Nuclear meltdown event

What do you guys think of eliminating the chance of a nuclear power plant "melting down" and taking advantage of the the random event system in BtS to make a "Nuclear Tragedy" event that is triggered when you have a nuclear plant? You could pop up a window telling the player that one of his/her nuclear plants has entered a critical state and present the player with a list of options:

• We can't deal with this crisis right now, tell the surrounding populous to evacuate. --- x for y turns (The angriness factor is debatable), fallout in tiles surrounding city, x population subtracted from city, nuclear plant is destroyed.
• Evacuate surrounding populous, begin efforts to bring nuclear plant back under control and research ways to make our nuclear plants safer. --- x amount of subtracted from treasury, nuclear plant will be destroyed (After the nuclear reactor has melted it will be of little use anymore and will probably need to be demolished anyway.), chance of fallout appearing in tiles surrounding city, chance that population will be subtracted from city, lower chance of this event reoccurring.
• Evacuate surround populous, research ways to make our nuclear plants safer, rebuild the the nuclear plant after this is all over and keep the nuclear plant from melting down at all costs! --- x amount of subtracted from treasury (much more than for previous option, of course), x amount of in city and lower chance of event reoccurring.

I like this idea; it'd be nice to not just have a simple random chance without anything you can do about it, and fits naturally into the event system. Following along the lines of the other events, the angriness factor at the top would definitely fit, ... even a single major accident is disastrous enough to raise concerns about plant security and safety, and instill some long-term uneasiness with other plants across the nation. Lingering unhappiness over nuclear power from a near-meltdown seems even more likely than an actual catastrophic failure and fallout, unless the situation is completely botched and a (non-nuclear) explosion of the cooling water occurs like at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.


An emergency has developed at the [City] Nuclear Facility and the reactor is in danger of melting down!

• Try and quietly contain the situation at the plant and keep it from becoming public.
  - The nuclear plant is destroyed.
  - 50% chance of catastrophic containment failure.
  If a major containment faliure occurs, the ensuing evacuation shuts down the city in disorder for 1 turn, +10 fading gradually over X turns, -1 population, a half dozen fallout drift up to 5-10 tiles away, and nuclear plants give +1 for Z turns.

• Declare a state of emergency and dispatch the National Guard to help evacuate the nearby population as a precaution, and contact experts to monitor the situation at the plant.
  - The nuclear plant is destroyed.
  - Subtracts a few hundred
  - A defensive unit in the city cannot move for a few turns
  - Nuclear plants give +1 for Z turns.

• Temporarily evacuate the region and organize a nationwide relief effort for the economy around the plant, fund programs to improve the safety and security of other nuclear facilities, and research new types of reactor construction while building a new reactor.
  - Subtracts around a thousand
  - A defensive unit in the city cannot move for a few turns
  - Reduces the chance of the event reoccurring by 50% (cumulative).

The reactor is going to be damaged beyond repair regardless of the outcome, the other major incidents I know of (the Windscale fire, SR-1, 3-mile island, Chernobyl) resulted in the reactor being sealed off... and two are still on-site to this day (Windscale's and Chernobyl's).

Cabay Jet said:

What do you guys think of eliminating the chance of a nuclear power plant "melting down" and taking advantage of the the random event system in BtS to make a "Nuclear Tragedy" event that is triggered when you have a nuclear plant? You could pop up a window telling the player that one of his/her nuclear plants has entered a critical state and present the player with a list of options:

• We can't deal with this crisis right now, tell the surrounding populous to evacuate. --- x for y turns (The angriness factor is debatable), fallout in tiles surrounding city, x population subtracted from city, nuclear plant is destroyed.
• Evacuate surrounding populous, begin efforts to bring nuclear plant back under control and research ways to make our nuclear plants safer. --- x amount of subtracted from treasury, nuclear plant will be destroyed (After the nuclear reactor has melted it will be of little use anymore and will probably need to be demolished anyway.), chance of fallout appearing in tiles surrounding city, chance that population will be subtracted from city, lower chance of this event reoccurring.
• Evacuate surround populous, research ways to make our nuclear plants safer, rebuild the the nuclear plant after this is all over and keep the nuclear plant from melting down at all costs! --- x amount of subtracted from treasury (much more than for previous option, of course), x amount of in city and lower chance of event reoccurring.

