[GS] Climate change mechanics

[Victoria]

I am writing up a Global warming guide though so welcome any thoughts or input.
One question on that, let’s say we have volcanoes saying 40% active and number of megacolossal per game = 5 how do you think that works?
It is not a thread for how it could be made better. Will update what I have here

Global Warming
Global warming is affected by using the resources Coal, Oil and uranium.
It is also affected by deforestation.

Deforestation
Note: deforestation is not fully tested and includes some assumptions.
Deforestation is the removal of forests and jungle from the map. The % of the map deforested is calculated at the end of each turn and applied to the carbon footprint produced for that turn.
Deforestation levels are as follows

0-9% deforested = -20% carbon footprint
10-24% deforested = 0% carbon footprint
26-39% deforested = +10% carbon footprint
40-49% deforested = +30% carbon footprint
50%+ deforested = 50% carbon footprint

Resource Use
When you build a unit that requires Coal, Oil or uranium that resource is applied to global warming.
At the end of each turn, the amount of Coal, Oil and uranium used to maintain units is applied to global warming.
After Unit maintenance is assessed and resources removed power plant resource usage is calculated.

Resource Effect on Global Warming
Each unit of resource produces an effect on global warming called its CO2 footprint.
This footprint is calculated for each resource using the formula

number_of_resoure_used * KW/H_of_Resource * Co2_of_resource / 1000 = CO2_footprint

Each unit of coal is 4(KW) * 820(CO2) / 1000 = 3.28 carbon
Each unit of olis is 49KW) * 490(CO2) / 1000 = 1.96 carbon
Each unit of Uranium is 16(KW) * 48(CO2) / 1000 = 0.768 carbon

Climate Change
Climate change has 7 phases, 8 if you consider the start oif the game as phase 0 with no change.
Climate Change increases the sea level, melfts ice and also increases the chance of natural disasters occurring.
Sea levels rise in two stages, flooded and submerged.

rise1 severity1 iceloss10 climatechangepoints3
rise2 severity2 iceloss20 climatechangepoints4
rise3 severity3 iceloss30 climatechangepoints5
rise4 severity4 iceloss40 climatechangepoints6
rise5 severity5 iceloss55 climatechangepoints7
rise6 severity6 iceloss70 climatechangepoints8
rise7 severity7 iceloss85 climatechangepoints9

Each 1000 carbon gives 1 climate change point
A climate setting in the game of 102 gives 1 climate change point

Natural disasters
All disasters increase in chance by 20% per degree of temerature rise.
1 Meter Coastal Lowlands flood at rise2 and submerge at Rise 4
2 Meter Coastal Lowlands flood at rise3 and submerge at Rise 6
3 Meter Coastal Lowlands flood at rise5 and submerge at Rise 7

Realism Settings
When you start a game you have a realism setting from 0-4
0 MINIMAL
1 climate change point is applied at the start of the game
45% of volcanoes are active at a time and eruptions damage 1 tile
1 LIGHT
1 climate change point is applied at the start of the game
60% of volcanoes are active at a time and eruptions damage 1 tile
2 MODERATE
1 climate change point is applied at the start of the game
70% of volcanoes are active at a time and eruptions damage 1 tile
3 HEAVY
1 climate change point is applied at the start of the game
80% of volcanoes are active at a time and eruptions damage up to 2 tiles
4 HYPERREAL
2 climate change points are applied at the start of the game
95% of volcanoes are active at a time and eruptions damage up to 2 tiles

Carbon Recapture
A carbon recapture project is possible after discovering Global Warming Mitigation civic and must be run from an undustrial zone.
Upon completion of the project it reduces the lifetime carbon emissions of that civilization by 50 carbon. You can have more than one carbon recapture project at a time.
A Carbon Recapture projects costs 400 production.

Volcanoes
Volanoes can be in the states dormant, active or erupting. There is a % chance of a dormant volcanoe becoming active, once active it will eventually erupt.
An erupting volcano may pillage or remove improvements, can damage fortifications, garrisons, and can cause population loss. Wonders are not affected by volcanoes.
When a volcanoe erupts it can also enrich tiles with food, production, science and culture.
The volcanoes Kilimanjaro and Vesuvius have specific settings in the game.
Realism settings 3-4 allow volcanoes to have a two tile radius of potential effect rather than 1.

Floods
Floods mat occur on aqny times adjacent to any river
An flood may pillage or remove improvements, can damage fortifications, garrisons, and can cause population loss. Wonders are not affected by volcanoes.
You can prevent flooding by byuilding a dam but each river can only have one dam.
The Great Bath wonder will also prevent flooding.
When a river floods it can also enrich tiles with food, production, science and culture.

