Removing Globel Warming?

[jeffreyac]

I have to admit - I've never seen global warming in game, because I've never seen nukes in-game. Every game, if I build the UN, no-nukes is the first thing I put up to vote, and if the AI builds it it still seems to be a popular motion.

No nukes=no GW, problem solved.

I don't like the nukes anyway, so this works well for me (and, for that matter, I don't build nuke plants - not that I'm against them, just hate the meltdown mechanic). If you really enjoy the nukes or like to build nuke plants, well, this may not be an acceptable solution for you.

 

[brades]

I have no nukes. The guys I'm fighting have no nukes. My cities are well under their caps and I've still had 2 tiles go desert - so it isn't just nuclear. There HAS been 1 nuclear detonation on the other side of the planet, but if that's causing me Gw, that ain't kool.

It most certainly did cause it, as you can see why there is so much QQing about GW in the game.

 

[Kesshi]

Nuclear meltdowns by power plants cause it, too.

I have to admit - I've never seen global warming in game, because I've never seen nukes in-game. Every game, if I build the UN, no-nukes is the first thing I put up to vote, and if the AI builds it it still seems to be a popular motion.

No nukes=no GW, problem solved.

I don't like the nukes anyway, so this works well for me (and, for that matter, I don't build nuke plants - not that I'm against them, just hate the meltdown mechanic). If you really enjoy the nukes or like to build nuke plants, well, this may not be an acceptable solution for you.

Duuk & Thorac,

I'm had games with zero nuclear weapons and zero nuclear meltdowns yet still received global warming penalties. I did have coal power plants and nuclear power plants, though. And being that I almost never run Environmentalism, a lot of my cities have been partially unhealthy. Could the coal or nuclear power plants cause it? Could the unhealthiness cause it?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Duuk & Thorac,

I'm had games with zero nuclear weapons and zero nuclear meltdowns yet still received global warming penalties. I did have coal power plants and nuclear power plants, though. And being that I almost never run Environmentalism, a lot of my cities have been partially unhealthy. Could the coal or nuclear power plants cause it? Could the unhealthiness cause it?

The nuclear weapons used or the meltdowns of nuclear power plants don't have to be your nuclear weapons or your nuclear power plants. If some civilization on the other side of the world were to build a power plant and it were to melt down (which you don't know), then you will still suffer from occasional desertification of your lands.

There is nothing you can do about it.

 

[Duuk]

I have no nukes. The guys I'm fighting have no nukes. My cities are well under their caps and I've still had 2 tiles go desert - so it isn't just nuclear. There HAS been 1 nuclear detonation on the other side of the planet, but if that's causing me Gw, that ain't kool.

That is exactly what is doing it.

GW in the game is hideously modeled, can't be countered, and never goes away once it starts.

I preferred CTP2's model for global warming. It was caused by a pollution counter, and your pollution emissions could be countered by buildings and techs. In addition, you could demand/negotiate with the other civs to reduce their pollution count.

 

[jeffreyac]

Hmmm.... This interests me, as I haven't ever seen global warming - and, though I never build the nuke plants, i can't believe no other civ has ever built them in any of my games (I typically end up with games running far out into modern tech, so they certainly would have the ability to build nuke plants...)

You'd think the odds would be I'd have seen this - I always just assumed the no-nukes ban was stopping GW, but from what I read here that shouldn't have been the case (as it seems that at some point, the AI should have built a nuke plant, had it blow, thus triggering the cycle...) What do you think, am I just lucky?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Hmmm.... This interests me, as I haven't ever seen global warming - and, though I never build the nuke plants, i can't believe no other civ has ever built them in any of my games (I typically end up with games running far out into modern tech, so they certainly would have the ability to build nuke plants...)

You'd think the odds would be I'd have seen this - I always just assumed the no-nukes ban was stopping GW, but from what I read here that shouldn't have been the case (as it seems that at some point, the AI should have built a nuke plant, had it blow, thus triggering the cycle...) What do you think, am I just lucky?

Each nuclear plant has a 1 in 2000 chance to melt down each turn (0.5% chance each turn). You also need uranium to build them and you need to be pretty advanced on the technology tree, so it's likely that not a lot of them get built by the AI.

