Random events

[Pook]

Originally posted by Shyrramar
If the icecaps melted, I believe someone has calculated that the seas would rise approximately 60 meters - which does leave a lot of land open. I believe, though, that the increased temperature would enable more of the water to form clouds, so it could be that the actual rise of water wouldn't be so high.

Dr. S. Fred Singer, physicist and the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, looked at that exact issue in the following link.
http://www.sepp.org/glwarm/skyfall.html

He notes that sea levels are notoriously difficult to measure (tides, storms, coastal erosion, is the land mass rising or falling?, etc). From the data he's examined, it appears that sea levels are rising about 7" (17.5 cm) per century, and human activity has no discernible impact.

As I mentioned in post #20 of the following thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84932, earth appears to have warmed by 1 degree C in the last 100 years, with .65 C of that increase occurring from 1920-1945.

Dr Singer points out that from 1900-1940, it appears that sea levels fell slightly. When the earth began slightly cooling again after 1945, the sea levels began rising again.

 

[judgement]

Originally posted by Pook
Dr. S. Fred Singer, physicist and the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, looked at that exact issue in the following link....

Siegfried Frederick Singer is a somewhat controversial figure. Accodring to sciencedaily.com:

"S. Fred (in full Siegfried Frederick) Singer (b. 1924) is President of The Science & Environmental Policy Project, a non-profit policy research group he founded in 1990. He is also Distinguished Research Professor at George Mason University and professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. Singer is also a director of The Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, a group founded by the Unification Church in 1982, and an Adjunct Fellow of "Frontiers of Freedom." He is known for his doubts about greenhouse gas induced climate change and the connection between CFCs and ozone depletion, disagreeing with most experts in the field."

Thus, while his credentials are impressive, it is obvious that his views aren't necessarily mainstream. Furthermore, although I hesitate to believe everything I read on the web, a google search abour Dr. Singer turned up this article, which claimes that his organization, and others that support his work, have received funding from the oil industry, but that he denies this. Certainly, Frontiers of Freedom is well known as an ultra-conservative organization, and Exxon-Mobil is one of its largest contributors.

I'm not trying to say that such connections, or being in the scientific minority, necessarily mean that Dr. Singer is wrong. I'm only pointing out that his impressive resume doesn't necessarily mean he's right, and that some people seem to have some questions about his motivations.

 

[Pook]

Unfortunately, it's difficult to find pure science. Research is expensive, and somebody has to pay for it. Whenever I hear about a study, the first questions I ask are "Who paid for the research?", "What's their agenda?", and "Where's their data?" There is certainly a lot of junk science out there, pushed for political reasons. You're well aware that I question the solutions of those in the so-called mainstream, and I keep looking for their data. Instead, I see Time Magazine on April 9, 2001 show pictures of Cape Hatteras lighthouse near my parents' home, with explanations that "the lighthouse had to be moved because of rising sea levels." Reality is that the entire barrier island shifted from normal coastal erosion and buildup, and it had nothing to do with rising sea levels. Hopefully other scientists who look at this issue are more responsible, and use actual data.
Link to discussion of that Time article
http://www.opinionet.com/staff/bobwebster/globalwarmingseries07.shtml

Two other factors that enter:
1) Selective reporting by the media. It's far more exciting to say that the planet is heating up and sea levels are rising than it is to do the homework and say "no, the data says not much change at all".
2) Filtering. We as humans tend to accept data that fits our theories, and filter out data which doesn't. For instance, everyone KNEW that Piltdown Man was an ancestor of modern humans- it fit the theories prevalent at the time. It took over 40 years for Piltdown to be exposed as a shameless hoax. I believe the same thing is happening with rising sea levels.

In any case, for some non-Dr Singer links that show much the same thing- sea levels aren't rising much, and human activity has had no measurable impact, try these:

US Environmental Protection Agency
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/ClimateTrendsSeaLevel.html

British newspaper The Guardian
http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/global/sea_level.html

Riverdeep
http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2000/05/front.100500.polar.jhtml

Greening Earth Society
http://www.co2andclimate.org/Articles/2001/vca42.htm

Cooler Heads Coalition
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=175

The following is a lengthy exploration, but does mention Dr Singer as one of a stack of references
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/Articles/2000/sea.htm

One other issue regarding ocean warming/ expansion we haven't covered is volcanism (not the Mr Spock/ Cdr T'Pol variety, the volcano variety). It appears that volcanism has increased significantly over the past 500 years- not just a better ability to measure it, but an actual increase. With 70+% of the earth's volcanoes underwater, this magma exiting into water at 1100 degrees C MAY have a small impact on temperature.

 

[mortalmadman]

OMG, I LOVE this idea . I would like earthquakes(Decreases pop.), hurricanes (if it could be done, Decreases pop.), tornados (Destroys city impov.)

It would make the game more interesting. And might make shifts in power of these sided games.

Don't they already have plagues?

Plus volcanoes should be more powerful.

 

[microbe]

It's a bad idea. Valcano is already bad enough. No more please.

 

[deo]

It's a bad idea. Valcano is already bad enough. No more please.

