[GS] Is climate change scaled properly with epic game speed?

[Eddi]

Hi, i'm probably late to the party, and got R&F and GS a few days ago while it was on sale.

So i've been playing one game since then, and as soon as i built like 3 power plants, global warming is like ticking up every 12 turns or so, which is faster than it took to build the power plants in the first place.

am i missing some game mechanics here? did i use weird settings?

i'm playing on epic game speed (+50%), emperor difficulty (6), giant map, picked the map type with lots of volcanos. i don't remember the disaster intensity, but it wasn't set particularly high.

i'm currently using like 11 coal and 11 oil per turn, half of which is from units. and it says i'm responsible for about 40% of the global contribution so far.

i'm currently not liking this mechanic at all, because it's ticking up waaaay too fast to do anything about (like switching to nuclear, which wouldn't even eliminate the contribution from units)

 

[hhhhhh]

1. It's not just your contribution, everyone contributes.
2. Even if it's just you it can be pretty fast when it comes to climate change. (I think it's almost always like "we thought we had time, but when it came it was so fast..." they are delivering a message here.)

 

[Lily_Lancer]

It ticks up every 1 or 2 turns on Online Speed.

I think the mechanism is just fine. Global warming only happens on online or quick speed in my games actually. The sea seems never rise on normal or slower game speeds. 12 turns is just, well, you know you can capture half a map in 12 turns, and capture another half in the following 12 turns, right?

 

[AriochIV]

Regardless of game speed, you will usually run into sea level rise before the 20th Century even if you never build a single coal plant, just from unit upkeep.

(I think it's almost always like "we thought we had time, but when it came it was so fast..." they are delivering a message here.)

I doubt that, but if so, I don't appreciate propaganda in my computer games. As if game developers have any business preaching to others on climate change.

And frankly, the effects are so unrealistically early and severe that if it was their intent to evangelize on climate, they're hurting their own message by modeling effects that haven't actually happened.

 

[Pfeffersack]

It ticks up every 1 or 2 turns on Online Speed.

I think the mechanism is just fine. Global warming only happens on online or quick speed in my games actually. The sea seems never rise on normal or slower game speeds. 12 turns is just, well, you know you can capture half a map in 12 turns, and capture another half in the following 12 turns, right?

My games play out different. Regardless of game speed and what I do, I get heavy climate change in every game and once it has started it levels up fast (usually 5-10 turns per level). There is hardy any variaction in AI behaviour here - as soon as tech allows them, they start to with pollution - regardless if the leader is Frederick or Kupe. It is hard to get the flood barriers up in time and everything else intended to slow climate change or to fight it just comes too late, e.g. frequently the WC resolution on this topic comes up after lvl7 of climate change has already passed...and you can essentially continue everything because, it can get any worse anymore.

 

[hhhhhh]

Regardless of game speed, you will usually run into sea level rise before the 20th Century even if you never build a single coal plant, just from unit upkeep.


I doubt that, but if so, I don't appreciate propaganda in my computer games. As if game developers have any business preaching to others on climate change.

And frankly, the effects are so unrealistically early and severe that if it was their intent to evangelize on climate, they're hurting their own message by modeling effects that haven't actually happened.

OK. Regardless whether they are delivering any message, my personal experience is actually worse than what OP says. I play on standard speed, sometimes quick. It's always like before it starts it's always like "34 turns till climate change", but it actually starts in 10-15 turns and it starts it goes up every 6-8 turns. So in terms of the units of CO2, when you start to contribute, it's like adding 10-20 per turn, then the whole world starts, it adds 100s per turn, and to go past one phase it only needs about 1000. Thus if you don't win fast you need to start preparing early.

 

[Pfeffersack]

OK. Regardless whether they are delivering any message, my personal experience is actually worse than what OP says. I play on standard speed, sometimes quick. It's always like before it starts it's always like "34 turns till climate change", but it actually starts in 10-15 turns and it starts it goes up every 6-8 turns. So in terms of the units of CO2, when you start to contribute, it's like adding 10-20 per turn, then the whole world starts, it adds 100s per turn, and to go past one phase it only needs about 1000. Thus if you don't win fast you need to start preparing early.

