3 questions

[holy]

1. For the first time I just noticed this: I can't seem to build the United Nations GW even though I have Fission. Is there a requirement for the Diplomatic Victory condition to be active in order to build UN? Maybe I've never played a game before with Dip. Victory off.

2. In Civ1 and 2, you could prevent global warming by cleaning up pollution as it occurred. This doesn't seem to be possible in Civ3. I don't let an orange spot of pollution stay on the map for longer than a turn and yet I still get global warming once in a while. Does anyone have a full explanation? (Perhaps global warming "heats up" based on the number of pollution icons in the cities COMBINED with or INSTEAD OF the amount of "actual" pollution [orange tiles]?)

3. In a city on an inland sea, I notice that it IS possible to build ships if you have a "canal" city that gives you access to the rest of the world's ocean. Will the inland city (on the "lake") be able to build things like harbor and offshore platform that normally require access to the "real" ocean? I could test this out myself but I'm looking for a quicker answer.

THANKS!

(I've logged hundreds of hours playing Civs 1-3, read all the manuals, and read tons in forums on line--so, I am pretty sure [and hope] these are not newbie questions that I could have easily gotten the answer to elsewhere!)

[holy]

OK, I found a very similar post re: question 1 and the people who answered seemed to be pretty confident that, no, you simply are not allowed to build UN with Diplomatic Victory off. But still, I would appreciate any more authoratative/exhaustive answers.

[vmxa1]

You cannot build the UN if you do not have that victory option selected.

[vmxa1]

Pollution on tiles no longer does anything to the global warming. You clean it up to allow the tile to be productive more than anything else.

Pollution comes from pop and polluting improvements, such as factories and coal plants. You cannot eliminate it, but can slow it down with anti pollution tech.

You would have to not grow to metro size and not make polluting structures. You can see in the city view how much you are generating and what structures are contributing.

[holy]

Thank you for the answers. These are confirmed by other forum discussions. I should have looked around a little more first.

Yes, Mass Transit knocks down population pollution to a max of 1, and Recycling Center knocks down pollution associated with shield production to a max of 1. So a large-enough city with enough shield production can only get down to 2 pollution icons in the city.

As for the UN no-build rule, the best rationale I found on line is that the AI would not choose to build a "useless" GW, so the human player is not allowed the unfair advantage of getting the culture of the GW that no one is competing with him to build first. Of course, Firaxis could have simply made the computer want to build the UN for the sake of culture if the AI determined that that was a good strategic move overall. Besides, with those 1000 shields a player would incur a pretty large opportunity cost to get the culture. That should be punishment enough so that the GW should be allowed.