[GS] Why should I care about Climate Change?

[Boris Gudenuf]

It’s good, but not ‘only’ good. How is the UK and America’s green credentials? This very minute DuPont is doing the same horrendous thing it has always done that has polluted the entire world with C8. They had to go back to blood samples from the Korean War from anywhere in the world to find blood without C8 in it. With every non stick pan you buy you are killing the world.

Not really, and this is true of all the environmental and non- (anti?) environmental arguments. You are not killing the world, you are killing the human world. The rest of the planet will spin along quite nicely without us, thank you.

If you can find a copy, back in the 1950s L. Sprague DeCamp and P. Schuyler Miller collaborated on a science fiction novel called Genus Homo. It was set on an earth several million years in the future, when all trace of Homo Sapiens had disappeared (except for the protagonists, who survived to provide a plot) and been replaced in the 'intelligent' ecological niche by various other animals: the other primates, beavers, etc. (beavers with water wheels on their dams: now That would make a Civ VI Improvement!)

Both having scientific training, Miller and DeCamp hypothesized the same type of evolution that has already taken place: large mammals became extinct, and smaller animals 'grew up' to fill their niches: raccoons the size of bears, storks the size of horses, etc. Iron, coal and other 'unreplaceable' minerals were very scarce, so the primates were using wind and water power and building in stone, wood, brick, etc. They had a pretty good grasp of basic mechanics and physics, and the Orangutans had taken to the sea in Polynesian-like catamaran ocean-going ships.

The point being, nobody and nothing missed the absence of Homo Sapiens Suicidus, and it's unlikely they or the planet will . . .

 

[Xmonger]

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.

It's an accident of history and not a punishment per-se. China is happy to support green, the quality of life is terrible because of pollution. A friend had a six month stint in China and developed permanent asthma.

I think it's soft pedaled which lets them understand the mechanic until they can update in the next DLC (hypothesized third expansion) or Civ 7. Possible it might be a update too.

 

[Victoria]

The point being, nobody and nothing missed the absence of Homo Sapiens Suicidus, and it's unlikely they or the planet will . .

You are talking to a very old and avid sci fi fan.
If humans wipe themselves out they will have taken a lot of other species with them amd C8 willl be affecting other species. Humans will likely evolve rather than completely die, probably if humans die most mammals may but virus may specifically do it.
The point is we are not just killing our selves
Anyway... what do I care... I am a Robert Sheckley fan.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Back to the OP.
The 'disasters' and 'climate change' mechanics for game purposes would, I think, be much more pertinent to the game if they included both the 'micro' and 'macro' disasters that have temporarily affected individual civs and (occasionally) much of the world, and if they had included the 'natural' cyclic changes that have affected civilizations.

The trick would be to not make a 'natural' disaster a Civ Killer, like the drought that forced the abandonment of the cliff-built cities of the American Southwest, or the Lake Ojibway Event that forced cities to be abandoned in the Middle East.

On the other hand, there have been literally dozens of 'local' or temporary 'Disasters' that would require the Civ (and the player) to react to them:

* Rivers silting up harbors so they have to be dredged or, in extreme cases, abandoned as Harbors and turn to other means of economic survival - Scarborough (and its fair) was a major port in Medieval England, today not so much.
* Volcanic Explosions like Tamboura or possibly Thera that create 'years without summer' due to upper atmosphere pollution: temporary loss of food and possibly amenities to require some kind of response. The high also start or force 'barbarian migrations from Tundra and other inhospitable-now impossible areas towards the Civilized regions.
* climactic 'cycles' of warming and cooling like:
Middle Bronze Age Cold Epoch
Homeric Minimum
Roman Warm Period
"Little Ice Age"
Medieval Warm Period
Spörer Minimum
That's an incomplete list, but there's enough right there to keep you reacting in every other game Era. Some of them are associated with other Disasters: the Black Plague event occurred during the Medieval Warm Period, and may be associated with the warmer climate being more conducive to insect growth and spread.

None of these are 'man-made' climactic events, which are pretty much limited to the End Game. Having earlier events that actually effect, at least temporarily, how you play and win the game, would be much more 'useful' from a Player's Perspective.

