fresh water is a finite resource

[Eyeoftiger]

I think one very big thing everyone is not looking at is the scale that Civilization is built upon and the time frame it encompasses. Managing water and its pollution (which is going to be less a part of the game anyway according to designers) is something that takes place throughout the course of time...and since 1 turn is at least 2 years (towards the end of the game, as many as 500 in the beginning) of "time," water politics become less important.

I understand real-life issues in third world countries and in the western United States and that water is a precious commodity. But this issue hasn't become a political issue or even one of concern until the 20th century. Sure, ancient cities had to be founded next to water supplies or they wouldn't survive. But the so-called "scarcity" of water has not become an issue until recent times. In the CIV world, the game is very closely reaching a conclusion by the time water politics would come into play.

Of course, you could impliment this at the start of the game and totally have an unbalanced, unfair, and totally unrealistic aspect of a great game. I don't think this has any belonging in CIV.

 

[troytheface]

fresh water a finite resource? what about desalinization plants? i know that they are pricey right now but i am sure in the future they can have like solar run desalinization plants to tap into the ....80% (?) of the earth's surface...
there have always been grim prophecies of the future all of which never came to pass- and i wonder why the oceans are salty anyway- i mean is there like salt deposits on the ocean floor or something?

 

[apatheist]

I understand real-life issues in third world countries and in the western United States and that water is a precious commodity. But this issue hasn't become a political issue or even one of concern until the 20th century. Sure, ancient cities had to be founded next to water supplies or they wouldn't survive. But the so-called "scarcity" of water has not become an issue until recent times. In the CIV world, the game is very closely reaching a conclusion by the time water politics would come into play.

Ummm... water was pretty important. Think about how many of the wars in history have been fought over land. Why did people want that land? To grow food. Land that could grow food was the most valuable. How many wars have been fought over non-oasis land in the Sahara? I'd be surprised if there was even 1. Now how many wars have been fought over land in Mesopotamia? I don't think I can count that high. Fresh water was one of the most important things to have on long ocean voyages.

What about those Roman aqueducts that are all over the Mediterranean? If water wasn't important back then, why do they exist?

What about disease? It's not just about having non-salty water, but clean water. It's only in recent centuries, with the understanding of the propagation of disease, that we've been paying attention to clean water. Before, unclean water led to epidemics, plagues, and just general lack of health.

fresh water a finite resource? what about desalinization plants? i know that they are pricey right now but i am sure in the future they can have like solar run desalinization plants to tap into the ....80% (?) of the earth's surface...
there have always been grim prophecies of the future all of which never came to pass- and i wonder why the oceans are salty anyway- i mean is there like salt deposits on the ocean floor or something?

Desalinization plants are a way to increase the supply of fresh water, but they don't create an infinite supply. Furthermore, they're a relatively recent thing, so in the game, they'd only appear partway through the modern age. They would be useful, but limited. After all, we have desalinization plants today, but there are still complicated and contentious water politics. Desalinization plants might make it worse, because they tie in even more complicated and contentious energy politics.

The oceans are salty (basically) because rain washes salt into rivers and rivers carry salt from the land into the ocean. Then the water evaporates, leaving the salt behind. Over time, all the salt on the surface of the earth washes into the ocean.

 

[GoodGame]

I'm not very knowledgeable on historical use of aqueducts for sewage, but it seems like sane use, ask long as "in" and "out" are kept separate. Perhaps the Romans were so into bath houses as surrogate 'sewage'? Or perhaps it requires too much medicine knowledge?

I think you're right to suggest aqueducts as river extensions, since that's all they are, unless combined with natural reservoirs. They should still be finite.

Like a SIM city building game, the best solution probably is to equate # of tiles irrigated with # of citizens given freshwater (above pop 6), versus the number of river tiles owned, by some equation.

