Pollution is killing me!

[Willem]

Originally posted by Alc0p0pz
Regarding the must-clear-forest-at-all-cost thing ... I kinda figured there must be some reason to have forest.

In Civ3, there isn't.
Lets quickly consider the base yield in terrian type as the sum of food and shields.

Grass - 2, can be improved to 4
Bonus Grass - 3, can be improved to 5
Plains - 2, can be improved to 4
Tundra - 1, can be improved to 3
Forest - 3, can't be improved

So you can see, there is no reason to keep forest as all the four terrian types which can have forest planted on them can ultimately yield more with mine/irrigation/RR.

So what I did was, use the editor to make Forest yield 2 food and 2 shields. I started a game with this in place, but it proved to be way too unbalancing in the early game.

I might try 1 food and 3 shields and see how that plays.
It shouldn't unbalance the early game as Despotism will reduce the 3 shields to 2.

What do you think?

An easier way would be to remove the mining bonus from your grassland and plains squares. So having a forest might be the only way for some of your cities to get any decent production. And you'll end up with a nicer looking map as a result. I think having all those grey lumps all over the world are so ugly, especially when you put a railroad on top.

 

[Willem]

Originally posted by Park Ranger


I think you're on to something...is there any way to allow rail improvements to increase shields from forest? This matches my RL experience, where a lot of timber is shipped by rail (though this is disappearing). I think the problem is that rail improvement only increases benefits of other improvments (mine & irrigation), has no effect on the "natural" yield of tiles.

Sadly, though, I think the AI's deforesting behaviour is fairly realistic...

You can if you add a mining bonus to Forests. Or in this case logging. That gives the human player a big advantage though, since the AI only cuts them down. I wish there was a way to stop them from doing that, like I could in Civ II.

 

[Carbon_Copy]

Forests do have several uses. For starters, they're flat out the best things to build in tundra prior to rails. And once rails are built, mining a tundra square only makes it as good as it was with a road and trees, movement notwithstanding.

Secondly, forests are great mitigating factors to global warming. If global warming hits, it takes out the trees, but spares the land.

Thirdly, forests provide a significant defensive bonus, such that planting forests in strategic spots could provide a decent benefit.

Forests can also provide a non-bonus grassland with an extra shield that it couldn't otherwise get until rails. In high-food areas (i.e. places near floodplains or coastal cities), I typically don't cut down the trees until the Industrial age since it's guaranteed to be the highest production possible for that tile until rails.

And about the worker movement...the only time I'm ever actually moving my entire worker squad is when it's rail building time or when I'm trying to clear out jungle, in both cases it's well worth spending a half hour per turn moving workers to accomplish more tasks per turn. And once I'm done with that, the only other time they ever all get activated at once is if I'm in the middle of a conquest and I have to build rails through former AI territory. If it's just pollution patrol, rarely will I ever have more than a dozen or so awake at any given time.

 

[planetfall]

I used to hate pollution because of the modeling also, but these are my pollution control basics:
1. never build coal plants {The short term gain is wiped out by disadvantage of dealing with their pollution}
2. change editor "may explode" with nuclear plants. {france has has nuclear power for decades and never had a plant explode}
3. check building pollution. Factories should create pollution, but not all other improvements should generate building pollution. Make changes in editor that you think are realistic or game enhancing.
4. build hoover, hydro and then nuclear power plants. Solar is ok but not as productive as nuclear.
5. cities above 12 may be helped by mass trans and recycle centers, cities above 17 require both mass transit and recycle centers.
6. Shift-A, in late industial age to endgame, there will be 1-3 polluted tiles every 10-20 turns. Just check with F11 and let worker find it and fix. Much, much faster than manually finding pollution tile and assigning worker to clean up.

Using these methods, pollution is still present for both you and AI but not a real hinderance to game play any more.

 

[Exile_Ian]

I don't really consider pollution to be the big problem that many of you seem to think. Here's how I handle it.

1) Have maybe 10 workers available for clean-up duty - don't sidetrack them on other things. Use Ctrl-P whenever a worker comes up idle - he'll find the pollution if there is any. If you send enough workers to a pollution square, it cleans up in the same turn. I rarely have more than 1 square of pollution lasting into the next turn.

2) Cut back on production! Does your city really need to be churning out 50 shields (sometimes yes) - probably not. Once I've got a city to a comfortable pop level, I scale back food production (why waste it?) and do same for shields (especially in my 'dirty' cities where I haven't got Solar/Hydro plants or Recycling Centers). Turn those spare workers into Scientists/Tax Collectors - or just leave them as Entertainers and get your city into 'We love the ...'.

Basically, I tolerate pollution where I need it (in my big production centres) and when I need it (big growth, rearming) - otherwise I minimise it (by cutting back production) and handle it (with teams of workers).

 

[Xiahou-Dun]

What is the breaking point for shields? 50 shields give you one bar of pollution? two bars at??

The main thing I was looking for here..(And from all the replies in this thread..I can see the answer is not going to be one I was hopeing for) is can you stop pollution in a metro.

I waited till I had both the mass trans and recycle center built in my size 12 city (producing 46 shields...no pollution bars) then built the hospital...next turn had a size 13, producing 47 shields (plus a lost of 1 shield) and ....one bar of pollution.

Will all metros, no matter what you build, always have at least one bar of pollution?

 

[Alc0p0pz]

What is the breaking point for shields? 50 shields give you one bar of pollution? two bars at??

No, this isn't how it works in Civ3. (IIRC the CtP games did pollution proportional to production.)

Pollution only comes from either city improvements, or from population over size 12. The number of shields your cities generate does not effect pollution. (You could theoretically have a size 12 city in the middle of bonus grass and hills with a Factory and Nuke plant producing >100 shields ... it would have only 1 pollution point.)

Will all metros, no matter what you build, always have at least one bar of pollution?

Yes. One pollution point is generated for every population point in excess of size 12. As far as I can tell, the Mass Transit System reduces population pollution to exactly one - it never completely eliminates it.

 

[Reichsmarshal]

Here's how to turn global warming off: change all of the terrain types to pollution effect none. That will get rid of the absolute worst effect of pollution. Then all you have to do is clean it up and that is easy .

Changing the worker rate and cheaping mass transist/recycling center just doesn't cut it. For real results turn off the ability of grasslands and such to be globally warmed. This might also affect nuclear weapons since it uses a similar method. After all global warming is a junk science and did Ukraine turn into a desert from the disaster?

The pollution effect itself is realistic, global warming is not.