Climate change Idea

[narmox]

Games before Civ5 had this global warming and tiles turning into deserts, especially the more pollution there was and the more nukes were used. It was deemed a non-fun feature and removed in Civ5 and beyond...

 

[MistyRonin]

Games before Civ5 had this global warming and tiles turning into deserts, especially the more pollution there was and the more nukes were used. It was deemed a non-fun feature and removed in Civ5 and beyond...

It would be a nice feature to recover, together with corporations.

 

[Ryika]

I know Firaxis probably won't go for this but maybe the game should have a "climate change" feature in the late game where certain tiles change to desert, coastal tiles turn to water tiles etc to add a sense of urgency. This would force the player to hurry up and win because they know that time is not on their side and if they wait too long, their cities will deteriorate, making victory harder. I just think that a sense of urgency is needed in the late game so that the player is not simply coasting to victory. I know it is a different game completely but XCOM2 has the avatar timer that creates that sense of urgency and the final mission gives the player that one big final challenge to overcome and it makes the win more satisfying.

Most people probably wouldn't like this though, it severely takes away from the openendedness of the game that especially people who lean more towards the roleplaying-side of things than towards strategic play would find extremely restricting, so I don't think it would be a good way to fix the problems. I still remember from Civ 2 how I hated when Civs on the other side of the map made my land become more and more deserted, without really giving me a way to act against it (at least that's how I felt, I was a child, so who knows how accurate that perception was).

I do think climate change and stuff like that would be great "fillers" for the late-game though, but not as a way to force the game to end, but instead to add challenge to what would otherwise be a cruise towards victory. Climate change could be the new "enemy" that enters during the later stages of the game, and forces you to fight against, devote resources to, even if the actual players on the map haven't been able to keep up with you for a while.

Ignoring Climate change could even be a loss condition; "The world has become deserted, humanity as a whole has failed. As the remaining people try to survive on the barren planet, corporations take power and gather the people under their lead."

And then, a few years later a patch alters text of that message, adding "Around the colonies that remain a faint hope manifests on the horizon: An operation dubbed 'The Seeding' promises to free humanity from the strangles of the lost planet." - signaling the GLORIOUS ARRIVAL of Beyond Earth 2, as the game that the first one was supposed to be.

 

[gunnergoz]

A game expansion that featured climate change, population health, UN-type assembly politics, perhaps corporations & global economy might be a real winner if done right. Space race & religious victories are kind of boring to me.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I do think climate change and stuff like that would be great "fillers" for the late-game though, but not as a way to force the game to end, but instead to add challenge to what would otherwise be a cruise towards victory. Climate change could be the new "enemy" that enters during the later stages of the game, and forces you to fight against, devote resources to, even if the actual players on the map haven't been able to keep up with you for a while.

That is exactly what I am talking about.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Climate change isn't quite as interesting because it isn't a good "enemy" it doesn't target the leader.

What I'd like to see is 'Nationalism' as an late game challenge.... when people talk about wide being viable and talk about the massive empires of the British, Spanish, French, Mongols, Soviets, even Alexander ... all of those broke apart internally... even the American one almost did, and that was all self founded.

Basically if you have a big empire late game you need to
1. go to war constantly with yourself (like the Soviets did for a while)
or
2. make major sacrifices in 'victory progress' to maintain stability (trade/science/gold/faith/production/culture is less efficient because you have a complex bureaucracy so that everyone gets a share and has their culture respected.)

 

[Ryika]

Climate change isn't quite as interesting because it isn't a good "enemy" it doesn't target the leader.

Climate change can be a great vessel for mechanics that target the leading players the most with a bit of creativity. While the changing climate itself does not discriminate, the reactions within the population of the countries certainly do - the more advanced a country, the more the population "rebels", the more it tries to make the country give a damn about climate change.

So not working on changes at a reasonable pace could make your population become uneasy, stagger your empire's productivity, etc. etc. - while smaller empires don't have these effects, because their populations simply don't have the privilege to care about such things. Aside from giving you stuff to worry about this is also rubberbanding that feels natural.

I actually think that's a lot more interesting than just adding more stuff to fight with units.

 

[HF22]

Climate change can be a great vessel for mechanics that target the leading players the most with a bit of creativity.

The other reason climate change would be much better in Civ VI is that now terrain is supposed to matter more. All those adjacency bonuses built up by a leading civ can be messed up, and trailing civs could get improved terrain (the climate changes could even be programmed to target leading civs - world could get hotter or colder / dryer or wetter depending on who it helps).

Really, Civ VI seems tailor made for a climate change / World Congress expansion.