 

[Red_warning]

You are talking to a very old and avid sci fi fan.
If humans wipe themselves out they will have taken a lot of other species with them amd C8 willl be affecting other species. Humans will likely evolve rather than completely die, certainly if humans die most mammals may but virus may specifically do it.
The point is we are not just killing our selves
Anyway... what do I care... I am a Robert Sheckley fan.

As a fellow sci-fi fan I have never really understood the misanthropic mindset, the sun doesn't care about life either and it will fry earth to death in about 1 billion years. The only chance for life on earth to survive is for some higher intelligence to intervene and save it, and humanity is by far the best bet.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

As a fellow sci-fi fan I have never really understood the misanthropic mindset, the sun doesn't care about life either and it will fry earth to death in about 1 billion years. The only chance for life on earth to survive is for some higher intelligence to intervene and save it, and humanity is by far the best bet.

Easily understood, as the old quote goes:

"There are many statues of men killing lions. If the lions were making the statues, I suspect they would have a very different subject."

Science Fiction, or any fiction by Humans, is going to be overwhelmingly misanthropic: even the stories supposedly about animals or aliens are almost always about animals and aliens acting human.

 

[The googles do nothing]

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?

If done right it will not be a black and white option. 'If done right' will be a matter of opinion. The design philosophy of Civ 6 is to avoid malus and randomness. I'm happy that they have taken a baby step over that line and hope they are rewarded enough to continue in that direction.

 

[Kaan Boztepe]

this is still a game and hyper reality takes the positive reinforcement of game experience usually away. For example if you make the disasters nearly unrecoverable or too much time/effort consuming then the casual players will rage quit en masse , so it is only there to provide flavor and even provide some bonuses for trade offs of some repair work for damaged tiles.

 

[Sagax]

Sometimes I suspect that it will be there only to artificially make late game more “action-packed”. As in, to slow down your progress via accidents, and to force you to repair old stuff and build new stuff that mitigate the climate change effects. So that you feel like you're doing something, rather than just clinking "Next Turn".

 

[Victoria]

almost always about animals and aliens acting human.

,many great writers aliens are truly alien. True some great books like A Mote in gods eye are quite humanistic but the intention of the book is not to show off a truly different alien.
Ian M Banks has some fantastic non-humans

 

[Arent11]

The point being, nobody and nothing missed the absence of Homo Sapiens Suicidus, and it's unlikely they or the planet will . . .

I never understood why some people expect other animals to be any better than humans. They would obviously make the same errors.

As a fellow sci-fi fan I have never really understood the misanthropic mindset, the sun doesn't care about life either and it will fry earth to death in about 1 billion years. The only chance for life on earth to survive is for some higher intelligence to intervene and save it, and humanity is by far the best bet.

In a million years cats can do anything humans can, but are more fluffy.

 

[Aristos]

Jesus, it's like they don't want to frustrate anyone even at the hardest setting. I understand them, though. With our own games we got lots of complaints of hard being "too hard". When we suggested lowering to normal, which was the intended design balance, they got offended and "showed" us how good they were at playing hard in other games...

Thank god for modding.

"Everyone is special, Dash."
"Which is another way of saying no one is."

The Incredibles, 2004

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

,many great writers aliens are truly alien. True some great books like A Mote in gods eye are quite humanistic but the intention of the book is not to show off a truly different alien.
Ian M Banks has some fantastic non-humans

Oh, no question there are some excellent, but, alas, the exceptions are just that.
Poul Anderson, for instance, in The Man Who Counts had a race of flying aliens with two completely different sociological/cultural patterns, and a physiology beautifully realized so that a flying creature with the size to be an efficient tool-using intelligent antagonist was also physically possible.
Hal Clement, in Mission of Gravity, had an alien race that evolved on an Extreme planet: one that spun so fast and was so massive that the gravity at the poles was 200 times that of earth and at the equator only 3 times, and the race was physically and mentally adapted to the poles and had to adapt to what was, for them, the extreme environment of the equator during the novel. Brilliant.
C. J. Cherryh's Chanur novels are to me, a Tour de Force: most authors can barely come up with a single alien species that's both believable and different: she came up with Four in One Book, each with a different physiology, psychology and sociology, plus one race so alien even the other aliens can't figure them out. And Humans are bit players in this set of books!

 

[MarigoldRan]

Mind worms. We need mind worms.

