Preventing Global Warming

[Zoke0]

I find that sometimes I'm trying to clean up my pollution and may have the least pollution (sometimes none), but there is still global warming!

My question: Does anyone have anymethods of stop or at least greatly delaying global warming? All suggestions would be welcome, thanks!

 

[Beamup]

Pollution the AI doesn't clean up can also cause global warming. Since the effect is worldwide and not localized near the pollution squares, this will get you too. All you can really do about it is in your own territory is:
1. Clean up all YOUR pollution as fast as you can.
2. Reduce how much pollution you produce by building Mass Transits and Recycling Centers (or curtailing your own growth, which is not advisable)
3. Build solar plants (IIRC these slow down warming).

If the AIs leave enough to cause warming, there's not much you can do, except for a couple possibilities:
1. Start a war and conquer their polluted squares so you can clean them up. I must admit this is one cause of war I have never heard of actually happening. Has anyone ever actually done this?
2. You can send your own workers into the territory of any AIs with whom you have a RoP to clean it up. Of course, this will help their production and may give them free workers if war breaks out, but you can't have everything.

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by Beamup
3. Build solar plants (IIRC these slow down warming).

I'm not sure, but I don't think that's true.

 

[Beamup]

Originally posted by willj
I'm not sure, but I don't think that's true.

That's why I said IIRC. Just checked the Civilopedia and it doesn't say anything - I think maybe I was remembering Civ2, where they DEFINITELY had that effect.

 

[Tatran]

I think you can't prevent global warming,because it hasn't anything to do with the amount of polluted squares.Global
warming occurs when there are a lot of cities (not only your
cities) producing a lot of pollution.

 

[Barker]

Tatran is correct. Global warming is based on pollution generated in all cities, not polluted squares on the board. The only way to deal with the pollution is:

1 - Reduce population and production (NOT)
2 - Build Mass transit and Recycling centers
3 - Use clean energy sources - Build Hoover Dam instead of coal plants

 

[Hellfire]

I have yet to play a game that gets to this point on the latest patches, but I am under the impression that you can never completely remove all pollution unless you nix your factory.

Here's what I see.

1) As population rises pollution rises, so when you create a mass transit center it cancells that out.
2) As you build a factory and your production rises, so does pollution, so you build a recycling center. HOWEVER, 2 pollution icons on the largest producers are always left.
3) Adding a hydro dam, nuclear plant or solar plant does not affect this. In reality a nuclear plant increases production and reduces pollution, but since the increased production increases pollution more than any other power plant, the nuclear plant pollution effect is negated.

Is this still true? If this is the case then there really is no way to beat pollution except by conquering the world and killing off your production.

 

[hbdragon88]

If you have lots of ICBMs, get rid of them. In one of my games I went on a ICBM-building spree - built 17 of them - and every five turns or so there would be three, maybe four squares that would be manipulated due to Global Warming. It's happening so fast I can't keep up with replanting forests or irrigating those squares.

Another solution is to sell off all the pollution-causing improvements: Factory, Manufacturing Plant, Offshore Platform, Coal Plant, etc.

 

[Emerald Knight]

Yeh.. ICBMs........

Go on a ICBM Bombing spree, and you'll see that yellow sun turn red, thereby screwing the world.

 

[bbaws]

In my current game I have dominated my own continent plus one that used to be shared by the Indians and Greeks. Since I completely forested that continent the only GW I have experienced has peen forests disappearing. These are easily replanted. The continent is only any use for building workers anyway as I amin't moving the palace.

 

[MummyMan]

lol, all forests? how do you keep your cities large enough?

 

[bbaws]

There's a lot of flood plain and desert, obviously

 

[WHTKD]

Originally posted by Zoke0
My question: Does anyone have anymethods of stop or at least greatly delaying global warming? All suggestions would be welcome, thanks!

You can change the effects of "global warming" in the editor. Under "edit rules" click on "terrain", select the "terrain type" then change the "pollution effect" of each one to "NONE".