Dramatic changes in the "prediction times" can be related to deforestation suddenly getting factored with +50% in the calculation:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/1-0-1-501-deforestation-bug-0-to-50-in-1-turn.659454/

 

[Eddi]

as far as i can tell, in my game it was "50%" ever since i first looked at the page, and that's despite half the map never having been touched by a player, and myself almost never chopping any trees (playing as Kupe)

i admit i don't have much experience with this game mechanics, but i currently dislike it for 3 reasons:

1. there isn't really any good statistics. you only see the total amount of CO2 ever collected, not how fast everyone is contributing, or what effect that has on the temperature
2. it's unrealistically fast. in the "real world" there was 150 years of industrialization before the effect was even noticeable (=stage 1 triggered). since then there was another 50 years until now (= stage 2 triggered). and we're discussing whether we aim for stopping at stage 3 or stage 4 until the end of the century (which we might fail)
3. a gameplay feature that happens so fast that you can't do anything about is just horrible game design. might just not have any coal power plants in the game. and the only reason i got coastal barriers up in all my cities is because i got the city state that lets me buy walls with faith. and the faith-cost isn't scaled by number of affected tiles like the production cost. also, only like 3 other civs and no city states seem to have tech to build barriers. i feel bad for them. there should be like an international emergency that people can trigger if they get flooded tiles with no tech for barriers, so other people can help them build up.

additionally, i don't like how the CO2 contributions are counted. like, population or cattle have no effect, nor any production coming from non-industry districts. and the planet seems to have no natural CO2 sinks (in the real world, forest is only like 30% of the CO2 sinks)

 

[hhhhhh]

Dramatic changes in the "prediction times" can be related to deforestation suddenly getting factored with +50% in the calculation:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/1-0-1-501-deforestation-bug-0-to-50-in-1-turn.659454/

I don't think I encountered that bug. I was aware that people are talking about it but I usually have a deforestation of 10% (I do lots of chop so it's rare for me to see 0%). But still the climate change phases go very fast. Nowadays I usually win before climate change even happen so it's not a problem for me but recently in an on-going PvP game it's coming up. I can imagine this is incredibly annoying for lots of players.

I agree the time from industrialization to Phase II (first non-trivial phase) should be a lot longer. Another thing I don't like about Climate mechanism is you lose diplomatic favor from CO2 emission even in Industrial Era. I think it should start on modern era, or start after a player researched a certain civic (can be a relatively early one like Conservation, a modern era civic).

 

[japanesesamurai]

I hope in Civ 7 they expand on this by adding historical warm golden ages and Maunder minumum and stuff like that. Maybe even add a DLC which will start settlers in the last glacial period. Then play an era in cold climate into the Holocene.
It would mean tiles and the value of them change overtime. I’m not sure how/if that could work in a strategy game like this. But it could potentially add another layer of depth...?
The climate change in VI is a bit of a gimmick without any gameplay improvements really. You either lose tiles or beeline to computers. It’s so boring and silly that I have modded flood barriers to steam power.
River floods and volcano’s I do like quite a bit. They change the value of tiles. But what if the value of tiles could potentially change negatively on the Northern hemisphere? That would be intetesting. Like more floods and devistating storms on the equator. “Meaningfull” droughts in the south and maunder minumum in the North. Stuff like that. Some variety. Adds some spice to the game. Aswell as story and overall epicness. Then have peoples like the Norwegians, Russians etc spawn in the North. Egypt on the equator and ... you get the idea. Give them all tools to protect them from local disasters and have them somehow benefit from them.
Also, in the next game: have specialized settlers. Settler with 10% discount on wonder building. Settler with +10% to economy etc... You will have the option to train a trading settler or a holy settler or a Wonder settler etc etc. Just spice things up a little bit

 

[Eddi]

I hope in Civ 7 they expand on this. [...] what if the value of tiles could potentially change negatively on the Northern hemisphere? [...] Like more floods and devistating storms on the equator. “Meaningfull” droughts in the south

that sounds somewhat interesting, but all the rest of your stuff sounds like making the game more complex without making it more interesting.

