I just don’t have the POWER captain!

[Supercheese]

I know it sounds dumb but why not just have it once electricity tech has been invented. I mean we could make up a million diffrent reasons why or why not, but this just seems the most practical way to do it.

Well, that does make sense, but then you still need some time (at least one turn) to actually build a power plant to provide electricity, meaning you'll get a penalty you can't really do anything about, which seems unfair...

Perhaps a set number of turns after the discovery of the Electricity tech? That would give players (and AI) enough time to build their power plants.

Another question: Would the AI be able to know about this new power system, were it to be implemented? I am unsure what kind of coding (if any) would be required to make the AI aware of the new power requirements for citizens/buildings...

 

[DavidB1111]

You know, this all sounds like a good idea. But will you make the different power plants unique? That will be kind of cool.

Let's see, Nuclear Power Plants are the cleanest plants compared to Coal and Gas and Oil. They're also a thousand times more effective than Solar. Give or take.
So, they should not give any penalties.

Methane should get unhappiness and Unhealthiness. Wind and solar should require you to build dozens of them to power a city.

Um, that's all for now. Hey, does anyone know of a thread where I can discuss more about Nuclear Power plants?

 

[Afforess]

Another question: Would the AI be able to know about this new power system, were it to be implemented? I am unsure what kind of coding (if any) would be required to make the AI aware of the new power requirements for citizens/buildings...

AI coding is always last, in the order of things. We need to do everything else first. Once it all works fine, then you code the AI logic. And yes, we would need to completely scrap the current AI logic for power plants and rewrite it.

I know it sounds dumb but why not just have it once electricity tech has been invented. I mean we could make up a million diffrent reasons why or why not, but this just seems the most practical way to do it.

Supercheese is right, and this is what I wanted to avoid. One turn, your cities are fine, the next, your citizens demand electricity. That isn't how it happened.

Electricity began as an extravagance for the rich, and slowly trickled down. So, once you have discovered electricity, (assuming normal game speed, it will scale for faster/slower games), your 0.1% of your citizens demand access to electricity each turn. Let's call this rate electrical dependence. It won't add up fast. But, if you build buildings that provide electricity, each power plant will speed up the rate of dependence by a small amount, say 10-15%. So that way, poor countries that don't have any power plants won't have very many citizens that are angry about power, but countries with lots of access will be totally dependent on power.

 

[Afforess]

Let's see, Nuclear Power Plants are the cleanest plants compared to Coal and Gas and Oil. They're also a thousand times more effective than Solar. Give or take.
So, they should not give any penalties.

Nuclear Power Plants should introduce radioactive waste, a resource that gives unhealthiness, but can be taken care of by a Toxic Waste dump.

 

[Baskedyt]

Problems:
We need at least one person who is good at coding python
We need to determine when citizens should start demanding electricity
I would really like another SDK coder.
We need to figure out two systems of power trading. Inter-nation and Nation-to-Nation trading.

Sorry, I can only do XML - maybe implement some graphics if someone can show me to a guide on how to ad them.

Regarding when citizen should demand power, I think there should be two kinds of demands - one for the individual inhabitant in the city, and one for the city as a whole.
The first should effect the amount of power each citizen demands, because the demands has increased over time. It could be made so that for each city that has power, the more power each citizen needs. For instance if you have 20 city and 5 of them have power, each citizen uses 5/20 = 1/4 of the 1MW I mentioned earlier. That way we can have a very low demand to begin with, but as more cities are powered up, the demand for power in each city increases.
The other effect could be like WW. When you hit some critical number of cities with power, let's say 50%, then for each 10 turns (depending of game length off course) you have one "We demand power" in the cities without power. That way you can neglect the craving for some time but after 40 or 80 turns you might wanna deal with it.