Storms
Various storms affect different areas of the map
All storms may pillage or remove improvements, can damage fortifications, garrisons, and can cause population loss. Wonders are not affected by storms.
Blizzards
occur in snow or tundra
Significant blizzards affect 7 tiles
Crippling blizzards affect 19 tiles
Sandstorms
Occur in deserts
Gradient sandstorms affect 3 tiles
Habob sandstorms affect 7 tiles
When sandstorms have passed there is a chance they have increased food or production.
Tornadoes
Occur in plains and grassland
Family tornadoes affect only a single tile
Outbreak tornadoes affect 3 tiles
Hurricanes
Occur only in ocean
Category 4 hurricanes affect 7 tiles in a circle
Category 5 hurricances affect 19 tiles in a circle
After a hurricane has passed there is a chance affected tiles have increased food or production.

Droughts
Droughts occur in plains and grassland and will be centered on a tile with at least 4 adjacent plains or grassland tiles that do not have a feature but they may extend to larger areas.
A drought will affect food yields in affected tiles by 1 while the drought is occurring.
All farms, camps, plantations, pastures, Mekewap, outback stations, and cahokia mounds will be pillaged and there is a chance they will be removed by extreme drought.
A city with an aqueduct, dam, bnath district or stepwell will not suffer the -1 food but will be affected by other effects.
Improvements cannot be rebuilt or replaces wihile the drought is still occurring
Major drought lasts for 5 turns
Extreme drought lasts for 10 turns.

Disaster occurrence
It is unknown precisely how these work but here are the settings

 

[Infixo]

One question on that, let’s say we have volcanoes saying 40% active and number of megacolossal per game = 5 how do you think that works?

What numbers are you referring to? From World Climate screen or some .xml parameters?

 

[Victoria]

What numbers are you referring to? From World Climate screen or some .xml parameters?

RandomEvents.xml
BTW, letting off nukes has 0 effect on climate change It does not even use a unit of uranium. That was used at creation while realistically it should only effect climate when used.

 

[Infixo]

@Victoria My understanding is that the climate and random events systems are mostly unrelated, except very few cases where the climate changes increase the frequency of some events (droughts and tornadoes? not volcanos afaik).
RealismSettingType - this is the setting from the startup screen. OccurrencesPerGame - seems obvious. I don't know if this is scaled with the game speed? If not, then the density of events per x turn would be 2x higher in online speed and 3x lower in marathon.
PercentVolcanoesActive, I assume you are talking about field from RealismSettings. I think this is used for map generation. Not every volcano on the map can erupt. So: all volcanos -> a subset can erupt -> different categories of events
I hope the engine does well with probabilities, so in the end the distribution of events should be close to parameterized occurences.
Here I don't know if named volcanos (features) are counted against that number. They have their own events, so I would assume that rather not.

PS. Maybe start a separate thread for that topic, it is a bit unrelated to this one?

 

[Victoria]

PS. Maybe start a separate thread for that topic, it is a bit unrelated to this one?

Agreed.

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Separate thread created.

 

[Takfloyd]

I hope climate change will get expanded a bit in patches. As it stands the only significant effect is the sea level rise, which is not all that impactful. We need to see some inland effects as well. At the very least, we need tundra tiles to melt into plains, which could open up new lands for settlement and conflict. But since that would be a mostly positive effect, they should also balance it out with desertification around the equator. Another good change would be disappearance of reefs, since that's a very relevant impact of climate change these days, with the Great Barrier Reef having been greatly damaged by warmer waters.

 

[gunnergoz]

I would absolutely LOVE for Civ to evolve into a climate change simulator. If not the main game, at least a well-done, comprehensive scenario.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I would absolutely LOVE for Civ to evolve into a climate change simulator. If not the main game, at least a well-done, comprehensive scenario.

I've posted a bit on this before, but it deserves saying again:
IF the game is going to include Climate Change, then climate should not only change at the end-game: the entire 6000 years of climactic mini-cycles needs to be modeled, so that 'climate change' is not limited to the part of the game that you don't get to in many games. Sea levels have been going up and down, glacial/tundra areas expanding and contracting, desertification taking place, sea ice expanding and retreating - all events that could have a significant effect on your play in a given area at a given time. Many of them are also, like the apparent current game model, Impossible to do anything about except recover from them - the technology certainly did not exist to do more than build higher dams or find new routes bypassing now-iced-up passages.

This would also allow us to have another mechanism in the game that I would love to see: Micro-Climate or localized climate effects on Barbarians. Numerous theories have been advanced that climate change started Barbarian Migrations or invasions. Many have been debunked when better science showed a lack of evidence for any climate change where it was expected, but, hey, the game isn't accurate historical or scientifically anyway, so why not?
Tundra/Ice start advancing in one area, so the Barbarian Camps start spawning in greater numbers just ahead of the tundra/ice edge, or start spawning units faster. Deal With It: it might be time for Your Empire to go on the defensive for a dozen turns or so until the 'cycle' goes the other way.
Desertification could have the same effect on boundaries, and shorelines have been sinking/rising throughout history, resulting in now-dry harbors or protecting seaside cities that are Going Under (like, for example, Alexandria in Egypt, of which the classical city's harbor area is almost entirely 15 - 30 feet under water now). Deal with it, and have to deal with it in the Classical or Medieval Era instead of ignoring all of it until the last 10 - 20% of the game.

