Catastrophes preventable by improvements

[zyxpsilon]

quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 11-16-2000 11:31 AM comments, suggestions?

Pretty much is ALREADY available, but...
GLOBAL-WARMING > tilt on Earth axis device!
OZONE-THINNING > O3 silos in the stratosphere!

Way out of technologically feasible developments.

Fear the most citizens... ET is coming to town?
UFO's-INVADING > radar stations!
BIOWARFARE-SPREADING > hospitals for the sick!

Naturally occuring catastrophic events are part of history, humanely invoqued ones are tougher to handle.

Improvements for the future and beyond, that's what we need in a game... anything less is pointless.

[airdrik]

Which civgods? Are there plurle gods or just one, or is there one? Idea for new thread: should civ3 have the Option of having one true religion?

Other than preying, there could be a way to control earthquakes, volcanos, and tsunames (tsunames are caused by underwater earthquakes, for you info) after discovering some future tech like tectonic plate control, or something. And tornadoes and hurricanes and other storms could be likewise controled by gaining some tech like weather control . These techs would actually give a wonder that is realy hard to build, but would stop all such natural disasters in your civ (and any civs that you ally yourself with).
[This message has been edited by airdrik (edited November 16, 2000).]

[Urban Ranger]

Floods could be stopped by city walls.

Weather related catastrophes might not be stopped (unless we get weather control), but life and properties losses could be reduced by effective weather servives.

Now a comet/meteor strike would be rather nasty. Might be able to stop it with Space Nukes or something like that

[DarkCloud]

quote: Floods could be stopped by city walls.

Good idea, but sometimes a flood is 'inside' the city.

[N35t0r]

quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 11-16-2000 11:00 PM after discovering some future tech like tectonic plate control, or something[This message has been edited by airdrik (edited November 16, 2000).]

have you, by any chance, read Arthur C. Clarke's Ritcher 10?

[airdrik]

No, I haven't. Expound, please?

[Theben]

quote: Originally posted by DarkCloud on 11-17-2000 07:13 PM Good idea, but sometimes a flood is 'inside' the city.

I think what he meant was that back in civ1 city walls prevented floods.

What, no Barracks to stop pirate attacks? Not that I mind not losing my 3-turns-'til-finished wonder from a random event!

BTW, random events should be optional. Pure strategists can turn them off, while realism seekers can keep them going. Maybe a "wimp" option, to allow for occasional, easy to deal with events as opposed to city-shattering comet strikes. Happy, Ralf?

[Shadowstrike]

What we could have too would be disasters wiping out improvements. Riots for example could lead the people to destroy a random number of improvements, floods could ruin resorts and seawalls, etc.

[N35t0r]

this guy wants to use thermonuclear devices to fusion tectonic plates together.

[Dauphin]

HsFB: That'll work.

[Vrank Prins]

Here’s an idea I wrote about on 06-11-2000 in the thread In the beginning: an article about ancient civilization by jrhughes98. It’s about a structural setback which IMO will make the game more challenging. A bit like we have now with global warming in CIV, but only more severe.

EROSION & SOIL DECOMPOSITION
Agriculture, especially in ancient times, very often has suffered severely from structural (!!) erosion in all its manifestations, because of insufficient agricultural merits/habits. Erosion has always been, and still is a very difficult phenomenon to handle. Soil decomposition is mainly caused by insufficient ways of irrigation, which causes salination of the soil; or for lack of (enough) fertilizer which causes soil-exhaustion.

Three modern-time examples.
In the late twenties and early thirties the prairiestates In the US suffered from what is called the dustbowl, caused by a combination of drought and a wrong agricultural habit. Luckily enough ways have been found to solve this problem, sometimes this meant that the former intensive use had to be brought to more moderate ways of using the land.
Parts of the former Soviet Union are seriously crippled because of soilsalination due to insufficient ways of irrigation. In parts of Spain and California this also is a subject of constant concern.
In parts of the west of the Netherlands, in the "peatpolders" of Holland and Utrecht we have to drain the water out of the fields and then pump the water out of the polders to control its waterlevel, so that tractors can ride over the meadows. By doing so over the last 70 years groundlevel has fallen 1 meter because of the oxidation of the peat (that’s also a form of erosion), which calls for renewed lowering of the waterlevel, which causes more oxidation, which etc. Uptill now no solution for this problem has been found. Usually polders which really have become useless to farmers (just too soppy) are made natureresorts . . . . .

In ancient times erosion & soildecomposition has caused whole communities/civs/colonies to collapse. There is a theory which claims that parts of the Mediterranean are still suffering from the ecological hazards caused by erosion because of too intensive timberlogging (f.i. to build fleets) by the greecs and romans. This also should have happened to indian tribes in New Mexico in the late middle-ages (12th to 14th century (?! I don't exactly know when, but around that time).

You would "experience" erosion & soil exhaustion in the game by at first accidental and slowly but steadily over a longer period of time dwindling agricultural output. When these problems have become structural it should be so that the solution, most certainly in the beginning of the game, lies a few advances away. OUCH . . . . This could cause cities to diminish, or that its social structure collapses (the less agricultural output, the less production, the less luxuries etc.). It may even cause a city to . . . . disappear. OOPS . . . .
Crop rotation may be an answer to your problem, artificial fertilizer.

I can think of a few others of these structrual setbacks in the game. This is only one idea about agricultural setbacks, but why not have them in the field of hygiene, economy, sociology, science’s etc.

Point is certain ways of doing things under certain conditions may have bad effects in the long run. Notice this, "under certain conditions, may . . . ", it shouldn’t be so that everywhere problems occur. But (!), they always occur when your population have grown beyond a certain point and starts to put pressure on things, the old insufficient ways.
[This message has been edited by Vrank Prins (edited November 22, 2000).]

[jdlessl]

Somehow I think that the underlying currents in the mantle would just tear the newly fused continents apart. I mean, the kind of energy it takes to move a continent is just plain awesome, and no pipsqueak sunbomb is going to make a dent in that.

--
Jared Lessl