Environmental choices

[tR1cKy]

Yes, there is not a consensus about the magnitude of the mess. But there is a consensus (at least among scientists not paid by corporation, strangely) that it will be at least a BIG mess.

Sorry Akka, but this is environmentalist propaganda.

And about the "perhaps", Texan General didn't expressed simply his disagreement, he flagged the very idea of environmental problem as "propaganda" and told that it was unrealistic.
That's ignorance at best, willfull idiocy at worst. Fact is fact.

And this is intolerance against people not sharing your point of view, being it correct or wrong. Can't you express your disagreement with someone without insulting him?

 

[Akka]

It's not a "point of view". It's FACT. Environmental troubles are existing and plentiful and quite serious. It's not a matter of opinion. The only point that is left to opinion is how grave they will become in the future.

And I'm not insulting him. I'm simply stating that if he says that the existence of severe environmental troubles is unrealistic and green propaganda, then he's ignorant.
No insult here, just a fact. Stating something false out of lack of knowledge is ignorance. If I say that USA has 45 states, I'm wrong out of ignorance. That's it;

 

[tR1cKy]

No, there's still a lot of uncertainity about what it will be its actual consequence on the climate. It's not only a matter of magnitude. Pollution on the higher atmosphere is shielding the solar rays, resulting in a minor exposure to the sun of certain regions. Then, there's a probability that ice cap melting will cause a cooling effect on the ocean and modify or disrupt the gulf stream, thus actually frozing Europe. Other streams can also be affected. This mix of heating and cooling effects is the cause of the uncertainity. You are still confusing actual facts with your personal beliefs.

About you not insulting him, may i remind you the words "willful idiocy" you used just 3 posts ago?

Anyway, we're threadjacking. If you're really interesting in the debate, how about opening a new thread in the OT section?

 

[Che Guava]

Alrighty, then let's bring it back to something I think most people will agree does occur: land degradation. The use of virtually any terrain, grasslands, forests, etc, is going to slowly deplete the resources you harvest if not done at a rate smaller than the replacement rate. one of the things that kinda bugged me about civ use of land is that there is no difference gradient of use: you simply use a tile and get the same resources from it, unless you advance government type (!?).

What I propose is that you can set more than one citizen or 'head' on a tile. Each time you add one, however, you get a little less back. For example, the first citizen you put to work on a grassland would return 3 food per turn, the next 2, and the next only 1. Same might apply to forest resources, or mining. The downside would be that every citizen you put to work would increase the chance of that tile being degraded, meaning that it would return less food per citizen ,and finally change terrain type (this probability would also lower depending on what technology you have availible). As I mentioned in my earlier post, this might be a good leveler of empires, since ancient cities might deplete thier resources quickly to get ahead, then crash by mideval times when they can't feed thier capital. Some might call it a big annoyance and a hinderance to gameplay. I would call it using more foresight in your games...

 

[tR1cKy]

This is quite an interesting idea. But i would limit the max citizen per tile to 2, or a floodplain (as an example) will become too powerful, hampering game balance.

 

[Che Guava]

...i would limit the max citizen per tile to 2, or a floodplain (as an example) will become too powerful, hampering game balance...

Absolutely! I think for a lot of these ideas to work, the relative importance of resources would have to be tweaked. Maybe instead of limiting the number of citizens to 2, you could increase the amount of food required to add a city point. Either way, I think 3 citizens per tile would still work out. A floodplain, for eg, when irrigated produces 4 'foods' . Putting three citizen on it would produce 9 (4+3+2) per turn, an average of 3 per citizen per turn who would otherwise be on another tile getting resources there...

On the other hand, with the addition of city health, perhaps the focus on food/population will be outdated anyway. A city that explodes in population is likely going to crash after using up its fresh water and spreading the plague!

 

[TruePurple]

And about the "perhaps", Texan General didn't expressed simply his disagreement, he flagged the very idea of environmental problem as "propaganda" and told that it was unrealistic.

That's ignorance at best, willfull idiocy at worst. Fact is fact.

. . . Exactly, and my post was in kind, not a "personal attack on texan general" like you characterize it tR1cKy, but to his arguement. I never brought his momma into things or any other such.

