[GS] about power plant and range

[Victoria]

First of all do oil plants stack with coal plants

A city will use power and get it from whatever plant it can. I imagine it will be oil first... want me to check? the plant only consumes oil/coal if needed.

EDIT:
So here Jeonju has the only factory but Sangju is getting a whopping +2 from it... Because it is not powered.
I will power it next to see what happens

Here we now have the factory powered by a coal plant and Gyeongju is getting 5 from the factory
Ask for a test soon and I can do a specific one or otherwise I'll just have a quick firetuner bash

At this stage I see this

EDIT:So now all 3 cities have a powered factory and all 3 cities only show +5 from their local factory

So you can see above the coal factory is using 2 coal per turn. A single coal factory can use as mucyh coal as you have in a single turn as per below.

We can also see in our resource report that 2 coal are being used per turn

 

[Victoria]

Now I have put an oil power plant in Gongju... you would think these cities would use oil right?

Wrong , This may be because I have geongju to the right off screen also needing a factory but then it should use 1 from each... but nope. I remove that factory and they are still using the original coal plant. next I will upgrade this plant

So first I create a coal plant in Sangju ... and weirdly... all power now uses this coal plant... and the oil plant is still not being used. It looks like you will use the most recently created plant that is the worst polluter within range is the current behaviour as I see it. I will upgrade it to oil and see if it swaps back to Jeonju's coal plant.

Confirmed... swapped back to the coal at Jeonju. As the two other cities are oil I will upgrade Jeonju to Nuclear and see which of the other cities it swaps to or whether it keeps using this one.

Nope!... wow.. it stayed with the Uranium plant... But why is it using 2 uranium for 6 power? ... aaah because I am probably reading it wrong. I will have to click next turn to see how many I use

So when I click next turn this should show 1 uranium... but the resource report above says 2

OKay... so the resource chart says I am using 2 uranium per turn but the warming chart is showing 1. At least that is right!.

Hmm OK. going to have a break. Post if you want a specific test. I can do anything.

 

[Infixo]

@Victoria Not sure if you are aware.
1. Wiki says that first local sources are consumed, then from other cities. In that case, the resource which we have more stockpiled is used first. I believe that forces the player to upgrade, as coal is more frequent than oil, and oil than uranium on the map.
2. Once the power plant is built, it generates power that is needed, i.e. can use 0 resources if no power is needed or more than 1 if more power is needed. i.e. uses resources all the time, no matter if needed or how much is actually consumed. (Edit: 6.03)
3. I put all the information about power in cities in a new tab in Better Report Screen. Power required, buildings, power consumed, where from, how much, power generated, by what, and from what resources. Very convienient for analysis.

 

[Furycrab]

I never build power plants, I always either do my best to be suzerain of Cardiff, or else I wait for Geothermal or Hydroelectric power. I'm obsessed with my carbon footprint, I won't even upgrade my armies any more until I can start doing Carbon Recapture.

Oh I've also started using Technocracy government, I'm finding that's working better for me than Digital Democracy, as much as I'd love to be Democratic.

And you can probably guess when I play Alpha Centauri I always play as Lady Deirdre lol.

Playing as the Maori and doing this now, but mostly just because I want to be able to get to flood barriers before they cost like 2000 hammers like they did in my Eleanor game where even though my contribution to global warming was just 30% we still managed to go from Stage 1 to Stage 8 in about 30 turns.

Coastal civs really get the short end of the stick when it comes to global warming. Meanwhile, if I play a civ that favors being inland, I can pollute to my hearts content and the only thing that really changes is a slight increase in disaster frequency.

 

[MaryKB]

I know, I was totally hoping for things like tile changes: you know, grasslands and plains becoming deserts and such.

For myself, I'm just obsessed with keeping my own CO2 at zero, for no reason other than it makes me feel happy to do so.

 

[Victoria]

2. Once the power plant is built, it generates power i.e. uses resources all the time, no matter if needed or how much is actually consumed.

