Water level rising 2000 meters in 20 turns

[buster]

In a Mp game - smacx transcend - I have been carrying out some "final mopping up".

This has included a fair amount of gassing, I must admit. Then last turn suddenly my eco damage rating explodes. Turn before a few cities had a bit - next turn they are running an average of 250 or so eco damage and I have a lot of cities.

This turn then I get some incredible amount of fungus pops, 6 water levels rising messages ending at 2000 meters huge armies of worms outside most major cities and a volcano erupting and I am still producing 150 ecodamage in several cities. (will I get another 1500 meters next turn ???)

Fortunately the game will be over in one - max two turns.

Anyone seen anything like this before? - I have never been even close and I was not even gassing that much.

[Ned]

Yes. Each major attrocity, such as wiping out a base, is the equivalent of an additional 5 minerals produced by each city. Each mineral produced in a base over a limit set by a faction-wide "clean mineral" counter produces ED. You can increase the number of clean minerals for your faction, and thereby reduce ED by building (or rebuilding) the following facilities: Tree Farms, Hybrid Forests, Centauri Presereves or Temples of Planet. Since the clean mineral counter is faction wide, the effect of building these facilities is faction-wide.

Search on "Eco-damage formula" revised for more.

Ned

[buster]

Thanks - I am aware of the atrocity causing ecodamage phenomenon. Just never saw it explode like this in one turn.

And the I havent even fired my PB yet.

[mark13]

Buster - I don't want you asking this question again at the end of FW2. Trust me.

[buster]

Dont worry Mark - it will more than a few thousand meters of water to stop me (I hope).

[johndmuller]

There was a post, IIRC by Blake in the ED thread which seemed to suggest that with a very large amout of either (I don't remember which) min production or ED, the game's ED mechanism would malfunction, probably rolling the odometer over, so that one would get much less ED than deserved. Perhaps you ventured across one such threshhold (in the wrong direction).

[Zakharov VII]

johndmuller,

I had never heard of the "rolling over" thing, but it would make sense if ED was stored in a byte (max 255), as buster's ED was averaging around there. An easy way to disprove this is if anyone's every gotten a higher ED. I have never broken 100 (no atrocities, ever !), so I don't know.

I'm pretty sure that nutrients/minerals/energy isn't stored in a byte, as I'm certain that I've gotten way over 255 with Space Elevator while building satelites.

Z

[Blake]

It's probably something else:
High tech = High ecodamage (and with most of the techs...)

Then if no ED reducing facilities/SP's had been built the ED could easily soar to 100+ by the addition of 5 'minerals'.

No-one actually got around to testing the effect of nervegas atrocities on ED, how I think it works:
After a certain number of offenses, a "enforced vendetta" is triggered, where all factions declare vendetta on you. At the same time planetmind declares vendetta.
I had originally thought it added the same effect as a one-of PB use, but it could easily be a greater effect. It would be fairly easy to test, just need a save game 'before' and 'after' you incur the ED penalty.

edit: I've ran some god-awfully high ED's in 'alternate' OCC's, cant remember for sure, but I think it was over 500, or even 1000. I never noticed any weird effects.

[Lefty Scaevola]

I entirely drowned Planet once, as Santiago. I experimented with a max nuke strategy. Each of my base had several PB of different sizes, several 1-1tr-1s, and a pressure dome. In one turn I PB all of the other factions leaving only a couple of sea base. I kept some extra fission and fusion PB for blasting fungus/worm blows. Planet must have hellacious large ice caps; sea level rose over 8000 meters, very quickly. All square were ocean trench, thus no improvements (and no fungus, I had actually KILLED PLANET), I had a cheerfully little ocean empire supplied from satellites.

[Flo]

yeah, i have seen this in another two games before (thats the reason those infantries didn't leave their cities - bait )
It is planets normal response to extensive gassing (possibly stapling ?). I assume its implemented from a balance standpoint, as it doesn't matter whether you won't receive trade income for 30 or 30000 years. Not sure if the ecodamage formula (5 mins/ gassing) correctly represents the observed effects. From experience i'd say the first 5 or 8 atrocities are "free", after that, damage is triggered. The function doesn't appear linear, it sure as hell looks logarithmic or some such.

What makes it dangerous and hard to track for the scenario builder is the lag between commiting atrocities and planets response. It seems to be in the order of 3-5 years. In the game Buster described the first damage (about 30 points in his bigger bases happened a few years into heavy gassing. One year later, all hell broke lose for Buster. Unfortunately, the atrocity victim had to surrender in the same year. Now, if i had bombed my own roads (banging head) we'd have some more data...