Do you like hydroelectic dams?

[planetfall]

I love hydro plants for cleaner energy, only perhaps beat by nuclear energy. BUT, BUT, I hate the game's restriction of just one per river.
Easy change. Much more fun using hydro than messing with dirty or clean coal or nuclear with limited uranium resources.

What is your take on hydro power?

 

[vorlon_mi]

On the one hand, I love them: clean power. Build once, doesn't consume any resources that are limited in supply, doesn't require me to spend any production to maintain them (like nuclear plants).

On the other hand, I'm frustrated by them. Riverside locations that can build a dam are competitive with other districts that benefit from being beside a river. That is, I can't build all the dams I want to; as you said, one per river. I might have 3 cities along the same river, so only one can get the clean power. Given that I'm going to build some IZ anyway, to boost production for my spaceports, I can't usually squeeze in enough solar farms or wind farms.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Dams primarily exist to stop rivers from flooding therefore having multiple dams on the same river is redundant.

 

[AntSou]

I like the restrictions in this case. It would look weird to have several dams on the same river, and knowing the placement restrictions you can plan it all in advance.

I just need to make sure I build an IZ and the Aqueduct in the tiles I want before I research Niter.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I never really seem to need them, as we get plenty of power in this game from other sources. Essentially we need power for buildings (where a power plant suffices), and for the exoplanet expedition lasers. But that project allows us to also use aluminium for lasers, and as such there is a breakpoint where adding another laser through power consumption (because you run out of aluminium) is not really impacting the game enough to be worth micromanaging a hydroelectric dam setup.

This is the same reason I think Cardiff is essentially the most worthless city state in terms of suzerainty bonus. The power bonus arrives too late in the game to matter, and doesn't really change things either if you have power plants spread out for your electric grid.

 

[TyrannusRex]

I do love 'em, irl and in game. In-game, it is sort of just a "build it once, forget about it" sort of thing, unless it gets damage, and I love things in Civ that don't require my active attention. Though, I do wish that the game would quit asking me to build fossil-fired or nuclear plants in my Industrial Zone after I've already built the dam. Usually by that point in the game, the dam provides more than enough power for a city.

 

[pokiehl]

I do love 'em, irl

That's certainly an interesting thing to love IRL...

In-game I don't really care. I think dams overall are a pretty awkward district. The implementation just feels kind of clumsy.

 

[Boublouc]

Having high production IZ with coal power plants is one of my favourite things in this game, and since dams help at doing this, I like building dams.
About more specifically hydroelectric dams, I also build a lot if IZ and sometimes, I just don't have that much coal so the power from hte hydro dam is always welcomed.

 

[Airey]

I agree with Derrick，it comes too late in the game. Sure the bonus looks nice, by the time districts are done. The game is nearly finished. There are more efficient way to use early hammers than building a dam.

 

[planetfall]

Hummm, I was just in love with the hydro plant advantages
-- renewable power
-- little negative environmental impact, except for early builds without fish ladders
-- recreation, i.e, boating and fishing
-- water for farming

Flood control is mixed blessing, yes less flooding, but also much less prime furtile land from flooding renewal of land resources.
I know of 3 dams.
Grand Coulee, which supplies power to the puget sound, i.e. Seattle and water to arid eastern Washington
Lassen, which supplies power to sacramento valley and bay area, tourism and fishing to Redding, and water to Sac Valley farming.
Hoover, which supplies power, but fails in water storage as for every 1 Gallon coming in, greedy politicans are taking 1.5 gallons out.

But then with all your comments, I had to relook at hydro plants. Wow, they really are not worth much in this game. They come way way too late and don't give enough of a boost of energy in game play. 1878 was first hydroelectric plant in England. So testing if it makes any difference to move to industrial tech. Suspect may help but probably need more juice to help game play.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

But then with all your comments, I had to relook at hydro plants. Wow, they really are not worth much in this game. They come way way too late and don't give enough of a boost of energy in game play.

I mean, I like hydro power as well. In Norway we are fully reliant on it, and it's perhaps the best renewable energy source there is because it delivers large amounts of power, and it can be stored (unlike wind and solar). But gameplay wise, it just isnt worth it. Once you can run fast scientific wins on high difficulties, the game essentially encourages spamming coal power plants for the high adjacency bonuses, and since the game is over so fast anyway, global warming never becomes a problem. Also coal becomes obsolete for military purposes rather fast, so instead of having to waste oil and uranium for power, the game kind of encourages coal power plant spam. It's not great design unfortunately, and it really does hydro power a great disservice.