? Am I correct in assuming a single power plant can burn 20 coal in a turn?
If so how much does it burn when not being used?
I thought @Sostratus said it did not use if it was not needed
Seems to match what I was looking at... so 3 turns of having 2 oil plants and one nuclear the climate shows my usage has only been uranium.

to 3 turns later

Also my resources screen says I am using only Uranium

Hovering over resources says the same thing, but here it says 2 uranium like the resource screen but the climate screen says 1... what does your mod say... 1 or 2?

... maybe it is because I am not in a real game, but I am not convinced.

Your mod is no doubt very handy but I prefer to use vanilla as that is what many people will use. It is useful to show other people how to get the info.

 

[Brutus2]

@Victoria Not sure if you are aware.
1. Wiki says that first local sources are consumed, then from other cities. In that case, the resource which we have more stockpiled is used first. I believe that forces the player to upgrade, as coal is more frequent than oil, and oil than uranium on the map.
2. Once the power plant is built, it generates power i.e. uses resources all the time, no matter if needed or how much is actually consumed.
3. I put all the information about power in cities in a new tab in Better Report Screen. Power required, buildings, power consumed, where from, how much, power generated, by what, and from what resources. Very convienient for analysis.

The new power tab in the Better Report Screen mod is really good. The mod was already a must have for the policy tab and this makes the mod even better, well done!

 

[Victoria]

OK so it looks like the truth is somewhere in between. I dropped my nuke plant to an oil one and now I am using 4 oil a turn.
However officially I am only using 2 resources per turn but the climate screen says 4. Some terrible inconsistencies here.
EDIT: in fact it is worse than that, I mean it seems really crazy, doing some more tests

 

[Sostratus]

OK so it looks like the truth is somewhere in between. I dropped my nuke plant to an oil one and now I am using 4 oil a turn.
However officially I am only using 2 resources per turn but the climate screen says 4. Some terrible inconsistencies here.

When you do certain things - and I'm not sure what all of them are yet - the game will recompute your power grid. AFAIK it it based off the order your city list is in (the order you founded your cities.) Sometimes if you build a single nuke plant, the game will convert your empire to uranium. It may later decide to switch you back to coal or oil even while the plant is running. I have a mali save with precisely one nuke plant, 2x tesla, mexico city, and magnus, yet it burns all my coal instead.

Part of the thing is that power plants are computed as you would expect from a intro CompSci perspective- start at the top of the list, power everything in range of the first plant, go down the list and turn on more plants until the whole power load is satisfied. But plants can only burn integer units of fuel. So if you have 2 plants with loads of 9 and 3, they will burn 4 coal (3 coal to supply 12/9 for plant A, 1 coal to supply 4/3 for plant B.) Whereas 12 load only "needs" 3 coal to generate. You cannot burn .25 coal to make 1 power.

But I do know for a fact that if you literally build coal plants in every city, you power use won't go up just because you built more plants. They have to be covering previously unsatisfied demand to actually burn fuel.

What I don't know is if emissions for power are based on the number of units burned or the power used for cases like I pointed out above. I guess an easy test would be 1 IZ with 1 coal plant which only powers its own factory, compared to a single Battleship/ironclad. The ship uses a whole unit of coal full stop, but the plant will burn 1 unit but only use 2 power.

 

[Victoria]

Sometimes if you build a single nuke plant, the game will convert your empire to uranium.

Because I have firetuner (simple to install, non invasive Firaxis tool from steam) then it is easy to test what you want fast.
Yes there are odd things happening... but the resources used match the power requirement while the carbon output matches the number of plants (sort of)
There are 2 things at play here, resources used are correctish but carbon footprint is large.
Of course a power plant uses full units for simplicity.

 

[kaspergm]

Really appreciate the research being done here, even if they conclusions aren't entirely clear.

 

[Sostratus]

Wiki says that first local sources are consumed, then from other cities. In that case, the resource which we have more stockpiled is used first. I believe that forces the player to upgrade, as coal is more frequent than oil, and oil than uranium on the map.

