centauri even set psychic death worms on polluters) Civilization VI is reluctant to take a side on ‘controversial issues’.

My thoughts:

- I wish Civ 6 did deal with climate change: first, I guess ‘natural’ climate change that happens from time to time (eg the little ice age) and man-made climate change.

- My thinking is that in Civ 6, as compared to other versions, you’re meant to play the map more. I think having a map which changes would actually lean into the ‘play the map’ aspect, and make the game more dynamic overall.

- I like the appeal system, but it doesn’t quite cover it. I think there needs to be something where grasslands change to plains and tundra and deserts expand, and perhaps some cities get hits to housing or amenities.

- I don’t think environmental change should be turned into random events. That would actually undercut the strategic aspects. So, when you place cities, the terrain should only change in ways you could potentially predict and plan for. eg if you place your city in a low land area, you’d know you were at risk of flooding.

- Here’s the catch. As much as I’d like some sort of climate mechanics, I don’t see how it would actually work in the current game. Civ has a sort of board game approach. I think that approach has made the game much better and I really wouldn’t want to lose it. For example, I think the boardgame approach makes the game easier to balance and actually makes the game feel more ‘realistic’, because it makes it easier to suspend disbelief on some mechanics.

tl;dr I’d like climate change in Civ, but can’t see it ever happening.
 
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A climate change system would be interesting. It could be determined from the number of certain districts of all civs and cities, and the adjacency effects from districts and improvements. If the number gets too extreme, it could change the yield of that tile. Does sound like appeal though. However, the only thing we'd have to deal with is the districts/city tiles themselves. Not sure if we should make something similar to nuke contamination or something.

Lastly, I'd also be great for the Alpha Centauri factions once we add them in. ;p
 
I think on balance I’d like to see at least climate change in the game, but I also really struggle to see how it would work TBH, at least without adding huge layers of complexity and potentially making the game un fun.

Just to be clear, I do think there a two different things to be represented here. One is climate change: there is no debate that the climate changes over time. It has and these changes have had huge impacts on societies.

The other is ‘human activity impacting on climate change’. Cards on the table, I think humans are clearly having an impact on climate but I’m not meaning to be controversial saying that, I don’t think this forum is somewhere to debate this issue really, and I’m not a scientist so can’t really debate the details anyway. At any rate, this second the issue is the one some people disagree with.

On the first issue, I guess tiles could slowly change type over time (eg grassland, to plains, to desert), perhaps with a lens that shows you which tiles will change next and in how many turns.

I don’t think rivers or lakes could change (dry up / move) without causing massive gameplay problems. Maybe settling on flood plains could reduce housing by 1 or 2 or slow growth. Then, as the climate changes, your city might be deemed to be settled on flood plains (reducing housing) or maybe go from flood plains to grasslands (increasing housing) depending on where you’ve settled. But that would require a change so that you can actually remove floodplains.

On the second issue, I don’t know how human activity should be factored in. That’s probably better just left to appeal. In any event, it may also not make sense to represent human driven change really. eg if you think humans are changing the climate, I think the real significant impact has only been relatively recent and most of the potential effects are (arguably) yet to be felt. I’m also not sure what you’d do about this in terms of gameplay - I’m not going to build less mines or chop less forrest if I’m going for a SV.

[edit: clarify first para]
 
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Would definitely not buy an expansion with climate change. There is so much about this game that is unrealistic why do we need to have climate change.
 
Fair call. I sort of agree too: I’m not sure the game really does need climate change for the sake of realism.

I think a map that changes over time would add another interesting dimension to the game, but I could also see how it might actually make the game a lot less fun. I’d be pretty cross if I built St Basil (Tundra Petra) and my tundra tiles starting disappearing.

Even if the game just had climate change - not human driven climate change- it feels like it would be a lot of work to implement and make work.
 
