Natural Disasters

[Quasar1011]

Hurricanes can adversely affect governments. In the USA, the Panic of 1857 was already underway when a hurricane intervened:

When the 272-foot wooden-hulled steamship SS Central America set sail from Panama for New York she had aboard 581 persons (many carrying great personal wealth) and over $1 million in commercial gold. She also bore a secret shipment of fifteen tons of federal gold, valued at twenty dollars per ounce, intended for the eastern banks.

Devoid of modern weather tracking devices, the Central America sailed directly into the path of a severe hurricane. For four days the steamer's passengers and crew bailed water and carried coal to keep her iron boilers lit.

Distress rockets finally attracted the attention of a small Boston brig, the Marine, to which the women and children were transferred. Most of the men remained aboard, however, with life preservers and the hope that another ship would pass. However, about 8:00 P.M. on Saturday, September 12, 1857, the Central America momentarily righted, lurched three times, and went down stern first in the Gulf Stream, 200 miles off the coast of South Carolina. Of the 478 men set adrift only 53 were later rescued by passing ships.

The loss of this gold nearly bankrupted the young United States!

 

[Furius]

What about tornados? They could occaisionally occur over large areas of plains causing production of shields to cease for one turn
@Quasar1011: What happened to the gold? Is it still down there?

 

[Ian Beale]

Interesting story!

 

[Quasar1011]

Originally posted by Furius
What about tornados? They could occasionally occur over large areas of plains causing production of shields to cease for one turn

I would rather think that one tornado, for gameplay purposes, would affect one square for one turn. Tornadoes are not limited to plains, but for gameplay purposes could be limited to both plains and grasslands, but only in temperate climates (30 to 60 degrees north or south latitudes). A rare outbreak of tornadoes, like the super-outbreak of 1974, could affect many squares. Remember in Civ2 there were barbarian hordes, and then major barbarian hordes? It could be like that.

Originally posted by Furius
@Quasar1011: What happened to the gold? Is it still down there?

Sorry to disappoint you, but it was retrieved in 1989. Here's that part of the story:

Never in American history had an equivalent quantity of gold gone to the bottom of the sea. Historians have estimated that the value of the gold on board the SS Central America was equivalent to one-fifth of the gold then in Wall Street coffers. Banks, having hedged their deposits by speculating on the delivery of this California gold, were consequently decimated by the loss. The Panic of 1857, which began August 24th, 1857, with the failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company,
deepened, ruining men and businesses.

It would have been nearly impossible for those living in 1857 to conceive that the gold on board the Central America would ever be recovered, but over a century later, in 1989, this “lost’’
California gold was brought to the surface in a dramatic recovery described by Life magazine as “the greatest treasure ever found.’’ Buried at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, at a depth of nearly 8,000 feet, the project required the most sophisticated marine-recovery technology developed to date.

 

[Vietcong]

Originally posted by Furius
But, it would have to be done very carefully, otherwise one's whole civ could dissappear underwater.
I worry about what disasters might do for the poor OCCers.

atlantis!!

what about tideal waves... and very realy ther needs to be super desaters!!! ones so strong thay can destryo ur hole civ!!

once in a while ther chold be tideal waves that destroy hole island chains or some small conitnats even

has any one ever heard of super volcanos, one example is yellostone, its one huge super valcano , it makes up "2/3rds" of the park.. some whear around 24-30 squar miles big!! thay go off once ever if i rember right, 500,000 years - 3 million years....

the last one that i know of that went of was when man was in its early stages of life, it was estamated that at the time about 3 million humans lived. the super calcano that went off was some whear in the south pacifit( when ther wher no islansd, wehn it was basicly one big land mass) and caused the human pop to drop down to 3-1,000!!! y not add this into the game??

 

[Quasar1011]

Vietcong, a tidal wave would not destroy an entire civ. Tidal wave is really a misunderstood term. Now if an asteroid smashed into the ocean, it could inundate an entire civ, wiping it out. But this wave would not be tidal. A hurricane storm surge could wipe out a city (Galveston 1900) or area (Bangladesh 1970), but this wave is not tidal either. A tsunami (Hilo Hawaii 1964; Chile, Hawaii & entire Pacific basin 1960) could affect many areas, but this wave is not tidal in nature either. The only way a tidal wave would destroy a civ, is if a rogue asteroid or planet passed near to the Earth, disrupting the normal tides by the sudden increased gravitational tug on the Earth's oceans. Tides are caused by the moon's gravity, so even this scenario wouldn't fit the exact definition of a tidal wave.