This statement means that it uses renewable power to satisfy load before it computes what it sends to the grid. IE, If City A has 9 load and a hydro dam, it uses up the hydro for itself, leaving 3 load unsatisfied. The nearest coal plant will provide the remaining 3. This rule is just done so that your renewable energy is never going to waste in favor of polluting power.

Because I have firetuner (simple to install, non invasive Firaxis tool from steam) then it is easy to test what you want fast.

I do love my firetuner. I still haven't figured out how to change terrain between sea and land and then place stuff on it without crashes. Oh well. The polder utopia will have to wait.

Okay so, here's a save that has the entire country running coal except one mega Nuke plant in timbuktu. When i first built it, all my power switch to uranium, then at some point it switched back. Can we figure out what the heck the power generation priority list is? I think it's based on city order, an easy test would be to just change one city at a time to an oil plant and see.

Also, something important for the thread: Nuke plants' production and science auras are separate. Even if a local coal plant has more production, the science aura is still applied to all cities in range!!

 

[Victoria]

. Even if a local coal plant has more production, the science aura is still applied to all cities in range!!

Nice to know something makes sense, good info

This rule is just done so that your renewable energy is never going to waste in favor of polluting power.

Also makes perfect sense... not tried a wind farm yet but maybe ratify at some stage, hope you do not mind, i am a little autistic, I need to see myself.

I think it's based on city order, an easy test would be to just change one city at a time to an oil plant and see

OK .. will load (no mods I hope) and change a random city and record the details I see from changing 1 city to oil. before and after... you want me to change turn after turn? all calcs seem to be EOT calcs

You can change all terrain from the main startup screen of the game but you need to save as a special mod map.

 

[Sostratus]

OK .. will load (no mods I hope) and change a random city and record the details I see from changing 1 city to oil. before and after... you want me to change turn after turn? all calcs seem to be EOT calcs

You can change all terrain from the main startup screen of the game but you need to save as a special mod map.

No mods, I am a simple man who lives the ascetic life.
I think the city reports screen has cities in order of founding, or one of the screens does. I suspect it's that ordering which matters. Maybe it's the order you build plants in.
See if you can figure out what plant/city has precedence. Because I would really love to actually build a nuke plant and have its capacity used...

I didn't know the special mod map thing. I guess wishing the world builder was as integrated as Civ4 is a pipe dream...

 

[Victoria]

OK .. loaded the game... having this many cities with complex requirements muddies the water in some ways.

So pre Oil station change I have these resources being used ... 13 coal being eaten for power and 7 oil for units ... no uranium

This matches the tooltips

I run for one turn to get climate difference - turn 1

Turn 2 ... no coal being used for climate change... 14 oil and 5 uranium ...

If we look at Timbuktu's power plant it is eating 5 uranium which matches your carbopn output... but to do what? power a local factory and stock exchange?... I suspect it is thinking it is powering more than that but you have built way too many foactories and power plants which is confusing it. Just like my test it.

So you see, very odd results here but due to making plants that cannot share their power although they probably think they can.
I want to run some turns removing power plants completely but you asked for oil so I will do a few turns... Too many pics in one post though so will have to post again.

I would really love to actually build a nuke plant and have its capacity used...

sure... do not build power plants next door, I will remove one altogether and then it will probably show. It looks like it thinks it is powering 5 uraniums worth of cities ... that much production you have wasted

 

[Victoria]

Yes, I removed the coal power plants from Nioroo and Walata and now I see Uranium used. You need at least 1 city to truly use Uranium from your PP to get it to show... now... thye issue is your coal plants should be using coal if out of uranium range

Now I will destroy this cities renewables... it is out of nuke range and so should trigger a coal plant correctly... I suspect your whole problem is you have gone production crazy and confused the poor simple system... lets see eh?

Hmm looks like it ALL switched back to coal because of this

Ahhh looking aty the cities... its your damn production overload causing this.
Kouroussa is getting its power from a coal factory and Walata is now getting its power from a coal factory.... the screens are not lying, it is switching resources because you have too many and it is keeping it simple

I will switch Diara to oil and see what happens

 

[Victoria]

OK it is now getting oil from Diara

The resource screen looks honest

As does the coal

So we now see 2 resources being used at once for power

and the tooltip is accurate too!

