Two things I think are terrible design

[japanesesamurai]

Maybe I’m missing something but this is kind of ruining the experience for me. Two things I think are bad design:

1/ When I am the only one who is not polluting the air with carbon, I am actually the only one who gets punished. Because
a. I dont have oil/coal factories, so production is slower = too slow to build flood barriers
b. without these factories you can’t run “convert to green power” and so the other polluting players get rewards (diplo favor etc) for converting while my horsehocky is getting flooded.
This is just poor design. Makes no sense. I should be rewarded for not polluting. And there’s no way of disabling this nonsense climate mechanic in game setup.

2/ When you free a city state, during a free city state war, you get kicked out of it’s borders. This is ridiculous. In civ 5, this didn’t happen. In 6, the next turn, you will be it’s suzerain. So why do you get kicked out the turn you capture and free these people from occupation? This is bloody annoying as your entire formation is messed up and you might lose half of your units the next turn. This almost seems like a bug. Again, really poor design.

 

[Hans Castorp]

For point 2, I agree entirely. For point 1, I think you have just summarised the paradox of industrial development in the last two hundred years. But I take this to be a feature and not a bug, and one that makes for some (moderately) interesting gameplay decisions.

 

[Linklite]

1. Well, that's kind of the point. Do you pollute, or do you suck it up? Eventually you can get the prod via green means, but do you use pollution methods in the mean time? The diplo part is a good point though.
2. A fair point, but I don't understand how you're losing units over it?

 

[japanesesamurai]

Because you often get teleported into enemy borders or next to enemy units while being damaged.
And yes the complain is mostly about the diplo favor. It doesnt make sense

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Real-world countries are awarded for "reduce" pollution, which means they get awarded from polluting first and then "reduce pollution". If countries make little pollution from the beginning, like the Pacific island countries, their only award is being flooded.

The game design reflects the real-world.

Moderator Action: Please stick to the effects in game. Current events discussions belong in OT. leif

 

[Kwami]

I don't have anything to say about #2 except that I agree. It's very annoying when units are teleported out of suddenly closed borders. It also happens when you have open borders with another player and they expire. Even if you renew them on the turn that they expire, it's too late and your units have already been banished. Very annoying.

As for the pollution problem, I'm not really seeing it. When I play a cultural, religious, or diplomatic game, I almost always get Computers and build barriers before the AI pollutes enough to cause trouble. Besides that, you can definitely build power plants and not cause much (or any) pollution if you have renewable power resources available (hydroelectric dams, solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal power plants, harbor buildings with Cardiff, etc.). Or, you can build the power plants and not build any power-consuming buildings. Then, you get the production without the pollution. Once you finish your barriers, you can build research labs or whatever other power-consuming buildings you want. I guess? But again, I've never had a problem getting barriers down before the floods, even at high levels.

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

Re 1: use military engineers to speed up barrier construction. It helps immensely.

 

[Josephias]

Regarding 1, this is being compensated by having carbon emission penalty in some Diplomatic Scored Competitions, is a feeble penalty, but akin to what you nowadays can do. As commented, by several, that's the paradox of our curent world. You enrich yourself by polluting, then you can access to "cleaner" power sources, and create a barrier of entry for others. Fair, probably not. True, yes.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Re 1: use military engineers to speed up barrier construction. It helps immensely.

Also, beeline to Computers once you unlock factories. Building floodbarriers before the first level of climate change is hit reduces their cost by a massive amount.

to be honest, I'm surprised Diplomacy isn't mentioned. I think Civ 6's diplomatic system is the absolute worst I've ever seen in a 4X game.

 

[Piranga]

Completely agree with point 2. Liberating a city state, to have it push your units sporadically around its borders immediately afterwards puts your units in such terrible positions.

 

[japanesesamurai]

I do think for better gameplay, there should exist some benefits from not polluting the air. For examample, if a player has no coal factories it should receive a special task, in the form of spending gold maybe, to compete. Because now it is a lose-lose scenario for every player without oil and/or coal.

as for teleportations:
A liberated city state should always be instantly (on the same turn it was liberated) become the liberator’s suzerain. Like in civ V.
In general, FXS should remove teleporting units from the game. If you declare while in your enemies borders, you should receive major combat and diplomatic penalties instead of teleporting units. Same with teleporting scouts. It’s stupid. In civ V, if you were inside CS borders, you received penalties. Much better gameplay.

