is hoover dam or dam cancels coal plant?

I agree on that I don't like having a completely random event like nuclear meltdown in my games. Random event like losing a 98% battle is a different thing - I can prepare for the possibility by having more units. But there's nothing I can do about meltdowns. So, I don't build nuclear plants.

I'm not completely sure about the unhappiness for nuclear plants either. There have been protests about everything you can think of, as people generally fear the new things they don't understand. What might be closer to truth would be that you need gold to run a nuclear plant. If you set it to run without funding, it has a meltdown risk. If you pay some small maintenance cost (some small gpt figure), then it doesn't have meltdown risk.

Coal plants should indeed be a cause for global warming (actually also for global cooling). For now, they cause unhealthiness, which isn't that far off the mark either.

Overall, the global warming issue in civ is a hard one. It's quite hard to figure out a method for global warming that would be reasonably balanced. Diplomatic effects should indeed be part of the whole, but that's pretty recent issue.. Global warming would affect the game only post-industrial age anyway, probably only in the modern age (during industrial age the pollution wasn't even on the same scale as during modern age), and considering that diplomatic effects are a very late development ('90s at earliest, maybe could say that not really even then) the late techs for understanding global warming are quite justified.

DynamicSpirit said:

More than that, it seems a rather bad thing to have in the game at all: It amounts to a small risk of something extremely bad happening to your game, where there is nothing you can do (once you have the plant) to control the risk. Those kinds of risks generally detract from the fun of playing.

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That's a matter of taste. I like random events.

I do agree that the benefits of nuclear plants seem too small for their costs. Actually, that would be true even if there were zero chance of meltdown. The problem, I think, is that the cost of unhealth in the late game is too low, and also that, once you've built coal plants everywhere, there's a reduced incentive to build nuclear plants. In the "real world" there is a continuing need for new power plants, so the choice is between building more coal plants or building nuclear plants. Not between keeping the existing coal plants or making them redundant by building nuclear plants, as in Civ4.

DaviddesJ said:

I do agree that the benefits of nuclear plants seem too small for their costs. Actually, that would be true even if there were zero chance of meltdown. The problem, I think, is that the cost of unhealth in the late game is too low, and also that, once you've built coal plants everywhere, there's a reduced incentive to build nuclear plants. In the "real world" there is a continuing need for new power plants, so the choice is between building more coal plants or building nuclear plants. Not between keeping the existing coal plants or making them redundant by building nuclear plants, as in Civ4.

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Agreed. I guess that's a sympton of the wider issue of the simplistic Civ economic model in which one of something is enough to supply everyone (one building supplies an entire city, no matter how big it gets, one medic, or hospital can heal unlimited numbers of units simultaneously, one oil well can supply an entire empire, etc. etc.)

Certainly the simple economic model causes some issues that feel out of place. However, a complex economic model that would better handle all special cases might not suit civ so well. Civ is, afterall, a fairly simple game when it comes to mechanics. I think that's one of the strong points here - simple mechanics that allow for a complex game to develop.

Elandal said:

I think that's one of the strong points here - simple mechanics that allow for a complex game to develop.

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I think so, too. But, if the design leads to options that never get used (like the nuclear plant), then maybe it should be tweaked.

Well, I guess then it pretty much means Nuclear plants were made into to game to not be built.

Coal - 150 cost. 2 sick.

Hydro - 200 cost. Only on cities with river tiles. The extra construction turns don't seem worth the effort. Prefer coal.

Nuclear - 250 cost. Puts a nuclear timebomb on your city. That's even more extra construction turns, and risk of city destruction. Prefer coal.

As coal comes first, my main production cities will definitelly get coal plants.
Nuclear I skip. I don't want the risk it brings.
When Hydro becomes available, I may have a shot at Three Gorges Dam. Depending on the size of my empire, and the number of second tier production cities (to which I would build factories but not coal plants) this may or may not be a good option. Hydro plants I build only in case I have serious health issues in some riverside city that has a coal plant - Ironworks city if riverside comes to mind as a potential target.

Factories I might actually consider in cities that have very low production but lots of food. Like the 1 tile triple-fish island. Reasoning there is that food allows for specialists, and factories allow for engineers, thus food can be turned into engineered hammers. It can make quite a big difference.