fortydayweekend
Warlord
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 239
Obviously the global pollution system is totally broken. The rumours that it was just rushed through prior to release with no testing seem plausible. I haven't played through to try to "stop" a pollution ending but it seems like the only strategy would be to invade and destroy the polluting AI cities, possibly with nukes, and either leave them as scorched earth or resettle without building any modern infrastructures.
But what would a better system look like? I think it would need a few features -
1) It should have some puzzle-like elements. A lot of the rest of the game is like a series of mini-puzzles - district placement, tactical combat, worker placement - where you're given the ability to get ahead by finding a good solution. (Or you can just place districts where they're suggested, auto-resolve combat, and use a preset worker combo if you just like hitting the End Turn button).
2) It shouldn't just be a matter of "discover techs". In the real world we have all the technology we need to solve climate change but we don't use it, and it would also be a very boring game if all you had to do was build research quarters and beeline a few key techs.
3) Cleaning up / reducing pollution should have big opportunity costs for your economy / industry / stability / research choices
4) There should be some collective action involved - players/AI should want to reduce global pollution but be heavily motivated to pay the least possible for it themselves. It shouldn't be simple to get everyone to agree to the required reductions but it should be possible for the player to do so with a combination of mutual reductions, bribery, threats, etc.
5) There should be some ability for players/AI to reduce others' pollution
In terms of making it a puzzle, a very simple way would be to tie pollution-reducing buildings into the district placement game, e.g. with adjacencies. So a hydro dam on a river could reduce pollution in neighbouring Maker's Quarters, but might be replacing a Farmers Quarter and so reducing food production. A solar panel field might be very expensive to build, need Desert or Mediterranean biome, but it reduces pollution in the whole territory. Wind might require flat or coastal land. This would make discovering clean energy techs and then implementing them more interesting, and give the opportunity to do it more or less efficiently with placements. You could also give the ability to "invest" in building clean energy buildings in allied territory, so you could help reduce the AI pollution too. Plus, it would look cool to have hydro dams and wind & solar farms.
Clean energy buildings should be very expensive and a real opportunity cost, you should feel that you're giving up building new research quarters in order to hydro dam all your rivers. If you're at war it should feel very difficult to prioritise a new solar farm instead of building more troops or coal-powered industry.
I'm not sure how to make the collective action / diplomacy part into a game. On a simple level you could have treaties where cultures bilaterally commit to pollution reductions, using the existing diplomacy system, and generate grievances/demands if they're not met. But it probably needs more than that. I like how the grievances/demands system creates a crisis->escalation->war (or crisis->submit/defuse) dynamic and there's probably a way to do something similar. Where the player and AI can mutually agree to reduce pollution, then there are shocks (e.g. the AI is at war and fails to meet their targets), which can then be "forgiven" and try again - with the risk of not reducing pollution enough to prevent the end of the game. Or it could lead to an escalation of demands and cancellation of treaties and maybe require an invasion to fix.
Industrial infrastructure also needs a rework, currently there's no real reason to build any of the pollution-producing infrastructure unless you've built a megacity (which itself isn't necessary or efficient). You can get to Mars without discovering Craftmanship, let alone building factories. So at the moment there's no tradeoff between polluting and not polluting, so obviously this needs to change. The meta should be that industrialising is essential if you want to keep up with Industry/Research/Military in Contemporary, and then adding clean energy should be essential in Contemporary to stop the world ending.
At any rate the changes they need to make are so extensive that I think they should take global pollution out completely in the meantime so that you can actually play into Contemporary and try nuclear war against equals instead of having to pick on pre-Industrial cultures because the game would end from pollution as soon as they build a few factories.
But what would a better system look like? I think it would need a few features -
1) It should have some puzzle-like elements. A lot of the rest of the game is like a series of mini-puzzles - district placement, tactical combat, worker placement - where you're given the ability to get ahead by finding a good solution. (Or you can just place districts where they're suggested, auto-resolve combat, and use a preset worker combo if you just like hitting the End Turn button).
2) It shouldn't just be a matter of "discover techs". In the real world we have all the technology we need to solve climate change but we don't use it, and it would also be a very boring game if all you had to do was build research quarters and beeline a few key techs.
3) Cleaning up / reducing pollution should have big opportunity costs for your economy / industry / stability / research choices
4) There should be some collective action involved - players/AI should want to reduce global pollution but be heavily motivated to pay the least possible for it themselves. It shouldn't be simple to get everyone to agree to the required reductions but it should be possible for the player to do so with a combination of mutual reductions, bribery, threats, etc.
5) There should be some ability for players/AI to reduce others' pollution
In terms of making it a puzzle, a very simple way would be to tie pollution-reducing buildings into the district placement game, e.g. with adjacencies. So a hydro dam on a river could reduce pollution in neighbouring Maker's Quarters, but might be replacing a Farmers Quarter and so reducing food production. A solar panel field might be very expensive to build, need Desert or Mediterranean biome, but it reduces pollution in the whole territory. Wind might require flat or coastal land. This would make discovering clean energy techs and then implementing them more interesting, and give the opportunity to do it more or less efficiently with placements. You could also give the ability to "invest" in building clean energy buildings in allied territory, so you could help reduce the AI pollution too. Plus, it would look cool to have hydro dams and wind & solar farms.
Clean energy buildings should be very expensive and a real opportunity cost, you should feel that you're giving up building new research quarters in order to hydro dam all your rivers. If you're at war it should feel very difficult to prioritise a new solar farm instead of building more troops or coal-powered industry.
I'm not sure how to make the collective action / diplomacy part into a game. On a simple level you could have treaties where cultures bilaterally commit to pollution reductions, using the existing diplomacy system, and generate grievances/demands if they're not met. But it probably needs more than that. I like how the grievances/demands system creates a crisis->escalation->war (or crisis->submit/defuse) dynamic and there's probably a way to do something similar. Where the player and AI can mutually agree to reduce pollution, then there are shocks (e.g. the AI is at war and fails to meet their targets), which can then be "forgiven" and try again - with the risk of not reducing pollution enough to prevent the end of the game. Or it could lead to an escalation of demands and cancellation of treaties and maybe require an invasion to fix.
Industrial infrastructure also needs a rework, currently there's no real reason to build any of the pollution-producing infrastructure unless you've built a megacity (which itself isn't necessary or efficient). You can get to Mars without discovering Craftmanship, let alone building factories. So at the moment there's no tradeoff between polluting and not polluting, so obviously this needs to change. The meta should be that industrialising is essential if you want to keep up with Industry/Research/Military in Contemporary, and then adding clean energy should be essential in Contemporary to stop the world ending.
At any rate the changes they need to make are so extensive that I think they should take global pollution out completely in the meantime so that you can actually play into Contemporary and try nuclear war against equals instead of having to pick on pre-Industrial cultures because the game would end from pollution as soon as they build a few factories.