Can some kind of wave affect an entire ocean basin? Yes, it happened in 1960! Link:
Pacific-wide tsunami of 1960

 

[wilbill]

A lot of people play with Culture Flip turned off because they can't stand to lose ONE city. I can't imagine the level of rage if a random event wiped out somebody's entire civ the turn before their spaceship would have launched.

 

[Furius]

Besides, how would it be either cool or fun for your entire civ to be suddenly wiped out by a disaster. That would just be really, really annoying.
A Tsunami might be better. However, they would probably want to limit the amount of disasters so we don't encounter them too often and become disgruntled.

 

[Vietcong]

not sundenly, after a great desaster, ur econamy whold calpas, food praduction drop, riots, civil disorder ect. so u wold sitll have a few turns to ether gang controle of things, or nt and fall from power..

 

[Furius]

I think that would just make begginners quit the game when they couldn't work out what to do.

 

[Quasar1011]

I still think there would be ways to negate natural disasters. First of all, this could be an option that beginners could toggle off at start-up. The civil defense improvement would lessen the effects of any disaster in the city in which its built. A National Weather Service small wonder could lessen (halve) the effects of weather disasters, though not stop them. A Seismological Institute small wonder could do the same for earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes.

But what about the plague? It wiped out somewhere between 25 and 50% of Europe's population, from 1348-1350. This could be much like the "your citizens are dying from disease" but with the plague given as the reason, and it would spread to each of your cities one at a time.

 

[Ian Beale]

I don't mind an odd city or tile losing its production for 1 turn but a whole civ is something i couldn't accept! Disasters should be damaging though not as disastrous as Vietcong suggests.

 

[Vietcong]

y not?! thay can be that bad!!! so y not in the game! many of civs have falen toi natral desaters... a lot of island ones near greece expasealy

 

[Quasar1011]

Perhaps you are thinking of a one-city civ. Yes, a volcano could take out one of these. From a website: [12] In the Late Bronze Age, Santorini, a complex of overlapping shield volcanoes, erupted spreading ash over Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean. Before collapsing into a caldera of forty-two square miles (eighty-three square kilometers), Santorini shot a lava column twenty-three miles (thirty-six kilometers) high into the sky. The destruction from Santorini has never been exceeded in 10,000 years. Many volcanologists and historians strongly suspect that the eruption of Santorini was the source of the legend of Atlantis.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I think that MOST of us would agree that a natural disaster shouldn't result in the automatic destruction of a whole Civ-unless they had only one city, as mentioned by Quasar, but I do feel that natural disasters should run the gamut of losing a unit/population/production, for just a turn, all the way to losing WHOLE cities, or losing population/production for the whole age!!! Definitely, tidal waves, droughts and tornadoes should only cause a minimal loss, restricted to a loss of a single city improvement, and/or production/food for a turn, wheras famines, plagues and religious schisms should actually cause you to lose a GREAT deal more, over several turns. I also think that there SHOULD be a dark age, caused by one of several possible triggers, which either causes you to lose some tech's, or else causes your research rate to slow down for several turns!!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Vietcong]

y cant tideal waves destroy small islands??

 

[Furius]

I think a Dark Age should be the exact opposite of the Golden Age, noting worse, nothing less, otherwise it is too unbalencing.

 

[khirkhib]

I like the idea of being able to prevent disaters or having random disasters linked into making a cost benefit analysis. Living on the plains where their is lots of food production means losing the occasional unit to a tornado. A city on healthy volcanic soil means suffering the occasional erruption. Or if a plauge comes starts coming through your civs, or you neighboring civ, you have to either reprioritize your construction into building hospitals (improving a cities saniation) or take the risk that the plauge will sweep through your town. Plauges should also be triggered by a a civiliazation (from one continent) making first contact with another continent, like the plauges that killed off the indian.

 

[Quasar1011]

Originally posted by Vietcong
y cant tideal waves destroy small islands??

As I said earlier, waves caused by tides alone do not get big enough to destroy cities. A small island in Civ 3 is still pretty big in the real world (think Iceland). A hurricane storm surge can be much worse if it happens at high tide, but the cause of the wave is the hurricane force winds piling water up in the shallows near the shore, not the tide. Killer tidal waves is really a mis-nomer.

On the other hand, I think droughts are under-rated. Droughts have been known to wipe out civilizations, in Africa, Asia, and the American southwest. But this kind of drought would be prolonged, lasting more than one turn. I don't think I'd want an extended drought factored into the game.

 

[sealman]

I think that natural disasters are okay if not done to the extreme that is mentioned here. A volcano or "tidal" wave knocking out a building or two and killing a citizen is okay. Something that destroy's my whole infastructure is not.

The game is not trying to mimic real life. If that is what you want, go play SimCity and have Godzilla trounce your city down.