Moderator Action: Please stick to the effects of global warming in game play. Discussing current events and/or politics is not allowed in game threads. leif

 

[Xur]

The game has global warming and not really any polution - polution is implied via a number and used to determine global warming. I agree though. I think 3 degrees of polution would be funnier - local, national and global. Let global warming take a step back and dont introduce it until the very end of the tech tree.

 

[Pietato]

A pollution system which transitions into pollution + climate change would be better, yeah. It is only recently that we have overwhelmed the oceans' ability to absorb CO2.

 

[Aurelesk]

There are many things we could say about the CO2 mechanic and how it could be improved. Right now, the two main problems about the mechanic is that it is capped and global.

A capped mechanic:
Once all ice on earth is melted, nothing can get worse. Why should anyone reduce their CO2 emission after the irreversible is done? The few ones who "reduce" it, did not do it for ecological reason but for the diplomatic one. My understanding of the evolution of global warming is rather limited, so I might say something non-sensical but... why this do not lead to a global game-over? If the Earth becomes uninhabitable, this should also lead to the end of all civilizations (and here: to the end of the game for everyone). Do not see it as a "hard" Game Over, but more like removing Food from tiles, leading to global rebellion and depopulation througth seething and starvation.

A global mechanic:
For the game, CO2 is only a global thing. There is no Pollution mechanic in the game, only an "Appeal" mechanic that seems to kind of notice that side? For example, Coal factory is a real problem: ashes that end polluting water and air, killing flora & fauna including humans, is a huge local hazard. All Coal factories are far more problematic than all the theorical nuclear malfunction. We should add a Pollution mechanic, something local that face penalties when exploiting too much something overrewarding.
If Power comes to a price that lead cities (or at least tiles around Factories) to face some penalties like a reduced Growth, Tourism and more, proportionnal to the number of CO2 the city is producing, maybe this will be incentive to change the power generation to something else to avoid those penalties. If your city is dying of Pollution due to overuse of Coal Factory, there will be a incentive to switch to Oil / Nuclear.

I see Pollution as something like this: emission minus absorption. We can pollute to some degree when the surrounding ecosystem can absorb the emission. When you are overpolluting, the CO2 is starting to stack and the penalties are starting to accumulate on the city. First as a light smog with minor effect. But it can get wider (more tiles affected) and thicker (more penalites). You should to really think about where you put the Industrial Zone, so you could avoid or delay those penalties. For example, a IZ in the middle of the rainforest could pollute a lot without any penalties while a IZ in the middle of hills and moutains would face penalties really quickly.

In the end, I think I am starting to figure out why I kind of disliked Apocalypse mode: the CO2 mechanic was already weird (and not realistic to some degree). Going wild on CO2 is leading to sudden random destruction instead to global waning of all civilizations was kind of a last straw for this mode. I understand why Apocalypse is more into "spectacular" and "RNG" approach (so: it was never made to please me), but this is highlighting me how the CO2 mechanic is quite weird to begin with outside of the Apocalypse mode.

 

[Draco84]

A capped mechanic:
Once all ice on earth is melted, nothing can get worse. So why should anyone reduce their CO2 emission? The few ones who reduce it, did not do it for ecological reason but for a diplomatic reason. My understanding of global warming is rather limited, so I might say something non-sensical but... why this do not lead to a global game-over? If the Earth becomes uninhabitable, thislead to the end of all civilizations (and here : to the end of the game for everyone). Do not see a "hard" Game Over, but more like removing Food from tiles, leading to global rebellion and depopulation througth seething and starvation.

Not sure if you've played the original Civ, but this is precisely how global warming worked. Once you hit a threshold a bunch of plains tiles turned to worthless desert, keep polluting and the whole planet eventually became uninhabitable. It's been quite some times since I've played, so some details may be a bit off. I think that system should come back.