Yes, I agree. Aqueducts can't just create water out of nothing. I think an aqueduct should be a terrain improvement that connects the city with the water source. If the city is right next to the water source, then there's no need. This would make it possible to build cities far away from fresh water as well, if you can build a long enough aqueduct. And, like all terrain improvements, the aqueduct would be subject to attack.

I think aqueducts and sewers should be separate things. A sewer system would be a city improvement that appears with Sanitation, while an aqueduct is a terrain improvement that you can build after Construction.

 

[Texan General]

@Apatheist- Somewhere along the line I think you have taken my comments the wrong way. I don't dispute that water is a serious issue in real life. I don't dispute the fact that industry and commerce (etc) play a huge role in city founding. I don't even dispute that this improvement would take a relatively small amount of codeing. What I am saying is:
1. Water is a serious issue in real life but this must be balanced in the game in such a way as to ensure it isn't an all encompassing issue. My point about there not being a Department of Water Affairs in the US was stating that the issue isn't so important that it has merited its own department yet and is unlikely to do so. Instead it is grouped with other issues in the Department of the Interior. I therefor disagreed with your implementation of this concept because I felt it made a disproportionately large issue in game.
2. City founding is indeed driven by commerce 95% of the time but the links to ability to found a city must be acknowledged. You yourself have stated the importance of fresh waters to cities. Without enough the population cannot grow. Las Vegas couldn't have grown because the technology/infrastructure wasn't effective enough at founding to allow more than a relatively meager amount to be drawn from its sources. The infrastructure first had to be created to allow the population to boom.
3. While I agree these improvements are no huge amount of coding or overwhelming task for a processor alone it must be taken into account that it does add to what he processor must do. We can't go crazy because our processors aren't unlimited (yet). That is why I advocate a simpler method of doing this. In order to add all the improvements you originally stated would require quite alot of coding as anyone who has ever toyed with programming knows. (I spent a year learning basic Java, a language acknowledged for its relative simplicity compared to many other forms.)
4. You missed a few thigns that I was getting at. I stated before that I would mod this aspect out myself if it was too complicated. I tied that to my statement that removing such integral aspects of a game often has many unforeseen consequences which require rebalancing on the part of the modder. This is many times a difficult task which not many have the patience or the knowhow to manage.
5. Your original proposal was just too all encompassing. Every war would have been fought at least in small part over water rights and issues. This would have been unrealistic and rather annoying. Politics would have been determined in large by who actually controlled the nearest river. The player would have been totally caught up in water and would have eventually drowned in the complexity of the issues that would have been created. We don't need that. In short I dub your original proposal: "Sid Mejer's Civilization: Water Rights". Thus the reason I advocate a simpler method.

 

[apatheist]

3. While I agree these improvements are no huge amount of coding or overwhelming task for a processor alone it must be taken into account that it does add to what he processor must do. We can't go crazy because our processors aren't unlimited (yet). That is why I advocate a simpler method of doing this. In order to add all the improvements you originally stated would require quite alot of coding as anyone who has ever toyed with programming knows. (I spent a year learning basic Java, a language acknowledged for its relative simplicity compared to many other forms.)

I do have some idea of the scale; my degree is in computer science and I work as a programmer (financial software, though, not games).

5. Your original proposal was just too all encompassing. Every war would have been fought at least in small part over water rights and issues. This would have been unrealistic and rather annoying. Politics would have been determined in large by who actually controlled the nearest river. The player would have been totally caught up in water and would have eventually drowned in the complexity of the issues that would have been created. We don't need that. In short I dub your original proposal: "Sid Mejer's Civilization: Water Rights". Thus the reason I advocate a simpler method.

Ah. Ok. I should have qualified my original statement more. I think the solution to this part might be easier than you think. Let's say water comes from wells, rivers, and lakes. Water gets used in irrigation and city population. Let's say that each citizen needs 1 unit of water and irrigation needs 10. If a well provides 10, a river 15, and lakes 20 units of water, then water sucks the life out of every other element of gameplay. On the other hand, if a well provides 100, a river 1000, and a lake 10,000, then water is so cheap and plentiful as to be almost the same as it is in the current game. Finding the balance between insignificant and all-consuming that makes water an important and satisfying part of the game may just be a matter of fiddling with those numbers till you get something that feels right.

