Self-plundering?

[DaviddesJ]

I just don't see how you can tell me that it's happened in history, and then now tell me it hasn't.

What you said in #34 is that it's not realistic for large areas of the world, on the scale of Civ4 tiles, to change to desert. This is not true, and there are plenty of historical examples of this happening.

It is true that the rising CO2 level in the atmosphere, by itself, has not had such identifiable effects yet, because it takes a long time for CO2 to produce severe climate change, and also the level is not nearly so high as it will be in the future. Global warming, in real life, is a problem that will primarily occur in the future.

On the other hand, desertification, on the scale of Civ4, is happening right now, across the world, even without global warming as a driver. So for desertification to occur in Civ4 seems very reasonable to me, whether or not it has anything to do with global warming.

But ultimately it's just a game. Certainly global warming has nothing to do with the use of nuclear weapons, and why they are tied at all in Civ4 is rather mysterious. But there are a million things in Civ4 that make less logical sense than this. Obviously, you care more about this one because you wish global warming weren't a real life problem, and you somehow transfer this emotion to Civ4. Oh well.

 

[Charles 22]

You are right, I ignored this part:

for (iI = 0; iI < getNukesExploded(); iI++)

so per default there is a 20/100 chance for one random tile per nuke fired per turn. The whole GlobalWarming code is in the spoiler tags.

Spoiler :

void CvGame::doGlobalWarming()
{
    CvCity* pCity;
    CvPlot* pPlot;
    CvWString szBuffer;
    TerrainTypes eWarmingTerrain;
    bool bChanged;
    int iI;

    eWarmingTerrain = ((TerrainTypes)(GC.getDefineINT("GLOBAL_WARMING_TERRAIN")));

    for (iI = 0; iI < getNukesExploded(); iI++)
    {
        if (getSorenRandNum(100, "Global Warming") < GC.getDefineINT("GLOBAL_WARMING_PROB"))
        {
            pPlot = GC.getMapINLINE().syncRandPlot(RANDPLOT_LAND | RANDPLOT_NOT_CITY);

            if (pPlot != NULL)
            {
                bChanged = false;

                if (pPlot->getTerrainType() != eWarmingTerrain)
                {
                    if (pPlot->calculateTotalBestNatureYield(NO_TEAM) > 1)
                    {
                        pPlot->setTerrainType(eWarmingTerrain);
                        bChanged = true;
                    }
                }

                if (pPlot->getFeatureType() != NO_FEATURE)
                {
                    if (pPlot->getFeatureType() != GC.getDefineINT("NUKE_FEATURE"))
                    {
                        pPlot->setFeatureType(NO_FEATURE);
                        bChanged = true;
                    }
                }

                if (bChanged)
                {
                    pPlot->setImprovementType(NO_IMPROVEMENT);

                    pCity = GC.getMapINLINE().findCity(pPlot->getX_INLINE(), pPlot->getY_INLINE());
                    if (pCity != NULL)
                    {
                        if (pPlot->isVisible(pCity->getTeam(), false))
                        {
                            szBuffer = gDLL->getText("TXT_KEY_MISC_GLOBAL_WARMING_NEAR_CITY", pCity->getNameKey());
                            gDLL->getInterfaceIFace()->addMessage(pCity->getOwnerINLINE(), false, GC.getDefineINT("EVENT_MESSAGE_TIME"), szBuffer, "AS2D_GLOBALWARMING", MESSAGE_TYPE_INFO, NULL, (ColorTypes)GC.getInfoTypeForString("COLOR_RED"), pPlot->getX_INLINE(), pPlot->getY_INLINE(), true, true);
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Thank you very much, so that all makes sense now, at least, that is, if one believes that nukes cause GW; which they don't. In one particular game I have in mind, I must had fired about 15 myself, after having been nuked successfully at least five times, and two other civs had gone at it and fired a minimum of another 20. So that was at least 40 that had been fired. I am also curious if it includes the ones shot down or not, since the 40 or so I counted saw at least 10 of the ones I fired shot down. I would assume that they at least had the brains to make it just the nukes that detonated, but then making nukes to cause GW is such a farce I do have to wonder.

 

[Charles 22]

DaviddesJ:

What you said in #34 is that it's not realistic for large areas of the world, on the scale of Civ4 tiles, to change to desert. This is not true, and there are plenty of historical examples of this happening.

I'm not sure I made myself clear in regards to that, but given the drive of my argument that should be quite apparent. I was asking for examples of any incidents of GW on the scale of this game. You gave me some examples of other causes which you didn't mention what they were, but also pointed out they weren't due to GW. If we went even further with the argument, to lay part of the foundation for this game, that nuke explosions cause GW, even if we could attribute something to GW, we sure couldn't attribute it to the nuclear explosions. Naturally, those explosions have something of an effect for the immediate area, however large or small that may be, but of course that has nothing to do with GW. I even doubt the weather itself is affected in the immediate area, at least not after the first week. I would think that precipitation and temperatures would be normal. Yet in this game we can explode one nuke and thereafter the world is subject to random GW.

