Coal - is it a waste?

[Seras]

railroad also works with oil, so coal isn't really needed for that once you get oil.

wow...i didnt believe it until i tried it in worldbuilder.

when did this change?? i could've sworn railroads required coal AND iron

 

[Ghandi33]

Let me get this straight, you get base unhealthiness from coal even if it's not being used in a powerplant?

 

[magicalsushi]

If you have a factory, yep. I must admit, while I like the idea of access to a resource causing unhealthiness, I'm uneasy that you don't get any benefit in return. Sure, it does cause unhealthiness in real life, but there's a reason we keep burning it regardless.

Same goes for oil. Okay, if your citizens have access to it, they're going to drive cars and create smog, but it's not like they only do it to generate the unhealthiness. The availability of personal transport makes people happier and wealthier. If anything ought to give you a commerce bonus, it's oil.

 

[Ghandi33]

If you have a factory, yep. I must admit, while I like the idea of access to a resource causing unhealthiness, I'm uneasy that you don't get any benefit in return. Sure, it does cause unhealthiness in real life, but there's a reason we keep burning it regardless.

Same goes for oil. Okay, if your citizens have access to it, they're going to drive cars and create smog, but it's not like they only do it to generate the unhealthiness. The availability of personal transport makes people happier and wealthier. If anything ought to give you a commerce bonus, it's oil.

If it's not giving a bonus it shouldn't generate unhealthiness, that makes absolutely no sense.

If they think it warrants a higher health penalty when being used, sure, slap a higher penalty on a coal power plant and the iron works. But don't just apply and arbitrary penalty with no benefit.

 

[HiroHito]

actually there is a benefit, else we would to just destroy the mine and build something else.

 

[aslindy]

For me, spending too much time managing unhealthiness = not fun. Buldings who's only purpose is to provide a few health bonuses are not fun to build. I have a hard time as seeing them as anything other than a waste of precious hammers.

BTW, you know what is really unrealistic? It is the fact that unhealthiness usually becomes a big problem during the industrial and contemporary period. Before that, it is usually (this is all very situational I agree) a minor or a mild annoyance.
It may sound odd, but think about it:
People in the 20th and 21th centuries are much more healthy than the were back in the days.
Yes, there is more pollution and all, but we also live to be 80-90-100 years old. Infancy death rate is much lower, Hygiene is much better, etc.

Don't you think one of the reasons we have better health now is BECAUSE we have good hospitals? I think if cities didn't build hospitals, there would be people sick and dying all over the place, and life expectancy would plummet.
So needing buildings for their health bonus seems kinda realistic to me. Or at least the CIV equivalent of realistic.

 

[Antilogic]

If only the hospital provided a +5 health bonus...

 

[Airefuego]

Coal's benefit in real life is that it's cheap and plentiful, unlike oil which rarer and harder to extract once you find it. So coal gives you an easy production boost, and a bad cough.

So to be "realistic" the game should make coal abundant, but unhealthy. It should make oil rare, and more useful and healthier than coal. I'm pretty sure that's how it is, too...

I also thought for a while that oil tiles should provide commerce, but i guess you can sell it to get that cash.

PS Railroads running on oil came in with BTS.

PPS People are healthier today largely due to better medical knowledge, better hospitals and medicines, better water and sewage services, and better and more varied food. These outweigh the modern day negatives of smog, industrial pollution, lack of exercise etc, making us healthier overall than our great-grandparents.