Global Warming - annoyance or problem

[planetfall]

Hi,

Still learning the game. Finally finished first game. But not sure about this "global warming" feature.

In real world, the global warming hypothesis is still being debated:
30% of scientific data supports hypothesis
30% of data does not support hypothesis
40% is inconclusive.
Intestesting the lastest "data" reported suggested we are in the beginning of a global cooling period.

Apart from real world, what about the civ3 world? Is "global warming" just an annoyance or a real problem?

Is there a way to turn off "global warming" in order to test the effect or non effect of this feature???


Thank you for your ideas.

[ICMB]

My experience is that Global warming is a complete non-issue in Civ3.

The only real drawback I see is the rare case when it causes a critical change in overal production. For example, if a city can produce 100 shields, but due to global warming, it drops to only 98 shields, you have to manage the production queue more carefully, as things that cost 100 will now take two turns to complete.

Similarly, most big cities in Civ3 are over-populated, and losing a pop point rarely has any significant effect on a city.

- ICMB

[Thrawn05]

I agree with ICBM, global warming rarely has any effect on your game, only the rare case in one of my games, that caused me to loose my only scource of coal when the terran under it changed to desert.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by ICMB
The only real drawback I see is the rare case when it causes a critical change in overal production. For example, if a city can produce 100 shields, but due to global warming, it drops to only 98 shields, you have to manage the production queue more carefully, as things that cost 100 will now take two turns to complete.

There's no loss of shields, but only loss of food. Grassland turns into plains (0 or +1 shield), plains into desert (no change in shields). The terrain changes usually very late in the game, where improvements (mines/roads/RR) are quickly rebuilt.

EDIT: Ah, and I agree with you, losing one of my 15 taxmen doesn't really matter

[barefootbadass]

I don't get much global warming terrain changes in civ 3, even when the ai's have loads of pollution(though they do clean it up, they always have several squares of it). On the order of a few squares a game. This is not too unrealistic, especially when you compare it to civ 2, which was ridiculous, the whole world would change all at once, and that would sometimes would happen more than once as well.

Civ 3 provides evidence that it might be happening but only enough to provide 'skeptics' room to deride it('oh no! I had one square of plains turn to desert in 200 years!).

[Qilue]

How much effect it has also depends on how you improve the land. With grassland, I usually mine the two best, irrigate 6 and plant forests on the rest. If one square turns to plains, I mine it and turn a forest into irrigation. Net result, no change in population, +1 shield production.

Interestingly, a plains square on a river 'degrades' to floodplain.

[player1]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Ah, and I agree with you, losing one of my 15 taxmen doesn't really matter

Instead of having city with 25+pop (I hate playing for scores), you could just mine more mines and have 20 pop city with lots of porduction.

You could also you extra food to make an "conscript factory".

Taxemen are generaly useless.

[planetfall]

warming test

ran a std game with 50 cities, about 200 workers on autoimprove, built all the factories and coal plants I could, got
global warming about 5 times with core territory now dim and more desert like.

Firaxis needs to slow down global warming
so instead of happening everying turn it gets
worst every 20 turns (not years). The way the game is by the time you can create hydro plants and Hoover dam, you are hit to hard
by reduced food. Will check to see what
happens when finish game.

Again, is there any way to turn off or reduce global warming via the editor or????

[Flight]

so instead of happening everying turn it gets
worst every 20 turns (not years). The way the game is by the time you can create hydro plants and Hoover dam, you are hit to hard
by reduced food

That isn't very realistic though, we aren't affected much by it at the moment, though we may be in the future - i think civ3 has the balance right because we really can only guess at what the effect's on the planet are and will lead to.

Though it should be editable, cos i dont think it is in the editor (is it? ).

[barefootbadass]

Re: warming test

Originally posted by planetfall

Firaxis needs to slow down global warming
so instead of happening everying turn it gets
worst every 20 turns (not years).

Again, they did slow it down, a square here and there instead of everything at once, as it is you can add irrigation as needed to keep things under control.

[planetfall]

civ3 has wrong balance

Since global warming is not a scientific law, nor a scientific theory, but is only the lower scientific hypothesis, and it may or may not be a possibility, it seems good to include as an option in this type of game.
But it seems DUMB to require this function before scientist's are in more agreement as to it's reality.

Factories do pollute and it makes less sense to turn off unit pollution.

My other point is the time frame for the
global warming effect is too short. Even those who support the global warming hypothesis talk about it happening in 50 to 100 years, not the 10-20 years the effect starts showing up in civ3.


Final point, how does civ3 show global cooling? If replant forests over entire "global warming effected area", will there
be a "global cooling" back to original terrain type??? If not, why not??? If going to allow for the global warming hypothesis why not also allow for the global cooling hypothesis????

oh the joys of trying to program a simulation game to match the real world possibilities.

[barefootbadass]

Global warming had a prominent place in civ 2. Its basically an urban legend, the idea of global warming in our culture. I like it, not because I think global warming is a major problem in the real world, but I always got a kick out of having the whole world transform in civ 2, and this now is just a cakewalk.

I think you are nitpicking about reality too much. It would be nifty to have the game simulate ocean currents and regional warming and and cooling trends and all of that, but personally, I'd rather have that effort put into things like a smarter ai, smoother interface, and maybe an automated pollution cleanup thing for workers that gets it done as fast as possible(which by far is more annoying to me than having a square change every 5-20 turns or so).

I don't start getting any global warming effects until at least late industrial, but then, I don't do experiments to make coal plants in every city and large population just to see how much I can get, I just play the game normally, going for hoover if I can, otherwise only building as many coal plants as I need and sticking with about 20-23 citizens in the big cities. Hmm, for me from early industrial to late industrial is at least 200 years(on large map). I don't know where you are getting this 10-20 year figure from, that's like 5-10 turns or less.

[planetfall]

10-20 years may have been imprecise.
It was 5-10 turns. I thought at that stage 1 turn was 2 years, but 1 turn could be 5 years. I don't have my sheet with list of turns and years with me.

Here's another idea for a firaxis fix: if years per turn are not going to be a static number, why not report turn# and year ##???


I agree there are more important game issues than the urban legend of global warming. I just ran across it because I was trying to push growth and high production levels in the first 2 eras with as little warfare as possible. Still on lowest level as I never played civ2 and civ3 is new to me. At this level it is not to difficult to delay warfare until the late indust/early modern era.

thanks for the comments.

Oh, I have just started experimenting with automating workers. I noticed with automated workers I would see 5-9 workers attacking pollution. The only way I can think to speed up pollution cleanup is to lower the time needed to complete cleanup.

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by planetfall
Oh, I have just started experimenting with automating workers. I noticed with automated workers I would see 5-9 workers attacking pollution. The only way I can think to speed up pollution cleanup is to lower the time needed to complete cleanup.

Really? For me it usually only puts 2 on a square(with the automated cleanup command, whatever it was), although if everything is improved I guess it would do it, don't like automated workers because they tend to get themselves captured or occasionally wander in a neighbor's territory with ROP improving THEIR land. Sometimes I do stuff like that, but only for a reason and I want to control that. I usually put some on automation and end up gradually taking them off when I find them misbehaving.