Pollution Sucks big time!!!!!

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Well it's supposed to be.

I'd favour keeping it with a slightly less micro inducing implementation.

I'm curious: why?

[TheArsenal]

I don’t have a problem with pollution per se, but I have a problem with the way it is implemented. As it is now, it is just a Sisyphusian task of endlessly cleaning blotches. I think I saw a thread somewhere where it was described as “whack a mole”. Since you have to clean it or suffer consequences this makes it a mindlessly repetitive task. Mindlessly repetitive tasks are not fun to me.

[Zord]

I like to have pollution in the game, too. Good feature

[Redeyed Rooster]

Originally posted by TheArsenal
I don’t have a problem with pollution per se, but I have a problem with the way it is implemented. As it is now, it is just a Sisyphusian task of endlessly cleaning blotches. I think I saw a thread somewhere where it was described as “whack a mole”. Since you have to clean it or suffer consequences this makes it a mindlessly repetitive task. Mindlessly repetitive tasks are not fun to me.

Yeah, I saw that too. I feel the same way, that's what I meant when I said it has 'no effect' because as long as you hav enough workers by the time each city is pumping out badly drawn orange blotches by the dozen, you can keep on with your coal and manufacturing plants and you can concentrate on building military units instead of bothering with mass transits which take a while to build in smaller cities and are expensive to maintain

[nbarclay]

Just to be clear, if Civ 4 can find a way to make pollution genuinely add to the game's fun, I'm all for its being included. One possibility would be to have pollution have an adverse impact on happiness rather than damaging tiles, in which case pollution-reducing improvements would bring back the happiness lost to pollution. It's the way pollution is currently implemented that I view as detrimental, not the concept of pollution per se, and TheArsenal summed up my reasons very nicely.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Redeyed Rooster
instead of bothering with mass transits which take a while to build in smaller cities and are expensive to maintain

Mass Transit Systems affect only pollution due to population, not pollution due to factories and such, and therefore are only relevant to metropolises size 13 and over. They ae totally irrelevant to smaller cities, at least assuming the Civilopedia and the flag in the editor reflect things correctly. Building them can still be problematical in metropolises that have mostly water rather than land tiles, of course, but a lot of the cities that can't build them in a reasonable amount of time don't need them anyhow.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by nbarclay

I'm curious: why?

Well as you know I sided with you before on some of the realism debates. However, pollution is something that occurs, and more importantly it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility to implement in such a way that there are strategic trade-offs involved with dealing with it. Right now by far the best way of dealing with pollution is having mass stacks of workers to yawningly clear it.........but perhaps it needn't be that way.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Does anyone think pollution adds to the fun of the game?

If one considers it as fun to move workers around (who have admittedly nothing else to do), to have his carefully crafted and balanced build queues ruined on a random basis, to swap city laborers around and to have thriving cities suddenly starving, there's a lot of it in Civ3. But then, who is that masochistic?

Or do we all agree that the game would be more fun if it were removed completely? I certainly feel that way; to me, pollution is nothing but a royal pain.

Away with it, and good riddance!

[Aqualung71]

I've always thought pollution should have a significant impact on happiness. From a realism perspective, pollution doesn't really affect production per se. Perhaps it should also cause disease and kill citizens (which would then affect production of course), but on a more regular and annoying basis than floodplains/jungles.

[Peter Triggs]

Re: "Whack a mole"

This was posted both at CFC and in the Civilization Games General/Future forum here:

Civilization fans may be eager to know that Soren Johnson of Firaxis games made a few comments about Civilization IV in his talk on game franchises at the Game Developer's Conference. All the features under consideration are tentative, and given the game's long development schedule may or may not make it into the final version. Still, the focus of Johnson's talk was on removing "unfun" aspects of games to create sufficient conceptual room for improvements. Some of the features under consideration are:

Improved interface and help screens

Replacing game concepts such as pollution, rioting and corruption with more entertaining concepts that maintain game balance (he described the current pollution model as "playing whack-a-mole").

Adding concepts of religion and civics

Introducing more sophisticated concepts of unit experience and upgrades.


Johnson emphasized that the game is still a long way off, and is being coded from scratch to produce a better final experience. He also mentioned that the team is paying attention to a list of suggestions submitted by fans that is longer than the New Testament. He didn't say how long it took the Firaxis team to slog through it.

So it looks like they're aware of how tedious it can be. Personally I can't stand playing with pollution and much prefer CTP2, where it's an option that you can turn off.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Just to be clear, if Civ 4 can find a way to make pollution genuinely add to the game's fun, I'm all for its being included. One possibility would be to have pollution have an adverse impact on happiness rather than damaging tiles, in which case pollution-reducing improvements would bring back the happiness lost to pollution. It's the way pollution is currently implemented that I view as detrimental, not the concept of pollution per se, and TheArsenal summed up my reasons very nicely.

Sounds like a CTP concept to me...and it works very nicely, I might add.

[Dis]

I support eliminated pollution from tiles. I think it's stupid.

In my city parts of the mojave desert don't become unusable because of pollution in my city (las vegas). That's preposterous. The only effect pollution has on my city is air quality.

Sure land contamination does occur sometimes. But for the most part, air pollution is the type of pollution america suffers the worst of.

One exception would be nukes. These should contaminate the land as usual. And cleanup should take much longer.

But I'd like to see air pollution in this game. Not shown on the map.

So what effects does air pollution actually have. Well not much . Many studies show it can cause asthma and other allergies. How could you represent that? Also studies have shown it can cause cancer. So you could represent that in slower population growth, decreased commerce (due to traffic congestion), and more unhappiness.

my 2 cents.

[Xorbon]

I agree with Dissident on this topic. If pollution was as bad in real life as it is in this game, we'd all be drowning in a sea of orange goo.

The occasional polluted tile is OK. However, several tiles getting polluted each and every turn...

Nuclear contamination should be separate from 'regular' pollution. Its effects should be harsher than normal pollution. And it should take longer to clean up.

Air pollution should be implemented in Civ 4 with effects on happiness and health (i.e. increased death rates). There could be other effects such as increased emigration from cities with high air pollution. The above effects (other than happiness) would have to be implemented into the game first, of course.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

They should have an option to turn pollution and disasters off in Civ 4...that's just my opinion

[joncnunn]

Global Warming seems to be much less of a factor in conquests than in classic civ 3.

Civ II had less global warming events, but when it occured, lots & lots of tiles were affected, especally grassland tiles along the coast sudenly become swapland.