The we have the trade question...
In another forum here I've discussed the same issue but regarding food. The idea I proposed there can be used here aswell, and it works like gold in CIV4.
Each city has maybe a surplus(+) or a deficit(-) of power which is pooled together on an account. That way the cities with surplus can "give" that power to other cities, like now where cities gold deficits just subtract it from the treasury and surplus is added. But with Power you shouldn't be able to store it like gold, it would just be lost as unused potential power. Then the Power NW could just make a lot of power in the city their built in, because the surplus is then distributed to the other cities automatically.
If you have national surplus of power you can then trade it with other civs like gold per turn trading, and there by have international power trade.
Then the problem arises when you have a national power deficit - which cities should suffer power shortages? I would recommend some sort of distribution key among the cities with power shortage.
The power loss from transmission could then just be a negative modifier to the surplus. So that only 80% of the power surplus is added to the national surplus. Then with Superconductors it could be 90%, and with Wireless Energy 95% and so forth.

That is what I have come up with now.
Afforess, I'll reply on your questions in my former tread tomorrow - right now I need to go to bed

 

[DavidB1111]

Nuclear Power Plants should introduce radioactive waste, a resource that gives unhealthiness, but can be taken care of by a Toxic Waste dump.

I'll give you that as a possibility, but they could be Breeder Reactors, which will eliminate all Nuclear Waste. Really, the Fuel Rods are like 99% of all waste.

 

[Afforess]

I like your ideas Baskedyt. No objections. Only one comment.

Then the problem arises when you have a national power deficit - which cities should suffer power shortages? I would recommend some sort of distribution key among the cities with power shortage.

Yes. In the real world, these are called "Rolling Blackouts" and occur when there is too much demand. Every city should be shorted the same percentage of the missing power.

 

[Hydromancerx]

AI coding is always last, in the order of things. We need to do everything else first. Once it all works fine, then you code the AI logic. And yes, we would need to completely scrap the current AI logic for power plants and rewrite it.



Supercheese is right, and this is what I wanted to avoid. One turn, your cities are fine, the next, your citizens demand electricity. That isn't how it happened.

Electricity began as an extravagance for the rich, and slowly trickled down. So, once you have discovered electricity, (assuming normal game speed, it will scale for faster/slower games), your 0.1% of your citizens demand access to electricity each turn. Let's call this rate electrical dependence. It won't add up fast. But, if you build buildings that provide electricity, each power plant will speed up the rate of dependence by a small amount, say 10-15%. So that way, poor countries that don't have any power plants won't have very many citizens that are angry about power, but countries with lots of access will be totally dependent on power.

Well then how about the "Electric Company" idea? Where you cannot build any power plants until you build an electric company. This could give you a temp effect to cancel out the negative unhappiness from no power. Say like "You need to build a power plant by x many turns before your people will become unhappy". Plus in the beginning your power consumption can't be that big. The company could be like a national wonder that you only need to build once.

 

[Galacticat42]

Seeing as I'm now taking a C++ class in college, i could also start to help more than before. This could be a side project from regular homework and classes, also I could make the buttons, skins, etc. needed near the end of the project(I can also do 3d graphics but i don't have the 3ds max plugin needed for Swift 3d).

 

[Afforess]

Well then how about the "Electric Company" idea? Where you cannot build any power plants until you build an electric company. This could give you a temp effect to cancel out the negative unhappiness from no power. Say like "You need to build a power plant by x many turns before your people will become unhappy". Plus in the beginning your power consumption can't be that big. The company could be like a national wonder that you only need to build once.

Sort of like a quest, eh?

Seeing as I'm now taking a C++ class in college, i could also start to help more than before. This could be a side project from regular homework and classes, also I could make the buttons, skins, etc. needed near the end of the project(I can also do 3d graphics but i don't have the 3ds max plugin needed for Swift 3d).

Good. That makes two of us. (I'm taking Java classes now, very similar to C++)

 

[Baskedyt]

Eh, I'm for leaving improvements out of power generation. However towns and cottages could consume power and generate extra revenue. I think this is do-able, with some work.

I'm OK with leaving improvements out of the projects as of now. It was just an example of how the system could be expanded.

I think I'm seeing the real problem in the way this is displayed to the user. I'm terrible at any sort of graphics work, and not very good at python, which is needed. We would need to add a new button in the UI for power generation, and a screen displaying a breakdown of power consumption and usage, but I doubt I could do this. Also, where in the city display would the power usage be displayed? The screen is already fairly full as it is.

