[GS] Why should I care about Climate Change?

[ubergeneral]

Global Warming is a new feature on GS. Awesome. I can adapt green technologies to reduce climate change. Very cool.

But why does it matter? Here is the thing. The reason why global warming exists in real life is because the people in power would rather make money than implement expensive technologies. But for a civ player we are working towards a certain goal, like Science or Culture.

So my question is this. Why care, either there is going to be no incentive to switch to greener techs or everyone will do it because it fits their strategy better. Anyone feel this might be a problem, where one method is better and it makes the mechanic moot?

My idea is that some Victory conditions favor one way over another. Culture, and Diplo favor green tech while Military and Science favor dirty tech. Perhaps having green tech has a downside of costing more GPT while dirty tech can help you build better military units.

thoughts?

 

[iammaxhailme]

Well, for culture you'll probably still need a good amount of production (dirty) to build your radio towers etc. Not sure how balanced it'll be, though....

 

[bbbt]

Honestly from initial looks, it looks like it won't have a significant impact on gameplay and is mainly their for roleplay/flavour. So basically don't have to care.

On the other hand, from the pretty limited uses of power we've seen so far, you might be doing minimal polluting anyways just because power plants aren't that useful, and with the speed of science you can probably get to some much cheaper builder created improvement energy sources for your space laser anyways

 

[MarigoldRan]

They should change the mechanics so that if you're unfriendly to the environment, psychic mindworms spawn on your borders and attack your cities.

THEN YOU WOULD CARE.

Ugh. I can't wait for them to open up modding.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Global warming is a global effect that obstacles you and your opponents , but carbon emission only benefits your Civ.

So the thing is that.

Heavy carbon emission Civ benefits from carbon emission, thus strong enough to suffer global warming, while environmental Civs do not benefit from carbon emission, but still pay for the carbon emitted by environment-unfriendly Civs. Since they do not benefit from carbon emission, it is harder for them to deal with the serious effects of Global Warming.

 

[Stringer1313]

I agree with the OPs concerns. I’m glad all the climate stuff is in there for flavor but none of it seems to make a big difference. It’s easy to avoid dangerous coastlines and even then u can just build flood barriers. And then power does nothing but barely help tier three buildings so it seems easy to acoid. It doesn’t feel deep or impactful.

I’m really only getting the expansion for world congress, diplo favor, slightly revised victory conditions, future era, and HOPEFULLY a raft of other subtle improvements they have made to existing features.

 

[MarigoldRan]

And thus the world is doomed. Oh ho ho ho ho.

 

[Arent11]

people in power would rather make money than implement expensive technologies.

You do understand that the 'people in power' make huge bucks 'implementing expensive technologies'?

 

[anandus]

I agree with the OPs concerns. I’m glad all the climate stuff is in there for flavor but none of it seems to make a big difference. It’s easy to avoid dangerous coastlines and even then u can just build flood barriers.

You know flood barriers don't work against tornados and such? Climate change also increaes those.

So my question is this. Why care, either there is going to be no incentive to switch to greener techs or everyone will do it because it fits their strategy better. Anyone feel this might be a problem, where one method is better and it makes the mechanic moot?

My idea is that some Victory conditions favor one way over another. Culture, and Diplo favor green tech while Military and Science favor dirty tech. Perhaps having green tech has a downside of costing more GPT while dirty tech can help you build better military units.

thoughts?

Well, it's mostly there to aid the diplo victory. You get diplo point for climate accords and diplo favour for carbon capture, etc.

 

[AriochIV]

There's very little reason to care about climate change in the game, because even if you are perfect and green, the other civilizations won't be, and it will happen anyway. So you do what you have to do to succeed, and mitigate the inevitable effects as best you can.

Just like in real life.

 

[anandus]

There's very little reason to care about climate change in the game, because even if you are perfect and green, the other civilizations won't be, and it will happen anyway. So you do what you have to do to succeed, and mitigate the inevitable effects as best you can.