 

[Kurioku]

The various civ games have treated fresh water as an infinite resource. Once you find a single source of fresh water, you can basically irrigate your whole civilization. I think water should be treated as a limited resource. People in cities consume some water. Irrigation consumes more water. You can get fresh water from rivers, lakes, and desalinization plants. If you take water from a river, there should be less available downstream. It should be possible to take all of the water from a river, thus drying it up for anyone downstream. You should be able to drain a lake in a similar fashion.

Perhaps to simulate this aesthetic, a river tile in reference to city building and provison may supply x amount of utilization perturn. Though I think, after the balance sphere of the game, this is already implemented as food, commerce and production output. The ability to supply vast reaches of demand simply illustrates societies ability to improvise new technology and methods for supplimenting greater demand via improvements. which in turn means nothing really needs to be changed here, unless you want many other areas of gameplay affected on account that the balance will need shifting to adjust to this proposal of input.

 

[Texan General]

Frankly, you haven't changed my mind. I still think this needs to be included but limited to a relatively simple method. Interesting to know you're a programmer though, I'll have to keep it in mind so that I don't look so much like an idiot in the future.

 

[apatheist]

Frankly, you haven't changed my mind. I still think this needs to be included but limited to a relatively simple method.

You're completely correct. The mechanism I sketched out is too tedious. To me, that just means that we haven't thought of how fresh water should work, not that it can't work.

Interesting to know you're a programmer though, I'll have to keep it in mind so that I don't look so much like an idiot in the future.

It's all right, I'm not very good and I don't know what I'm talking about.

 

[Kurioku]

I do have some idea of the scale; my degree is in computer science and I work as a programmer (financial software, though, not games).



Ah. Ok. I should have qualified my original statement more. I think the solution to this part might be easier than you think. Let's say water comes from wells, rivers, and lakes. Water gets used in irrigation and city population. Let's say that each citizen needs 1 unit of water and irrigation needs 10. If a well provides 10, a river 15, and lakes 20 units of water, then water sucks the life out of every other element of gameplay. On the other hand, if a well provides 100, a river 1000, and a lake 10,000, then water is so cheap and plentiful as to be almost the same as it is in the current game. Finding the balance between insignificant and all-consuming that makes water an important and satisfying part of the game may just be a matter of fiddling with those numbers till you get something that feels right.

yes and to keep that balance "feeling right", this is displayed as :food, production, commerce: The food(which is surely why water is important for suppliment and all) you get x amount of food poetential from rivers, lakes, oceans etc... THEN, auqeducts, fisheries, irrigation and wells as you put it(which extract underground sources) are the examples of improvments to how vastly many sources linked by terrain developement that may look like one source, feeds such demands. How do you think dessert and inland cities stayed so well nourished in roman times.
The improvements simple multiply that base tile statistic of potential amount.

 

[Skybuck]

Water is very important for irrigation so I agree it has to be included in Civ 4. Mostly for irrigating etc.

However cities could create wells etc... to dig for water etc... but this would only be enough for a small population

Bigger cities need lot's of food and that food needs to come from irrigated plains

No water, no food, starviation, population decrease etc =D

Lovely

 

[Pacifist]

Hi!

Before I begin, I'd just like to point out that I am not much of an expert in programming nor am I in matters related to water related issues in reality and history. I am though, a big fan of the Civilization franchise and any ideas that could improve/benefit it I support willingly and I see potential in this idea put forward. I donot think my thoughts would have much impact on the game's final release but such is the way of things, but I'll voice them anyway.

Civilization is already such a complex game with many rules. Although its not a necessity to learn every single rule to play the game and have fun, it is beneficial to the player to understand these fundamental principles in order to maximize the gaming experience. From reading the many threads in this amazing forum, I can see many have gone through a lot of trouble in finding the specifics to many unexplained game mechanics. This idea of fresh water being a finite resource should not complicate it any further.

