Electricity: and alternative system

[phantom000]

What if each of the modern buildings, radio towers, factories, airports, laboratories and stuff all use electricity. Power plants, be it coal, nuclear or whatever, produce a certain amount of electricity. As long as you are producing more power then you require all is well but when you have more demand then a city can meet...then you have problems.

Now instead of a one shot building you can build multiple power plants but of course there is a catch. The more coal plants you build the more pollution is produced which of course causes it's own problems if it gets out of hand. Nuclear plants have a chance of melt down and the more you build the more likely it is to occur. A hydro plant has neither of these problems but can only be built if the city is near a river.

Now what if you could also get power from certain improvements? Wind and water mills provide electricity but only to cities say within three or four squares and of course you can only build so many.

I think it could add a degree of depth because you have to balance the advantages and the draw backs or else you are in trouble but how you balance them could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

 

[mrhell]

This would also provide some very strategic targets for my spies and bombers.

 

[paradigmx]

I like the idea of Improvements providing power, it's realistic, very few major cities have a power plant in the city limits. Add to what mrhell said, it would make for some interesting strategic elements as well, now your military needs to defend your power plant as well as city, and removing power from a city may lower it's defensive capabilities to some degree.

Actually, you could take this idea further and have factories also be an improvement, increasing production in those tiles by several degrees, with cities now having access to 36 tiles, theres plenty of room to add those improvements into the cities BFC

 

[Onionsoilder]

I like the prospect, but nuclear plants meltdown chance really wouldn't make it worthwhile unless you didn't have access to any power at all. If power becomes that important, then there should be some sort of different system to compensate for it. Maybe make nuclear meltdowns a random event that is disabled after a certain technology checkpoint, instead of being a % chance each turn.

There should also be more plants, probably. Solar plants could be another improvement(or built in a city, or both) that provide power with no negative drawback but are extremely expensive to build. Geothermal might work if such geographical areas are added in. Oil and Gas could be another type of plant, similar to coal but useful if you lack the coal resource.

 

[phantom000]

I like the prospect, but nuclear plants meltdown chance really wouldn't make it worthwhile unless you didn't have access to any power at all. If power becomes that important, then there should be some sort of different system to compensate for it. Maybe make nuclear meltdowns a random event that is disabled after a certain technology checkpoint, instead of being a % chance each turn.

The idea i would think is that while Coal Plants maybe safer Nuclear Plants don't require coal. It is a little detail that could be nothing or make all the difference. If you run all your cities on coal then loose your coal to an enemy then you could be in series trouble because all your factories have just shut down. Of course a nuclear plant would need uranium but once you develop fusion the power the chances of a melt down should be at pretty much zero.