Click to expand...

you forgot one option more - wich was the in fact that was correct one in soviet union and theire satelites.
I leave in Poland but i suffered radiation cloud from Charnobyl. The soviet union authorities tried to keep this as much secret as possible - the cloud radiation go east in the begining so it wasn't tough to keep it secret in begining. Next the wind changed and cloud stroke west europe and scandinavia.
The meltdown of core was in 26th April, but on 1st May during the workers labours and big communist holiday (it was very warm day so after parade many people stayed in open air) many people received large doses of radiation.

The day after 1st May Sweden started asking what's happening. soviet Union kindly informed couple days later what has happened in chernobyl. So they started to give us in creche (i was a kid when this happend) Lugol's iodine - and it was next mistake of communist government. Taking Lugol's iodine has only sense up to 48 hours, it should keep away from acumulating radioactive iodine-131 in the thyroid. They started to give it around 6th May so it was to late, the other problem is that many people in my age has problems with teeths - it destroys tooth enamel.

Edit couple years ago i was in mountains in metereologic observatory near the place i leave. In museum they keep graph from that era. Guide in the museum told that the day the radiation cloud heated Poland the didn't knew anything. Imagine the equipment that measures the radiation of earth etc now go mad. Everything is out of scale, the ploters are looking like there broken (the earthquake 8 in richters scale - doesn't makes such a graph)> The y didn't new if the aparature get broken or if happened something real bad - for example nuclear war.


So another option should be available:
[*]Keep this in secret as long as possible, hopefully the radiation cloud won't spread outside borders.
It should have the chance that people in your country and sorrounding countries get angry and -30% of population in the city is dead. +10 unhealthiness for 30 turns (decreasing over time)

Thanks for the suggestions, guys! I could use somebody to help me with the python as it's all french to me.

Thalassicus said:

An emergency has developed at the [City] Nuclear Facility and the reactor is in danger of melting down!

• Try and quietly contain the situation at the plant and keep it from becoming public.
  - The nuclear plant is destroyed.
  - 50% chance of catastrophic containment failure.
  If a major containment faliure occurs, the ensuing evacuation shuts down the city in disorder for 1 turn, +10 for X turns, -1 population, a half dozen fallout drift up to 5-10 tiles away, and nuclear plants give +1 for Z turns.

Click to expand...

I don't know about adding 10 for any amount of turns, as fallout inside of a city's radius adds its own . And it seems a bit unfair to have fallout from one of your plants appear in your neighbors' territory. Sure, I know it's realistic, but after all, it's only a game. Having 4-12 tiles of fallout appear within the target city's radius seems better in my eyes.

Thalassicus said:

• Immediately dispatch the National Guard to help evacuate the nearby population as a precaution, and contact experts to monitor the situation at the plant.
  - The nuclear plant is destroyed.
  - Subtracts a few hundred
  - A unit in the city cannot move for Y turns
  - -1 population
  - Nuclear plants give +1 for Z turns.

Click to expand...

I don't know about rendering a player's units inside the city useless for Y turns, seems like it would infuriate the player. Especially if the target city was the players' base of operations and housed a great portion of his army. Everything else is alright, but a poor civilization would get bankrupted by one of his nuclear plants melting down. Perhaps the amount of gold could decrease as the player built more plants?

Thalassicus said:

• Temporarily evacuate the region and organize a nationwide relief effort for the economy around the plant, fund programs to improve the safety and security of other nuclear facilities, and research new types of reactor construction.
  - The nuclear plant is destroyed.
  - Subtracts around a thousand
  - A unit in the city cannot move for Y turns
  - Reduces the chance of another disaster at nuclear plants by 50% (cumulative).

Click to expand...

I like everything in option, except for the amount of gold required. Originally, I was planning on having the amount of gold in this option cover the cost of bringing the plant under control and building a new one so the city doesn't go without a nuclear plant. If the plant is going to be destroyed anyway, 1000 is a bit steep IMHO.

