stop being so political

[TheDS]

Let's see.... I can build a cheap coal plant and pollute the whole world.... or if I have a river, I can build a hydro plant for the same cost but without the pollution... or if I can build a certain Wonder, I get free hydro plants everywhere... or if I spend a whole lot of money on clean energy, I can build a nuclear plant anywhere, but I run the risk of it blowing up. Hmmmmm.....

Okay, Firaxis, you don't understand nuclear power. Let's stop acting like little kids about it. How many far larger disasters have we had in the world that you don't model? How many massive oil spills and well fires have there been, yet there's never been a way to do this in Civ, not even as a random event? How much of a disaster is a war nowadays, what with all the people fleeing it, clogging up the roads, getting attacked, and so forth, yet none of this is in Civ? How many deaths have been caused by traffic accidents? By cholesterol? By eating unhealthily? By alcohol and nicotine?

But no, we have a nearly useless resource that's usable only for about 1/5 of the game (whales), we have nuclear plants that explode, we have global warming, and so on.

Hey, I think we should save the whales too. I'm trying to collect the whole set.

Hey, I know some people aren't taking nuclear power problems seriously, but this is a political will problem, not a technology problem. Get rid of politicians that don't have a sense of responsibility to the people they were elected to serve and the nuclear waste problem will get fixed in a hurry. (As will most of the rest of them.)

Hey, I know the pollution is ruining the world, but its effect is so short compared to the length of the game, so why bother? (The way it's been implemented has never compelled me to think much of it, anyway.)

Don't ruin a perfectly good game for the sake of a lame political statement. What's next, a penalty for eating meat?

 

[Churchill's Hat]

I think the reason is for balance rather than making a political statement. That being said, nuclear power plants aren't really balanced against coal plants in non-river cities, but that's because they weren't balanced correctly.

 

[dwaxe]

I feel it is your problem for taking a simulation in a video game as a political statement.

 

[Rowain deWolf]

But no, we have a nearly useless resource that's usable only for about 1/5 of the game (whales), we have nuclear plants that explode, we have global warming, and so on.

Ah but that is quite accurate. Whales were hard/impossible to hunt1 for a long time. Then for a short time they did provide valuable resources which have nowadays a lot of cheaper/better replacements so today they are a useless resource.

Hey, I know some people aren't taking nuclear power problems seriously, but this is a political will problem, not a technology problem. Get rid of politicians that don't have a sense of responsibility to the people they were elected to serve and the nuclear waste problem will get fixed in a hurry. (As will most of the rest of them.)

I'm most interested to hear your cheap and easy solution for nuc. waste. If it really without danger I think you would be booked for nobel-price .

PS: I agree that the global warming in CIV happens too often but OTOH you can use Nukes very easy and without destroying the world too.

 

[Yakk]

I'm most interested to hear your cheap and easy solution for nuc. waste. If it really without danger I think you would be booked for nobel-price .

Stuff in deep hole in geologically/hydrologically stable area.

For example, most of the Canadian shield has been geologically stable for 3+ billion years, and the water pressure a mile down is left over from the last ice age.


It isn't hard to deal with the ridiculously small amount of high end nuclear waste. It is in fact so easy to deal with the high end nuclear waste that we are storing it in pools at the nuclear reactors indefinitely, because it is both so compact and not that dangerous.

(In comparison, look at what we do with what comes out of a coal power plant... We cannot store the resulting toxic sludge at the power plant, because there isn't enough room, nor can we extract out the toxic parts of the sludge and store it at the power plant, because extracting the toxic parts isn't economically feasible...)

 

[TheBladeRoden]

If nuclear power plants have a risk of blowing up, dams should have a risk of breaking and drowning everyone downstream.

 

[Skyre Noktis]

Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation. Civ is not a simulation.

And the real problem with global warming in Civ 4 is that nukes should really be causing a nuclear winter instead. I want to be able to plunge the entire world into a second ice age if I feel like it.

 

[Koning]

Civ isn't political. At most a American-Western view of world history. And if you don't like the global warming events, interpret them as being environmental degradation.

 

[zorven]

Stuff in deep hole in geologically/hydrologically stable area.

For example, most of the Canadian shield has been geologically stable for 3+ billion years, and the water pressure a mile down is left over from the last ice age.


It isn't hard to deal with the ridiculously small amount of high end nuclear waste. It is in fact so easy to deal with the high end nuclear waste that we are storing it in pools at the nuclear reactors indefinitely, because it is both so compact and not that dangerous.

(In comparison, look at what we do with what comes out of a coal power plant... We cannot store the resulting toxic sludge at the power plant, because there isn't enough room, nor can we extract out the toxic parts of the sludge and store it at the power plant, because extracting the toxic parts isn't economically feasible...)

