Jared Diamond's Collapse...

[Finite Monkey]

I'm reading this book right now and its interesting so far (A side note, why no Vikings in CIV4?). What really got me thinking after reading the first half of the book though is how much weather (and human abuse of the world) really impacted civilization throughout history. I also remember reading the designers notes in the back of the book about the intial thoughts to implement a Dark Age as opposed to a Golden Age which they ultimately settled on for gameplay enjoyment.

So the developers thought of Penalties (dark ages) first, then went with Bonuses (Golden Ages). Why not apply both to a Civ game in weather patterns? Not things like a hurricane (Like Civ 3?) or tornado, but large scale warming or cooling. Yes you have the option on playing on Deserts or Ice Age, but I enjoy some randomness in my city placement (I love finding iron right next to the capitol). Here is my suggestion:

Tiles can change between fertility and warmth. Much like how Global Warming worked in past games. However instead of just going drier and warmer things can also grow colder and wetter.

1. These changes should be on a long term but not necessarily permenant basis.

2. The changes should be regional. The game clearly already makes regions to some extent (Deserts, Jungles, Plains etc) so hopefully it would not be to much to have the weather patterns effect a region.

3. The changes are never guarnteed to happen, should happen infrequently (Maybe 2-3 times per game) and the chances of severe drought or increased rainfall should be small enough that they rarely entirely ruin a city but enough to make it significantly better or worse. So 2-3 tiles in a particular region may be enough.

4. The tiles changed each shift in weather should be different so you can not plan for the grassland to go back to a plain etc.

5. The kicker (Props to Dr. Diamond) is not just weather realted but player related. To really mess with the Civ 4 chop rush, if you chop down a significant portion of your trees that area is more likely to suffer weather changes and those weather changes are more extreme.

I'd be happy to discuss other points from the book, and I know there are fans of Guns Germs and Steel in this forum.

CONTINUED

 

[Finite Monkey]

Thank you so far for reading and feel free to tell me I'm ******** and should never post here again.

I thought I would give an example of how this would affect gameplay, but first my basic idea on how a particular tile can change.

In my mind at least (a scary place to be) there is a contium of Warm to Cold and Wet to Dry.

Warm to Cold: Desert, Plains, Grassland, that Brown Stuff, Ice
Dry to Wet: This is a little more complex so I opt to leave out Ice and Tundra, but it works out similarly: Desert-Plain-Grassland

So lets say a tile is a Plains. The weather pattern shifts... to Warmer and Drier. Well thats easy the tile in question becomes a desert. Using a different plains, the weather pattern shifts... to wet. Plains becomes Grassland.

Now for just a couple more complex issues then I'll shut my mouth.

Using a plains as an example. The weather pattern shifts ... to Warmer and Wetter. What do you think, Oasis or Flood Plains if on a river?

Last one, Grassland with Jungle on it. The weather pattern shifts... to drier and colder. If at a certain lattidtude it could become a tundra with forest. If in the middle of the map maybe a plains with forest instead of jungle?

So what are the questions that need to be answered to make this work? Essentially, if a given tile gets warmer or wet, colder or dry what happens to it?

Thanks for any feed back.

 

[whitecrow]

I'm impressed with his books too.

In general Civ-like games lack ecological or environmental view on civilizations. (Maybe except SMAC) And Civ4 is maybe the worst of all.

- You can chop down all forests in the continent and your civ can still prosper. Can you imagine pre-coal civ prospering without tree supply? And can't even plant forests nor make grow forest like cottages.

- Rain forest(jungle) is just nothing but obstacle for civilization and its removal will always benefits you. I feel always somewhat disturbing when I found whole African and American jungle is completely stripped and a few metropolis take the place.

 

[Finite Monkey]

Gameplay issues should seem obvious. If you are in an evironmentally marginal area of the map you might not be able to chop down all of your trees for fear of a massive drought or worsening of the evironment.