. . . "You got your head stuck up your ass if you don't think environmental issues are real." Thats a general statement not a personal attack, anyone who thinks environmental issues are the imaginations of a select few scientists and doomsayers, has turned a blind eye to the issue altogether, intentionally ignorant. Which "head stuck up ass" is another (granted more animated) way of saying such. I might have been bothered to say it nicer if Texan General hadn't thrown nasty words around like propoganda.

. . . As far as misspelling names, hardly. Alot of funky names on a message board I like to abbreviate them and I don't bother with spelling so much because memorizing said spelling is an unnecessary pain. I'm sorry if you personally find it insulting, I shall try to remember to cut and past your name for my posts, if your nicer to me then you have been.

. . . If anything, you calling me a troll, characterizing my replies as personal attacks and making pronouncations about my intent to insult by mispelling names etc and knocking my thread off topic is trolling or borders on such. Something I am willing to look past since I'm sure you didn't mean to cause trouble and probably believe how your characterizing things. Either way, please stop calling me a troll and characterizing my replies as "personal attacks"

*edited in*
.. wrote this before I saw page 2. I see you guys moved on, still wanted to say some things in response to the troll accusation though so I'll leave it. Please respond via PM or another thread or something.

 

[TruePurple]

What I propose is that you can set more than one citizen or 'head' on a tile. Each time you add one, however, you get a little less back. For example, the first citizen you put to work on a grassland would return 3 food per turn, the next 2, and the next only 1. Same might apply to forest resources, or mining. The downside would be that every citizen you put to work would increase the chance of that tile being degraded, meaning that it would return less food per citizen ,and finally change terrain type (this probability would also lower depending on what technology you have available). As I mentioned in my earlier post, this might be a good leveler of empires, since ancient cities might deplete their resources quickly to get ahead, then crash by medieval times when they can't feed their capital. .

Good ideas with the same principle of my previous ideas in this thread.

. . . As far as more pop heads working the tile, sure. Though I see no need for diminishing returns, at first, since in the first age a pop head would represent the least amount of people. (please read my pop growth ideas) As a matter of fact if you didn't apply more then 1 pop to work a tile you might only get a portion of the return of the tile. Remember, no need to use civ3 scale of things. Or its standardized bonus square method. Bonus squares could be land thats extra furtile, till its used enough. Likewise food units will be more plentiful with people needing more of them per turn.

. . . As far as things like mines, those should simply run out, till better technology is discovered which allows for additional resources to be found. But I don't speak of the civ idea of a mine which can be built almost everywhere and causes items to be completeted faster.

. . . As far as turning into another terrain type, only if thats a nonstandard terrain type like "fallow land". Since things like desert is something different entirely and not realistic. I'm not sure the point of it turn into another terrain type, perhaps you could explain it to me?

. . . I still believe environmental techs should be involved. Even the standard civ material like aqueducts and irrigation (which has strangely never needed a tech) are environmental techs of sorts as well as things like better farming methods for less land fatigue/better production and human waste management techs (like toilets). Following different parts of the tech tree depending on environment needs and desired strategy could make for interesting game play. Latter on environmental techs could represent what we normally think of them as, like biodiesel which would allow you to use food in place of oil for example.

. . . Not to mention things like swamps and other terrain effecting things (please see link in sig)

 

[sassoundwave]

well no one can prove that if we would not have environmental pollution that the global warming would not take place.
I think it is just the normal routine of nature.

I also dont quite understand the alarming sounds like "the most wet summer since 1973" and then refering to pollution etc...doesn't such sentence implicate that in 1973 there was a wetter summer.
So it just has nothing to do with pollution or other green talking.

I just don't buy it, especially not as the people who do, keep being persistent about being right. They look to similar to religious fanatics to me.

But that is just my 2 cents.

 

[apatheist]

Let me ask you this: do you disagree that something specific like climate change is happening due to human action in the real world right now, or do you disagree that such a thing can happen at all due to human action? i.e., do you say that it's impossible for us to affect the environment like that, or that it's just not happening in that particular case as some say it is? Suppose we put our minds to it and said, "Ok, we want to make the Earth's average temperature higher." Do you think we could if we wanted to? If so, then surely you can concede it's possible we could do so accidentally or through negligence, without conceding that's what's happening today in the real world. If you don't believe we can affect the environment at all, either intentionally or otherwise, well, I don't know what to say to you.