 

[MistroPain]

With the new Continents mechanic, climate could be affected in specific continents rather than globally. This way you, as a player, can react to your surroundings. If your aiming for a tourism victory you could try to prevent climate change on your continent, without needing to worry too much about what is going on, on the other side of the world.

 

[MkLh]

Climate change was a dreaded mechanism in Civ4 and not a bit interesting strategically. No matter what you did, it could not be avoided effective (others would build those coal plants anyway) and it punished every civ equally. It was possibly the only thing Civ5 did better (by removing it). No thanks!

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

With National Parks and land Appeal a thing right from the beginning, my senses tell me Firaxis has something up their sleeves when it comes to climate change. I'm OK with it as long as it can be disabled in the advanced menu.

 

[Verenti]

I quite like how Call to Power handled pollution. I mean, mechanically. The AI didn't really know what to think about it and the game didn't really give to player a concrete idea of how to lower pollution output (besides building new buildings). But the game handled it well. I wouldn't be upset if a lot of ideas from CTP found their way into mainline civ.

 

[Amrunril]

Climate change could be an incredibly interesting mechanic if handled well, with powerful buildings, improvements and resources contributing to a global tracking system. The trade off between short term economic benefit and longer term environmental effects [which could include sea level rise, conversion of tiles to desert and biodiversity loss (perhaps represented as reduced tile appeal)] is interesting in its own right, but the diplomatic implications are equally fascinating. Players would suddenly have a reason to care what their neighbors are doing with their own resources in their own land, and different civs might have dramatically different priorities based on their geographic positions and playstyle choices. A player with lots of coastal/island cities and heavy investment in national parks would want to stop climate change at all costs, while an inland player with rich reserves of coal and oil would feel somewhat less urgency. A player with ice-locked cities might even want to encourage climate change. All of this would provide dramatic incentives for late game conflict and cooperation and provide new issues for a hypothetical world congress to consider.

 

[outlaw22]

It does sound interesting. I like the idea of a rising sea levels causing a continents map to possibly turn into a island map late game. But it seems pretty predictable as this is likely to happen every game so it would be something everyone would prepare for every game. Maybe add a possibility for the opposite effect like an Ice age to occur that expands tundra tiles from the poles towards the equators and possibly lowers sea levels. This way it is impossible for players in the ancient era to prepare the entire game for global warming. I mean if i know global warming can happen when i am in the ancient era i could just settle all my cities inland and push for global warming and watch the AI get destroyed.

 

[Amrunril]

It does sound interesting. I like the idea of a rising sea levels causing a continents map to possibly turn into a island map late game. But it seems pretty predictable as this is likely to happen every game so it would be something everyone would prepare for every game. Maybe add a possibility for the opposite effect like an Ice age to occur that expands tundra tiles from the poles towards the equators and possibly lowers sea levels. This way it is impossible for players in the ancient era to prepare the entire game for global warming. I mean if i know global warming can happen when i am in the ancient era i could just settle all my cities inland and push for global warming and watch the AI get destroyed.

I do see how advance knowledge could be something of an issue, but I don't think it would be an insurmountable one. Knowing in that CO2 emissions will result in climate change isn't inherently any more of an issue than knowing in advance that there are civilizations on other continents to trade with or knowing in advance that theoretical physics will lead to the ability to construct nuclear weapons. The key is to make sure that incentives and trade offs are structured to prevent taking to much advantage of this knowledge. You could build exclusively inland, but this would mean forgoing lucrative maritime trade. You could forgo using fossil fuels, but this would mean falling behind dramatically in production. You could research alternate energy sources as possible, but only if you're willing to delay techs related to victory conditions or key military units. Additionally leaving the AI to the effects of global warming could be a risky move, when their cities start to flood or their farmland starts to desertify, they may decide they want your land and cities instead, especially if they consider you responsible for the crisis.

That said, having some variability in the magnitude of the effects might be a good idea. On Earth there's enough water stored in the ice caps to flood plenty of islands and coastal regions, but not to convert the planet from a continents map to an island map, so to speak. The hypothetical worlds civ is played on might have more or less water in their ice caps, though, and this might not become clear until late in the game. An opposite, ice age effect would be harder to justify scientifically- it just isn't the effect our technologies are having, and natural shifts aren't remotely fast enough to serve as a comparable late game force, but I suppose you could treat some subset of cooling effects as a representation of nuclear winter (making global warming and nuclear winter alternate outcomes to builder games and massive endgame wars).

 

[Knasp]

I think it would be wonderful to add global warming in the late game, to add a difficult challenge which breaks the boring predictable linearity of progress. You could have it as an option/mod so that you can choose to play without it if you find it annoying. Civ isn't just about conquering or going to space, you're supposed to build a Civilization "that will stand the test of time".

