Global Warming as an Offensive Weapon in MP

Ken Hinds · July 1, 2000, 04:30

Back in the General thread on Global Warming it was suggested that it could be used as an offensive weapon. Someone suggested that it might not work well in MP. Myself, I don't think that it would be that difficult to pull off, especially if you were able to reach Industrialization early in the game. Double production should make it that much easier to pollute the countryside.

So my question to you frequent MP gamers is:

Assuming they are not tossing nukes around like Holloween Candy, how would you identify the polluter and what could the others do about it?

Assuming that it is not treated like bribing in a "No Bribe" game and you don't say "That wasn't very nice and since you can't play nice we won't let you play in our games any more.", I'm not sure that you could do very much about the situation.

From having the AI do it to me I know that reaching Industrialization by 1200A.D. - 1600A.D. is not unrealistic and if the player was in or went fundy right away they would have the cash available to start buying factories for all cities and once they had railroad they could really start pumping out the shields, even at 1x production. If they had even a moderate amount of forested land they might be able to get a cycle of global warming in easy within the next 50 turns or so. Short of flooding them with settlers and engineers to cleanup the pollution I'm not too sure the other players could stop the process unless you all ganged up on them and knocked them out of the game.

Ken

KhanMan · July 3, 2000, 04:28

Personally, I would be the first to suggest a temporary world alliance to crush anyone who tried that.

I mean, if someone is delibrately trying to ruin a game (and this is what a global warming strategy would be: ruining, NOT winning, a game), they deserve to be beaten to a pulp by every human civ (and any ai civs, if playing).

Creating pollution gains you no bonus. You merely destroy the fun others might have from a challenging game (if you have any success), or make sure no one plays you again (in any case). No, you can't survive against an attack by all the other humans at once. No amount of factories of fundamentalism will save you.

As for identifying the __________, that's simple: who ever has MPE or UN (or embassies) can see, using the demographics for pollution.

If you try to wreck a game, you deserve to be killed first.

IMHO, that is.

-KhanMan the LLSS

Ithil · July 3, 2000, 10:41

How could even someone with an embassy tell? In demographics, it would only say your pollution, and who polluted the least (1st place).

Empress · July 3, 2000, 18:45

well, you have to admit, the effects of global warming would do a lot to slow the production of the other guy

Frank Johnson · July 3, 2000, 19:01

Well I think there was a test eariler that showed that MP games were more resistant against global warming than normal games, and 2x production games required that almost 20% of the world be covered by polution (on a small map). I think the strain on your own empire would be much worse, first you are suffering the negative effects of the polution directly, and you are already behind if you are trying to mess up a game w/ this tactic.

Ken Hinds · July 4, 2000, 04:30

So far, the consensis seems to be that deliberately triggering a Global Warming cycle would be equivalent to bribing in a "No Bribe" game. With the guilty player being removed from the game and most likely shunned and barred from further MP games.

I don't have the hardware setup for MP gaming and so am unfamiliar with the general dynamics of MP games. Is pollution and the threat of Global Warming so unusual in MP that it would be easy to tell if someone was using this tactic as opposed to several players having one or two cities with a polluted square bringing on the threat of Global Warming? From my fairly extensive SP play I know that it takes around 20 turns before a single polluted square causes a serious threat of Global Warming.

Ken

Makeo · July 4, 2000, 05:25

If i felt that this tactic would help me I would use it. I see it as a legitimate tactic if you wish to slow your opponents down. (Depending on their terrain)

Its not ruining the game. Its introducing a new aspect of the game that you must overcome if you wish to win.
Thats what MP is all about. MP creates new situations that keeps the game interesting. I never play against the AI anymore because it bores me, but i never tire of MP because of the different strategies required to win.

If someone used this strategy against me, and it worked, I would respect them for thwarting me and I would work to overcome it and I would enjoy the game even more because of it.

CornMaster · July 4, 2000, 19:18

Makeo is right. If this tactic was used you shouldn't ban the player from MP games. They suffered more and longer by making all the pollution. Therefore they must be a good player in order to win under these conditions. It's not the cleanest strategy (no pun intended) and I wouldn't enjoy playing a game like that but it's no reason to ban them. If they were playing in a "Don't cause global warming intentally game" then sure ban them.

KhanMan · July 5, 2000, 01:02

Empress-Sure it's a strategy. So is randomly killing caravans in a diplomacy game, but I don't agree with either.

:P

Makeo-I never said ban them from mp: rather, I would never play that player again, unless they agreed not to delibrately pollute.

Personally, I can see it having a positive (to the user) effect only in one way: it slows everyone down.

As such, I think that using this kind of tactic in a game is, in my view, against the spirit of mp. If I wanted a slow game, I'd play 1x1x, or the ai at cheiftan level.

Use and develope this strategy if you wish, but I will not play those who delibrately cause pollution and global warming.

-KhanMan of the Sayen

Ken Hinds · July 5, 2000, 04:34

KhanMan, Makeo probably got that from my summary and not from words directly in your post. However, you indicate that while obviously you can't prevent others from playing with such a person, you would not play in any future games with them. Or, at least not until you could be convinced that they would not do it ever again.

As for the argument that the polluting player would suffer significantly from his own pollution. I'm not so sure of that. Let's take for example someone who plays a reasonably dedicated ICS modified for mimimal overlap and mostly abutting cities. If they polluted just one low production tile in each of 15-20 cities and then backed production down to the point where there were no more triangles being generated they would still run up the clock on Global Warming. From all my game play it doesn't appear that pollution is contagious in CIV II like it is in some other city building games. Once a square is polluted if you back off on production and/or city growth, which an ICSer would do anyway, then your city doesn't gather more pollution even if you never clean it up.

This would probably only work on a medium or large map where you wouldn't have someone else tramping all over your territory.

Ken