It could work if it were a relatively uncomplicated mechanism. Pollution could be reintroduced as a side effect of well developed industrial zones, commercial hubs, harbors and aerodromes. Each district could have a building that prevented pollution (e.g. a recycling center in a commercial hub, a CO2 capture facility in an industrial zone). Ignoring those buildings would lead to pollution on the map, lowering tile yields and amenities. Ignoring pollution for an extended time could lead to climate change. That way it would be preventable but could not be ignored - somewhat as it is in reality.

The problem would be forcing the stupid AI to consider pollution, because having the world plunge into chaos through the AI's stupidity would be frustrating.

Stopping at reintroducing pollution could be enough.
 
There are quite a few major events from history that aren't in the game. Like plague, slavery, soil erosion, rail roads and natural disasters. You can't have everything.
 
I didn’t express myself well in my first post. I was actually just trying to draw attention to the article TBH.

I’m not sure I am really advocating for climate change in Civ. I do think a changing map would fit with Firaxis’ ‘play the map’ philosophy. Endless Legends has a sort of climate mechanic and that seems to work. Maybe something could be made to work in Civ.

But I also think there are other things that are more important and that any climate change mechanic could really muck things up. So, I’m probably not pushing it. I agree you can’t have everything.
 
I'd like to see an Ecological victory condition added. This would be related to climate change by dealing with pollution like in older iterations of the civ series. There are plenty of possibilities around this but I would link it to a health mechanic also. The principle is sustainability with players required to have healthy populations as well as a healthy environment with a victory score measure for these. That kind of thing is a good measure of a modern society so makes sense as a victory type. National parks could play a big role, they could do with a bit of a revamp anyway.
 
Would definitely not buy an expansion with climate change. There is so much about this game that is unrealistic why do we need to have climate change.

What do you mean? Even if you deny the impact of man-made global warming, natural climate change, such as the little ice age OP mentioned, was very severe. The game could replicate this by growth of tundra tiles or chance of farm tiles failing, for example.
 
... the game is a few thousand years long and the climate changes in there (e.g. Mayan drought) arn’t Really to do with global climate change but more localised affects down to weather patterns, sunspots and so on.

OP the thread seems incorrectly titled. I was looking forward to the fact you can get 4 golden ages in a row fairly easily to instead find another thread that should really be in the ideas forum
 
The first civilization game was created in (around) 1990 and rooted in the thoughts and understanding of that time. There are a lot of variables in the model applied that we wouldn't spell out like this in our current conception of the world. I.e. the focus on cities seems debatable, but I would also put a question mark in the yields: 'Food', 'Hammers' and so on. Add to that that we added additional variables on top like religion. If you want to have "Fall"-Features such as Climate (Change) added into, the house would look very ugly and mostly depend on random chance. And that is bad, randomness kills the joy of playing a game.

So we would probably need to revisit the whole "founding principles" of civ to have the proposed features in the game in a sensible way. But I would like that.
 
tl;dr I’d like climate change in Civ, but can’t see it ever happening.
They had climate change in Civ II. if you played long enough and dropped some nukes, coastal tiles would turn into swamp and jungle iirc.
 
It could work if it were a relatively uncomplicated mechanism. Pollution could be reintroduced as a side effect of well developed industrial zones, commercial hubs, harbors and aerodromes. Each district could have a building that prevented pollution (e.g. a recycling center in a commercial hub, a CO2 capture facility in an industrial zone). Ignoring those buildings would lead to pollution on the map, lowering tile yields and amenities. Ignoring pollution for an extended time could lead to climate change. That way it would be preventable but could not be ignored - somewhat as it is in reality.

The problem would be forcing the stupid AI to consider pollution, because having the world plunge into chaos through the AI's stupidity would be frustrating.

Stopping at reintroducing pollution could be enough.

