do multiple power plants combine their effects?

[KMadCandy]

I thought the meltdown could only happen when a city is in revolt, is this not the case?

i think it worked that way in a previous civ, or the chance was much much higher when the city was in revolt? but not in civ4.

the first and only meltdown i've ever seen was when hubby captured a city from gandhi. gandhi had built a nuke plant in it, and it had a meltdown before it ever came out of revolt. hubby was really pissed. you can't sell off buildings in civ4 of course, and it wasn't his darn fault the building was there in the first place! this wasn't long after we got the game and we thought like you did, that it happened because of the revolt.

 

[Sempronio]

i think it worked that way in a previous civ, or the chance was much much higher when the city was in revolt? but not in civ4.

Yes right! It was civ3.
Many thanks for the info.

 

[Dirk1302]

I'll reconsider the whole thing when i get my first meltdown, how bad is it if this happens? Global warming turns tiles into desert iirc, how many tiles approx?

 

[jkp1187]

i think it worked that way in a previous civ, or the chance was much much higher when the city was in revolt? but not in civ4.

This was something that went all the way back to 1991 and the original Civilization. There was a chance of nuclear meltdown in Civilization, but only if the city went into disorder. Also: if you were a Democracy and one of your cities went into disorder for more than one turn, you went into a revolution with twice the normal turns of anarchy. I learned that one the hard way...a headline appeared: "DISCONTENTED CITIZENS OF LOS ANGELES REVOLT! GOVERNMENT COLLAPSES!"

@DIRK: A meltdown is more or less identical to the effects that would happen if your city was hit by a single nuke. Not pleasant, but not necessarily the end of the game, either. Some of your units in the city may be damaged (and weaker units killed off,) and you'll lose some population (and have a few neighboring squares turned to fallout). It has happened to me once, in the very first Civ 4 MP game I played back in 2005. Hasn't happened since, and yes, I do build nuke plants from time to time.

 

[Refar]

The trouble with meltdowns is - they cause Global warming. A single Meltdown gives you a 20% chance of a tile becoming desert each turn. Thats one tile every 5 truns on average...

 

[iamnleth]

According to Sisiutil's Gilgamesh ALC, the Three Gorges Dam is now apparently accompanied by a +2 unhealthiness?

 

[KMadCandy]

Trv016, yes, because power itself gives the city 2 , regardless of source. whether it's 3GD, hydro, 3GD, nuke, or coal plant. a coal plant brings additional on top of that. so it's not 3GD giving it, it's the power.

what's odd about 3GD is that because it gives power to all your cities on the continent, you're now looking at that 2 pollution from power even in cities without factories, which are getting no benefit from the power. build a new city there after 3GD is in place, voila, you get bonus 2 there too the year you settle it. i think that without 3GD, your cities don't check for "do i have power or not?" until there's a factory in that individual city, so the 2 doesn't show up until then and it's a city-by-city thing.

it's just a bit weird, because it's a wonder with a downside of sorts now. not a big downside imo, because by that stage of the game, you'll almost surely have enough resources to deal with it just fine in the cities without factories, since they're not getting the pollution from the factories in the first place . but it is kinda funky, took me a little while to figure out what was going on.

 

[Gliese 581]

Trv016, yes, because power itself gives the city 2 , regardless of source. whether it's 3GD, hydro, 3GD, nuke, or coal plant. a coal plant brings additional on top of that. so it's not 3GD giving it, it's the power.

what's odd about 3GD is that because it gives power to all your cities on the continent, you're now looking at that 2 pollution from power even in cities without factories, which are getting no benefit from the power. build a new city there after 3GD is in place, voila, you get bonus 2 there too the year you settle it. i think that without 3GD, your cities don't check for "do i have power or not?" until there's a factory in that individual city, so the 2 doesn't show up until then and it's a city-by-city thing.

it's just a bit weird, because it's a wonder with a downside of sorts now. not a big downside imo, because by that stage of the game, you'll almost surely have enough resources to deal with it just fine in the cities without factories, since they're not getting the pollution from the factories in the first place . but it is kinda funky, took me a little while to figure out what was going on.

It seems unreasonable to me. I think this should be fixed..

 

[KMadCandy]

they fixed something about 3GD in patch 3.13 (or thought they did anyway). the change list includes these items:

Fixed bug where the Three Gorges Damn would give power unhealthiness to all cities
Fixed bug where new cities would not get power unhealthiness from the Three Gorges Dam
Fixed bug where cities with just hudro/nuclear plants would not get unhealthiness

yes, the Damn is a quote not an edit . i think that before 3.13, cities everywhere would get the 2 , not just cities on the continent with 3GD, and those cities would never get the free power even when they did build factories. so if i'm remembering right, that's what the "all cities" bug fix in the first line is about.

whether the "new cities" mentioned in the second bug should get the upon founding or when they build a factory, i'd prefer that they get it if and only if they build a factory of course . but i kind of think it's intended to be the way it is now. maybe just because it's easier to program it that way? i don't know, i couldn't program it either way! i'd love to be wrong and see it changed in the future.

 

[gdgrimm]

Somewhat on topic...

Japan's UB is a Shale Plant, which replaces Coal Plant, generates power for the city, a +2 , and a +10% .

If you then build a Hydro Plant (or 3GD), do you get to lose the +2 of the Shale Plant, but still keep the +10% from it?

 

[Refar]

Interesting question.

Never realized they UB is a Coal Plant... Poor japanese... A UB no one ever wants to build. Now i see why Toku is allways pissed.

 

[DrPepper836]

Actually, I'd build it. By the end of a game, +10% can be huge. Like adding 15 hammers per turn. It's worth +2 extra unhealthiness, which you usually have the resources by then.

 

[Refar]

Yes playing Japanese (which i obviously did not do so far) i would probably build it too. Still 2 are a severe caveeat. And i cant remembere another UB with such a caveeat.


[Edit]Oh. Actually i can... The Russian one. Still - the Laboratory has no alternative, the Power plant has.

 

[gdgrimm]

Yes playing Japanese (which i obviously did not do so far) i would probably build it too. Still 2 are a severe caveeat. And i cant remembere another UB with such a caveeat.


[Edit]Oh. Actually i can... The Russian one. Still - the Laboratory has no alternative, the Power plant has.

So do you just build factories and leave them without power in some cities? That's walking away from +25%/+35% boost.

Some cities can't build Hydro Plants. Building 3GD can't be counted on, and is horribly inefficient unless you have a bunch of cities that need it's clean power (I'm playing Warlords). And nuclear plants have their own downside, which I feel is worse than the of the Coal/Shale Plant.

And all those technologies come way later than Assembly Line, and won't do you any good if you want a fast war with Infantry (I'm playing Marathon).

 

[Refar]

I try to plan ahead, so my main production cities do have Rivers. I go for the TGD if i can. If both fails i leave cities witohut power - there are of course exceptions - if i really need it, and have a way to comepensate the unhealtihness i will build coal plant.

Also on BTS the unhealthiness is much more of a problem that it was on Vanilla/Warlords.

 

[futurehermit]

I've been thinking about playing a game with Toku where I go for a chemistry-communism-assembly line beeline with the goal of workshopping pretty much every city (after expanding my empire to a good size) and then going into caste system-state property for a pretty massive empire-wide production economy. The goal would obviously be world domination or conquest driven probably by tanks and/or infantry (to get the protective/aggressive boost)

 

[Snovvdog]

I've had my best production city meltdown once .
Never again I'll build nuclear plants in important cities, only is less important ones.