Corruption/Waste/Riots/Pollution, something we need to discuss

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Drachasor
If I may ask, what don't you like about the concept of Pollution?

Because it's only an annoyance, not something that needs to be considered carefully.

Everything in a strategy game should involve making a tough choice, where all options have benefits and all of them have drawbacks, ideally with everything balanced.

Pollution is designed to be the counterweight to industrialization, but it really doesn't do much of anything. By the time you get lots of pollution popping up, you have railroads everywhere and a lot of Workers. The only thing pollution does is cause the player to have to deal with more micromanagement, rather than actually adding anything fun to the game.

[Fosse]

But that shouldn't mean that pollution should be done away with... just that the old system is a bad one.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Fosse
Slightly off the current topic:
Maybe "Happiness" is a misnomer. Shouldn't "Ruler Approval" or some other civic sounding term be better at measuring whether the people riot or defect to another empire? (I know... possibly the least important point that will be made today... but still! )

Well, just calling whatever it is "happiness" is good enough for government work (bad pun intended). If your people are happy, then they are very unlikely to want to change things, particularly something drastic like defecting to another country. If they are unhappy, then they aren't content with how things are going, and hence are much more open to radical ideas.

Hmm, WLTK day perhaps should make it impossible to bribe a city, or dramtically decrease the chances of success. (It doesn't do this already, does it?)

-Drachasor

PS. heehee, I knew I could count on someone to point that out, Fosse. ; ) Sometimes I worry about posting too much in my own threads.

[Urban Ranger]

Re: Corruption/Waste/Riots/Pollution, something we need to discuss

Originally posted by Drachasor
Soren has said that these are "unfun" elements in the Civ series and that he is getting rid of them. It is very unclear wether he is replacing them with different systems, or simply getting rid of the concepts all together.

Are they really going to dumb this down even more? Play-Doh, here we come.

[Drachasor]

Re: Re: Corruption/Waste/Riots/Pollution, something we need to discuss

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Are they really going to dumb this down even more? Play-Doh, here we come.

Hence my concern. Everyone seems to ignore the possibility these elements might be completely gotten rid of. I seriously doubt I'd buy cIV if it doesn't have some sort of implementation for most of these.

-Drachasor

[Arrian]

I didn't ignore that possibility at all. I too am concerned that all of the downsides to growth & industrialization might just vanish... but I doubt Soren's that dumb. I think he's just looking for a less annoying implementation. So I focused on that.

-Arrian

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Arrian
CivII's WLTKD was nuts. But a more moderate growth bonus would be good

-Arrian

Some of the most fun I got out of Civ2 was using the WLTKD to rapidly grow cities in MP games with my brother. It would spark of an intense population war. Timing of setting luxuries to 100% had to be just right so that you could get most growth for most cities and that cities were sustained with sufficient improvements to maintain their size without rioting or requiring too many entertainers when you reduced luxuries again.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Drachasor
If I may ask, what don't you like about the concept of Pollution?

It does not, and indeed cannot serve any function save to annoy the player. There's no way to make cleaning up pollution an interesting/fun feature of the game, and it makes no sense to force a strategic choice whether or not to build factories and such (industrialization should be the obvious, necessary decision).

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Arrian
I didn't ignore that possibility at all. I too am concerned that all of the downsides to growth & industrialization might just vanish... but I doubt Soren's that dumb. I think he's just looking for a less annoying implementation. So I focused on that.

Why should there be "downsides"? It should be the obvious and necessary choice in order to win the game. It's kind of like having a downside to "building cities".

[Fosse]

Because empire management is part of the game, and Civ has always tried to incorporate broad representations of real world hurdles to civilization.

Pollution as we've seen it before is obnoxious. You get some goo, and a handful of tiles on a huge map might switch to something else.

But done smartly, pollution and other such "unfun" elements could add greatly to the game. The ideas talked about that would link pollution to happiness creates a much more intuitive system that better mimics reality.

Do we see, "Gosh, I'm going be sad because my city just got bigger," or, "I'm sad because the city's sewage flows down the street outside my bedroom window." ?

Pollution, retooled to represent the concentration of people as well as industrial factories, could serve as an effective brake on runaway city growth (or at least, runaway GOOD city growth), forcing the player to make strategic (!) decisions of when to address one of human kind's oldest problems, and how.

Refusing to address some aspect of what could be a great game just because it was poorly done before is just silly and backward thinking. If there is indeed no feasable way to implement pollution, then it should go. But we can't have even begun to approach it from all the possible angles.

Let's hope that Firaxis at least doesn't just dismiss things from the get-go.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Fosse
Because empire management is part of the game, and Civ has always tried to incorporate broad representations of real world hurdles to civilization.

Pollution as we've seen it before is obnoxious. You get some goo, and a handful of tiles on a huge map might switch to something else.

But done smartly, pollution and other such "unfun" elements could add greatly to the game. The ideas talked about that would link pollution to happiness creates a much more intuitive system that better mimics reality.

Please explain how to make cleaning up pollution even remotely interesting and/or fun.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Kucinich


Please explain how to make cleaning up pollution even remotely interesting and/or fun.

Did you read my idea on it? As he said, there are ways to handle it so you don't have workers running around cleaning up pollution (that is annoying and not quite realistic).

Naturally only an idiot will not industrialize, but that doesn't mean you want a factory in every city. If say, every factory made 1 or 2 people unhappy (regardless of city size), then your industrial base will be in larger cities, not the smaller ones. It just wouldn't be worth it. That gives you choices to make that don't get rid of industrialization.

Naturally there should be ways to reduce the unhappiness caused by pollution. Two ways come to mind. The first is with luxuries or other happiness producing methods. The second is that tech should come along (probably in the form of an improvement) that allows you to have cleaner factories (hence an improvement that reduces the unhappiness caused by pollution only).

Naturally the unhappiness bit is in regards to the system I proposed. That's where unhappiness lowers worker productivity given the net number of people unhappy; the amount is proportional to 50% waste/corruption when everyone is unhappy.

Naturally, a Factory is going to dramatically increase shield production in a city where it is built, despite the pollution it would cause. You'll just suffer in other areas. It's a trade-off, and those can add to the game.

-Drachasor