[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Glaciars

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At the risk of being pedantic, I would say that the time scale is probably 
wrong.  In the past million years or two, glacial advance and retreat 
happened about every 100,000 years, which is ten times longer than the 
maximum length of Freeciv time (4000BC--5000AD==9,000 years).  In real life, 
glaciers move at an extremely slow pace, hardly perceptible on a human time 
scale.  Therefore, I think a glaciers/ice age senerio is not very realistic.
Of course, we can throw the above argument out of the window if glaciers do 
offer interesting possibilities in terms of gameplay.  After all, global 
warming hasn't really happened and yet it is in the game.  The interesting 
thing about global warming is that it is a direct result of industrial 
pollution, and the players more or less have some control over the situation 
(complaints about "dirty" AI notwithstanding).  On the other hand, a 
spontaneous global glacial advance would just be a nuisance, at least to me.
However, I think a "nuclear winter" senerio would a perfect place for 
glaciers.  For this we have to treat pulltion from nuclear weapons 
differently from ordinary industrial pollution, and when too many nukes are 
being deployed, a new ice age will begin.  The resulting glacial advance 
would be much faster than during the natural cycle because of the much 
reduced sunlight.  Alas!  The game rarely advances to the nuclear stage.  So 
this is also kind of pointless, at least at the moment.
On a much smaller scale, we can have icebergs instead of glaciers as part of 
the natural disaster collection, floating around arctic waters, waiting for 
the Titanic.  I am pretty sure, once implemented, all the earthquakes, 
volcanos, floods, hurricanes, etc. will keep the player busy even without 
the threat of another ice age.
Just my $0.02.

Mike


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