Global warming - a suggestion

[702]

"It seems to me in Civ 4 global warming was simply a way of trying to stop players getting too "nuke-happy"."
I don't think so, because it had no correlation whatsoever to the amount of nukes being used. It was simply an event that is triggered from the very first bomb dropped, unless I'm mistaken. Frequency of nukes had no correlation to global warming "strikes", right?

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought that every time a nuke was used there was a small chance it would initiate global warming, so when the first one is used it probably won't start global warming, but if you keep on firing nukes off willy-nilly it becomes quite likely you will end up with global warming

 

[Ahriman]

I don't find it more absurd than unhappiness from "It's too crowded!", which has a pretty huge impact on the game right now.

Population pressure means resource scarcity, which absolutely makes people more likely to rebel.
Besides, as a gameplay mechanic it works well.

You don't think anyone would speak out if their leaders suddenly decided to chop down all forests in the surrounding area

No, not at all. This has happened many times through history, and the outcome is for people to be happy about all that newly cleared farmland.

Just look at Brazil today, its the locals doing the forest clearing.

Well, if you dislike not being able to do anything about it, and you dislike explicitly dealing with individual tiles to reduce pollution, how would you want to be able to do something about it?

I wouldn't, I'd cut the mechanic. Its intrinsically broken.
Just increase the unhealth benefits from industry, and then you can deal with them by building health-providing buildings.

I feel that you're missing the point. The affects of global warming are meant to be a bad thing. You're not meant to be thinking "wow, dealing with global warming is really fun, lets create a bunch of pollution so that I can experience the awesomeness of this feature".

Penalties from heavy industry that you have in your own empire is fine.
*Permanent* penalties from terrain degrading forever, and penalties that happen from what happens outside your empire, is NOT fine. Its broken.

It's like complaining that the process of dying in an FPS isn't fun. Sure it isn't, that's why you're meant to avoid it

Failed analogy. Its like dying in a FPS completely randomly because of something that happens outside your control, and then having to quit the game and reboot your computer before you can start playing again.

If it's an unavoidable pain in the ass then that would be bad for gameplay

It has been thus far.

it really is one of the biggest problems for the modern world

It might be, eventually, we'll have to see.
For most of the world I would argue that lack of clean water and the spread of drug-resistant infectious diseases are likely to be more significant.
But so what? Whether it is important or not IRL is not the point; its whether or not its fun in the game.

Having penalties that happen to you based on the industrialization of other empires is realistic, but it is in no way fun at all. Its not like you can negotiate an inter-government climate treaty in the game (or IRL it turns out).

Besides, playing in the real world today would be pretty boring. There's hardly any conflict, there hasn't been a major war in 65 turns, and most of the world have fairly good diplomatic relations with each other.

Environmental dystopia is a lame late-game. I'd rather much rather have a political/economic/military dystopia; think of the future options from alpha centauri and the like. Cyborgs, nanotechnology, cloning, arcologies, and so forth.
Cyberpunk is way cooler than resource depletion.

 

[Chalks]

Penalties from heavy industry that you have in your own empire is fine.
*Permanent* penalties from terrain degrading forever, and penalties that happen from what happens outside your empire, is NOT fine. Its broken.

So, if there was a particular "wasteland" terrain that was produced by GW rather than standard desert, and a tech allowed you to terraform this terrain into something more productive this would resolve the "permanent" aspect of it.

If there were additional diplomacy options and visualisations of individual nation's contribution to the problem of GW, this would hopefully reduce the problems of it being from outside of your empire.

One of the fundamental features of global warming is that it's not a localised issue, so I don't think there is any getting away from the fact that the root cause of it could be outside of your empire. Having the ability to identify and apply diplomatic pressure to the civilizations that are causing you problems here would probably be best.

Then you'd get the ability to run an ecological super power. "Stop polluting or we shall crush you beneath our mighty tanks". Which is kinda cool.

Environmental dystopia is a lame late-game. I'd rather much rather have a political/economic/military dystopia; think of the future options from alpha centauri and the like. Cyborgs, nanotechnology, cloning, arcologies, and so forth.
Cyberpunk is way cooler than resource depletion.

I'm a massive fan of SMAC and seeing a real extraterrestrial colonisation end game would be fantastic, but I think it's somewhat outside the scope of the game. It'd make for a fantastic and truly epic game though. Colonising another planet, or having the surface of earth wiped of almost all life and having to rebuild from scratch with post apocalyptic sci-fi tech.

Any fleshing out of the sci-fi tech trees would be fantastic, but they seem dead set against it which I guess is understandable.

Here, GW isn't the end game, it's just a minor embellishment of the modern era, while your Civ is getting ready for the score board.

 

[Warlord Sam]

To me, the bottom line is that global warming, however serious an issue it may be in real life, isn't inherently an important part of the Civ experience.