The problem with the way water is implemented in the game is NOT in the food/production/commerce bonuses it gives nor is it the improvements that directly or indirectly connects to it. In fact, I believe someone here has already made a very good point about it (see 1st quote below). As some of you have mentioned (and I completely agree) is how irrigation works prior to researching the TECH advancement allowing workers (settlers in previous Civ games) to irrigate without nearby fresh water (rivers, lakes, etc.). The problems lies where ONE fresh water tile can be used to irrigate unlimited number of terrain tiles (ones that can be irrigated). In the early stages of the game, once you have found fresh water (i.e. a tile with a river), you can create an irrigation chain that has no limits. In fact, ONE tile with a river is enough to support all available tiles that can be irrigated, therefore the whole world can have fresh water just from that single fresh water source, which is ridiculous. I know this is a very, very, very improbable scenario but it is NOT impossible. Can you just imagine all the civilizations sharing that one tile with a river? Not a very likely scenario I know but its there none-the-less. I believe this should be addressed in following "Civilization" incarnations, whether it be Civ4 or anything else down the track (I can wish, can't I? ).

I believe their is a good solution put forward here already (see 2nd quote below)

The original proposal, I must agree with everyone, that it is too complex. This "finite fresh water resource" idea, in my eyes, has merit. It just needs a way for it to be implemented into the Civilization game mechanics, as simple as possible, without breaking it, so to speak.

Another idea I would like to put forth is having certain improvements that is linked to "water" (aqueduct is the only one that comes to mind ) have prerequisites to building it. The prerequisite I propose is to have an irrigated square within the city's radius before it could be built, much like the "Hoover Dam" wonder requiring a river, I believe, within the city's radius.


BTW, I'm new to this forum so let me know if you find something I shouldn't be doing so I donot repeat it in future

-Pacifist-
The Peaceful Civ Gamer, who wants every city in his empire to have every possible improvement and wonders

Perhaps to simulate this aesthetic, a river tile in reference to city building and provison may supply x amount of utilization perturn. Though I think, after the balance sphere of the game, this is already implemented as food, commerce and production output. The ability to supply vast reaches of demand simply illustrates societies ability to improvise new technology and methods for supplimenting greater demand via improvements. which in turn means nothing really needs to be changed here, unless you want many other areas of gameplay affected on account that the balance will need shifting to adjust to this proposal of input

You could, I suppose, create a maximum radius that water could be brought out from its source. For example, I have a river with a city 7 spaces away. The maximum distance I can irrigate out to with my current technology is 3 spaces. That means I cannot irrigate into the city's radius currently but 10 turns down the road when I discover <insert water tech name here> I can get water out to a distance of 8 spaces so my city has water. This would keep cities in the early game near sources of water (Historically accurate!) but in the later game as technology becomes better we could be building in deserts (like Las Vegas)

 

[apatheist]

Nah, it was too complicated the way I described it. Gotta simplify.

Even worse than the effectively infinitely long irrigation chain is that you can destroy the first irrigation but that doesn't do anything to the connected ones. You can just have this isolated blob of irrigated tiles that are getting water out of thin air (not to be confused with rain, of course).

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Don't know if it helps or not, but we know that Fresh Water will give a +2 (at least) to health which-in turn-will probably effect population growth. So at least they have come that far (i.e. linking fresh water with population growth), the next thing is to see whether aqueducts will require fresh water, within the city radius to be built. If you can't build an aqueduct, then you need a well instead, but this would have a lower health bonus, and will probably produce an unhappy face (as this is artesian water, which is usually sub-par.)
Not a perfect solution, but it is better than what we had in Civs1-3.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[orven]

You do have a point.... but it'll make the game a lot more complicated.
All-in-all; a nice idea but too complex for some people.

