[TOT] [Civ2] Global Warming - how to avoid

[Mariusz1]

I had a global warming in 2008. As I got several saves (for 2007, 2008, 2006...), I could move back some tim - is there anything I can do to avoid this warming?
I know all this Mass Transport/Recycling center/Solar Plant etc.
But I got all of this stuff, and for 115 cities I got 21 Solar Plants now (5 more under construction).
There was a nuclear war anyhow some time ago and there are still 5 cities surrounded by pollution. I am cleaning it with 5 engineers (1 more each turn), but maybe that's too slow? And still I got like 10 cities to conquer - whenever I capture a city, there is an enormous amount of pollution. I need to buy mass transport immediately ($640), but it gets built only after it pollutes everything for 1 turn....
I tried to start again in 2006, bought 3 solar plants close to those polluted cities but in 2008 there was again a global warming...

Anything to do, or this battle is just lost...?

 

[Key-key-jar]

Hi,
The battle might not be lost ! You should attach your save so we can try it on our own.

If you want all the details, see https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/pollution-explanation-by-request-from-supernaut.765/

But long story short :

_Wipe tile-pollutionon as quick as you can (it's the one that produces global warming). That is the main point. If there are too much of those on the map, it may be too late to save your planet.

_Avoid creating more. Which means : No more nuclear devices ; reduce the amount of pollution produced by your cities (the yellow triangles, in case you didn't notice). You likely don't need to put Solar
Plants nor Mass Transit in every city you own, and they are quite expensive. Build SP in the cities producing a lot of shields, and MT in those that are densely populated. You can also reduce the amount of shields produced until the amount of pollution stops going down. If that isn't enough, sell (costly) buildings, and buy more MTs (as the production-generated pollution can be lowered manually).

_In you future games, don't let this kind of stuff happen, or be prepared to live in a Globally Warmed nightmare, which can be fun
To do that, don't pollute, clean your mess, or at least keep an eye on the Global Warming risk icon (the sun, somewhere near you amount of gold). It gets bigger when the risk grows... So it is possible to keep a "reasonable" amount of pollution without ever suffering a Global Warming.
If you have a hard time distinguishing the three stages of the warning (which I did for many years ), you can change the icons in... Icons.bmp !

 

[Mariusz1]

You should attach your save so we can try it on our own

I needed a while to find out how to dig my saves out of my Win98 VM
Here they are:
https://nofile.io/f/gTdkyCVHgJV/ce_a2001.SAV
https://nofile.io/f/40x6PQbzAYp/ce_a2002.SAV
https://nofile.io/f/Js6XzhpXZz5/ce_a2003.SAV
https://nofile.io/f/W9SSUNCfcAF/ce_a2004.SAV
https://nofile.io/f/pZgCpscHogH/ce_a2005.SAV
https://nofile.io/f/D7Eu50jS2Qq/ce_a2006.SAV

_Avoid creating more. Which means : No more nuclear devices ; reduce the amount of pollution produced by your cities (the yellow triangles, in case you didn't notice). You likely don't need to put Solar
Plants nor Mass Transit in every city you own, and they are quite expensive. Build SP in the cities producing a lot of shields, and MT in those that are densely populated. (...)

_In you future games, don't let this kind of stuff happen, or be prepared to live in a Globally Warmed nightmare, which can be fun
To do that, don't pollute, clean your mess

I always do that, No idea, why global warmiong happend this time. It seems like AI was the driver, but to help that I'd have to conquer them like 100 years earlier, or more... :|

 

[Major Advantage]

Global warming occurs when too many tiles of the whole world map are polluted, regardless who or what caused the pollution. Not sure what the threshold is, we had a GOTM a few years ago with a lot of polluted tiles on a far-off island (which was quite interesting btw, global warming also makes gems and spice appear), my guess would be it was ~5 tiles.

Mass transit, solar plant etc. reduce the city pollution (triangles in the city info window), so it is less likely (or impossible if there are no triangles) that a tile in that city's radius will be polluted during the next city-processing-cycle.

 

[Key-key-jar]

The links you posted are broken. But you can upload your files directly on the forum (button is just next to "post reply").

No luck in avoiding the inevitable yet ?

 

[Mariusz1]

Here it goes
I will try once again moving all my engineers to the polluted continent and pilling out all the pollution. The turns are so long now that I am still postponing this, though...


EDIT
I started 4 years before warming, moved 16 engineers to the polluted continent but, apparently, it is not enough. I guess I should move back in time enough to be able to pillage everything before the "current" warming date. Which is 8-10 years/turns, probably. Not sure if I wanna do it, as it means gaming for some 5 hours or more...

EDIT2
I moved back 6 years, looking forward to have all the pollution cleaned out right in the last turn before the warming. Would it be enough...? Let's se...
It is exactly 6 years before the warming that I had the last warming warning, and the warning indicator (right upper corner) became the biggest one. If I get the warming againt this time, it would mean I need to move back in time again and just give up the nuclear confrontation

 

[Major Advantage]

It takes 2 engineer's actions to clear pollution of one tile (regardless of the terrain), so either 2 engineers or 1 engineer that has already been pre-charged. Mabye this might help. How many tiles with pollution are there?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

You should always have every city on each continent linked by mass transit, so you can move Engineers around quickly to where they're needed. Use at least two at a time for the polluted tiles, and reduce your shields as much as you can until the pollution is taken care of. Sell off any improvement that produces pollution, and invest in the ones that take care of pollution. It may seem like a lot of money, but it will help the later stages of the game.