Thalassicus said:

No matter what happens the reactor is going to be damaged beyond repair, the other major incidents I know of (the Windscale fire, 3-mile island, Chernobyl) resulted in the reactor being sealed off... and two are still on-site to this day (Windscale's and Chernobyl's). I'll look into the event system and see how this can be done.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

asioasioasio said:

you forgot one option more - wich was the in fact that was correct one in soviet union and theire satelites.
I leave in Poland but i suffered radiation cloud from Charnobyl. The soviet union authorities tried to keep this as much secret as possible - the cloud radiation go east in the begining so it wasn't tough to keep it secret in begining. Next the wind changed and cloud stroke west europe and scandinavia.
The meltdown of core was in 26th April, but on 1st May during the workers labours and big communist holiday (it was very warm day so after parade many people stayed in open air) many people received large doses of radiation.

The day after 1st May Sweden started asking what's happening. soviet Union kindly informed couple days later what has happened in chernobyl. So they started to give us in creche (i was a kid when this happend) Lugol's iodine - and it was next mistake of communist government. Taking Lugol's iodine has only sense up to 48 hours, it should keep away from acumulating radioactive iodine-131 in the thyroid. They started to give it around 6th May so it was to late, the other problem is that many people in my age has problems with teeths - it destroys tooth enamel.

Edit couple years ago i was in mountains in metereologic observatory near the place i leave. In museum they keep graph from that era. Guide in the museum told that the day the radiation cloud heated Poland the didn't knew anything. Imagine the equipment that measures the radiation of earth etc now go mad. Everything is out of scale, the ploters are looking like there broken (the earthquake 8 in richters scale - doesn't makes such a graph)> The y didn't new if the aparature get broken or if happened something real bad - for example nuclear war.


So another option should be available:
[*]Keep this in secret as long as possible, hopefully the radiation cloud won't spread outside borders.
It should have the chance that people in your country and sorrounding countries get angry and -30% of population in the city is dead. +10 unhealthiness for 30 turns (decreasing over time)

Click to expand...

But the thing about Chernobyl is that the russian government chose to keep the meltdown a secret, but it didn't remain one. If you're going for realism with this option the chance of discovery would have to be very high.

The gold cost is pretty small actually, 1000 is about the same to upgrade 5 Infantry to Mech Infantry I think, I just did that upgrade in my current game with about half my infantry. I typically leave at least 1000 on hand at all times for emergency upgrades if a giant SoD lands somewhere on my coast. Likewise, rushing a Wonder in the endgame typically costs me 2000-5000, even with the Kremlin. Dropping Science to 0% for one turn brings me in 4000/turn in this match.

With option 3, anything that reduces the chance of an accident basically makes nuclear plants into free-power hydro plants you can build anywhere... there's got to be some drawback to going nuclear. I'd be more than happy to spend the money if it meant I didn't have to spend Great Engineers on the 3 Gorges Dam... which the AI almost always gets first anyways. Keeping a unit in your city from moving is the same as another event that occurs (the mineshaft collapse), and defensive garrison units typically won't be moving anyways, it can still defend.

You have a point about the radiation cloud spreading into rival territory, from a game balance standpoint it would probably be best to simply drop it around the city. Even so, if you're fighting a cultural war, or the city has recently been captured near a rival, it might appear in rival territory if your cities are very close. The +10 would be the same as the Spy poison-water mission, gradually disappearing over a dozen turns or so, depending on game length. Fallout by itself only generates -3 -3 -3 +0.5 per tile, which most of the cities in my current game could survive through - and some still even grow. Most cities at that point in the game have a Granary, so it sometimes takes a dozen turns or so for the spy mission to just go through the surplus grain. In reality it would depopulate your city like asio mentioned (over a hundred thousand were permanently evacuated from the area around the plant), but that would be too harsh from a gameplay perspective.