 

[planetfall]

Reexamining hydro plants, they simply are a waste in this game. Too many serious issues:

-- they are a district and the game has a limit of districts. Alternative districts can be more beneficial
-- they don't add much spice. Synthetic technocracy adds much more spice and is easier to have in game
-- they depend on having a dam and dams are so limited as they are not a terrain improvement, perhaps because rivers are not a terrain type
-- maximum number of dams, and thus hydro plants is just a handful, even in very large maps
-- power range is limited and power additions are too small, but if raise power additions or benes, they don't make sense as nuke plants in RL recreate at least 10x the ouotput of hydro plant, and usually 100+x power.

Too many changes required to make a game change or a game focus, phffttt.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

My first thought on seeing this Thread was "Sure, love 'em!" - because I live in Puget Sound, which gets almost all of its energy from the Columbia River hydroelectric complex.

Then I realized after a bit of reflection that in several thousand hours playing Civ VI, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've actually built a Hydroelectric Power source in any game. - And it's for all the reasons already mentioned by others here: not many good sites for such power sources, comes too late in the game, takes up a District slot which may be better used for something else, etc.

And the negatives are particularly awkward because they are Artificial:

1. As stated, the world's first hydroelectric power installation was in 1878. The world's first electricity-producing coal power plant wasn't until 1882, and by 1889 there were over 200 hydroelectric plants in the USA alone. Effectively, hydro and 'conventional' coal-fired power was Simultaneous.

2. Virtually all the dam-produced reservoirs have multiple uses. Lake Mead produced by Hoover Dam is also a major recreation lake. Grand Coulee not only powers Seattle and Puget Sound, it also provides irrigation water for a large part of central Washington state, which is a massive agricultural production zone - if you are eating an apple in the American hemisphere, chances are it came from hat area. Similar examples could be applied to virtually all the major hydroelectric dam/reservoir complexes. And note that one of the first 'major Dam' complexes known historically, the Marib (or Mar'ib) Dam complex in modern Yemen, (1750 BCE approximately) created an irrigation reservoir that watered enough land to feed 50,000 people - that's a very large city by the standards of the first 3 - 4 Eras of the game - dams of all kinds and purposes are badly mis-modeled in the game: too late and not important enough for Food and population.

3. Size and output. Of the top ten power-producing complexes in the world as of 2020, 8 are Hydroelectric. The other two are numbers 8 and 10 on the list, and they are Natural Gas and Nuclear, and the nuclear plant is virtually tied in output with the world's largest Wind powered generation unit. Hydroelectric on any comparison of installations is far more powerful than any other source being regularly used today: coal, gas, wind, - and that's only assuming conventional hydroelectric dams on rivers producing reservoirs, the Civ VI model. There is a proposal on the books for a Tidal hydroelectric complex that would produce 4 times the electricity of the largest current power plant anywhere.

Hopefully, Civ VII will include a 'redesign' of the mechanics for dams, hydroelectric, coal and other Power sources to allow them to produce the way they should and reflect their IRL importance.

 

[Patine]

I love hydro plants for cleaner energy, only perhaps beat by nuclear energy. BUT, BUT, I hate the game's restriction of just one per river.

I always prefered as in Civ2 and Civ3, where you could build one Hydro Plant in any city a river went through, but I guess it didn't give the visual of the big dam, and, I believe, in RL, the plants are there to channel energy from a bigger, regional dam in most cases.

 

[reddishrecue]

Hydro power plants are some of the best forms of production because it's made out of water plus its efficient and its pollutant free. Water makes all kinds of life forms, while dams controls flooding. Dams really are the best when they're produced in a reasonable amount of time. Too many positives for dams except that they often take time to build.

 

[TyrannusRex]

That's certainly an interesting thing to love IRL...

In-game I don't really care. I think dams overall are a pretty awkward district. The implementation just feels kind of clumsy.

It's plentiful clean power!

 

[Dragabond]

I mean, I build the dams anyway. Getting power out of it is a nice side effect later on in the game.

 

[tedhebert]

I only build them when I’m short on coal…

But I like them for the RP factor

 

[UWHabs]

I only build them when I’m short on coal…

But I like them for the RP factor

Yeah, I'll admit that I probably build dams mostly because they look cool and synergize and give me pretty yields, so it just makes my empire look cooler with them. That, plus building them with engineers means you can sort of shift production from one city to another. And mostly, I just hate having to queue all my buildings in a district after a flood. That alone can be worth it.

 

[planetfall]

In test, even reducing dam requirement to 1 floodplain, from default 4, still can only build 3 to 4 hydro plants. I would like to be able to build a hydro plant also on tiles with hills/river or mountain/river, but alas cannot think of any way to do that. Might be able to do if didn't have river requirement, but no river or just flat land doesn't make any sense. So again, hopefully something in in civ7.