 

[tR1cKy]

First, sorry for having contributed to drive the thread off topic. I owe it, although i have already expressed the need to continue the debate elsewhere.

For the rest, TruePurple, i'll try to take you seriously, although i doubt it's worth the effort: when in a previous occasion i have questioned your "bad" behaviour asking for an explanation you happily ignored my post and went on as nothing has happened.

Now, despite your request to continue the discussion via PM or elsewhere, let me point out that it's here that you did your attacks, here i exposed your trollish behaviour and here you denied it. I honestly think that the right place to reply is here, so people can read the whole thing and judge it. This means that i'm gonna threadjack a little more. Sorry for that. People not interested in what i have to say on this issue can ignore what follows from now.

TruePurple, are you realizing that a good percentage of your posts contains personal attacks against people? Can't you realize that it's not necessary to "put your momma into things" to offend someone? Can't you stop it and treat others with politeness and respect?

You ask for politeness where you're the first to be abusive and offensive with others. This is trollish behaviour. You put up excuses to justify your words, claiming that they're not attacks but something else, and this is trollish behaviour. You edit out your questionable posts after people have read and replied and after moderators have warned you because of them, and this is trollish behaviour. And about this:

if your nicer to me then you have been.

If i interpret it correctly, it would be "you're" and not "your" and "than" and not "then". And so the sentence would be "If you're nicer to me than you have been". Well, this is trollish behaviour because it contains an implicit lie. It drive people into thinking that i was disrespectful with you first, while in reality it's the exact contrary. In this thread you asked for advice, i tried to give it and you replied with silly and useless sarcasm. That's how the whole thing started, don't you remember?

You (and others) may want to know why i put so much effort in tracking down your questionable behaviour. Probably someone will think to me as a "wannabe paladin of justice", or something likely. Well, nothing like such crap. The reason is much simplier. I find this place quite useful and quite friendly. I learned a lot of things here and owe a lot to many experienced players who gave me advice. And so, when i see one of your kind attacking others, well, it's unpleasant. Simple as that. It's like feeling the smell of rotten fish, or walking onto a horse poo. It's unpleasant. It's disgusting. It breaks the friendly and nice sensation i usually have visiting CFC, like a smelly fart that covers the wooden perfume of my room and forces me to open all the windows when it's damn cold outside.

You don't like to be called a troll? Fine. Then, stop being a troll. Stop being abusive with others. Stop with personal attacks. Stop with silly sarcasm against people. Don't try to misrepresent things. Don't edit out your posts after people have replied to them. Start being polite and respectful and i guarantee you that no one will call you a troll. Or, if you can't resist the urge of acting like a troll, do it in a forum different from my preferred one. There are a lot of places in the internet where you can abuse, offend or belittle as many people as you want. Places i never visited and i will never visit. Pick any of them and you'll see no tR1cKy breaking your game. Continue being a troll here and i'll expose you every time i have the misfortune to stumble upon one of your trollish posts. And if you don't like the thing, feel free to complain to the forum's administrators.

tR1cKy

PS: sassoundwave and apatheist: here is the right place to continue the debate.

 

[Akka]

well no one can prove that if we would not have environmental pollution that the global warming would not take place.
I think it is just the normal routine of nature.

We only have all the data going in the same direction, but I guess that's no proof enough

I just don't buy it, especially not as the people who do, keep being persistent about being right. They look to similar to religious fanatics to me.

But that is just my 2 cents.

People who are fanatics, are usually people who stay in their wishful thinking against all reasonable odds.
As global warming IS happening NOW, and, "coincidentally", the quantity of gazes what could create a global warming (rise in CO2, methane and so on) is ALSO growing NOW, and, even more "coincidentally", the rise of temperature ALSO started when the human started to launch huge amount of these gazes in the atmosphere...
And same "coincidences" can be found with the ozone layer and CFC-like gazes rejected in the atmosphere...
And acidic rains and amount of polluting gazes...
And changes in undersea biosphere and polluting garbage been thrown in the same area...
And so on...