The desertification of terrain is completely random, so even if global warming is occurring you don't necessarily have to see it in your area of the map. Especially if just one nuclear plant melts down, the amount of desertification of the terrain will not be very high.

 

[Supr49er]

Each nuclear plant has a 1 in 2000 chance to melt down each turn (0.5% chance each turn)...

Those odds are minuscule, yet whenever I have had to build NPs, they seem to inevitably suffer melt downs. So it's Hydro or Coal Plants for me, and the Three Gorge Dam if I can manage it.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Those odds are minuscule, yet whenever I have had to build NPs, they seem to inevitably suffer melt downs. So it's Hydro or Coal Plants for me, and the Three Gorge Dam if I can manage it.

It used to be 1 in a 1000 per turn, but it was changed in some patch or expansion pack.

Also note that when you have several nuclear power plants over a long time, then the odds of one of them melting down during that period is still significant.

Modding out the melt down probability is very easy, it's difficulty is comparable to removing the desertification effect of global warming.

 

[Endure]

If you don't mind, I'd like to laugh.

But seriously, It's an integral part of the game, and unless you had next to no military ( Which brings the point of why you didn't get wiped out ) you could have prevented it.

Sometimes Civ IV things piss me off too..But after realizing your mistakes and playing through again, you realize that everything is fine the way it is.

Post is full of fail? Yep I think so.

How the heck do you prevent AI's on another continent from building nuclear reactors and having a melt down or nuking it out? You don't unless your playing on such an easy difficultly level that you can completely dominate the world and at that point, it's all trivial anyways.

It's certainly not an integral part of the game. It was a poorly thought out mechanic that annoys many players.

 

[Dida]

It's certainly not an integral part of the game. It was a poorly thought out mechanic that annoys many players.

In addition to being annoying, GW renders an already weak unit: nuke useless.

 

[Seven05]

My mod changes global warming significantly. I've added climates (cool, temperate and warm) and the climates can shift according to the ratio of polution to the amount fo polution the current world can handle. For example, on a map with a lot of unimproved tiles the world can handle a lot polution but a world where nearly every tile is covered with towns, mines and farms... well, it can't handle so much. Global warming itself simply changes the climate of the terrain, so temperate grassland becomes warm grassland which is a generally insignificant change except that it can potentially destroy resources if they're not allowed in the new climate. The climate zones affect random weather events and the random weather events increase in severity as the global polution ratio increases, so not being 'green' can result is more frequent and more severe events such as flooding. While not easy to control the players do have some control over global warming, reducing building unhealthiness (through recycling centers for instance) will reduce polution levels and destroying improvements (or building national parks) will increase polution tolerance. Fancy eh?

On top of that I have a new model for 'nuclear winter' based on some research I did using several scietific models. Although the models all had some variations they had two things in common; first, the temperature decrease was short term (months, not years) and not severe enough to cover the world in snow and second, the most significant impact was reduced precipitation as a result of the reduced temperatures which could have long-term effects. So I have a deteriorating counter of nuclear explosions, unlike the standard Civ4 counter which never decreases which results in a nuclear winter effect that is most prominent during and shortly after a nuclear war but eventually fades away. The actual effect is to reduce the fertility of the land, so grasslands shift to plains and plains to deserts. Since the cool climate doesn't have a desert terrain type a world without extensive global warming will have fewer tiles turning to desert during a nuclear winter. Nuclear meltdowns do not increase the nuclear explosion counter at all so their effect is entirely local. Oh, and to make it fun to destroy the world I increased the power of nuclear weapons and added a wasteland terrain and a crater terrain. Wastelands can appear in tiles with fallout and fallout can drift around the map if not cleaned up. It's pretty interesting to see the results of a nuclear meltdown when the owner can't clean up the fallout quickly and nuclear wars are truely devastating as they can render huge areas uninhabitable in very little time.

Anyway, if that's more along the lines of what you'd like to see you can follow the link in my signature. It's not a finished product but it works well and relatively bug free

 

[Samus_au]

My main issue with GW is simply there is no counter for it, unlike just about every other game mechanic. If building a forge, ironworks, coal power planet etc blows your health limit out of the water you can build hospitals, aqueducts, adopt environmentalism. if you’re getting attacked by tanks, you can build spearman lol, and so on. But once GW sets in you can’t do anything about it. I don’t mind the idea behind it, but until you can do something to balance its effects (a treaty with other leaders on pollution, build some structure to slow / remove its effects, terraform the land back to what it should be) it shouldn’t be in the game.

