JNR’s Climate Balance frames the climate crisis as a high-stakes, delayed-impact catastrophe rather than the relatively quick and comparatively easily manageable gameplay cycle in the original Civilization VI: Gathering Storm expansion. It shifts the focus from immediate consequences to hitting later in the game but disproportionately harder, i.e. the window for prevention is wider, but the eventual penalties for failure are significantly more severe.
The mod increases the amount of CO2 required to trigger temperature rises (by 1.5x, 2x, or 3x depending on the version), simulating a more realistic lag between emissions and global warming. However, once thresholds are hit, the damage, including e.g. coastal flooding and higher disaster frequency, is intensified.
It further expands on the threat of rising sea levels by increasing the percentage of coastal lowland tiles eligible for flooding from the base game’s 45% to as high as 100%, making sea-level rise a literal existential threat for coastal civilizations.
The mod reworks mechanics to make switching to renewables a necessity for survival. This includes a Climate Accords Rework, through which players lose points for maintaining dirty coal and oil plants and gain points for cleaner alternatives, and enhanced renewable energy improvements (solar, wind, geothermal) so they provide more power and yields but require better placement and technology developments.
Climate change increases the frequency of severe disaster variants even more than the base game, with disasters like hurricanes and droughts becoming significantly more damaging to units and infrastructure.
New buildings and projects, such as Substations and Battery Storage Power Stations, allow for better management and distribution of renewable energy, framing the crisis as a logistical and technological challenge as much as an environmental one.
The mod combines multiple smaller modifications, including one that enables decommissioning nuclear power plants; this mod is interesting because it essentially penalizes players who use it, i.e. it simulates the costs for building back power plants, limits that player’s energy capacity and the upside, reduced CO2 emissions, benefits all players. Thus, it appears more like a role-playing tool than a strategic option; in the discussions, similar mods like Zee’s Decommission Power Plant are referenced, which differ e.g. in terms of the cost of decommissioning, which the latter notably limits.