Or we could recycle the spent rods like the rest of the world...

http://www.ehow.com/about_5453815_uses-spent-nuclear-fuel-rods.html

 

[tono213]

Seeing any discussion about Israel and Palestine, any viewpoint or opinion, on this forum gives me a case of RAGE.

 

[Bowsling]

I disagree.
Are we going to have a super-powerful nuclear plant that makes electricity at no cost other than in shields?
Are we going to have a game where we can all run around and pollute as much as we want without any sort of penalty?
All these bonuses and penalties, etc. aren't there because that is the opinion of Firaxis, they're there to balance the game.

 

[Set]

People dying from cholestrol, traffic accidents and all thase other problems you mentioned are represented by 1 unhealthiness 2 speed of city growth. a 10 person city has a lot of people and one tenthof that city is not killed in traffic accidents very often.

 

[Abraxis]

How many deaths have been caused by traffic accidents? By cholesterol? By eating unhealthily? By alcohol and nicotine?

Death by Nicotine? The lethal dose of pure nicotine is not something anyone will come across unless they really pissed someone off, and even then it probably wouldn't work...

 

[weekend_warrior]

I really don't understand the point your trying to make, so I'm just going to leave this thread and not come back.

 

[fromeast2west]

There could be two, or more, levels of nuclear reactor which would model the development of safer reactors as well as hybrid reactors. The older generation could, and IMHO have more risk and pollution associated with them. Even though there have been few catastrophic accidents, they have been notable, both in terms of pollution and public reaction.

 

[nullspace]

Civ is not a simulation.

I agree, but global warming, nuclear plants, and whales are pretty bad game mechanics in Civ 4, so it seems like they were included mainly for realism or politics.

Global warming is no good because it affects all players equally randomly so there is no strategy decision involved that would predictably influence who wins the game. Instead, maybe you want to reduce global warming to milk your score or just build a green utopia, but there still isn't anything you can really do. If you save your trees and don't build factories, you're shooting yourself in the foot, and the other players will cause global warming anyway. The environmentalism civic has no effect, so the only way to stop the AIs from polluting is to conquer them. Global warming is just an annoying penalty to everyone that doesn't cause any strategy decisions.

Nuclear plants are poorly balanced against coal plants. Yeah, they cause less unhealthiness, but they are later on the tech tree, they cost more to build, and they randomly melt down. The risk/reward is all wrong.

Whales are the weakest resource in the game. They require a higher tech than any other natural happiness or health resource, and they're one of only a few that goes obsolete. They only appear in the ocean, not on coast, so if you want to work the whale tile you probably don't have much choice about where to place your city, and that city will have lots of water in its radius. Whale isn't even a very good tile.

So what's the point of these three features if it isn't realism or politics? I hope that if Civ 5 has any political statements to make, that they add to the gameplay, too.

 

[fdgsgds]

Yes, it's for balancing issues. The only problems are that Civ doesn't simulate resources disappearing and that some sources of power just don't do enough or are expensive to create.

 

[Woodreaux]

Ah yes, 's magic-desert-tile-wand wielding global warming fairy is an epic troll. I frequently rage when a village finally becomes a town in my Wall Street city then 3 turns later BOOM!!! global warming hits that tile.

I understand they want to include pollution and climate change in the game, but there has got to be a better way than that. It wouldn't be so bad if deserts weren't completely useless. At least in other versions ( if I remember right), you could build improvements on desert tiles. Is farming a desert realistic? Probably not, but it made for better gameplay.

 

[Jawa'sRevenge]

Civ III nuclear plants only had a chance of a meltdown when your Civ went into anarchy, otherwise they gave no pollution, that system is fine in my book.

 

[Dryhad]

Civ isn't political.

I disagree. Civ is about governance, and history, and international relations. That is what politics is. It's the belief that Civ isn't about politics that leads to ridiculous requests to "stop making it political". Certainly, it should try not to be partisan as much as possible, but people who run screaming from politics because they don't know the difference between politics and partisanship should take note that it is irreversably linked to politics, by its very nature.

I don't see what the OP's objection to the whale resource is. There are... whales in the game? Yeah? What about them makes it political? They can't be used before Optics, and they go obsolete at Combustion. These seem perfectly logical thresholds, it strains credibility to imagine how they could be a calculated political message in any way. Or perhaps it's the existence of the resource at all, but I would rather have thought that if the intent was an anti-whaling message they'd have either not been included or it'd be worse than a resource of limited utility. I mean really, is that supposed to be a bad thing?

Yeah, global warming and nuclear meltdowns are poorly implemented mechanics. Clearly the intention is balance, and having a difference between the types of power plants. Could be better done, but poor design != political message.