It doesn't necessarily need to be included. In Civ4, it wasn't fleshed out at all. It felt very arbitrary and "tacked on". And has been said by many in this thread, it isn't fun to punish the player for something outside of his or her control. The difference in my opinion between "challenging" and "hard to the point of not being fun" is all about how much control the player has over events, at least in a game like Civ.

As far as a future cyberpunk end-game, I think that'd be totally kick ass and just once I wish they'd make one of the required two expansion packs to Civ5 a fantastic expansion to the end-game a la futuristic cyberpunk rather than something practically without content such as Warlords.

I'm not opposed to gw playing a role in the end-game, but only if they take some time to fully realize it as a fun and balanced part of the game. It might be realistic to have it occur outside of our control, but gameplay > realism. It isn't fun for that to happen, as a rule, and they are marketing games towards the majority because that's how capitalism works.

For Civ4, maybe they shoulda just included global warming as a very late game eighth religion, which spreads automatically to any city with a broadcast tower or the Hollywood Hits resource?

 

[_hero_]

I feel that rather than global warming they should include all the various environmental concerns in this world instead of focusing solely on the one which we know the least real information about.

Massive cities with poor public transportation in Civ should have smog.
Cities without basic sanitation should have to deal with polluted water.
Over exploiting certain resources should cause extinction of certain species (not sure how this could be reasonably implemented).
Over harvesting forests should cause some extinction as well, and as some have stated it can alter weather patterns.

Finally, if they want to simply have "global warming" it should be reflected by melting ice caps leading to occasional or eventual flooding on coastal cities, not random desert squares appearing on the map.

 

[Ahriman]

So, if there was a particular "wasteland" terrain that was produced by GW rather than standard desert, and a tech allowed you to terraform this terrain into something more productive this would resolve the "permanent" aspect of it.

But this would be the same as whack-a-mole pollution control. And we know how much fun *that* was....

I feel that rather than global warming they should include all the various environmental concerns in this world instead of focusing solely on the one which we know the least real information about.

They do; this is what the Health variable represents. More environmental damage (deforestation, lack of sanitation, lack of public transport, etc) reduces the carrying capacity/maximum size of your cities.
You can make these more significant and harder to solve; I've no problem with that, but they don't need separate mechanics.

If there were additional diplomacy options and visualisations of individual nation's contribution to the problem of GW, this would hopefully reduce the problems of it being from outside of your empire.

I don't want environmental policy to be a diplomatic option. Seriously, diplomacy is for globe-changing importance; wars where millions of people can die. Haggling over environmental controls just feels so... prosaic. Its not at the scale that Civ demands.

so I don't think there is any getting away from the fact that the root cause of it could be outside of your empire

Precisely. Which is why it should be removed!!!
I find it strange that your argument is: "Well, it has to come from outside your empire to be realistic, and that's kinda lame, but too bad" whereas the logical argument to me says "Well, if we were to include it it would have to come from outside your empire, but that's no fun, so lets remove it."

but they seem dead set against it

Really? I thought some of the dev comments seemed to suggest that they were going to have some Next-Warish elements with Mechs and the like.

 

[Chalks]

Precisely. Which is why it should be removed!!!
I find it strange that your argument is: "Well, it has to come from outside your empire to be realistic, and that's kinda lame, but too bad" whereas the logical argument to me says "Well, if we were to include it it would have to come from outside your empire, but that's no fun, so lets remove it."

I just think that because it's a modern era effect (which makes it very short lived in most games) it's not such a huge problem that it comes from outside of your empire, because by this point you should be positioning yourself for victory anyway.

On the other hand, if the game was to last beyond the modern era and into the future you could probably remove it with the introduction of high efficiency clean energy techs to replace the polluting ones. In the Civ version of future history, clean energy appears quickly allowing the game to gloss over the relatively minor effects we have experienced so far.

So I'd probably be happy with its removal if the modern era is not the end of the game anyway.

Really? I thought some of the dev comments seemed to suggest that they were going to have some Next-Warish elements with Mechs and the like.

God, I hope so - do you have any source on this? A future era for Civ is one of those things I've always wanted.

 

[chongli]

Your phrasing is very confusing. For it to be challenging, it would need to make the game harder - it doesn't have to be something the player can control. Random earthquakes and meteors annihilating parts of your civilization would make the game harder.

Umm, no it wouldn't. It'd make the game more random and arbitrary. It's the video game equivalent of randomly awarding points to one of the teams.

Do you think football fans would put up with a game where they award a free goal to one of the teams by coin toss? Hell no!

 

[Warlord Sam]

"On the other hand, if the game was to last beyond the modern era and into the future you could probably remove it with the introduction of high efficiency clean energy techs to replace the polluting ones."
Funny you should mention that, because actually it never bothered me in all my regular Civ4 games for that exact reason... it only started to annoy me after I started exploring the NextWar mod.

