Gripe: Pollution too pervasive

[Zealot]

Hey, you must give your swarm of workers something to do, right?

[Freiherr]

Mass Transit Recommendation

The rampant pollution in the Industrial Era in Civ III is due in part to the incomprehensible decision by the game designers to make Mass Transit available with Ecology, rather than with Mass Production. My recollection is that in Civ I and Civ II, Mass Transit became available with Mass Production and even then it came none too soon.
Historically, mass transit systems were begun in the late 19th century in order to get workers to their jobs cheaply, with reduced pollution as a side benefit. Apparently the designers at Firaxis have some gaps in their knowledge of history!
My recommendation to at least partially alleviate the high pollution levels in Civ III is to use the editor to put Mass Transit availability where it belongs, with Mass Production.

[Arrian]

It seems to me that population pollution is harsher than industrial pollution, at least from a factory alone (I've never built a coal plant). So I don't build hospitals until I have mass transit. Now, it could be argued that mass transit comes a bit late - personally I wouldn't mind moving it back to motorized transport.

My main issue right now is the "only 2 workers to a polluted square" thing when you automate them. It takes many more than that. Cleaning up pollution is tedious, as it was in Civ II (though it might be worse now, I'm not sure). Then again, I do want there to be a negative impact if you choose to build coal plants everywhere and no recycling centers or hydro plants, etc.

The AI obviously doesn't care about pollution, so I usually end up selling them ecology (which is quite lucrative) so their size-25+ cities don't turn my country into desert.

-Arrian

[Dadeo]

More thoughts:
Pollution is a very important part of industrialized society and should be a part of the game. Having said that the way pollution is portrayed in the game is not effective. Late game pollution is easily taken care of by the hordes of workers that are virtually unemployed. Automating the process (CNTRL / P ??) does away with most of the tedium. To improve th current systtem:
1)Pollution effects (ie desertification) should be tied to the the time it takes to clean up the polluted squares and the number of those squares. Each turn the total number of polluted squares should be tallied and summed. As this total passes through various thresholds deserification begins.
2)More than two automated workers should be able to be assigned per square.
3)When workers are automated on 'Pollution Patrol' they should continue until the polluted squares are eliminated.
4) OR...do away with the current system and have the effects of pollution tied directly to the offending city by having a muliplier effect much like corruption. Build that coal plant and see your city lose shields and commerce by X%. In a highly producing city the polluting effect of the coal plant could/would wipe out the production increase. Wait until you have some pollution controls before building the coal plant or the hospital. If you want the large cities live with reduced output until you get Mass Transit.

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Arrian

My main issue right now is the "only 2 workers to a polluted square" thing when you automate them. It takes many more than that.

The AI obviously doesn't care about pollution, so I usually end up selling them ecology (which is quite lucrative) so their size-25+ cities don't turn my country into desert.

I think the 'automating code' for your workers is the same as what the ai uses for its own workers, and the reasons it only puts two on a square is to avoid losing a stack of like 10 workers, and possibly to avoid 'wasting' too many workers on cleanup while other more important terrain improvements are available. Obviously, only the first reason really makes sense getting a job done in one turn reaps immediate benefits, rather than waiting 5 turns for the job to be done in 4 places at once.

I think its good that you have to spread something like ecology to protect the environment, and fairly realistic, but I do think that some of the ai's should do their part to protect it as a part of their personality, kind of like that 'green' civ in SMAC. I also think, that for dealing with civs that wouldn't have that trait there should be a diplomacy option for an agreement to avoid increasing levels of pollution(no more building of coal plants or hospitals, or increased growth for cities with hospitals until mass transit systems are built.)

You pretty much have to build 5 hospitals anyway when you get sanitation, so you can build battlefield medicine, but it may be wise to wait on the other cities(choose your lowest corruption cities or a frontline city that needs the defense bonus for your 5) can probably wait, maybe make a few extra temporary cities to work the extra land for those.