And if anyone other than you has nukes, conquer them ASAP.

Personally, I only build the Manhattan Project (or the ToT equivalent) for the Wonders points. I never actually build the weapons themselves, and I make sure I've got my cities protected in case the AI civs decide to get hostile.

If you're short on Engineers, bribe other civs' Engineers.

 

[Mariusz1]

Pilling everything out let me win this battle

 

[Ali Ardavan]

Glad you finally managed to avoid global warming Mariusz1. Global warming is brought on not just by how many polluted tiles you have but also by how long they have been polluted. Thus cleaning up quickly helps postpone global warming. The safe threshold of polluted tiles, I believe, is 9 and below. Like Valka, I never build Manhattan (other than for points at the very end of the game). Nukes are too messy and too expensive both in terms of pollution and in terms of defense (building SDIs). For late game opponents my top choice of weaponry is the stealth fighter. One stealth fighter can usually kill all the defenders in a city. Have a few of those on hand and you can break down massive defenses. For inaccessible cities, once the defenses are gone, drop a paratrooper and conquer the city.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

At some point, if my opponents haven't discovered Railroad, I just give it to them. The more rail lines they build, the easier it is for me when it's time to conquer them. I can hit and take over several cities in a single turn, using a combination of spies and whatever else I have (since I play ToT, it could be a lot different units than are normal for ordinary Civ II; dragons are very handy, for instance).

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Why not just weaponize it? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Like, seriously, instead of trying to kill it, use it to your advantage.

Global warming in Civ 2, all versions iirc, occurs in cycles. Instead of trying to kill it, if you leave enough polluted tiles laying around, eventually the the entire map (except for: Oceans, Mountains, Hills, and Jungles) will turn into swampland (or the ToT or scenario's equivalent) after about 10 cycles or so. For 10 GW cycles, you need the equivalent of two full city radii of polluted tiles, meaning at least 42 tiles. The Swamps will AT FIRST start showing up on your coastlines, completely filling up seaside tiles by the last cycle before the global swamp phase.

Howver, having just two cities pollute their squares fully and leave them there isnt enough. The tile the city itself can not be polluted, it is physically impossible. Founding a new city on a polluted tile automatically kills the pollution. I found this out the hard way: The warning sun/icon was at max in the final cycle before the global swamp phase. And just like that it started decreasing hy itself. I had to make 2 more tile polluted, and finally the deed was done.

The downside is that any tile eligble to turn into swamp, WILL lose irrigation/farming upon tramsition

For weaponizing GW, try this: Spare as much as you can for settlers or engineers (doesnt matter who, they BOTH can clean up pollution, but Engineer is obviously still faster). Allow the GW cycles to run their course. Maintain a defensive stance as you keep the irrigation tile loss to a minimum. Transform select desert tiles as necessary. This is important BECAUSE: any and all tiles that have a resource attached to it (oasis, wheat, etc) will ALWAYS have it no matter how often that tile changes terrain types. So those tiles with resources are best candidates, considering default transform times take FOREVER.

Eventually, the AI cities will start to suffer. They will lose population. Once they lose enough population in their cities, units with those home cities will be disbanded once their production shields max out at lower and lower thresholds. Keep up the pace in your civ, you may be able to keep losses to a minimum, especially units.

Here's the downside, sadly...

Even after Global Swamp, the GW cycles will continue *endlessly* as long as there are more than 42 or more polluted tiles. So if you leave that pollution their, any and all swamp you transform back to grassland, will keep turning back to swamp at the next cycle. But if you clean up the 42 polluted tiles, that wont happen, and you'll be able to recover more quickly than the AI, depending on how much you invested in Engineer units.

The AI will still be cheating basterds, of course. Always have been always will be. But this is one strategy to get a better hand against them. :3

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Sounds overly complicated. Why not just accumulate money, bribe their non-capital cities, and kill/conquer the rest?

And I like getting points for not having polluted tiles (at least that's a thing in ToT).

 

[Major Advantage]

I agree, there are so many ways to defeat the AI, and I am pretty sure that ALL of them are easier to accomplish than trying to provoke global warming that the human mind can handle better than the AI. You have the human mind, so you should be able to direct the game to your advantage, simply by applying knowledge of the game mechanics and the tips & tricks that are available in this forum.

 

[Key-key-jar]

I agree, there are so many ways to defeat the AI, and I am pretty sure that ALL of them are easier to accomplish than trying to provoke global warming that the human mind can handle better than the AI. You have the human mind, so you should be able to direct the game to your advantage, simply by applying knowledge of the game mechanics and the tips & tricks that are available in this forum.

It sure isn't the easiest way way to win, but it's an interesting take at playing in a different and more challenging way.

That's what I meant in my first post, when I said GW could be fun. I was, however, thinking of letting the cycle go on forever. The idea would be to develop your cities exclusively on coastal tiles, with as much sea tiles as possible, and prepare from the start for the swamp world.
You could then, at some point, let your cities produce pollution and start the global swamping, which would cripple your foes way more than it affects you, making subsequent conquest rather easy.

Not the best way to get a high score, admittedly !

@ Marius's : I couldn't load your saves, for some reason I was not able to figure...
Glad you made it

 

[Serutan]

Another way to avoid global warming is to start a new game, go into Cheat Mode, and set "Eliminate Pollution" in the "Edit Special Rules" in the "Scenario Parameters section of the Cheat menu. Then "Save as Scenario", exit and load the scenario file. No pollution, and no 'Cheat' annotation on your score.