also, it has nothing to do with what we're talking about

 

[Lily_Lancer]

My games play out different. Regardless of game speed and what I do, I get heavy climate change in every game and once it has started it levels up fast (usually 5-10 turns per level). There is hardy any variaction in AI behaviour here - as soon as tech allows them, they start to with pollution - regardless if the leader is Frederick or Kupe. It is hard to get the flood barriers up in time and everything else intended to slow climate change or to fight it just comes too late, e.g. frequently the WC resolution on this topic comes up after lvl7 of climate change has already passed...and you can essentially continue everything because, it can get any worse anymore.

Well that may be the cost mechanism for flood barriers. For each level of sea rise it costs 100% more. So they'll be easy to build at first, but if you don't build them up before flood happens, it is likely that you cannot finish building them until everything floods up.

 

[AriochIV]

I hope in Civ 7 they expand on this by adding historical warm golden ages and Maunder minumum and stuff like that. Maybe even add a DLC which will start settlers in the last glacial period. Then play an era in cold climate into the Holocene.

Cold snaps could be an interesting new type of disaster (maybe working similar to droughts), but large-scale changes in climate happen on a much larger timescale than civilizations. The ice ages are ~20,000 years apart, but city-building civilization is only about ~5,000 years old.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Well that may be the cost mechanism for flood barriers. For each level of sea rise it costs 100% more. So they'll be easy to build at first, but if you don't build them up before flood happens, it is likely that you cannot finish building them until everything floods up.

Yes, hard-building them everywhere needed is almost impossible. It is the golden hour for Military Engineers - 5 of their charges can always built it regardless of cost. You still need need up to 4 turns to get their work done, as those not spending their last charge block access for the next one in that turn (ironicallyt England suffers more delay here, as their MEs have more charges!) and you have to take care that while you are rushing the FB with them no new climate change level triggers (as it either means your are directly too late with your effort or the barrier might become at least more expensive, which screws up the 5-ME-calculation). If one does not shy MM and extra maintenance, it could pay out to produce a lot of MEs before climate change becomes an issue and use their charges except the last one - then 5 of those 1-charge-MEs can rush a barrier in one turn.
It is a pity that the AI is completely incompetent, when it comes to building flood barriers. They don't built them consistently and if they start them at all, most of the time too late and without ME support (which would be easy for them, given that they have encampments everywhere and sometime sthey even spam MEs for unknown reasons)

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Yes, hard-building them everywhere needed is almost impossible. It is the golden hour for Military Engineers

Well, actually not. Barring a tile cost 80 production, while 5/2 military engineers cost 425 production. If you have less than 6 tiles to bar hard build is better.

 

[hhhhhh]

Well, actually not. Barring a tile cost 80 production, while 5/2 military engineers cost 425 production. If you have less than 6 tiles to bar hard build is better.

But there will be cities without enough production... so ME still shines.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Well, actually not. Barring a tile cost 80 production, while 5/2 military engineers cost 425 production. If you have less than 6 tiles to bar hard build is better.

Production cost is one thing to consider, but speed is another - MEs allow you to transfer hammers from productive core cities to less developed ones. I often found new cities mid/late game to get access to ressources and those cities struggle heavily with getting sufficient production for a hard build in time. And if the deal is a cheaper hard-built failing because of lacking time vs. getting the FB done in time for a higher hammer investment in form of MEs, I prefer the latter. Also, the initially calculated price might increase during the constructiuon, if some of the tiles intended to be protected get flooded - if you manage the ME rush before this, you might have even a better efficiency hammer-wise.

 

[hhhhhh]

And ME is something, in desperate case, one can buy with gold. Unless you have Valetta you usually don't have a quick way to get flood barrier.

 

[Breadsmith]

If you get the CS that lets you build walls qith faith, Flood Barriers only coat about 250 faith.

 

[hhhhhh]

If you get the CS that lets you build walls qith faith, Flood Barriers only coat about 250 faith.

The price is not a constant.