Climate changes

[pletiplot]

I dont like the concept of the global warming in Civilization IV. The newest research shows that the global warming (global climate changes actualy) is not the last period effect, but the climate changes through the ages and affected all the human kind, the agriculture and finaly the number of wars. Let's see this article: http://www.pnas.org/content/104/49/19214.full

In Civ IV there is a stable climate, until the nuclear age which brings some desertification. No hunger from climate changes.

Is there some mod, which does climate changes through history?

 

[lindsay40k]

Climate Change is so bizarrely handled, I've ended up using it as a weapon. Pollute, chop, nuke, and run a Sushi-powered Specialist Economy.

 

[SyntaxError]

My recommendation is K-Mod, which redid the global warming mechanics to be more realistic than retail BTS.

 

[damerell]

Climate Change is so bizarrely handled, I've ended up using it as a weapon. Pollute, chop, nuke, and run a Sushi-powered Specialist Economy.

Quite. It combines the "everybody takes the penalty, might as well play defect" problem in real life with the fact that, in the game, you _really_ don't care if the entire world is desert - provided you have the biggest chunk of desert, and ideally a monopoly on Sid's.

I'd like to see it made into more of an effective game mechanic; as warming worsens, civs would be more likely to switch to Environmentalism, with diplomacy penalties if you don't, or if you have a high hammer output. So, switch to a cottage-and-windmill knowledge economy and have peace... or stay in hammers and crush them with Modern Armour? At the moment, the real issue with it is that it doesn't really make the player make any choices.

 

[pletiplot]

Modern science says that climate was changing through the whole history. It is not just warming after industial era. Rome best age around 0 AD was in wet and warm weather, but in 5. century climate got colder and dryer, price of food grown and the barbarians were pushing more, Rome fell down. few centuries later temperature gronw again and in 10th century there were missionaries in Greenland and had sheep, but in 15th century there were too cold to maintain it. And finaly, if you read the article I referenced in first post, there is more examples through the world. IPCC forecast seem wrong. So I just don't like that system that modern human activity triggers global warming. Global climate changes were through WHOLE HISTORY and were both directions, but Civ don't reflect it at all. Is there some mod which does?

 

[mattio]

Modern human activity does not -start- climate change, but it does -affect- it, and dramatically. Just because the climate has been slowly changing for thousands of years does not mean humanity is without blame; what we are doing is turning a one-thousand-year cycle into a one-hundred-year cycle. That makes us neither safe nor blameless.

Anyone who thinks differently needs to do more homework. Naiveté is neither attractive nor helpful.

 

[damerell]

Modern human activity does not -start- climate change, but it does -affect- it, and dramatically. Just because the climate has been slowly changing for thousands of years does not mean humanity is without blame; what we are doing is turning a one-thousand-year cycle into a one-hundred-year cycle. That makes us neither safe nor blameless.

Without engaging with the nuts, I think it is worth noticing that (as I thought the OP originally meant), if it's a thousand-year cycle, we ought to see six of it in a game of Civ. Although this would be a far more ambitious mod, it would be nice to see the effect of the previous cycles in-game.

 

[lindsay40k]

I've wanted to see a Civ type game where you get ice sheets, oceanic ridges that veer between land and shallow water, mild continental drift. If you lack oceangoing tech, cities on different continents become new civs if ice and land bridges fade away.

Built Atlantis and it sank? Tough luck.

 

[jokulmorder]

one thing i hate about global warming in this game is that it is started for the wrong reasons. launching tons of nukes would indeed create a climate change... in the other direction. there is a reason it is called "nuclear winter" and not "nuclear summer". it should be the construction and use of units and buildings that use fossil fuels and subsequently release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that cause global warming, not launching nukes that spread dirt into the atmosphere and block out the sun...

it could be kind of funny actually. in order to counteract global warming, you could launch tons of nukes. and to counteract global cooling, you could build tons of coal plants over your hydro plants! makes 3GD much less useful

 

[damerell]

I agree, although the difficulty with that would be that the two effects would not simply cancel out - a world with a nuclear winter cancelling global warming would still see enormous undesirable change. So the implementation would have to be quite clever.

 

[pletiplot]

Modern human activity does not -start- climate change, but it does -affect- it, and dramatically. Just because the climate has been slowly changing for thousands of years does not mean humanity is without blame; what we are doing is turning a one-thousand-year cycle into a one-hundred-year cycle. That makes us neither safe nor blameless.

Anyone who thinks differently needs to do more homework. Naiveté is neither attractive nor helpful.

I did many homeworks and I still can't see how much people affect the climate. I saw many graph and articles which sayed yes and other graphs and articles, which sayed no. I saw many articles which proved that other articles was a lie. The forecasts issued ten years ago did not fit the current state. So my conclusion is the impact on climate is smaller than the politicians tell us, because the carbon lobby is strong and CO2 allowances is a good bussines.

However the climate discussion is beynd this forum. This shoud be about the climate in Civilization, not in real life.

 

[damerell]

So my conclusion is the impact on climate is smaller than the politicians tell us, because the carbon lobby is strong and CO2 allowances is a good bussines.

Whereas, as we know, multinational oil companies are desperately impoverished and have no prospect of doing any lobbying at all.

However the climate discussion is beynd this forum.

You've just been discussing it. Hypocritical, much?

 

[calibur]

You've just been discussing it. Hypocritical, much?

Perhaps, but is it so wrong to want to bring a thread back on track, even if you participated in the derailing?

 

[damerell]

Perhaps, but is it so wrong to want to bring a thread back on track, even if you participated in the derailing?

It never was on track - it started with the conspiracy theories. All the posts that are just about the Civ game mechanic have been by people other than the OP (including me).

 

[mattio]

However the climate discussion is beynd this forum. This shoud be about the climate in Civilization, not in real life.

I agree, and I apologize about snapping like that. Climate change is a sensitive subject for me, largely because there's so much half-baked horsehockey from half-informed shitheads who think they're in the know, and the idea of the whole concept flying out of humanity's hands kinda worries me a tad.

However, that being said: "The newest research shows that the global warming (global climate changes actualy) is not the last period effect, but the climate changes through the ages and affected all the human kind, the agriculture and finaly the number of wars."

Your first post. Anyway, with regards to the game, I find Global Warming to be so poorly handled, from a technical perspective, that I just disable it. It seems to me to be a totally arbitrary and extremely inconvenient way to force progress towards the end of the game, and I don't feel the need to play with it.

 

[pletiplot]

Anyway, with regards to the game, I find Global Warming to be so poorly handled, from a technical perspective, that I just disable it.

I think you hit the point.