Thalassicus said:

The gold cost is pretty small actually, 1000 is about the same to upgrade 5 Infantry to Mech Infantry I think, I just did that upgrade in my current game with about half my infantry. I typically leave at least 1000 on hand at all times for emergency upgrades if a giant SoD lands somewhere on my coast. Likewise, rushing a Wonder in the endgame typically costs me 2000-5000, even with the Kremlin. Dropping Science to 0% for one turn brings me in 4000/turn in this match.

Click to expand...

Right, of course 1000 gold would be a very nice luxury for most players. Less experienced players need to be taken into consideration. If it's going to cost the player 1000 there need to be more rewards than just an absolute chance of fallout not being scattered across the city radius.

Thalassicus said:

With option 3, anything that reduces the chance of an accident basically makes nuclear plants into free-power hydro plants you can build anywhere... there's got to be some drawback to going nuclear. I'd be more than happy to spend the money if it meant I didn't have to spend Great Engineers on the 3 Gorges Dam... which the AI almost always gets first anyways. Keeping a unit in your city from moving is the same as another event that occurs (the mineshaft collapse), and defensive garrison units typically won't be moving anyways, it can still defend.

Click to expand...

Good point, but nuclear plants aren't entirely power free. You have to have a source of uranium to build and run nuclear plants, remember? And uranium isn't something you'll find in your backyard, you know.

Thalassicus said:

You have a point about the radiation cloud spreading into rival territory, from a game balance standpoint it would probably be best to simply drop it around the city. Even so, if you're fighting a cultural war, or the city has recently been captured near a rival, it might appear in rival territory if your cities are very close.

Click to expand...

That would be reasonable, at least your neighbor would know where the fallout came from in that case.

Thalassicus said:

The +10 would be the same as the Spy poison-water mission, gradually disappearing over a dozen turns or so, depending on game length.

Click to expand...

Actually, poison water missions give +8 to the target city for 8 turns. In marathon it gives +24 for 24 turns due to a rather nasty flaw, but that's a completely different story.

Thalassicus said:

Fallout by itself only generates -3 -3 -3 +0.5 per tile, which most of the cities in my current game could survive through - and some still even grow. Most cities at that point in the game have a Granary, so it sometimes takes a dozen turns or so for the spy mission to just go through the surplus grain. In reality it would depopulate your city like asio mentioned (over a hundred thousand were permanently evacuated from the area around the plant), but that would be too harsh from a gameplay perspective.

Click to expand...

Let's do some math relating the +10 in the city debate, fallout gives 0.5 per tile. The "fat cross" consists of, at most, 20 squares. (If you subtract the square the city itself is built, on which I don't think fallout can generate.) 20 * 0.5 is 10 . So I think it's reasonable to not add to the target city itself, if you did add to the city and scattered fallout across the city radius you'd end up with 14 or 15 inside a city and I don't think that's fair.

Depopulating the city... I think that could be added in but only in a small amount. You could option 1 you could have it depopulate the city by 20% of the total city's population and you could have option 2 depopulate the city by 10%. The problem with this is that smaller cities wouldn't be harmed by depopulation as much as the larger ones would be. Of course, a nuclear meltdown in a sprawling metropolis would be more disastrous than a meltdown would be in a town with a population of 100. Picture a meltdown in New York city and No Name Colorado, which would be worse? (No Name exists, I kid you not.)

Well, 20 fallout would be somewhat of overkill if the player has not researched Ecology yet. Even if they had, rendering the entire city area zero food (or close to it) would be much worse than 10 for a dozen turns. Either way, I experimented by dropping 8 fallout tiles in the area around my capital city in my current game, size 20, and it still had positive growth, which is counter-intuitive for a major containment breach. Also keep in mind the surplus of grain from granaries... it takes a long time to eat up that first, before the city actually begins starving. The spy mission is negligible in the game... I tried it a few times in my current epic-speed game against rivals, but even at 16 it had no effect before the city reached 0 stored food and the effect had dissipated. It's not a matter of math, just try it out in practice. A few fallout alone, or alone, wouldn't be enough to really affect the city. Likewise 20 with no fallout, or 20 fallout with no , would be too devastating.

