[GS] Why should I care about Climate Change?

[KrikkitTwo]

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?

First thoughts
Your global warming affects other powers and vice versa.... ie people in power (dominant civs) would rather make money (power for third level buildings/military units) than implement expensive technologies.

So even if Global warming is bad for your strategy, you might still "Drill baby Drill" because if you don't someone else will.
Of course you could try to persuade them otherwise with diplomacy or diplomacy by other means.

Coal and Oil will probably be the best way to get energy IF
1. you have normal levels of access to them
2. you ignore the Global warming costs (which are spread out over the entire world)

If that is the way the numbers turn out, then the strategy is clear..
It is best for each civ to go with Coal/Oil
It is best for all civs to go with Green technologies

And that makes diplomacy worthwhile

 

[TheDisco]

There should be a game setting where you can still have all the draconian diplomatic policies available based on climate change fears, but then not have any significant change in climate actually occur in the game. I prefer to play on the most realistic settings possible...

 

[ExemplarVoss]

In some ways it seems like the lesson of Gathering Storm is to revert to early vanilla and avoid the coasts (though at that point it was because the sea tiles were just awful). Just focus your attention inland and not care about climate.

One thing that I think will really be apparent quickly is the difficulty level will be the factor that really impacts climate change in games. The huge tech and production boosts (for opponents) at higher difficulty will up the various climate modifiers and make it much, much worse than it otherwise would be, and the player will have even less impact on the change.

And I really doubt the AI will manage a consistent approach to climate change, even within individual civs. Wind farms one turn, coal plants the next.