Environmentalism: when to use it?

[Cookie Crumbs]

I have never found any use for Environmentalism. Food corporations can be used to offset unhealthiness, you can build the electric wonders to trade for health resources, and you can always go knock some heads to take them by force.

 

[Howard!]

My favorite use for enviromentalism is to get the AIs off of State Property. I have a good corporation (/one that won't benifit them) I build up the executives, say up lots (and lots) of gold. Use the UN to get enviromentalism through, and roll in the money!

 

[Ball Lightning]

I use it in a game where i don't have much health, and it would give me 5-7 more health per city, or a coal plant.

 

[Howard!]

My grandmother saw some ball lighting in a storm a few years back...

That's another very good use for it.

 

[Milly]

I tend to use it late game due to the unhealthiness issues... I'm not one who really likes seeing that food penalty.

 

[gnosticgnome]

I used it sometimes when 3-4 AI's sent spies every few turns to poison my cities. Other than that, i didn't find too much use for this civic

 

[Roxlimn]

Environmentalism is a Civic you use to save up on research time. Essentially, it allows you to spam Factories, Coal Plants, and Industrial Parks without having to snag Hospitals, Recycling Centers, and other latter game health techs and buildings.

Paired with the occasional Forests, Forest Preserves, and Windmills, it's a great Civic for going to war or boosting production for some other purpose. Granted, you can wait the 25+ turns of lower population until you can snag the health techs and buildings, but why bother? Get the Industrial Revolution going and conquer the world already.

 

[CivDude86]

It useful as economic weapon as stated earlier. By allowing you spread your corps to the entire world and making them pay more for it you can slow them down at bit (and they'll likely build more units if its mining/create con causing them to spend more ). If you need some more votes to secure a UN win you use it along with farm spamming to speaze some more pop of your cities.

 

[Ihmemies]

I always use enviromentalism, because I don't have enough health to counteract the penalties from factory, industrial plant & coal plant.

Usually I need as much production I can get as fast as possible, so I can't wait later to get more health-friendly buildings instead of those.

 

[Conanski]

Environmentalism (my personal favorite) is the strongest civic(yes it is also the latest) especially on high levels where unhealthy kicks in early.
One word:big cities. Big cities= more specialists>> more gold, more science, more GP more everything! Also the windmill bonus is nice in non production cities. Also the timing could not be better because you have just gotten biology before getting environmentalism so your cities will grow like mad and you need the health bonus.

State property is only important with large empires(distances important, not number of cities). However in BtS you can make colonies so it has become less important.

Free market is like state property a financial civic (only it increases income instead of reducing costs). Still state is better for production purposes.

 

[Wacky]

I rather beeline for recycling center and keep SP.

Specialy with lots of rivers, Levee/dike with SP and watermills is huge

 

[Stalker0]

In most games, I just can't see the advantage to environmentalism. You can't so much out of free market and state property.

Personally I wish they had just left out the +25% corp cost with enviro. There's no need to balance out its benefits, the benefits are balanced by oppurtunity cost with other civics.

However, there is one scenario where I love enviro, and that's for the one city challenge. You can get such a high population that the health might really be worth it.

 

[lordqarlyn]

Don't know, don't use it, never intend to.

 

[Hammurbabble]

I always end the game with all my civics across the bottom: Universal Suffrage, Free Speech, Emancipation, Environmentalism, Free Religion. When I switch to these and why:

Universal Suffrage - when I'm far enough ahead in tech and the build from the hammers in towns plus being able to buy rush becomes more important than the three extra research points per specialist of Representation. Very late, usually.

Free Speech - immediately on reaching Liberalism. No reason not to, really.

Emancipation - immediately on reaching Democracy. Very good reasons TO, I think!

Environmentalism - when my cities are getting so big that they're going into bad health no matter what I do. That's especially important in BtS, where unhealthiness with big pops seems to be worse than it was in vanilla. DO NOT blow off bad health! Bad health = slowed growth, plus you lose some production and commerce because you have to put more people into producing food to compensate. Big cities = more specialists, a good thing. So the answer is, pretty late, but not as late as U.S.

Free Religion - as soon as I finish the war I'm either building towards or in the middle of fighting every time I hit Liberalism. Until then, I stay with Theocracy for the better troops.

BTW I think maybe that need to compensate for lost food is the reason why switching to Environmentalism is often a moneymaker (unless you do it earlier than you should).

Everyone should bear in mind that Sid is himself a raving greenie, as anyone who's played Alpha Centauri can attest. So naturally Enviro is going to be a very good end-game tech.

 

[pxpdoo]

Used to never use it, but was in a "health" pickle this one time...
WOW.
I've never looked back.

 

[Morgrad]

I used it once to eek out .1% population when that was all I needed for a domination win. That was funny.

I've used it to increase population in cities by that one or two when I needed the extra votes for a UN victory (when I've already decided not to go get votes the pointy-stick way).

Overall, it's OK - if you hit a scenario where those extra couple population are going to benefit you more than the lost commerce then it's worthwhile. Otherwise, not so much.