My last game last night... pollution!

[GenghisK]

Well last night I started an Emperor game and it stuck me till 6am.
The problem is that it was the first time I was cursing Sid Meier and Civ1. It was about pollution. In emperor level, you cannot avoid pollution each turn. If only one of your city has even 1 smoking factory, you can be sure that there'll be a pollution square the next turn. Well I find stupid that to increase the duration of the game, you have to spend 80% of each turn time trying to clean up everything. It becomes boring and kills all the fun in the game. If I left a 6am yesterday (this morning actually

) it was because I didn't want to go to bed before having only ONE turn with no pollution. And finally I got it after 50 turns with pollution... It really
Oh of course you can clean up everything within one turn with the "click-click" cheat but it does really waste time. As I said it's more interesting focusing on exterminating the enemies or sending Apollo than cleaning up pollution. Anyway...

Curse Civ1

For the first time, I feel bored with this game. Oh there're a lot of stupid things on this game but I didn't mind. Nevertheless this pollution feast is really annoying. So... My words are fed up with nuclear pollution!

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[TTG]

What you are describing sounds a lot like the pollution bug. Which is a bug where, one by one, all of your cities start producing pollution every turn. Say first it will just be a few that already have a few smokestacks, then later half of them and eventually all will be producing pollution even if they have NO smokestacks. It's not related to the difficulty level; it's caused by having a high score, high population, or something like that and I know of no way to stop it. In previous games I built a settler for every city and used the settler cheat to combat it, but it was still a lot of work. I feel I'm justified in using a cheat to combat a bug, though... that's fair.

So, what's happening to you may or may not be a result of the pollution bug. If it is, I say go ahead and use the settler cheat, or just project what your high score would have been and quit. It's a lot of work and damn boring...

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[This message has been edited by Thunderfall (edited June 13, 2001).]

 

[thedirk]

I have always been vexed by pollution too. I understand that to be realistic with production levels and industrialization that pollution is an obvious part of the game. But it has always been a big hassle for me. I for one, would not complain if it was not part of the game.

 

[gaborka]

Do you know what secret rules are there for calculating pollution?
Recently I have played 2 games. In the first one I quitted at 1969 with 113 million people, because the pollution was choking me despite having Mass Transit + Recycling Ctr./Hydro Plant in each and every city.
In the second one I am now at ~1910, 70 million people and the pollution seems to be under control.
There is pollution, but it always has a logical reason (lack of mass transit, too much production) not like in the first one, where I was just getting and getting pollution without any reason.
The differences between the two games are the dates, it seemed to me that unjustified pollution was picking up after 1950 and that in the first one I had a long and dirty industrial age because I was building the space ship. During that age I was fighting pollution quite heavily an drifted at least 4 or 5 times to the brink of global warming. Interesting thing was that the population pollution first happened with cities >20 then with cities >15 and eventually I had to build Mass Transits for cities <5!!!! But it was only a temporary relief, of course.
I think there might be a hidden counter that pulls down the threshold for generating new pollutions as a pollution event happens and that threshold went very low. What are your experiences?

 

[stormerne]

I wonder whether this fear of pollution isn't overrated. I recently played a Civ2 game (OK - I know it's not Civ1 but the lesson might still apply) that makes me wonder if I shouldn't worry. It might depend on what you're going for: if you're going for a high score then play as before, but if you simply want to win then listen to this...

I was playing Civ2 Deity level and at the start of the 20th century I decided that I couldn't win by normal means - I was too far behind in tech. So I decided to slow everyone else down by polluting - build lots of shield making factories etc but no mass transits. I nuked enemy capitals to try and stop spaceships - succeeding in one case - but never cleared up the mess.

The strategy worked as I triggered two global warming events and at the end of the game was about to start a third. And I clawed my way back by stealing tech to the point where - using my high production cities - I was able to launch late but land one year ahead of anyone else.

By the end of the game I had just 40 cities, and 577 points for the population, 80 for wonders and 100 for a spaceship, but with 113 squares polluted (minus 1130 points) I scored zero! But I'd still won.

So now I'm wondering whether or not in Civ1 I couldn't use a similar strategy. Anyone else tried it?

 

[Zwelgje]

So what you are saying is....screw up the whole planet and you'll win. Now that's not very civilized is it?
Haven't tried it but I never play emperor, I like to build empires with fully equiped cities and lots of trade that seems to be impossible in emperor.