Volcano is bad but reality

 

[Sturmgewehr]

Earthquakes are excellent ideas. But it would be stupid if they just happened in nonsensical areas, how would the game designate things like fault lines?

I also support the idea of space rocks slamming into earth. Perhaps not gigantic comets that would destroy half of your empire (if not the whole thing), but smaller ones like the one that exploded over Siberia so many years ago.

 

[Pariah]

I suppose earthquakes could be focused around mountain ranges and undersea trenches (continental margins). But you've got to have them in prime populated areas now and again, as well.

 

[sengfossil]

I'd like to see a kind of random events which last for some (random) turns.

Possilble are:
floods: stops all production in the area, but double agriculture after the event for 10 turns
dry summers: reduces agriculture to half production but pops up citizen satisfaction and tourism in the region
sun radio storms: no flights possible for some turns
blizzards: no unit movement at all for some turns
eathquake: random destroyed buildings and population losses
....

and so on. a kind of newspaper or CNN-speaker message could appear to introduce the event and declare the end of the event...

 

[TeeAhr1]

I would also like to see pollution handled differently...I would like the Civ4 system to give less disadvantage to leaving pollution. This would add a lot more "realism" to the entire pollution effects.

I agree, but I disagree. Less short-term crippling of squares a la CivII/III, more serious long-term global changes, as in Call to Power, with the global warming and rising sea levels and whatnot.

 

[#1 Person]

In alpha Centaria they have them, I like them. And in Civ it would be quite awsome.

 

[klopolov]

I also support the idea of space rocks slamming into earth. Perhaps not gigantic comets that would destroy half of your empire (if not the whole thing), but smaller ones like the one that exploded over Siberia so many years ago.[/QUOTE]

Actually a meteor of that size would destroy more than half of anybody's empire... But perhaps that is irrelevant, if that's the case, my apologies...
But I do think that natural disasters are a good idea and fault lines could be simulated relative to the continents and their location. To the best of my knowledge the real life fault lines are mostly along the coasts of the continents, but I am far from being an expert on the subject.

 

[searcheagle]

space rocks, aka astroids, would be either too over powering or to underpowered to include. Who's going to be happy if they are about to win the game an astroid knocks out their empire? If not, they will be just like craters.

 

[danegeld]

not true if you dont like it there is auto save its a random event so a reload should take care of it.

way i recall and i may be mistaken was

temples prevented eathquakes and volcanos (pop loss)
granary prevented famine
baracks prevented barbarians from looting the city


i like random events but it never seems to happen to the cpu only the player

I cant recall ever seeing polution in the cpu's teritory unless its from a nuke strike but i have seen global warming happen even though i had no polution and I had cleaned it up as it happened

should be all sorts of disaters waiting to happen that you can enable or disable as you see fit to make a more tailord game play for you.

even to the extent of their severity.

I also recall when you took a nations capitol the other bigger half went to your strongest competior which really cut that guy to size in a hurry and forced you to defend your capitol

I also rember when barbaians could take over a city. i liked that but barbs dont ever seem to bother the AI

 

[searcheagle]

not true if you dont like it there is auto save its a random event so a reload should take care of it.

I considering reloading cheating, but don't take it out cause it is useful for when civ crashes!

i like random events but it never seems to happen to the cpu only the player

I cant recall ever seeing polution in the cpu's teritory unless its from a nuke strike but i have seen global warming happen even though i had no polution and I had cleaned it up as it happened

I have seen pollution in the AI's lands to, and from a volcano. I dont know why the computer never cleans up its pollution!

See the thing is, I'm not opposed to random events. I just want them to "flavor" the game, not overpower the game and destroy it. There is a delicate balance in concepts like this and I don't want it destroyed!

 

[Jon Shafer]

not true if you dont like it there is auto save its a random event so a reload should take care of it.

Ummm... why would you want to include something that's so not fun that the natural response is to reload and prevent it from happening?

That doesn't make sense to me...

 

[danegeld]

I suggested that these events be able to be toggled on or off as the player sees fit. Now if you have it on and it jsut happens to be your civ that gets wiped out, you might want to reload.

Yes i have seen volcano's polution as well but never any other kind except after a nuke. seems that they get a free ride on that either that they clean it up instantly

 

[Gramphos]

Now if you have it on and it jsut happens to be your civ that gets wiped out, you might want to reload.

Why would the AI need any more disadvantage than they currently have? Reloading is a bad thing, so if an optional element of the game does make you want to reload, you should not have it activated.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Exactly. If players want 3 of their cities to vanish suddenly they can have their cat dance around on the keyboard and come back in 10 minutes and pick the game back up. A certain amount of randomness is necessary, but only to facilitate strategy and fun. A "wham, 3 cities just exploded" event does not fall into that category. This is a turn-based strategy game, not SimCity.

 

[MOTH]

Yes i have seen volcano's polution as well but never any other kind except after a nuke. seems that they get a free ride on that either that they clean it up instantly

I definately see polution inside the AI's territory that is not the result of a nuke or volcano. Often near the end of games I use ROPs to send my excess slave workers into AI land to clear the polution for them and try and stop global warming. I do see AI workers trying to clear the polution aas well, but its usually only 1 or 2 workers per tile, so it takes them a while.