So it is looking more confirmed.... your huge inefficiency and power overkill is causing the system to simplify.
It will use local power first
All of your cities were using power locally and the shared was not being used at all!! However the system expects to share some of it so is trying to show at least one unit of value which is likely the last used.... Thats my theory....l
thoughts?

 

[Victoria]

OK I have got all 3 types of power resources being used by destroying most of your power stations.
Save attached for your perusal
You need to get your head around it and move forward from there... 1 power station for everything within range... and you look like your range was extended which just made it worse
1 power plant will use an unlimited amount of coal in a single turn, having 3 power plants does givve more production per city but confuses the hell out of the game when everything is using local.

I have to go to bed in a minute and have to prepare for a court case coming up... I have procrastinated too long. I think I have a fair idea how it all works now but still some ironing and lots of validation.

However the paedia does provide a great writeup... wish there was more of these.

This will explain some of the switching between resources also...

people in other posts seems to have missed the obvious
if you want to stop using coal... remove your coal mines... enough to make it switch to Uranium.
This will not stop your old decomissioned coal plant from adding to global warming though which is a bit odd.

Note to self.... If you ever accept a job at Firaxis ensure the following is fixed
1. Quadrupple the output of powered factories but make them only local.
2. Remove all production created by power plants, they do not create production DUH!

The entire issue here is people want to create a PP everywhere because it gives more production... but they don't in real life and it is damn stupid making them in the game when this happens. Maybe they had a couple of people extra in the art department that went into programming for the day... or design.... ed is too busy looking at canals.

 

[Infixo]

Am I correct in assuming a single power plant can burn 20 coal in a turn?
If so how much does it burn when not being used?
I thought @Sostratus said it did not use if it was not needed

I haven’t done any extensive tests. It’s just that I have not seen yet a power plant producing 0 power, also i have not seen consuming more than 1 resource.
Also, it makes things easier to code, 1 pp = 1 resource, same as tooltip says. I kind of didn’t even think it can consume more or zero.
But if any conclusive test will be done proving something different, I will accept it findings

 

[Sostratus]

The entire issue here is people want to create a PP everywhere because it gives more production...

I apologize, I am a production monger... although coal plant spam is great for certain empires. You get the hammers even if you don't have coal!

Thank you for looking into it. Sorry it was a late game thing... It was the only handy save i had with the one nuke plant in a sea of coal. I guess I hadn't realized how complex the power rules are.

Okay so the rules are:
Largest Stockpile, then
Largest Income, then
Most Tech Advanced

I feel like the priority list should just be tech advanced at the top. Otherwise you have to basically shovel your fuel reserves to other civs in order to get it what you want. There's no emissions gameplay because you'll never use cleaner fuel unless you have more oil income than coal income and you are still positive after burning fuel. Oil needs to be buffed to 6 power per resource burned, otherwise you'll end up with power pong if you burn more fuel than your income:
You make more oil than coal and have max reserves, so your oil plants fire up burning X
Next turn your reserves decline, now stockpile coal >stockpile oil, coal time
Since we defined oil income exceed coal income, coal reserves decline since the same amount gets used
Back to oil!
Etc.

I guess I had just never wrapped my head around the stockpile aspect. What a strange way to break ties.

people in other posts seems to have missed the obvious
if you want to stop using coal... remove your coal mines... enough to make it switch to Uranium.

This is sadly the end result. You have to give away your reserves first, then rip out your coal mines (or build battleships- which uses the coal anyways and isn't green!) and then you can have oil/nuke. Jeez. Come on FXS. I get the plant aura benefits regardless of usage - why would I ever build an oil/nuke plant if not so it could burn oil/uranium? Did anyone in QA ever build a nuke plant and then say "you know, I'd prefer to save my uranium and burn coal instead. That's why I spent the extra time building this expensive, accident prone nuclear plant." That's got to be a small crowd.