There should be long term environmental effects!

[TravellingHat]

Would there be any positive effects? For instance, would the climate warming cause some tundra tiles to turn into plains or grasslands?

To the best of my knowledge in Civ 4 the effects were all negative and to be actively avoided (unless for some particular reason you really wanted a tile to become desert).

However, if your example were implemented, you might get the interesting phenomenon of the equatorial climes become less habitable (e.g. plains to desert would decrease food yield) while the northerly/southern regions become more habitable (e.g. tundra to plains would increase production). If widespread enough, that could cause a major change in fortunes for the civs involved.

I think that could make for a great end game, as formerly fertile equaltorial civs, facing famine etc. look elsewhere, and northerly/southern civs start getting some "unwelcome visitors": after all, competition for resources has been a major driver of war, and no resource is as valuable as good land (people have to live somewhere that can support them).

Edit: Didn't see Murky's post (2 previously) when I wrote this, and I'll bow to his/her greater knowledge of the ecological factors!

 

[AbbieRevo]

Until I realized the theme of Civ V was simplicity I was surprised that there wasn't an implementation of weather effects and such.

I also think that if they added it now it would probably not turn out very well.

However, I would be very very happy if Civ VI focused more heavily on planetary modeling, including climate, weather, currents (very important for navies until the modern era), tectonics, sea level, and such.

 

[Smokeybear]

However, I would be very very happy if Civ VI focused more heavily on planetary modeling, including climate, weather, currents (very important for navies until the modern era), tectonics, sea level, and such.

Additionally, I would love to see more work done on inter-civ relationships and friendship building, so that it would be possible to have real allies and partners and even shared-victories with one or more other civs, as opposed to the current theme of everyone against everyone else all the time and the only constant is the backstabbing. While it makes for lots of great warring all the time, if that's your main bag, it just doesn't seem like a 'civ building' game, so much as just a last man standing wargame. The whole game is just too much tunnel vision and not enough variation.