 

[hbdragon88]

I think he means with playing unmodified games.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Even if you never build factories you still get at least 1 pollution icon from hospitals. With mass transit if your city is over size 12 you get 1 pollution icon no matter how big your city is. Without mass transit you get 1 for EVERY citizen you have above size 12. If you have a factory you get a minimum of 1 pollution icon and additional factories add more (hydro and solar don't add any more). A recycling center will make the maximum production pollution at 1. Airports and research labs also add pollution. I don't remember if that pollution is reduced with the recycling centers or not. So with mass transit and recycling center you will always have a minimum of 2 pollution if you have factories and hospitals.

With unmodified rules there isn't a whole lot you can do other than hold off on building hospitals until you reach mass transit (not usually a smart move unless you are playing the lower levels), or if you build hospitals only let your cities grow as large as they really need to be (specialists aren't all that useful, especially if the pollution they generate loses you some shields). You can try preventing the AI from getting the hospital/factory techs, but eventually they will get these, so there isnt' anything you can do unless you want to give them the mass transit and recycling techs (yeah right, and even then they might not build those) or you destroy them.

I hate pollution/global warming so much that I completely eliminated it from my mod (except from nukes). I set the pollution generated from each factory/building to 0 and a city needs to get to size 50 before needing a hospital. Of course a city will never reach size 50 so it does change the gameplay a little by having much larger cities much earlier on in the game. I let a city grow to size 10 before needing an aqueduct to make it a little more balancing, but I admit it still is unbalancing for a player who gets a really good food start. If I make nukes unbuildable then pollution would NEVER show up in my games.

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy
A recycling center will make the maximum production pollution at 1. Airports and research labs also add pollution. I don't remember if that pollution is reduced with the recycling centers or not.

I am pretty sure that Recycling Centers reduce the pollution from ALL buildings down to one. Just like Mass Tansit reduces pollution from population to one.

Originally posted by Tatran
I think you can't prevent global warming,because it hasn't anything to do with the amount of polluted squares.Global
warming occurs when there are a lot of cities (not only your
cities) producing a lot of pollution.

and:

Originally posted by Barker Tatran is correct. Global warming is based on pollution generated in all cities, not polluted squares on the board.

Well, I have heard otherwise. More specifically, from JoseM: he played many games where he cleaned up everyone's pollution, and that helped global warming; it was never as bad as when he didn't do it. So he strongly thinks that global warming is produced by polluted squares, not pollution being produced. Now, just like I have heard before he said that, I am hearing otherwise, and now I don't know who to believe.

 

[Tatran]

In civ2 polluted squares caused global warming.I still think this
is not the case in civ3.In my current game,as America/Monarch,
I'm the biggest civ with the largest army.All my largest cities
have factories + Hoover dam and still no Global warming occured.
And there about 33 metropolitan cities in the game (15 above the
population of 20 + mass transit system) and only a few squares
are polluted (huge map).So the total produced pollution on the planet is low.Most of the civs are communists and a lot of wars are going on.So they don't have the time to build up their cities.

 

[hbdragon88]

Whoa. What's the secret you have? I have a standard size map game, no modded features, five civs now, with every city having mass transit, recycling center, and a hydro/solar plant. Tons of global warming occur. That was after my ICBM-building spree. But even before it still occured.

 

[JuicyCivNewbie]

I've seen the AI with horrendous pollution problems before. I remember looking at an AI Chinese civ and seeing about 1/5 of the squares on their completely railroaded and mined/irrigated island polluted. Of course the fact that the AI was at war at the time might not have helped, as they could have had most of their workers sitting in cities.

 

[Tatran]

The America/Monarch game is over and won(space race).The
best game I've played so far,but I still have to experience with diplomacy before I go to the emperor level.I stayed 7/8 techs
ahead till the end.(future techs are no options -> not enough
points for the total score).At the end of the game there were
about 70/80 (sorry,but I didn't count them) metropolitan cities
and yes some global warming occured (4/5 times in my territory).
The only way to prevent global warming is to conquer all your
enemies.I guess it's a possibility that global warming occur
because of the use of ICBM/Tactical missiles.I know in Alpha
Centauri I used once a lot of singularity planet busters(probably
to get rid of Yang or Miriam) and that had a major effect on the
ecology(many times the sea levels rose).I never have to use
those missiles,maybe someone else can say something about
the use of nucleair missiles and global warming.