Please Reconsider Dumping Pollution.

[brinko]

i was reading the pre release information, to recoat my hopes. i notice something that kinda bothered me. They said they were considering removing the pollution aspect from the game...?

I have to disagree, with this proposition.
Every Civilization pollute...expecially the ignorant powerful ones. this leads to global warming, polluted lakes and rivers, and disease.

I was hoping that in civ 4 the pollution aspect would be more emphasized. especially with a 3d engine. i was considering the possibility of visible smog around heavily polluted cites, smoke stacks(that actually pumped out smoke) and improvements to reduce such products.

I take it that it will be hard to know everything about an enemy, it could be a hint of gesture to notice smog around many cities of ones rival, indicating strong economy and powerful industry but also primitive technology, and poor leadership. During englands industrial age, they used so much coal, the forest around london turned black and changed the colors of the moths! How can this be ignored in a game where coal, factories, power plants, and motorized transportion be significant factors within it?

Some people play very industrial, while others take pride in having green and clean enviroment. how can such pride be applied, if there is no such thing to strive for? how boring it would be if the enviorment is always going to look clean and sparkling, how could this appeal to anyone whom wants to create a utopia, knowing that his efforts would not make any visible result at all?

In summary pollution is not a problem that will go away. I cant imagine it going away in the world, so i cant imagine it going away in a game modelled from the world. yet there is hope and ways that can change this destructive path, of which I hope civ 4 acknowledges, and civs could benefit.

Thank-you for reconsidering

 

[dojoboy]

I don't think they are getting rid of the concept, just looking at applying it differently so people do not have to run around and clean it up. Now, how do we apply it differently?

 

[Civrules]

Well, it also mentions that they will be replacing it with a much better concept, presumably the new Health system.
The only reason why they are "removing" it is because they want to eliminate annoying micromanagement tasks. This is not to say that some negative factors will disappear as well.

Here is a quote from Soren at Apolyton. Here is what he said about it:

There seems to have been a lot of consternation about the "get rid of unfun elements" quote. Perhaps I should clarify. We have identified the game pieces of Civ which have caused the most user annoyances (pollution, corruption, etc.). Instead of trying to band-aid these problems, we are mostly tossing them out and implementing better systems that will require less micro-management, provide better high-level control, and still create interesting gameplay challenges. Pollution, for example, is being replaced by a more comprehensive "Health" system which has a large variety of positive and negative influences. There is no need to go into detail yet - even though I am sure you can imagine some of the factors - the important point is that we aren`t just chucking the whole thing.

The take-home here is that we understand that cleaning-up pollution is not fun. We can fix that!

He puts an emphasis on removing unfun aspects, and not removing realistic aspects.

 

[brinko]

okay, thats comforting news. thanks for the swift reply civrules and dojoboy. which aspects were of great concern in civ 4, that they have to remodel the entire structure for civ 4.? Pollution to me is like ticks in the forest, its a problem but it dosent stop u from going in the forest. I got used to dealing with pollution playing, so its hard to see what was wrong with it.