Yeah, there would be some simple changes to be done without even having to bring back the old "remove pollution" button from civ 2, was it?
-Every tier 2/3 building (university, factory, power plant, etc.. ) generates pollution points. Maybe neighbourhoods do too, or maybe just population after a certain amount (ie. every pop above 10 provides 1 pollution point)
-Pollution accumulates in a city (like war weariness). Every 100? points, your city loses 1 housing due to pollution. Maybe every 400 points you lose an amenity as well.
-National parks reduce pollution by some amount as well. Maybe you also have forest tiles reduce the pollution in a city as well, to give another reason not to chop them.
-Add some new buildings (recycling centre, mass transit, etc...) that reduce pollution points by a lot. City parks would also reduce pollution too, and you can think if there's other improvements that could as well. Maybe you have some civics that reduce pollution as well (something like "-10% production in all cities, but all cities get -5 pollution points per turn" or whatever balance works).

I have it only affecting housing and amenities, which means maybe you have enough of them that you don't care. But by having a basic system that builds up over time, it works in having it as a minor nuisance earlier on, but if you let it continue, your most developed cities will need to do something to combat it. You could also have cities with pollution issues also have negative appeal on any tiles around them, so your seaside resort next to your heavily polluted capital won't be a huge attraction unless if you can clean up the pollution :)

And with a system like this, you don't have to worry about tiles changing, or sea levels rising, or any other more drastic and controversial changes. It's a simple modifier that basically only kicks in in the modern era, and might be a nuisance although not game-breaking if you ignored it.
 
What do you mean? Even if you deny the impact of man-made global warming, natural climate change, such as the little ice age OP mentioned, was very severe. The game could replicate this by growth of tundra tiles or chance of farm tiles failing, for example.
Because its unpredictable, I didn't say that I don't believe in global warming. I just don't care to play a game that has disasters like this. I just don't see why anyone would want to play a game where your land can be randomly sabotaged.
 
The thing about incorporating climate change into the game is that it would need to be based on total global CO2 output (not just your civ's) if you wanted to make it realistic. Though this might make for some interesting diplomacy.

However, civ only goes to year 2050 and the effects of climate change wouldn't likely be in the game long enough in order to make it that big of an issue in terms of game play.
 
It existed in Civ IV I think as a result of nukes going off. Tiles would change from grass to desert.

A series with more extensive terraforming than Civ 6 is Age of Wonders. There are some basic examples of how you could handle it there, although probably not on the same scale.

Possibly the easiest way to do it would be for desert and tundra tiles to be capable of spreading. That might be super unfair to the civs that start near those regions though.
 
the article is bad and global warming is a bad mechanic, it was terrible in every game except maybe civ 2 where it was just something for workers to do post-game
 
I don't think the game needs to model climate change. If anything, it would come too late in the game to make any real difference. The real question that the article raises which I think is a far better question is should the game do more with the rise and fall idea? I think civ has always been very conservative when it comes to implementing rise and fall mechanics for fear that it would demoralize the player too much. The Rise & Fall expansion adds golden and dark ages but still makes the dark ages "good" so that even in a dark age, the player will still feel like things are ok. The devs admitted in one of the live streams that they wanted to make sure that dark ages did not cause the player to quit the game. If you make the rise and fall mechanics too severe, you run the risk of just frustrating the player and having them quit the game. For example, if a natural disaster cuts your population down significantly, or if a horde of barbarians suddenly show up and capture several of your cities, the player would probably get demoralized and just quit.

My suggestion would be add more things to the game that don't necessarily involve rise and fall per se and would shake up the game and keep things interesting especially towards the end. For example:
- Replace goodie huts with more minor civs, a step below city states, that you could trade with, fulfill quests for, conquer etc... Have some minor civs be quite aggressive while others would be more peaceful. Also, have these minor civs pop up throughout the game in any area left uncolonized.
- Have special events pop up throughout the game similar to civ4 that would require you to make decisions that could entail both positives and negatives.
- Make the loyalty mechanic a bit stronger so that cities can flip a little bit easier if you don't provide enough amenities.
- Have some natural disaster but make sure they are not too strong.
- Have some barbarian uprisings but not too strong. Have "terrorist" uprisings in the late game instead of barbarians.
- Have techs or civics cause a positive or negative sentiment among your population, possibly including civil unrest.
- Maybe have the government of your neighbor affect your population. For example, more pop unhappiness if you are an authoritarian government and your neighbor is a democracy.
 
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