Just like in real life.

The Tragedy of the Commons

 

[ezzlar]

Since it's global it will effect all civs. And the AI will probably be worse at handling the consequences. So going dirty might be a good strategy.

 

[Disgustipated]

I say ignore it, but have builders available to fix tiles and replace improvements.

 

[sonicmyst]

Well, I hope the devs fix this. Maybe they can put a HUGE grievance against bigtime polluters by civs with Environmental agenda. Or an emergency session wherein the biggest polluter gets sanctioned.

 

[Haggbart]

I think it's quite funny actually, to see how the way climate change in Civ6 is showing people's misconceptions of what climate change will actually be like IRL. On one hand you have the deniers and on the other hand you have the doomsday prophets. The scope of this game is the forseeable future, and I think they try to make it somewhat realistic within that time span (according to the IPCC-reports) and not Sid Meier's Doomday Simulator. I understand that they would rather like to stay away from controversial topics, but nowdays the scope of what's controversial has increased to a degree that it's almost impossible to please all.

Of course it's all an abstraction of real life, and the most important is it will work well as a game mechanic. But I'd rather this be one of the many small cogs in the machinery rather than the main game concept all victory conditions hinge upon. Especially since there is no guarantee in any new game mechanics that people will enjoy it. If it gives an extra consideration in diplomacy as well as some small economic and practical consequences I'll be more than happy with it. It's also a nice fit with the introduction of a World Congress. I guess there will be mods out increasing its effects or removing it completely within very short time.

 

[Pistol90]

When it was first announced it sound good to me, but they implement it way too easy to handle. To be able to see which tiles will be effected with sea level rise in ancient era is really stupid and dumb down, also too little tiles are being effected ... for me any tile on coast should be submerged (maybe only those with cliffs not) with max sea level rise, maybe even two or three tiles deep into land. Hurricanes, floods, vulcanic eruptions should go crazy --- bassicly every turn one-or-two. And those civ most effected by this should start start to denounce you - or even start war against you if you dont lower down your CO2.

This would make thinks way to interesting and exciting, and it would be easy to implement (bassicly just numbers, maybe it would be possible through mods) --- but FX again went down with easy , dumb down version of one of the mecanics (like they did with loyalty, gouvernors etc). Like bad AI wasnt enough, they dumb down game every time, spend year implementing cool mecanics just to have no effect at the end.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

As far as I have seen there is no reason to care other than perhaps the risk you could lose some districts from flooding but this can be avoided by not placing anything important in tiles that may be flooded. The flood barrier is just too expensive to be of any use from what I could see, 1500 production and no ability to rushby is just too much.

Consider that +3.5C is basically Cretaceous climate from around 100 milion years ago should probably be quite bad but that don't seems to be the case in the game, atleast they could make pollution drain diplomatic favors given you basically work against the good for everyone.

And then power does nothing but barely help tier three buildings so it seems easy to acoid. It doesn’t feel deep or impactful.

In civilization 3 industralization is completely overpowered but the global warming is much harsher.​

 

[Red_warning]

Using dirty or clean energy might be more than just a matter of strategy, the clean methods seems to be straight out better. Coal and oil plants consume resources, wind and hydro does not with the added bonus of causing no emissions. Wind power also gives you production and can even be built on sea tiles later on. Dams also prevent flooding, which may or may not be good depending on your city layout.

 

[BTSeven7]

The best way to make it matter if it’s not going to affect your ability to snow plow 100 mph with domination and efficiency to a 223 turn victory is to create a great scoring mechanic and get that hall of fame to matter.

As long as score is based solely on how much of the map you have and the de facto community score is number of turns it takes for victory things like this will take a back seat.

 

[Victoria]

Maybe they can put a HUGE grievance against bigtime polluters

I love the fact that in real life the civs that have already been through their heavy industrial stage want to limit and punish those that are embarking on it.