Cabay Jet said:

If it's going to cost the player 1000 there need to be more rewards than just an absolute chance of fallout not being scattered across the city radius.

Click to expand...

The other reward is the permanent, nation-wide reduction in the chance of an accident occurring again, reducing the already-slim chance down to a negligable occurance and makes nuclear power risk-free. This is a huge reward in of itself, making the Three Gorges Dam much less attractive. I've never used nuclear plants due to the risk of meltdowns, but would if there was a way to avoid the meltdown. If a civ is poor and cost-cutting like Russia was then it'll just have to risk a meltdown.

By depopulate we meant that the area would permanently lose some of its population from evacuated land without a way to recuperate, as in real life, but that's not good from a game balance perspective.

Regarding city size, keep in mind that regardless of the city the nuclear plant is not literally built in the city limits. Dallas-Fort Worth's Comanche Peak Nuclear Station is a hundred miles away near Glen Rose, rather than in the middle of the 6 million population metroplex. Each "city" represents a regional area in Civ.

It seems like this will be relatively easy to do with a few links to external functions.

Well, looking at the old way Civ IV handled nuclear meltdowns you ended up with:

• A destroyed plant.
• A few destroyed buildings not including the nuclear plant.
• Units that were in the city when the plant exploded were damaged.
• Lost population.
• Up to 9 squares of fallout and destroyed improvements in those squares.
• Global warming is increased.

Those fallout squares gave 5 (Assuming Civ IV rounds the number 4.5 up.), you'd have 9 unworkable tiles and the thing that ruined nuclear plants for most people, global warming, which is completely unrelated with nuclear fallout so it's entirely unrealistic even from a gameplay point of view.

But damaged units and destroyed buildings are all good ideas, I'm beginning to think that units should be damaged instead of immobilized for options 1, 2 and 3 and buildings destroyed for option 1. How hard do you think adding all that in would be?

It shouldn't be hard, this is all doable in some simple scripted functions (which I'm pretty familiar with), I don't think anything would require actual recoding of the game engine (which I'm not). It's mainly a matter of tying it with the existing event system, which has a LOT of data. I'm not sure what the xml event system is capable of handling itself, and what would require additional scripting.

The "Global Warming" effect in the game actually makes much more sense if you simply rename it to "Nuclear Winter". I did this in my personal singleplayer mod a few years back. Fire off enough nukes and the world starts becoming irradiated, turning to desert.

All the current meltdown effects would only occur if there is an actual catastrophic containment breach, which with water-cooled reactors requires a steam explosion of the cooling water strong enough to break through both the reactor shielding and secondary concrete containment dome/building. That's the reason why water-cooled reactors don't go thermonuclear, the water vaporizes and blows the reactor apart long before the core reaches that stage... but it still leads to a radiation breach. This has only happened once in the history of nuclear power, at Chernobyl's plant, and it occurred partially because (if I remember correctly) there was no secondary containment dome (could look up the specifics). Construction of the reactor was bad, training was bad (most of the men were brought in as a skeleton crew from coal power plants), and there were other contributing factors. That's the situation where all the above effects would occur.

It actually truncates decimals on partial healthiness and unhealthiness (1 workshop doesn't give you any for example).

Have you encountered the mineshaft collapse event? It gives two options I think... one is do-nothing with the mine destroyed and +1:unhappy: in the nearby city, the other option is to send one of your military units there to assist the workers, which disables the "move" order for 2-3 turns and doesn't give :unhappy. The unit can still defend, it just can't move.

What this represents in options 2 and 3 is sending 1 of your defensive garrison units ("the national guard") out to help with a precautionary evacuation of the surrounding populace, but no major Chernobyl-style containment breach actually occurs. The reactor is lost from the meltdown, but is brought under control before it breaches the containment domes, nothing else is damaged and no population suffers. Cleanup costs a fortune though, due to the lethal radiation danger to personnel severely limiting options, usually requiring remote industrial robot/machine operations.

