I understand wanting to educate people on climate change and pollution, I really do think it's a good goal to have.

But that's why you have it reflect the real world. A slow decline. Not 2 levels then sudden death. It's jarring, it ruins immersion, wastes peoples' effort.

A slow crawl, with barely noticeable effects, creeping upwards and upwards (Think frog in cold water being heated to boiling). By the time you take notice, it's too late to stop it and you need to prepare to mitigate costs because you will start to experience famines, widespread rebellions, societal collapse, refugee movements, water wars etc... in 50 or so turns. Just like how it is in the real world. Much scarier, I think you'll agree. 

As it currently is, pollution is a pointless, poopy little mechanic that destroys the endgame and basically makes the game worthy of being refunded. It doesn't even teach anyone about the scariness of climate change, it just makes people impulsively angry when they get screwed over by it and they won't be thinking about anything other than "Shit devs shit game i want my money back". 

Please donate G2G points to this thread to make it harder for the devs to ignore it, this pollution mess is the kind of thing that slowly kills the playerbase. 

So similiary to all, debuffs from pollution killed my late game. 

But thing that i came up with to this mechanic, please add whole chain of events due to creeping pollution and maybe let it make random tile of each player unhabitable, instead of end game in few turns. Make this pollution race as a whole end game crisis, where you have to pollute within whole early modern and half of contemporary, and then its time to pay this back, by losing tile by tile due to climate chagnges. How much its ofcoruse matter of balance, but it would be more engaing to do anything about it, if you would lose 5-10 tiles (including this super important wonder!) in span of X turns (shor time in general) if you and others still pollute and final end of the world due to pollution when X tiles are permanently destryoed -> so if players managed to win with climate change, after all they will see whole damage, all city disctricts lost due to pollution, thats the price they had to pay to stay in game in terms of power, weath and influence. 

Idea for a more fully implemented pollution system

Each Pollution Generated by a Territory goes to 

"Local pollution box" in its own and adjacent Territories

"Global pollution box"

The amount of Pollution in any box cannot go below 0

When a Forest or Woodland is cut down or dies it adds 20 Pollution to its Territory's pollution output for 1 turn

Every Territory has a base level of -1 Pollution per turn

Once enough Pollution accumulates in a Local territory box or in the Global box it Triggers certain "Pollution levels" (local just that territory, Global=the whole world)

(Threshold for Global Levels would be different from the Thresholds for local levels)

The Territory Takes the Effects of the higher of Global and Local

Pollution Levels give Additively Cumulative effects (so level 2 pollution in a territory has the effects from level 2 and level 1)

Level 1: -10% total food production, -2 stability per district, -1 Pollution per Forest tile, every turn one out of every 100 forests die (As if cut down) 

Level 2:-20% total food production, -3 stability per district, -1 Pollution per Forest tile, every turn one out of every 100 forests or woodlands die (As if cut down) 

Level 3:-20% total FIMS production, -3 stability per district, -1 Pollution per Forest tile, every turn one out of every 100 forests or woodlands die (As if cut down)

Level 4:-30% total FIMS production, -7 stability per district, +3 Pollution per Territory, every turn one out of every 100 food producing tiles is converted to a non food producing tile

Level 5: End Game

The Pollution in the "Local boxes" would become visible once one of them hit level 1

The Pollution in the "Global box"  would become visible once it hit 50% of level 1

There would be 4 new Civics (in 3 slots since 2 are mutually exclusive)

Local Pollution:

Solve it... No addition to local pollution boxes+25% cost for Districts and Infrastucture...Collectivism Ideology: Trigger Global Pollution Regulation Civic+Pollution Reduction Civic 

v

Build out of it...-25% cost of Districts and Infrastructure:.. Individualism Ideology  Trigger Global Pollution Project Civic

Global Pollution Regulation Civic

Reduce Emissions...-50% Pollution from Districts... World Ideology.  Trigger Pollution Reduction civic

v

Adapt: Ignore pollution penalties from levels 1 and 3 (so at level 2 you have only -20% food instead of -30%)..Nationhood Ideology

Global Pollution Project Civic

Geoengineering: Opens Geoengineering Project (shared repeatable project, takes 7 tiles can be placed in the Ocean, Raises the Thresholds for Global Pollution levels).. World Ideology

v

Adapt: Ignore pollution penalties from levels 1 and 3 (so at level 2 you have only -20% food instead of -30%)..Nationhood Ideology

Pollution Reduction Civic:

Regulate: +Stability per tile producing pollution... Authority Ideology

v.

Tax: +Money+Science per tile producing pollution.... Liberty Ideology

Most Games should reach levels 1-4 by the end depending on how much all the players focus on it... level 5 would be rare, and ending the game with 0 pollution should require a real effort (or killing everyone in Industrial Era.)

planting forests should lower permanent pollution and not be a temporary fix for a measly 2 turns
Pollution thresholds should be based on the total forests in the world, them being less impactful if being exploited by makers quarters,
planting more than 1 forest per turn in the same territory should stack in its effects(probably a bug at the moment)

these three changes would do wonders to the current system as is, its so asinine that I have to swap between cities and outposts every 2 turns just to plant trees which also dont stack, I dont care about any message about being eco friendly when there are other games that did it better. On a HUGE map I managed to contribute 20k pollution on my own(24k if you count the amount I managed to reduce), clearly the only alternative is to revert to monkey and tell my civ to go back to wiping their asses with single ply organically grown fern leaves.

I build my self a massive empire moment i hit last age it was over in 24 turns cause pollution. I on my own in just 24 turns poisoned the planet no amount of forest building will help against that, and belief me i haven't even gotten around to unlock every polluting research yet.

So yea i agree with the many here, sure it can add depth, but this has been done in such a piss poor way this doesn't add depth, this is a game killing mechanic that in no way is enjoyable or manageable if you go big. Unless you play a game where u purely focus on avoiding it  may you stand a chance not to be a mass polluter. But clearly that will mean your always behind on the AI and even if they play nice with you they will end up doing all the polluting then.

Please remove this feature till such time it can be manged in a reasonable way, or just leave it out cause this isn't fun, but game killing.    

Mausklickmoerder wrote:

Haha, climate change isn't real and nobody ever died from pollution, stop being woke lefties.

LMAO, Oh wow, I mean the one dude brought weird politics into talking about this broken game mechanic but way to seal the deal by posting a pic of an industrial town experiencing a common thing like an inversion layer with STEAM and maybe a tiny bit of soot coming out of factories that IDK, make like everything you touch? LMAO.

I just finished my first playthrough. Huge map, 10 players, slow speed, civilization difficulty.

Pollution doesn't seem to do much here. I finish my game with Mars landing finisher. It has high pollution so it's -100 stability and -10 food on all cites. But all my cities are having hundreds of stability so it's not that bad except that it will end the game, which I'm sure its what the developer intended, as a timer to end the game.

But, being able to counter this doesn't mean that it's not bad. I think pollution mechanics lacks both realism and gameplay. IRL you can counter pollution and we are doing this right now. While in game, it's getting higher fast. Again, this is a problem not just with this mechanics but Humankind problem with pacing (Contemporary era is super quick even in slow mode).

I think one of the reason Amplitude introduce pollution is to counter the amount of stability that can reach ridiculously beyond 100%, but they never tested it.

It has potential to be a great mechanics of late game, but the implementation of everything now is horrible.

Screenshot of my capital having hundreds of stability beyond 100.