I was too young to really understand global warming when I started playing on my dad's PC as a 6 year old, but I do remember having to deal with the fall-out of Global Warming.

 

[nzcamel]

Not sure if you've played the original Civ, but this is precisely how global warming worked. Once you hit a threshold a bunch of plains tiles turned to worthless desert, keep polluting and the whole planet eventually became uninhabitable. It's been quite some times since I've played, so some details may be a bit off. I think that system should come back.

I was too young to really understand global warming when I started playing on my dad's PC as a 6 year old, but I do remember having to deal with the fall-out of Global Warming.

Except global warming doesn't increase deserts. Global cooling does. Warming reduces deserts overall.

I really hate my units getting booted out while liberating a city when they're going to end up vulnerable and scattered in hostile territory. It's not immersive, and it doesn't help the AI as they're subject to it too.

Moderator Action: Edited. Please take discussion of current events to the Off Topic section of the forum. leif

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

Real-world countries are awarded for "reduce" pollution, which means they get awarded from polluting first and then "reduce pollution". If countries make little pollution from the beginning, like the Pacific island countries, their only award is being flooded.

The game design reflects the real-world.

make the problem -> Solve it -> become a hero. And people say this game lack of realism

 

[UWHabs]

I do think there's a missed opportunity to tie in the factory/PP with local appeal/growth. Perhaps adding in a sort of "local pollution" system where factories and power plants emit local pollution per turn to the surrounding areas, and at certain levels that causes increased local effects?

For example, if every turn a factory and PP gave out 1 "pollution" per turn to all tiles within 6, then say you have a case where once a tile reaches 10 pollution, it gets -1 appeal. At 30 maybe it gets -2, etc... so that the longer a factory is running, the appeal in the area will keep dropping (perhaps capped).

You could also add in some extra stuff. Maybe at 50 pollution then that would trigger something like a chance every turn at either a local drought, or perhaps trigger some sort of local "disease" that reduced output of the tile/reduced amenities in the city/triggered a population loss in the city/etc... Basically, if you build factories and power plants everywhere, let's turn the map into an orange smog-filled disease ridden wasteland until you discover recycling. That would also be balanced in that if it takes some time to kick in, you can build those power plants early and get benefits from them, but you are then sitting on a ticking timebomb before they start to cause some larger negative effects.

 

[oSiyeza]

Maybe I’m missing something but this is kind of ruining the experience for me. Two things I think are bad design:

1/ When I am the only one who is not polluting the air with carbon, I am actually the only one who gets punished. Because
a. I dont have oil/coal factories, so production is slower = too slow to build flood barriers
b. without these factories you can’t run “convert to green power” and so the other polluting players get rewards (diplo favor etc) for converting while my **** is getting flooded.
This is just poor design. Makes no sense. I should be rewarded for not polluting. And there’s no way of disabling this nonsense climate mechanic in game setup.

2/ When you free a city state, during a free city state war, you get kicked out of it’s borders. This is ridiculous. In civ 5, this didn’t happen. In 6, the next turn, you will be it’s suzerain. So why do you get kicked out the turn you capture and free these people from occupation? This is bloody annoying as your entire formation is messed up and you might lose half of your units the next turn. This almost seems like a bug. Again, really poor design.

I agree with point 2, and would probably agree on a lot of other design choices in the game. However, regarding point 1, I disagree. There may be a balance problem, sure. But in my experience AI is so far behind in tech, oil or carbon that barely contributes to global warming.

Sure in multiplayer games that may be a thing, but this is also how reality works and creates a cool diplomatuc dynamic.

The problem is again, that in singleplayer the diplomacy is so bland that is allways worth it to be the maximun polluter on Earth.

A Fxs oversight in key game mechanics so big that makes them inconsequential? Who could have imagined...

 

[NukeAJS]

I'm sure someone already mentioned it, but your "reward" is not getting punished via diplomatic favor. All those polluters have been taking a diplomatic favor penalty every turn while you have not. So, your "reward" is an extra couple of hundred diplomatic favor.

Whether that's worth it or not is debatable.