 

[Aristos]

Mind worms. We need mind worms.

But first we need minds.

 

[Gali]

From the previews it seems that if you are not playing on Prince just go dirty. Every single game I saw go late game went full level 7 climate change well before victory. You can't stop it so avoiding it is just an RP handicap. There could be an argument for delaying it long enough to allow you to setup flood barriers. But those things can't be bought and are incredibly expensive. In quill's game it was 50 turns to build one which means its just a race. Besides most of the time I don't even hit endgame because the AI is horrible and the fun is building my empire. Their solution was to make late game longer and add punitive effects so I doubt that is gonna change.

 

[pgm123]

From the previews it seems that if you are not playing on Prince just go dirty. Every single game I saw go late game went full level 7 climate change well before victory. You can't stop it so avoiding it is just an RP handicap. There could be an argument for delaying it long enough to allow you to setup flood barriers. But those things can't be bought and are incredibly expensive. In quill's game it was 50 turns to build one which means its just a race. Besides most of the time I don't even hit endgame because the AI is horrible and the fun is building my empire. Their solution was to make late game longer and add punitive effects so I doubt that is gonna change.

If you're going for a Diplomatic Victory (which I suspect you are not), then you will get benefits from fighting climate change. Granted, I could see an argument that it is better to mess up the Earth first to do more to fix it.

 

[Amrunril]

From the previews it seems that if you are not playing on Prince just go dirty. Every single game I saw go late game went full level 7 climate change well before victory. You can't stop it so avoiding it is just an RP handicap. There could be an argument for delaying it long enough to allow you to setup flood barriers. But those things can't be bought and are incredibly expensive. In quill's game it was 50 turns to build one which means its just a race. Besides most of the time I don't even hit endgame because the AI is horrible and the fun is building my empire. Their solution was to make late game longer and add punitive effects so I doubt that is gonna change.

If this is accurate, it seems like a definite tuning error (both gameplay-wise and realism-wise). Running a carbon based economy in the industrial-atomic eras should push you into the early stages of climate impacts but leave you time to avert more dramatic changes if you commit heavily to lowering emissions in the information and future eras. I suspect a significant part of the problem may be the AI's propensity to maintain huge armies, with their associated oil upkeep. If this is the case, a discount to units' resource upkeep might be a good addition to the AI's difficulty bonuses.

 

[Gali]

I am actually a very peaceful builder type of player and especially in civ 6 where the AI is so weak. I don't want to play on deity to get a challenge so i have more fun building my empire Civ 6 and its district system and far better resource and terrain features really fits that kind of gameplay. Warring the civ 6 Ai is like picking a fight with a 6 year old, just not that satisfying. Any difficulty where the AI could fight back makes distorts every other feature in the game. I also want to have a diplomatic game and warmongering has been so broken even conquering one city has made me a pariah. R&F made me more of a warmonger because the to arms dedication allowed me to actually fight a bit without becoming hitler when i took one city. The Cree are usually the most populous and advanced civ in the game at that point and thus the most interesting target.

I usually win by culture and did so even in civ 5. Its more I have finished developing my empire by that point and its just hitting end turn a bunch of times. Though R&F and it seems GS did some things to improve the culture game and make it more interesting and diverse. Ski resorts could be interesting, as shopping malls and national park boost in R&F made tourism not just spamming seaside resorts. It seems they did not fix theming being a giant pain and the AI being useless for trades. Maybe sweden and their projects can help fix that. Marbozir just released a review that confirmed my impression that full climate change is just going to happen and pretty early so playing clean is sub-optimal. You could probably play a green game if you put in environmental civs like America or the maori and avoid Germany and England, but will the AI be that flavorful.

 

[treadwin]

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?

Global warming wasn't put into the game in isolation, it came in with diplomacy and power. Given that global warming will have differing effects on different civs based on their geography and strengths it provides another thing to think about when going for victory. It doesn't even matter if you are cynical about climate change. If you are going for a diplomatic victory, it is something you can leverage for popularity.

I am really seeing a gulf opening up between the players who play civ as a strategic wargame, and those who play it as a builder. We are not going to agree very much on anything, because quite frankly you could remove 3/4 of the game mechanics and it wouldn't make it any better or worse as a strategic wargame.