Climate Changes

[Roman]

If there are random disasters, they should be preventable by certain improvements, like in the original Civ.

[zyxpsilon]

Event driven changes into a "world" map, for example, is necessary if reality is part of the evolution.
No one can deny;
- EL NINO (pacific ocean boiled up, a little too much for ecologist).
- Ozone depletion in the Artic stratosphere, radiation UV levels rising.


In a case of "historical" accuracy, events must interact with an empire building, conquering, researching, player.
It adds the pleasure of randomness but also the fact that one must sustain the truth about OUR behavior through times.
What stopped the Aztecs from flourishing in central america? Climate? European invasion? Epidemy?
What prevented the Greeks to settle in Australia?
The Great flood of the Bible?

Humanity has a tight grasp over Earth's resources and features... but "Gaia" packs its own power at populations.
If the Antartica ice melts too much... we might very well witness boats zooming from Michigan lake to Hudson bay on a huge "man-made" area of water!

Speculations? I wonder.

[Chuckles]

I vote for this over and over and I still would like something very similar to the random events model of civ1. It was great. Simple too.

[Straybow]

Naw, there are very few areas of the world where climate changes have altered the basic terrain type of a large area. Swedish coastlines may have extended a few miles farther, but that's nothing compared to a 100 mile wide tile. The civ2 terrain types are too limited to model crop effects.

Theben has understated the timescale of climate change. There have been 5 major climate changes in written history:

• Temperatures warmed up around 800 BC and then cooled slightly around 500 BC, staying above "average" until 300 AD.
• Temperatures were below average for about five centuries, then came
• the "Little Optimum," 800-1300. The North Sea and North Atlantic were calm enough to be traversed easily in longships (basically big rowboats with clunky sails) and wine grapes grew in England and Labrador (the Vikings called it "Vinland").
• The "Little Ice Age" saw Alpine glacier advancing visibly until the mid-seventeenth century! Grain harvests in Northern Europe fell by one third. Temperatures remained cool until the mid-nineteenth century.
• We are presently in a warming trend, although there was a slight cooling in the '60s and '70s.

Much has been made of the fact that the greatest periods of technological and cultural advance occured in the warm periods, whether in Europe, Near East, or Asia. The Renaissance and Industrial Revolution in Europe built on the momentum of the Late Medieval. The Medieval advances of the Near East were transfered to the West by the influx of scholars and other refugees caused by the fall of Constantinople in 1453… blah, blah, blah. All things very hard to model in a civ2/SMAC/CTP type system.

I must disagree with zyxpsilon. Climatologists are finding more and more evidence that El Nino/La Nina effects were common in earlier warm periods. It seems that the transition from cold to warm (like the present time) is worse than the stable warm periods. We have no data on ozone layer/UV flux for historic warm periods, nor evidence that these changes are significant in the present.

Deforestation, on the other hand, is already included in civ2. Forest tiles are easily turned into Plains, and SMAC added the bonus of shields harvested in the process. I think we'll see that in civ3. Any other climate effects should be left out or optional.

[Sean]

I can understand how local disasters, and the planning involved in dealing with them can improve a game. Though, personally I often just found them to be unneccasary annoyances in civ 1. Climate change, on the other hand, would become an unenjoyable pain in the game, by preventing such planning. While (perhaps) adding realism, it would take away from playability. We are not playing sim-history here! This is particularly true when it is "not your fault", i.e. from large amounts of pollution, or large scale agriculture.

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Give me Liberty, or give me death!

[Sirotnikov]

I tihnk it would be cool if teperatures were changing. But when our science is developed enough, we should have a few turns warning. And maybe we'll have things like domes or dams to help deal with the changes.

I mean, if sea level rises in early age and gulps a city of 3, it's tolerable.

But i need some warning to build a dome around my 30 size city so it won't go atlantis on me.

[tmarcl]

quote: Originally posted by Sirotnikov on 02-27-2001 01:43 PM I tihnk it would be cool if teperatures were changing. But when our science is developed enough, we should have a few turns warning. And maybe we'll have things like domes or dams to help deal with the changes. I mean, if sea level rises in early age and gulps a city of 3, it's tolerable.

You do realize that a city size of 3 equals 30,000 people, don't you? Add to that the loss of money spent in developing the city as far as it has been (especially early in the game-you're looking at about 40 turns for a settler to build the new city in the first place, cost of building roads to the city, irrigation, military units being built there, any city improvements) and you're looking at a very expensive loss. Granted, in game terms, the loss of a size 3 city isn't much, but in real life, you better believe the government's going to be concerned.

Marc

[Sirotnikov]

I know but I'm talking from a ruthless leader's point of view. I wouldn't be too sad to lose a 3 size city, but I would be sad to lose a 30 size city.

Like Stalin once said "the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of 20 million is statistics".

Not that I'm anything like that in real life, but you have to be cold and calculated in Civ. Didn't you ever killed innocent population just to get sometihng / protect something? You wouldn't be able to do that in the real world these days, but you always have to give up something. It's a matter of priorities, and in the big picture, some human life is sometimes less important to leaders than the future of thier whole nation (or thier own lousy bum!! )