 

[Chalks]

Do you think football fans would put up with a game where they award a free goal to one of the teams by coin toss? Hell no!

It would make the game harder to win though, wouldn't it?

There seems to be some difficulty here understanding what the concept of "making something harder" means.

If random tile roulette didn't make the game even slightly harder, it only has two options. A) not affect you at all, and B) make the game easier.

If you're going to stick to your claim that it doesn't make it harder, which of the two options are you going to go for? A or B?

You can say that it's not enjoyable, but you can't try to say that it doesn't present even the smallest irritating problem for you.

 

[Ahriman]

I just think that because it's a modern era effect (which makes it very short lived in most games) it's not such a huge problem that it comes from outside of your empire, because by this point you should be positioning yourself for victory anyway.

This makes it sound like you're saying "it doesn't matter if its a bad feature that reduces fun, because you don't have to deal with it for very long".
You would have to deal with it for an even shorter time if it were removed entirely...

Umm, no it wouldn't. It'd make the game more random and arbitrary. It's the video game equivalent of randomly awarding points to one of the teams.

Agreed. It wouldn't make the game harder since it'd punish the AI as badly as it did you. Actually, more complex features generally make the game easier, because the AI ends up not handling them as well as the human player.

It reduces your power, but it also reduces the power of every other player, and does so in a random and arbitrary way.

That's just bad design.

 

[Chalks]

It reduces your power, but it also reduces the power of every other player, and does so in a random and arbitrary way.

Affecting everyone in the same way is not mutually exclusive with "making the game harder". It can become harder for everyone, equally, to present more of a challenge.

There is a distinction between "creating an extra challenge" and "improving the gameplay".

Although I agree that any challenge should improve the gameplay, you can't say that it doesn't make the game harder because if it didn't affect you at all then you wouldn't be complaining and if it made the game easier then you'd not be irritated by it.

 

[chongli]

It would make the game harder to win though, wouldn't it?

How does getting a free goal make the game harder to win?

 

[Chalks]

How does getting a free goal make the game harder to win?

Well, if we were to correct your failed analogy, and say that it was your opponent getting a free goal, since you know, random tiles turning to desert isn't a change in your favour, the answer to your question becomes more obvious.

So lets try again:

How does [your opponent] getting a free goal make the game harder to win?

*insert obvious reply here*

 

[chongli]

Well, if we were to correct your failed analogy, and say that it was your opponent getting a free goal, since you know

Strawman! Try again.

 

[Chalks]

Strawman! Try again.

Hey, it's not my analogy! Just trying to work with what I'm given.

 

[Ahriman]

It can become harder for everyone, equally, to present more of a challenge.

Uhh, no, if the game is harder for everyone, then everyone is being affected, and so the game isn't becoming harder to win via score.

If you subtract a goal from both teams, what have you accomplished?

Making it harder for everyone to reach non-score victory conditions isn't good either, the last part of chasing all of those conditions is boring as hell.

*insert obvious reply here*

You're being deliberately dense.

Sometimes global warming affects you (which makes it harder for you to win), sometimes it affects your opponents (which makes it EASIER for you to win).

Your argument "oh, it can hurt you, therefore it must make the game easier to win" is just utterly false.

Sometimes your opponent gets a free goal, sometimes you get a free goal, all you have is extra randomness. Not fun.

 

[Chalks]

If you subtract a goal from both teams, what have you accomplished?

If it causes no difficulty and affects everyone equally then why do you not simply ignore it? Bad analogy is bad.

Sometimes global warming affects you (which makes it harder for you to win), sometimes it affects your opponents (which makes it EASIER for you to win).

So why are you arguing with me, saying that it doesn't make it harder? Sometimes it makes it easier, cool, so it does that too.

I'm not saying it's good. I'm arguing with someone who's saying "It doesn't affect the difficulty because I don't enjoy it". You're just joining in while agreeing with me. It's confusing.

The affect is there to make the modern era more interesting. It may fail at doing this because it is more of an irritation than anything else, but claiming that it does nothing to the difficulty of the game just doesn't make any sense.

 

[chongli]

Hey, it's not my analogy! Just trying to work with what I'm given.

You misrepresented my argument to produce one more to your liking so that you could tear it down. That's a strawman.

 

[Chalks]

You misrepresented my argument to produce one more to your liking so that you could tear it down. That's a strawman.

The analogy is just poor. Don't like my attempt at squeezing it into the situation? Cool beans, lets abandon it.

The crux of the matter: Randomly spawning desert tiles in the player's territory randomly makes the game slightly harder. This may be a bad thing, but it still affects the difficulty to know that you may be affected by this phenomena if you are not careful about pollution.

It might fail at improving the game, it might fail at being enjoyable, but it doesn't fail at randomly making the game harder and making avoidance an additional challenge.

You might not enjoy the challenge, but it doesn't vanish when you decide you aren't enjoying it.