The effects of a power planet meltdown should be either local to the area, or maybe even the Civ it happened to. When Chernobyl happened, patches of England didn’t instantly turn to arid desert. Say present it as a random event;

One of your Nuclear power plants has melted down

• Shut all plants down and perform safety checks. (Costs a bunch of gold, nuclear power plants don’t work for 5 turns, but your per-turn risk of a meltdown is reduced by 100%)
• Do what we can to help our citizens, send medical and technical aid. (Costs gold, but lowers the amount of fallout and population lost by 25% to 50%)
• The end is nigh! Stockpile beans and head for the hills! (plant blows up, leaving lots of fallout and lowering the city’s population considerably).

At least this way you could do something about it, and when the AI’s plant’s blow up it won’t ruin your land. Any other ideas on how it could be handled?

 

[bestbrian]

Global Warming is a silly game mechanic that goes hand in hand with the idea that electrical power (in and of itself) is unhealthy. Firaxis needs to find some non-California programmers.

 

[IronicBuddha]

Yea GW is lame

 

[Duuk]

Global Warming is a silly game mechanic that goes hand in hand with the idea that electrical power (in and of itself) is unhealthy. Firaxis needs to find some non-California programmers.

Same file. Change POWER_HEALTH_CHANGE to 0.

I did.

 

[bestbrian]

Same file. Change POWER_HEALTH_CHANGE to 0.

I did.

I know. It just shouldn't be there to begin with.

 

[Duuk]

I know. It just shouldn't be there to begin with.

You're talking about a game where the most brutal form of economic fallacy ever invented, which took Russia from a net exporter of food to a net importer and left all of Eastern Europe living in the 1950s while the West was busy inventing modern, pleasant life... is called CIVIC_UTOPIA. And of course, the mode of thought that spread violent revolution, purges, and death camps for the "enemies of the people"... is called TECH_UTOPIA.

 

[bestbrian]

California Uber Alles

 

[ScribJellydonut]

It just serves Firaxis's left-wing environmental agenda, pushing it down our throats.

I second that. The Civilization series has long been a historical oriented game with themes and concepts time-tested fundamentals of human history. Such as the fact that when you have slaves, slave revolts are bound to happen. When you have nuclear reactors, there is a risk of meltdown. Corruption always had and always will occur. Simple things such as this. I just spent a semester in a college english research class that focused on the environment. Global Warming hasn't been proven, isn't time-tested, and surely isn't historical, but instead is a projected future effect - a theory no less.

Not only that, but in the game it is caused by nuclear detonations, which is the most ridiculous idea ever. Not only would a nuclear winter be caused by a nuclear war rather than warming, nuclear winters (Yes I have CREDIBLE sources ) wouldn't last as long as everyone seems to think. The media, as usual, has blown it far out of proportion. Nuclear Winter from a 5000 MT + exchange is predicted to only last a few months, with opacity levels in the atmosphere returning to normalcy well within a year. This doesn't alter the fact that a full growing season would be affected, and starvation would, yes, be rampant. Civil Disorder is probably the biggest concern from Nuclear Winter in the United States. The worst effect (as far as numbers) of a nuclear war would be fallout and radation.

Not only this, but one game I decided to start nuking and being an . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. I had view of most of the 'tiny' planet, from vassalage and such, so I would be able to see anywhere it was occurring. After about 10 nukes, global warming started to occur, but ONLY in my territory. As if there is a 'global warming' god who deals bad karma to those who deserve it. In reality, any would-be effects of global warming are indiscriminate of the guilty party.

Want a better consequence of nuclear weapons? Make your people unhappy (look at how many people still cry today over America's decision to use atomic weaponry in 1945) and make people unhealthy across the globe. For every 10 - 20 nuclear explosions persay, make one person in every city unhealthy due to fallout. Make it regional to the explosion sites if you like, but with global weather patterns, it's unlikely that any spot on the globe would be unaffected. Nuclear testing in Nevada caused radiation levels of 100+ rads somewhere near New York from rainfall.