Well I'm glad to see that we're understanding each other here, as it's quite clear as I read more into your last post. As far as your analysis of my motivation here, I think you're quite wrong. What I have stated here is pretty much it, though I haven't stated everything. I just don't want to get into it any deeper than I have, but the main gist of my raising this concern in the first place was spot on what I said, ie, that I think it's ludicrous to have GW so blatantly overpowering in the game and reverting us back to cavemen (nukes should do that all by themselves thank you). This does raise another concern however, one that alleviates the Civ4 folks quite possibly. That is, that the game was put out with the nukes, so to speak, not working, such that the AI would either barely use them or not use them at all, and now we have this. We know what has caused this rude change don't we? Yet another reason for me to hate the Blake patch change. Well, at least ori has given those like me a workaround, but it is a pity the game is as it is regarding GW nonetheless.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I was asking for examples of any incidents of GW on the scale of this game.

OK. You need to look to other planets for that (Venus). It hasn't happened on Earth, yet.

One of the problems is that the "scale" is very different for you, because you apparently play games where lots of nukes are used. Most people avoid that, so the issue doesn't come up.

We all agree that the use of nuclear weapons shouldn't have anything to do with "global warming", to the extent that Civ4 is supposed to model the real world. Obviously, the designers did want to put in negative consequences for using too many nuclear weapons. It would probably be more "realistic" if the game just ended in a loss if too many nukes are used. I'm not sure if you would like that better, though.

 

[Charles 22]

No, I wouldn't like that better, but it's about the same thing as the current unmodified game.

Yes, I am somewhat of an expert in the field of Civ nuke research , but I emphasize "somewhat". No, my main problem with 2.08 has been the Blake changes, and since I quit so often before the modern age due to losing in some fashion, my forays into the nuke realm have only been a couple of times. I had been there more frequently pre-blake but even the nuke portion was vastly different back then.

I was partially not blaming the original programmers for the current nuke mess, because I would have to doubt if it ever worked in the first place, even before the masses got the game. If it doesn't work, you aren't liable to change the game and realize how radical it is when it does work. Naturally, there are other angles to this sort of thing, such as they could program the AI's to be more reluctant to use them (and I would wonder if blake didn't do the extreme opposite). The sad thing, as it was for me for a while, is that if there's a war going on between other civs and they break out the nukes (I'm actually wondering if they will EVER hesitate to use them if they are at war and have them) then I start getting GW cheapshots as a result.

Another part of the problem regrading the heavy useage of nukes and the GW problem is that I am playing games with no time limit. I suppose if you played within the usual game time limits then GW and nukes aren't quite as annoying, but if you have no time limit, a given option in the game, then it doesn't take too long to figure out that there will be no shifts in power, let alone conquer the whole board at some point, simply because the game gets so decimated by them over more turns. I must have had half of my capitol's tiles destroyed by GW before I got fed up with it. Funny thing was the proper nukes didn't even hit that city. I guess the enemy civ could see how hitting such a GW decimated city was pretty pointless.

 

[Charles 22]

ori: I'm unclear what I need to change in that script, assuming I can access it, to change the rate to say 1% instead of 20%. Can I use the standard Windows txt editor to change it, or is it one of those C++ things that I have not the software or any knowledge of?

 

[ori]

ori: I'm unclear what I need to change in that script, assuming I can access it, to change the rate to say 1% instead of 20%. Can I use the standard Windows txt editor to change it, or is it one of those C++ things that I have not the software or any knowledge of?

If you just want to change the rate you can modify the .xml using any editor - but I would recommend Microsoft's XML Notepad since it is easier to find the required tag and not accidentally mess with other stuff than in a simple txt editor.
What you want to do is: open ...\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\GlobalDefines.xml (for Vanilla) or ...\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Warlords\Assets\XML\GlobalDefines.xml (for Warlords) and search for:

<Define>
 		<DefineName>GLOBAL_WARMING_PROB</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>20</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>

just change the "20" to any integer value you like (I would not recommend a negative value though - this might produce unwanted effects )

 

[Charles 22]

Alright, thanks a lot. I thought that if I did a search on "20" I would probably come up with it, but I did need to know what I needed to edit it because I do recall how people were saying how modifiable it is, and that is where I heard of C++ mentioned. I have no idea how much programming on any game goes to text or not.

 

[DaviddesJ]

You can just use "Notepad" (Windows text file editor) to change it, or the program ori suggests.

If you wanted to change the GW mechanism (e.g., add a special case so that improvements that can exist on desert tiles aren't destroyed if the tile is changed to desert), then you would have to write C++ code. But just changing the rate is much easier.

It's also easy to just modify the game to prevent nuclear weapons from being constructed, if that would make you happier.