Other issues might be that after a warming period vast stretches of Tundra or Jungle might suddenly become available for settlement.

I'm sure there are more so lets hear them.

 

[Shaihulud]

One thing that annoys me is that Jungles produce less resources than forest. Realistically, that is untrue, Jungle produces a larger amount of timber resources and better quality than forest.

 

[Swiss Bezerker]

youre right, maybe u cant grow stuff in forests but it still produces good timber

 

[potatokiosk]

When you cut down a jungle, why does it become a grassland? The Amazon has very poor soil.
And I usually leave forests alone and build lumbermills.

 

[Corbeau]

Jungles have always gotten the shaft in Civ. On Jared Diamond, I have yet to read Collapse (I want to, though). I read and discussed Guns, Germs, and Steel at length over the past summer, which I think has even more application to Civ. After all, the objective of Civ is to be the dominant Civilization on the planet.

I really, really wish that crops were handled more realistically than they are currently. I couldn't help but think that if crops gave a food bonus to all squares of a specific type even, it would better model the difficulty of building a civlization on a north/south axis (if your plains were more productive than grasslands, you'd have a belt of terrain good for your civ that you'd be encouraged to settle on... until you obtained another food resource). Other than that, and climate change (the reason that the fertile crescent doesn't rule the world), I actually think Civ4 does a good job as a simulation (as long as you don't take it too literally).

 

[zafyro]

Civilizations is on a macro scale. You deforesting al your start zone doesn´t means that you cannot see a single tree in those squares it´s just that the forest is no more representative.

In the end this is a game and resources gained from diferent squares should be balanced. So there should be some better than others. If you believe that forest are worse than jungles, mod it.

I´d agree that the total amount of forest left in the world should affect to the global warming so we can get situations as we have now in our world, having deforestated europe we want to prevent south america to do the same for the sake of world health.

It would be fun a mod were jungle sqares were the most interesting ones followed by forest and the rest of the squares being really poor and you having to build tree increasers in your cities to create a better chance of the forest expanding in your zone.

I really miss SMAC little worms and the power of Gaia Faction

 

[Corbeau]

SMAC was awesome when it came to ecological damage. Playing the Morganites late-game was always tough.

 

[Artanis]

SMAC was awesome when it came to ecological damage. Playing the Morganites late-game was always tough.

Heh, I remember the first game of SMAC I played. By the end of the game, all but three of my cities were underwater and I was being hit by so many worms that it looked like an outright war

 

[Dracleath]

Well, jungles should be useless in the early game, but around medicine should get some bigger bonuses and allow lumber mills (they were pretty useless as a means of obtaining resources before malaria et al were dealt with).

Also I think in order to build ships and most buildings you should need forests or jungle somewhere in your civilization. If you're dumb enough to cut down all your trees you should be screwed.

And perhaps also you'd have a % chance per production to have forests and jungle dissapear ala pollution to represent deforestation? But you'd have the ability to replant them with workers if you have access to them somewhere in your civ (this would prevent people from just cutting down all the forests but one tile, you'd need to save at least 3-4 to keep from getting unlucky and losing them all in one turn.)

Some of this could probably be done with python coding.

 

[drjones]

When you cut down a jungle, why does it become a grassland? The Amazon has very poor soil.
And I usually leave forests alone and build lumbermills.

The addition of the 'leave forests alone' option in the new patch is great for this. Personally I cannot imagine a great city without some forest nearby. The game does kinda push you to deforest though as it is the only way to get wonders out before the ai at higher difficulty. There is a small health bonus to having forests at least.

I'm not sure it is correct to assume jungles were not useful before sawmills however. There are accounts of enourmous populations living along the amazon before western diseases spread up the river. They may not have had algebra or iron but to support that large a population shows the fecundity of the rainforst and the river.

-drjones

Edit: To the main point: I think what is neeed is a mod framework to alter tiles during the game. Once that is esablished one can tinker with when and how climate or pollution etc. might effect it.