https://play.half.earth/ – simple little web game with good communist propaganda, full of fun little references to socialist history and theory.
Here's how to win the game in three turns.
Round 1
Change energy production: Coal, gas, and petrol to 0%. Solar to 40%. Wind to 35%. (I expect any mix of solar and wind would be fine; this one is verified.)
Change energy production: Coal, gas, and petrol to 0%. Blue hydrogen to 85%
Change crop production: Industrial farming to 0%, organic farming to 70%
Change meat production: Industrial farming to 0%, organic farming to 100%
Research: Green ships: 15 years to go.
Infrastructure: Cloud brightening 10 years to go. Direct Air Capture 15 years to go. Electric Cars 16 years to go. Energy Conservation Campaign 20 years to go. Expand Nature Preserves 16. Public Transit 17 years to go. Indigenous sovereignity 3 years to go. Remediate and protect ecosystems 20 years to go. Wooden Skyscrapers 15 years to go.
Policy: Accelerationist, Animal lib, Champagne, Consumerist, Factory farm reform, Marine protecc.
The win-condition is temperature rise below 1° + biodiversity pressure below 20 + emissions below 0. Cloud brightening wins the first directly by geoengineering. Most of the 'policies' are to win political capital for Round 2; this list wins +75 political capital. Most of the research/infrastructure is to reduce emissions by reducing fuel demand; some is to reduce biodiversity pressure.
Round 2
Policy: Ban hi sea fishing. Ecofem. Restrict air travel.
Research: Electric-Arc furnaces 10 years to go. Apex pred: 10 years to go.
Infrastructure: Biochar 15 years to go. Cloud brightening 4 years to go. Wetland protection 10 years to go. Recycling 10 years to go. Pedestrian and bike-friendly cities 15 years to go. Sewage plants 10 years to go.
That wins +405 capital, mostly by the delayed impact of the 'Change Production' work in Round 1. Now you have a free hand.
Round 3
Research: Green ships 4 years to go. Hempcrete 1 years to go. Electric-Arc furnaces 4 years to go.
Infrastructure: Biochar4 years to go. Pedestrian and bike-friendly cities: 4 years to go. Compost: 4 years to go. Direct Air Capture: 4 years to go. Electric Cars: 4 years to go. Energy Conservation Campaign: 5 years to go. Public Transit: 5 years to go. Phase out commercial fishing: 4 years to go. Recycling: 4 years to go. Sewage plants: 4 years to go. Remediate and protect ecosystems: 4 years to go. SRM: 4 years to go. Wooden Skyscrapers: 4 years to go.
Policies: Vegan, detox, no cats, no cars, crypto ban, hunting ban, exotic animal ban
Strategy is to ignore everything that'll take you longer than 13 years. Ignore resource shortages. Ignore contentment. Switching to renewables wins you mad political capital in between rounds 2 and 3; in round 1 you win enough capital to tide you over. You pour all that political capital into the game's three win conditions, rather than all the fun little side things like fanonism.
Ah, the classic "ruin the economy to bring down emissions". It works, at the obvious cost of contentment going down like a brick - like when I banned fossil fuels in the 2060s in this game's lib and outdated counterpart "Fate of the World" (2011) - bringing down the GDP to 1980 levels. Fun fact: The game assumed the CO2 ppm at Mauna Loa in the startdate 2020 would be 395. It was around 415 IRL.
You don't even need to do every step listed here (I missed some), and you'll still win.
Isn't this the game that treats nuclear energy with contempt? That has an option to research nuclear fusion but it's hard coded to never actually complete?
Meanwhile the "right" way involves unworkable or just nonexistent solutions like direct air capture, cloud brightening, and solar radiation management?
Isn't this the game that treats nuclear energy with contempt?
Conventional nuclear energy isn't treated that badly. It's low-emission energy and the issues emanating from it are primarily waste related and the possible meltdown event (which isn't hard-coded to trigger or anything). Uranium runs out in the late game if you focus on building nuclear power and this leads to the unlocking of Thorium Nuclear Power Plants, which are of equal quality but are based on a similarly scarce mineral resource. The fast breeder and fusion nuclear power is indeed possibly hardcoded to unviability (idk if the "tiny chance to" is actually more than 0, so I can't confirm or deny. I never had the event, even if there are some other really rare events. For example Posadism if you reach a high + temperature with high biodiversity loss, an evil playthrough.)
Direct Air Capture
time-consuming to research and requires repeat investment to make a significant dent in emissions (and you are likely to have lowered emissions in other ways by the time it does.)
Cloud Brightening
Indeed, this is the geoengineering with probably the lowest amount of criticism, but I am pretty sure that there are events linking it to protests in island nations (?)
Solar Radiation Management
This is the worst technology in the game. It triggers events lowering output of food production, lowering happiness, triggering protests and in your average playthrough it's forcefully deactivated by a chain of discontent culminating in SRM facilities being destroyed.
You do not have to research any of the latter three to win. If you achieve negative emissions, eventually the temperature will drop by itself even without geoengineering.
It's just ridiculous how already real but not optimized nuclear technologies are hardcoded to never be possible, meanwhile complete fantasy geoengineering technologies are possible.
Since the game came out, nuclear fusion has had a major breakthrough, making more power than was put in for the first time. Meanwhile those geoengineering technologies are still purely speculative.
Meanwhile those geoengineering technologies are still purely speculative.
Sure, yet we are geonengineering Earth at this very moment to breach 2°C celsius!
It's significantly easier to pump a bunch of carbon into the atmosphere than it is to pull carbon out.
It is good that nuclear fusion never works, while space elevators work. It is funny.
However you can win without CCS, cloud brightening and other geonengineering solutions that are over powered. Coal is also an absurdly good fuel source in the game.
Coal is also an absurdly good fuel source in the game.
What. That makes no sense.
Why change industrial meat farming to organic? Doesnt that increase emissions?
Maybe not everything is 100% optimised, but the above gets the job done in three turns.
I can't test all the combinatorial possibilities.
I could've sworn this game was open source, but i can't seem to find the source code for this anymore. Anyone got a link?
Not a lot of links for it anywhere really.
The web version doesn't link to the itch page with builds for 🪟/🍎/🐧 and itch doesn't link to the web game.
https://frnsys.itch.io/half-earth-socialism
Everything is in it's own separate space that has to be searched for.
There is a fairly detailed breakdown of development for the game on the dev/designer's blog that's interesting.
https://spaceandtim.es/projects/half_earth_socialism/
And none of this is linked to or from the github page.
"you still used fossil fuels".
Yeah I ALWAYS get this and I think it's unfair
How much does this depend in RNG with the parliamentary system? You don't always start off with the same number of seats for each faction, but it also doesn't seem like it depends on getting allies cause the plan is to win before you can really start getting them anyway.
It seems to always work.
Allies are good especially for building BECCS, which is a solid way to create a sustainable economy, but that's not the goal in this case.
The authors of the book were on the latest episode of Srsly Wrong, it was a good discussion even if I disagree with most of what they said about nuclear power.
https://srslywrong.com/podcast/290-half-earth-socialism-w-troy-vettese-drew-pendergrass/
