First off, I tried setting GLOBAL_WARMING_PROB to 0 in BTS GlobalDefines.xml. It did not turn off "global warming". If I'm changing the wrong thing, someone please point me in the right direction.
I've said all along that the GW code doesn't make sense, and it is biased against long games, or people who like to build. My position is it makes long term empires unsustainable, so it breaks one major facet of the game. Granted, not everybody plays alike, but the settings are there to play long games, so they shouldn't be broken.
So, the game tells me I have a sustainability of 28,470. Working backwards:
28,470
-1140 (electricity penalty, I only have electricity in a small percentage of my cities)
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27,330
-340 (building penalties) I have recycling in almost all cities
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26,990
+6000 offsets (trees and jungles. I had more, but I added them in world builder. the comp civs cut down all their trees and build workshops. with no ability to plant forests, you're stuck with what's left, even if you preserve yours).
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32,990 Okay, this is your max possible penalty for population, at 10 points/pop point.
3299/263 cities = 12.54. So, if my average city size exceeds 12.54, then global warming is inevitable, even with little electricity, NO access to coal or oil, and almost all cities with recycling. With electricity in every city, the average would be 10.4.
I only have electricity in a small percentage of my cities (I have 263 cities on a huge map). A size 17 city is 2,787,000 people, according to the city screen. Most of my cities are size 30+, not having electricity in them is kinda flaky, at best. Note: the game doesn't care where you get electricity. Hydro or 3 Gorges counts against you bad. There are no wind turbines, tidal hydro power, or fusion plants, and even if you had them, if the penalty was no different than hydro, you'd still get GW penalties.
Note that you can't just build more cities, and keep them under 10, it is total pop that matters. Also, if you build on a hill that later turns out to have coal, or a grassland that later has oil, you're screwed. It will give access to oil and/or coal in all your cities, once you have trade routes over ocean, and you can't unbuild your own cities.
If you have access to coal, you get 2 unhealth with a factory, at -20 each, and one more for industrial park (which requires a factory). That's a -60 penalty, equivalent to 6 population points. So, you can do without factories, or you can reduce your city population to 6.54 (or 4.54 with industrial park). Note that you get these penalties from the buildings, even if you have recycling centers, which are supposed to remove all unhealth from buildings.
If you break any of these limits, GW is inevitable, and will eventually ruin the map.
Earlier I said it will eventually turn your land to desert, but I decided to confirm that, as it was a (educated) guess. I went into worldbuilder, removed all the forests/jungle, and turned everything to plains.
Now, under a real climate shift to warmer temps, we'd have greater evaporation from the oceans, and more total rainfall on land than we have now. It's distribution would probably shift, but that water has to go somewhere. My guess is the most likely result would be more areas like the Amazon, hot, humid, steamy, with rain every day. Some areas would see drying, probably, but it would be more than compensated for by enhanced grown in other areas.
Not in Civ4. All it did was turn plains to desert, randomly, all over the map. Not a single desert turned to grass (as is currently happening in places around the Sahara right now), not a single plains turned to grassland, forest, or jungle. GW is VERY one-sided, and prejudiced against large empires.
The functioning of the Civ4 GW code shows an innate bias against building, and against a sustainable civilization. It is arbitrary, capriciously so, and destructive to long term game play.
This isn't the fault of karadoc, it's what Firaxis did. But it ought to be fixed. Karadoc is such a good modder, I've been hoping he'd take a whack at it.