Well, when I see all these FACT, and someone who say "hey, we don't have proof it's human-created, it's simply the natural course !", I know who is more likely to be a blind fanatic and who is not

 

[Che Guava]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I delve into civ to get away from reality! I know global warming is a very important topic, but if you have a strong opinion about it, put it in tR1cKy's new thread, and leave the civ threads as civ threads. Sorry for the rant.

Back on topic, in response to TruePurple's comment, I do think that if you were to put more citizens to work on a single tile you should experience dimishing returns. Not necessarily because of population differences in 'heads', but just because the more people you have working the land, the more marginal areas you have to use. I think this would probably be true for forestry and mining as well...

I do agree that env'tal tech's should come into play as well, including different 'branches' that you could explore for resource harvesting, even earlier on in the game. Just take a look at the different ways in which agriculture has developed in europe as opposed to china. WHile I don't have any hard evidence to support it, I do think that different systems would vary in terms of efficiency, both in the long and short term. in gmae play this might be represented by a difficult choice early on: adopt a less efficient agriculture system now and have it last longer, or squeeze everything you can out of the land, and hope that that advantage can get you more territory to replace the land you may be ruining. More strategy, no?

 

[frekk]

Alrighty, then let's bring it back to something I think most people will agree does occur: land degradation. The use of virtually any terrain, grasslands, forests, etc, is going to slowly deplete the resources you harvest if not done at a rate smaller than the replacement rate. one of the things that kinda bugged me about civ use of land is that there is no difference gradient of use: you simply use a tile and get the same resources from it, unless you advance government type (!?).

I agree ... things like salinization of topsoil due to irrigation *still* haven't been solved. There probably isn't a solution (though perhaps you might be able to slow the process a bit, but it would probably be very expensive to do and so defeat the point of irrigating in the first place).

What I propose is that you can set more than one citizen or 'head' on a tile. Each time you add one, however, you get a little less back. For example, the first citizen you put to work on a grassland would return 3 food per turn, the next 2, and the next only 1. Same might apply to forest resources, or mining. The downside would be that every citizen you put to work would increase the chance of that tile being degraded, meaning that it would return less food per citizen ,and finally change terrain type (this probability would also lower depending on what technology you have availible). As I mentioned in my earlier post, this might be a good leveler of empires, since ancient cities might deplete thier resources quickly to get ahead, then crash by mideval times when they can't feed thier capital. Some might call it a big annoyance and a hinderance to gameplay. I would call it using more foresight in your games...

I like it. There should also be a few other subtle effects (like, if you are in plains area next to a desert, and you chop down the few forests that are there ... helllloooo Sahara)

Similarly they should bring back *some* of the terrain modifications that you could do in civ2. It's probably unrealistic to be able to tear down whole mountain ranges, but it's certainly possible (at great expense) to reclaim desert sometimes.

 

[tR1cKy]

Akka, your opinions are welcome here.

 

[HourlyDaily]

I have very little respect for the radical extremes of the 'green' movement, but in principle the moderate advocates are right. Global leaders (Google it) have recently commented that they now know is real, yet Bush remains strangely silent - Oil capital of the country maybe? Won't sign a car fuel emissions limiting bill? Need I say more?

Texan General - I know this is only a games forum and people at least agree with you about the game not being weighed down with such heavy stuff - but don't ever post that environmental problems are propaganda, that point of view is beyond comprehension and I'm normally receptive to anyones point of view. Texas really is its own country.

 

[sassoundwave]

Let me ask you this: do you disagree that something specific like climate change is happening due to human action in the real world right now, or do you disagree that such a thing can happen at all due to human action? i.e., do you say that it's impossible for us to affect the environment like that, or that it's just not happening in that particular case as some say it is? Suppose we put our minds to it and said, "Ok, we want to make the Earth's average temperature higher." Do you think we could if we wanted to? If so, then surely you can concede it's possible we could do so accidentally or through negligence, without conceding that's what's happening today in the real world. If you don't believe we can affect the environment at all, either intentionally or otherwise, well, I don't know what to say to you.