Thalassicus said:

Have you encountered the mineshaft collapse event? It gives two options I think... one is do-nothing with the mine destroyed and +1:unhappy: in the nearby city, the other option is to send one of your military units there to assist the workers, which disables the "move" order for 2-3 turns and doesn't give :unhappy. The unit can still defend, it just can't move.

Click to expand...

Yes, I have had that event before and that is not the way it works at all. See for yourself, here's a screen shot of the event.

It's the same event, there's three different possible trigger texts:

- A minor earthquake near %s2_city has caused the collapse of a nearby mine. Trapped miners have perished by the hundreds.
- A massive explosion has destroyed one of our mines. The cause is unknown, but hundreds are dead.
- Tragedy has struck near %s2_city as poisonous gases filled a mine and struck down most of the miners who were inside.

I think I got the earthquake one a week ago, one of the options was to pay a little and my Archer in the city could not move for a few turns as they helped out. (Or it might have been a different event involving a mine improvement.)

It's where I got the idea from, to send the National Guard out, which fits in with national disasters and is in the game. It'd just be a matter of copying it over, then doing the other things you recommended: reducing the chance of it happening again, or possibly having a containment breach, depending on the option you choose.

I had an earthquake in one of my mines too, twice in fact, and I don't recall there being an option that froze any units inside your city. And it doesn't make any sense either, your archers are helping get people out of the mine? With what, shovels? And even if I'm mistaken and it is in the game, that doesn't automatically make it a good idea. Maybe throwing the city into revolt (Read: "panic") for one turn would be a better idea?

Well, civil disorder would be more incapacitating from a gameplay perspective as it would remove all defense modifiers for a turn, whereas this wouldn't leave the city open to attack. It's just a matter of realism, when a State of Emergency is declared the national guard can be dispatched to help the area. The National Guard in the game can be represented by defensive garrison units. In the case of a mineshaft collapse it would make sense to help with shovels or anything else at hand, plus help with getting food or water to the victims, general organization, or anything else they need help with. Why would tying up a defensive unit for a few turns a bad idea...? A fortified defender likely isn't going anywhere... and if you predict you'll need to move it you can go with "keep quiet" and risk a normal meltdown.

Oh fine, have it your way. One frozen unit for one turn. (Surely the meltdown crisis wouldn't last for more than a year...) Let's see if anybody complains about it since nobody except for you and me are saying anything.

These are the options so far if I remember correctly, tell me if I'm wrong.

Option 1: We can't deal with this crisis right now, try to keep it from becoming public.

• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 50% chance for containment failure. In the case of containment failure: 20% of population subtracted from city, 9 fallout within city cross, 2 for 10 turns in target city, nuclear plants give 1 for 10 turns, units inside city damaged and up to X buildings destroyed. (never went over the exact number...)

Option 2: Tell the population to evacuate but don't send troops out to force an evacuation as we can't afford to. Send specialists to the plant to monitor the situation, as well.

• Subtract 200-300 from treasury.
• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 1 in target city for 5 turns.
• Nuclear plants cause 1 for 5 turns.

Option 3: Send troops to evacuate the nearby populous, send specialists to monitor the situation at the plant and research ways to make nuclear plants safer.

• Subtract 800-1100 from treasury.
• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 1 unit in target city is frozen for 1 turn.
• 50% lower chance of event reoccurring.
• Nuclear plants give 1 for 5 turns. (Due to the fact that nuclear plants are now safer.)

Hmm, seems as if something is missing...

Perhaps the option that leaves your defensive unit pinned in the city is the "send emmisaries to the victims" or whatever. I never choose that option, so I can't confirm, but it almost makes sense. I usually just pay whatever it takes to keep the improvement.

Any progress, Thalassicus?

First of all, I have to say that this is a fantastic idea, and I will gladly use this mod if it is ever completed.

Cabay Jet said:

Oh fine, have it your way. One frozen unit for one turn. (Surely the meltdown crisis wouldn't last for more than a year...) Let's see if anybody complains about it since nobody except for you and me are saying anything.

Click to expand...