Then, having established Game Long Climate effects, we could also add Pollution/Human Depredation effects to the game.
Examples:
Burning coal to heat cities resulted in the Pea Soup "London"-type fogs of the 19th century - and a much higher death rate in those cities from lung diseases.
They burned coal because every city that needed heating chopped down every forest within a days' ride/walk/drive of the city for firewood, unless some big guy on a horse with weapons and friends declared it His Hunting Preserve and shot anybody that came near the woods with an axe. Whether you 'chop' or not, your Population will, over time. Chop enough trees near a desert, and the desert will expand, adding, probably, even more problems to solve or deal with.

So, yes, let's 'simulate' Climate Change and Pollution and all those effects, but don't just think it is a 'Information Era' set of effects, and spread some of them throughout the game.

That means, though, we've first got to figure out how the game files are handling the 'climate' effects they have now, and how easy/insane it would be to change the time parameters or sources of 'change' to earlier events and situations.

 

[Infixo]

It is not a thread for how it could be made better

After reading 2 posts above: well, that escalated quickly

 

[orasis]

I would like to know how units and mines effect C02 output. It seems that regardless of what we do - as long as we've mined coal/oil ... we're going to hit the limit, even without power-plants or units making use of the aforementioned.

I've posted a bit on this before, but it deserves saying again:
IF the game is going to include Climate Change, then climate should not only change at the end-game

That's crazy talk. The climate has always functioned like clock-work. It's been the same on every calendar day, ever, forever.

 

[Victoria]

I would like to know how units and mines effect C02 output

Mines do not make any difference, only using resources and deforestation.
An ironclad will use 1 coal per turn, a destroyer 1 oil per turn, a GDR 3 uranium per turn.
1 coal = 3.2 carbon and 1 K carbon is a global warming point.
Mine the stuff until you are full and beyond, but unless you burn it you warm nothing.

After reading 2 posts above: well, that escalated quickly

There is a whole forum for suggestions, I just want to get all the info needed to write a manual and it would be nice if one thread was not littered with suggestions for how Firaxis could change things.

 

[Abaxial]

I don't understand why uranium should affect climate change; it's not a fossil fuel.

 

[L4Psha]

I don't understand why uranium should affect climate change; it's not a fossil fuel.

There is some logic behind this. The construction of power plant itself can have indirect CO2 output and also other facilities which process nuclear waste. Maybe that's not a steady output but it will add unnecessary compication in game mechanics.

 

[Roy P Cat]

Resource Use
When you build a unit that requires Coal, Oil or uranium that resource is applied to global warming.
At the end of each turn, the amount of Coal, Oil and uranium used to maintain units is applied to global warming.
After Unit maintenance is assessed and resources removed power plant resource usage is calculated.

Resource Effect on Global Warming
Each unit of resource produces an effect on global warming called its CO2 footprint.
This footprint is calculated for each resource using the formula

number_of_resoure_used * KW/H_of_Resource * Co2_of_resource / 1000 = CO2_footprint

Each unit of coal is 4(KW) * 820(CO2) / 1000 = 3.28 carbon
Each unit of olis is 49KW) * 490(CO2) / 1000 = 1.96 carbon
Each unit of Uranium is 16(KW) * 48(CO2) / 1000 = 0.768 carbon

I am under the impression that as building railroads also uses carbon, that each railroad tile built contributes to climate change. What I am not sure about though is whether the climate change is just a one off contribution when the railroad is built, or ongoing.

 

[Victoria]

just a one off contribution

One off, the coal is consumed at track laying, you do not see continuous coal usage.
Basically one of the three resources consumed is the only direct contribution of carbon.

 

[Troy Bruckner]

I am late to this thread, but having played exclusively on Marathon since expansion launch until yesterday where I played on standard speed I must say I am shocked at the implementation of how the polar caps melt. It is virtually impossible to build flood barriers without massive deforestation or Valletta Suzerain status after one phase of melt. It's like Al Gore was part of the design team and it's 2015.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

RandomEvents.xml
BTW, letting off nukes has 0 effect on climate change It does not even use a unit of uranium. That was used at creation while realistically it should only effect climate when used.
View attachment 521221

It is easily possible to re-enable it. the Carbon recapture can be inversed by giving -50k value (instead of 50) which in turn GENERATES free Carbon Emission, so with Lua , I plan on adding a significant Co2 emission from WMD detonations.

Can the 7 stages be increased to more stages in any wya? I couldn't find any Data for that.

 

[Abaxial]

It seems to me to be a perfectly viable strategy just not to build coal power plants. The last two games I played I had no global warming at all.

 

[Zenstrive]

Even if you don't build power plans, your modern war machines requires oil which will add to carbon emission. Also railroads.