I don't say it is impossible. What I do say is that it seems that the green people only consider human factor as a possibility. And that is what I challenge: I return your own question back to you

If there were no humans, wouldn't the earth have global warming as well?

 

[tR1cKy]

@Che Guava: i was thinking about a tile like a wheat floodplain. Tossing there many citizens is in my opinion too unbalancing. However, the thing can be calmed down by putting a severe land deterioration factor into it. Something that allows you to exploit the wheat FP for a while, but hits you with a severe penalty on it if you exploit it too much.

Anyway, thinking about it, there's a problem: programming an AI that takes into account these possibilities. I don't know if the problem can be easily solved or not. Any opinions?

@HourlyDaily: your opinions are welcome here.

 

[Goblin Fanatic]

The thread is called 'enviromental choices'.
So let's drop the global warming thingy, it's for some reason a political issue for US people.
The most basic enviromental choice that any nation would face is:
Factories pollute air and water, an industrial city is likely to have less growth and fod production.
That could be implemented by factories decreasing the 'health' stat.
Easy enough to mod if it won't be included...
It would be nice if you could get extra happines for having national parks as suggested in a different thread.
Another thing would be that factories in a city make terrain around it worse, destroy forests, turn grassland into plains, etc.
Fish and animal resources could dissapear too.
If global warming *is* to be implemented, there should be a diplomatic option to pay/force other countries to stop polluting.

 

[Che Guava]

... It's probably unrealistic to be able to tear down whole mountain ranges, but it's certainly possible (at great expense) to reclaim desert sometimes.

Yeah, I think that's what Isreal is in the business of doing these days. Terrain improvements should come back, I agree, but I think only at late stages in the game. It seems to me that reclaiming deserts has only actually worked in the last 30 or so years....correct me if I'm wrong!

there's a problem: programming an AI that takes into account these possibilities. I don't know if the problem can be easily solved or not. Any opinions?

While I'm the last person who should be giving out advice on programming (I get so jealous when I hear about people being able to mod so easily!), I do beleive that it wouldn't be too hard to get the AI to understand. If, for example, you had a formula to calculate when degradation was likely to occur like so:

SUM[(C*S)/T]=PD

C=Citizens working the tile
S=Sensitivity of terrain (how prone to degradation)
T=Technology (env friendly techs bring it up, unfriendly tech's bring it down)
PP=Probability of degradation

where (C*S)/T was given every turn you use a tile and summed up to give a probability of that land getting degraded while you use it (the longer you use it, the more likely it becomes), the AI could calculate how long it would take for land degradation to become a real possibility, calculate how much food/resources/etc it could obtain from it, and decide whether it would be worth it in terms of net resources to intensify production on that land (Resources per turn*turns until degradation). If you lived in a desert with one floodplain tile, it would make sense to get as much as you could out of that one area. If your city was surrounded by grassland, it would make more sense to spread it out a little.

But here's the clincher: AI's with different personalities would react differently to the same decision. How? By limiting thier foresight. An agressive leader would still calculate how long it would take to degrade a particular area using the formula above, but might only take the first 30 turns into account. Presumably, a warlord like Ghenghis khan would only be interested in building up a city quickly to support an army, then move on to another area with fresh resources. A builder leader, like Ghandi, realizes that his cities will be there for the long haul, and would make the same calculation, taking into account the next, say 60 turns. He might take a more conservative approach, save his resources and grow slow but steady.

I hope all this makes sense! I'll try to come up with an easier explanation....

...The most basic enviromental choice that any nation would face is:Factories pollute air and water, an industrial city is likely to have less growth and fod production.That could be implemented by factories decreasing the 'health' stat...

I have a feeling that is exactly how civ4 will be dealing with city/factory emisisons now that pollution is gone. Still brilliant! What I really hope this adds to the game is the notion of "I CAN build it, but SHOULD I build it" when in comes to city improvements like factories and coal plants. I'm not sure if I would be totally happy with factories turning grasslands into plains, but I think I could be convinced.

What I'd really like to figure out is a possible model for water pollution affecting cities 'downstream'...