Of course a global warming expansion or mod needs to add more gameplay. You need some kind of world congress, diplomatic climate change agreements, social policies and probably an additional victory condition. Or you could simply have it so that a Time victory requires all remaining Civs to cooperate if they wish to survive. Maybe there could be prestige victory (competition) about who can reduce their emissions most and sequester carbon most. I'd say that any game wishing to simulate the future (based on our current situation) needs to deal with several challenges.

Challenges (problems to solve):

• The ongoing massextinction of flora and fauna. The worst case scenario would be the disappearance of for example bees and important pollinators, making agriculture incredibly work intensive and increasing the risk of droughts and famines. This could be represented by a global reduction in food yields, that has to be overcome by inventing GMOs and other various technical solutions, and of course reducing emissions. Also, overfishing is currently a big problem in a lot of ocean and coastal areas. Some scientists argue we need to stop using large scale fishing fleets and go back to smaller scale fishing.

• Increased desertification and soil degradation due to intensive agriculture and reduced precipitation in a lot of areas. This could be represented by overall reduced food yields, plains turning into deserts, grasslands turning into plains, forest regrowth reduced in these bordering areas. The players would have to reduce their emissions to limit the rate of change, and adapt by big technical infrastructure programs, improved hydrological management. Reduce/alter production of goods that require lots of water, like Cotton and prioritize stable Food production.

• The melting of land-bound glaciers will reduce the more or less stable water supply for some of the world's largest rivers, leading to more and more drastic water shortages, in turn leading to droughts and starvation. This could be represented (in-game) by all tiles adjacent to rivers getting minus to food. Today's "current" of refugees is nothing compared to what you'll be seeing in 10-50 years. In the game this could be "random" movements of population from cities that have drastically reduced food yields to cities close-by, leading to overpopulation in those cities (not enough happiness/amenities/housing etc), leading to unrest.

• Many dry places will get drier, some tiny and (agriculturally) insignificant cold wet places will get slightly warmer but also a bit more wet (like Northern Scandinavia). In the game you'd have some Tundra turning into plains, and snow into tundra, sea ice features will start to disappear. (Of course IRL we're talking about the winter's oceanic ice sheets lasting for shorter durations.). Some northern or southern plains could turn into grasslands, of course not those closest to the equator/Mediterranean.

A suggestion for game mechanics:

How do you represent emissions and the rate of climate change? I guess you could have an "invisible" value, which accumulates points for all Civs actions.
So every coal and oil resource with an improvement will add to this sum, every turn. The oil and coal consumption (and thereby emissions) can be calculated by multiplying the population of every city with the number of coal/oil that is improved within its border, +1 for every citizen assigned to work such an improvement. Every turn you'd accumulate more "points" and the rate of climate change would depend on how high the current sum has gotten. If a city doesn't have any oil/coal itself but has any or both traded from another city or Civ, it would also contribute.
Depending on tech, additional buildings and improvements would multiply the number of emission points.

Example:
A city of 10 population could add emissions by:
Each oil or coal resource improved= 1*10
Each oil or coal resource worked = 1*10
Each industrial district with a factory or power plant = 1*10
With motorized agriculture, every farm = 0.5*10
Every motorized mine = 0.5*10
Every tourism point could add as well.
Other buildings/districts also...

Edit: Read up on nuclear weapons and they don't contribute to warming, my bad.

Apart form coal/oil/fossil fuels you can also take land use into account. Every forest/jungle tile that has been chopped/replaced by district would add points to the Emissions sum.
The effects of global warming would lag behind, meaning that even though you increase the rate of emissions, you wouldn't see the effects right away. You'd have to establish certain threshold levels that bring effects. Once a higher threshold is reached, the rate of climate change (bad stuff) increases.

So how would you win this Prestige victory? Or at least reduce emissions (the increasing sum of emission points)?
Replace old improvements, remove those which bring a lot of emissions, tech, stop working certain tiles, modernize or reduce your army/fleet, plant forests/restore wetlands, new buildings/improvements to sequester carbon, new social policies which reduces Wealth/Gold/Food/Production output in exchange for reduced emissions. And so on...
Every action that reduces your emissions (the addition for each turn) and the total sum accumulated (sequestering carbon) would give you Prestige points.

For more info on climate change, I really recommend checking out SRC (Stockholm Resilience Center) and their director Johan Rockström. He's a climate scientists, not a politician, and talks a lot about Planetary boundaries (the environmental and ecological limitations we had to cope with).

http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html