 

[Chieftess]

I think as long as there's ice and rain (sources of fresh water), then fresh water will be pretty "infinite", as it's recycled.

 

[apatheist]

Uh... I'm not sure where you live, but that's just not right. See the links I provided above regarding fresh water in the western USA, the issues with water in the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, etc. Then there's desertification... hey... instead of global warming causing deserts to form, they should be formed by the diversion of natural sources of fresh water by humans, perhaps in conjunction with deforestation.

 

[Chieftess]

Where I live, it used to be a swamp. (And Baltimore City has a huge natural water (rain) resevoir. That's where we get our water from.

 

[Pacifist]

Nah, it was too complicated the way I described it. Gotta simplify.

Even worse than the effectively infinitely long irrigation chain is that you can destroy the first irrigation but that doesn't do anything to the connected ones. You can just have this isolated blob of irrigated tiles that are getting water out of thin air (not to be confused with rain, of course).

LOL
Okay, so it's much worse than I said. I actually knew that one, just forgot to mention it hehe. Actually, I got another idea, which derives from those who keeps mentioning rain water

Have another resource which is NOT tile specific, so it can go to any tile (mountains, plains, oceans, etc.) The resouce would be "rain" (maybe a cloud icon could represent it hehe) It would appear and disappear randomly, per turn, since each turn is represented in years (B.C. -> A.D.) "Acid rain" would be its "polluted equivalent", which would pollute the tile it's covering and destroy it's irrigation if it has one.

Tiles with a "rain" resource could be irrigated, as well as adjacent tiles. If "rain" appears on "water tiles" (i.e. coast, sea and ocean), that tile would receive a movement penalty to represent stormy weather conditions. Can you imagine a chunk of water tiles having "rain"? Ships would either have to brave the seas or navigate around it Also, no matter what techs you have, there would still be a chance that ships could sink in "water tiles" that have "rain".

As for "rain" on land, it could give the tile one bonus food which would last for a few turn before it disappears. "Rain" could also give movement penalties on tiles vs foot soldiers and wheeled units (i.e. chariots, catapults), while mounted and motorized vehicles would be unaffected.

No calculations required on our part. The game would do everything. We would just have to remember its effects, much like we all "should" know mountains are very difficult to move units over and produce no food (default settings).

We could then start a civ chorus ...

"I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain ..."
"... I'm singing and dacing in the rain"

-Pacifist-
The Peace Builder
"Let make peace please, I want to complete the <insert Wonder> first, then we can go to war"

 

[apatheist]

Have another resource which is NOT tile specific, so it can go to any tile (mountains, plains, oceans, etc.) The resouce would be "rain" (maybe a cloud icon could represent it hehe) It would appear and disappear randomly, per turn, since each turn is represented in years (B.C. -> A.D.) "Acid rain" would be its "polluted equivalent", which would pollute the tile it's covering and destroy it's irrigation if it has one.

We already have rain; that's what separates Plains from Grassland.

Tiles with a "rain" resource could be irrigated, as well as adjacent tiles. If "rain" appears on "water tiles" (i.e. coast, sea and ocean), that tile would receive a movement penalty to represent stormy weather conditions. Can you imagine a chunk of water tiles having "rain"? Ships would either have to brave the seas or navigate around it Also, no matter what techs you have, there would still be a chance that ships could sink in "water tiles" that have "rain".

There's no need for irrigation at all if you get sufficient rain. I've suggested elsewhere having several levels of farming:

1) No improvement.
2) Farm - plows, draft animals, planting, etc. Boosts food. Better hope it rains. No tech necessary.
3) Irrigation - Farm + irrigation from some fresh water source. Boosts food more, but requires fresh water. Irrigation requires Construction or some other tech.
4) Industrial Farm/Factory Farm - Farm + irrigation + mechanization. Boosts food yet more, but requires fresh water and oil, and may cause pollution from runoff of fertilizer, pesticides, and animal wastes. Requires motorized transportation.