Well, let's divorce ourselves from the idea that turns = years.... Turns are turns, and I'd say that keeping the unit immobilized for multiple turns (let's say 3 turns) is not unreasonable given that other, less critical events (hunting down bandits) have similar requirements. Remember that in such a situation, it isn't just a matter of the army distributing aid, but also maintaining order after the chaos, and sometimes the emergency situations can last longer than anticipated. (I think there was an earthquake that hit Managua in the '70s--I don't think the place completely recovered for years afterward. A nuclear accident could conceivably be that sort of situation.)

These are the options so far if I remember correctly, tell me if I'm wrong.

Option 1: We can't deal with this crisis right now, try to keep it from becoming public.

• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 50% chance for containment failure. In the case of containment failure: 20% of population subtracted from city, 9 fallout within city cross, 2 for 10 turns in target city, nuclear plants give 1 for 10 turns, units inside city damaged and up to X buildings destroyed. (never went over the exact number...)

Click to expand...

This looks good. How about up to three buildings destroyed? And instead of a guaranteed 9 fallout around the city, make it a random number, say, capped at 5? (Not even an ICBM strike guarantees 9 fallout around the city from what I've seen.)

Option 2: Tell the population to evacuate but don't send troops out to force an evacuation as we can't afford to. Send specialists to the plant to monitor the situation, as well.

• Subtract 200-300 from treasury.
• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 1 in target city for 5 turns.
• Nuclear plants cause 1 for 5 turns.

Click to expand...

How about this instead (just a slight change):

Option 2: Order the population to evacuate; use force, if necessary, to compel evacuation and maintain order. Fly in experts to get this situation under control immediately.

• Subtract 200-300 from treasury.
• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• One in target city for five turns.
• Nuclear plants cause 1 for five turns.
• One military unit in target city frozen for one turn.
• 15% chance of containment failure. If containment failure under this option, everything would be the same as in #1 EXCEPT no population loss.

Consider this the "Katrina" situation. Everything is eventually brought under control, but in a ham-fisted way, and people aren't happy about it. I think some of the local military would have to become involved, just because they are on the scene...and failure to have them enforcing the evacuation would leave people in a situation similar to option #1.

I also think that the possibility of a containment failure should still be present in Option #2....however, since you forced the population to evacuate, there would be no population loss.

Option 3: Send troops to evacuate the nearby populous, send specialists to monitor the situation at the plant and research ways to make nuclear plants safer.

• Subtract 800-1100 from treasury.
• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 1 unit in target city is frozen for 1 turn.
• 50% lower chance of event reoccurring.
• Nuclear plants give 1 for 5 turns. (Due to the fact that nuclear plants are now safer.)

Hmm, seems as if something is missing...

Click to expand...

I would go a little further with this one:

Option 3: Mobilize five military units (in this city and others, if necessary) to force the population to evacuate and maintain law and order after the crisis has passed. Fly in every expert in the country to get this reaction under control NOW, regardless of cost. Make a full public inquiry of the problem and use the information learned to reduce the chance of this accident happening again.

• Subtract 800-1100 from treasury.
• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 5 units in target city (and, if necessary, neighboring cities) are frozen for 3 turns.
• 50% lower chance of event recurring.
• 1 Military unit suffers 75% damage (sustained during emergency reactor lock-down.)

Considering what is gained here (no loss to city at all,) I think the "price" in terms of military units being occupied should be increased. Also, no matter how safe nuclear plants would be made afterward, I can't imagine nuke plants increasing happiness after such an incident.

Also -- perhaps once Fusion is discovered, perhaps a new random event could occur wherein fission plants are upgraded to fusion plants at a cost, eliminating any chance of a meltdown?

Thoughts?

Perhaps option 3 should have a % chance that you save the nuclear power plant since you're flying in every known expert. I like where this is going.

Thanks!

@jkp1187 I like all your ideas, what do you think of this:

Option 1: We can't deal with this crisis right now, try to keep it from becoming public.

• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 50% chance for containment failure. In the case of containment failure: 20% of population subtracted from city, 8-5 fallout within city cross, (I don't think a maximum of 5 fallout is a big enough consequence, especially in the late game where you have dozens of workers sitting around.) 2 for 10 turns in target city, nuclear plants give 1 for 10 turns, units inside city damaged and up to 3 buildings destroyed. (Currently in civilization, cities and targets in a nuclear explosion go through a "kill check", if it were possible to trigger the kill check through the event system in Python this would be the best thing to use.)

Option 2: Order the populous around the plant to evacuate, send troops to assist the evacuees and send specialists to the plant to monitor the situation.

• Subtract 200-300 from treasury.
• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• One in target city for five turns.
• Nuclear plants cause 1 for five turns.
• One military unit in target city frozen for one turn.
• 15% chance of containment failure. In the case of containment failure: 10% of population subtracted from city, up to 5 fallout within city cross, units inside city damaged and up to 3 buildings destroyed. (Kill check instead of damaged units and destroyed buildings, if possible.)

Option 3: Mobilize nearby troops to force the population to evacuate and maintain law and order after the crisis has passed. Fly in every expert in the country to get the nuclear plant under control NOW, regardless of cost. Make a full public inquiry of the problem and use the information learned to reduce the chance of this accident happening again.

• 1000-1300 subtracted from treasury.
• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 2-3 units in target city (and, if necessary, neighboring cities) are frozen for 3 turns. (I think 5 units is a little bit severe...)
• 50% lower chance of event recurring.
• 1 Military unit suffers 75% damage (sustained during emergency reactor lock-down.) (No! This just doesn't make much sense at all and I think the frozen units already cover this.)

jkp1187 said:

Also -- perhaps once Fusion is discovered, perhaps a new random event could occur wherein fission plants are upgraded to fusion plants at a cost, eliminating any chance of a meltdown?

Click to expand...

That isn't a bad idea, you could have the cost be 100 for one plant and have it increase for each nuclear plant you own.

EmperorFool said:

Perhaps option 3 should have a % chance that you save the nuclear power plant since you're flying in every known expert. I like where this is going.

Click to expand...

I don't think this should be the case, having no fallout, destroyed buildings, damaged units and a lower chance for the event to reoccur for the price of 1000 and 2-3 frozen units is already teetering towards being over powered.

I got Solver's opinion on this little event in this thread when I asked him if the "Nuclear strike" event in his mod was similar to this event. Luckily, it isn't.

Solver said:

Well, I can still beat you to it, you know

The problems there are:

1. The containment failure consequences are too complex. I'd stick with a direct loss of some population, fallout and unhappiness from Nuclear Plants. Don't overdo it.

2. Doing things such as 1 angry in a city for 5 turns sound simple, but actually require Python. It's easier to do 1 angry which will last for 10 turns on Normal speed.

3. You can only "freeze" one unit through regular XML event editing. Freezing any more units would require Python.

4. The "50% lower chance of event recurring" won't work. You can make something similar, but it won't really work too well. It's easier to set up a "higher chance of event recurring" than the opposite.

Click to expand...

Basically, he thinks that the options need to be simplified. Looking over the latest incarnation of the event and its options, I'm thinking that things are getting too complex as well. Especially for option 1.

So back to square 1, I'm thinking this is what it should look like:

• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 50% chance for containment failure. In the case of containment failure: 1-3 population points subtracted from city, 8-5 fallout within city cross, nuclear plants give 1 for 10 turns and units inside city are damaged.

• Subtract 200-300 from treasury.
• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• Nuclear plants cause 1 for 10 turns.
• 1 military unit in target city frozen for 1 turn.
• 15% chance of containment failure. In the case of containment failure: 1 population point subtracted from city, 5-3 fallout within city cross and units inside city are damaged.

• 1000-1300 subtracted from treasury.
• Nuclear plant is destroyed.
• 1 unit in target city is frozen for 1 turn.

And I hadn't realized that events could be made with XML. I'll see what I can do with the XML since I haven't heard from Thalassicus in a while. Maybe I won't need python after all...

Edit: Okay, I now officially know that I'm completely unfamiliar with the XML events system. If only I had something better than Word Pad to do it with, then I might be able to do myself. But alas, I'm afraid I'm going to need help.