I was thinking of a status bar of some kind, like food, production, culture, Revolution etc. and thinking of how many that don't play with the revolution mod on, it could be placed there. Other places it could be placed was below the production progress bar or the building list could be changed to like the trade route list, where you can switch between different views.
If the solution with just the status bar is chosen, we make the break down as a mouse over feature, just like the production bar. When I say we I mean "someone", because I have no clue on how to do it But I'll try to produce a sketch of my idea so you better can see what I mean.

Oh we might get more help by spinning this off as a separate modcomp/mod, talking about it in the main C&C forum, and later, when it's done, merging it into RoM.

Making it a modmod or a separate mod is OK with me.

In the real world, these are called "Rolling Blackouts" and occur when there is too much demand. Every city should be shorted the same percentage of the missing power.

I didn't mean to distribute the power shortage to all the cities, only to the ones that are already suffering a "local" deficit, because with a national deficit they now can't cover it and will suffer blackouts. The cities with powerful PP and a large power surplus should not be effected by the power shortages, and therefore I didn't think they should be effected. And I feel its better, game wise, to "punish" the cities who haven't build adequate PP, than the ones how have.

Well then how about the "Electric Company" idea? Where you cannot build any power plants until you build an electric company. This could give you a temp effect to cancel out the negative unhappiness from no power. Say like "You need to build a power plant by x many turns before your people will become unhappy". Plus in the beginning your power consumption can't be that big. The company could be like a national wonder that you only need to build once.

How about the Electric Company as a Corporation? It could provide a large amount of power and perhaps some sort of bonus based on the amount of power produced in the city. That way you can spread electric power quick through you lands, especially if you run the Corp. Civic. And the you can spread it to cities with a low amount of hammers, at the expense of gold.

A quest or two as Afforess suggested, is also a good idea IMO.

 

[Galacticat42]

We could try for a different type of resource... instead of one that can be used by every city off of 1 item of that resource we could have a number pertaining to a building like +100MW (new XML tag +for giving watts -for using watts) this new 'resource' will be intra-city, after all the building calculations for that city is done, it will have a static watt surplus (meaning it is not stored but a consistant number based off of how many + and - watt buildings there are) after, you can use a Power Grid screen to redirect power between cities (must be connected by wires) at a cost for distance. Also, the total surplus not used for your country could be traded for other things. (Living in the US, trading electricity to other countries is a very weird concept for me). The weight for power usage may also be adjustable in the Power Grid screen (controlled amount allotted to certain buildings or cities in general, if you wanted to redirect an automatic sum of power toward a specific building or wonder from nearby cities)

 

[generalstaff]

Since such a project would be headed into C++ land anyways, shouldn't tile improvements also have an impact on power. Windtraps and the like produce power and Cottage Improvements and Workshops (or Modular Industry) get bonuses with power.

Also, power should affect happiness and health with buildings, or be a requirement to be built. Example: Pharmacy and Shopping District gives happiness with power (Convenience of 24-hour economy), Public Transportation and Personal Transit gives increased health by having power (powered by electricity rather than combustion), and Movie Theater and Computer Network requires power (obvious).

 

[Baskedyt]

You know, this all sounds like a good idea. But will you make the different power plants unique? That will be kind of cool.

I hoped that each PP could be unique. It should provide some amount of Power with some sort of price/penalty or have specific requirements. So this way each PP is unique, but some are in some situations better than others.

My quick list of PP. If you feel some sort is missing please note. I've only listed the current or near future types I could recall.

Spoiler :

I haven't listed the Tech req for each PP.

The specific cost of each PP isn't listed either, just a note of the level of price. If nothing is mentioned, it is medium.

Coal Plant:
3 per city
+ medium power output (PO)
- Req coal, Lots of

Oil Plant
2 per city
+ medium PO
- Req Oil, (less than Coal Plant)

Natural Gas plant
(I know Natural Gas isn't a current resource in ROM)
2 per city
+ medium PO
- Req Natural Gas, (less than Oil Plant)

Nuclear Plant
1 per city (too powerful to have more)
+ High PO, + 5 :Science:, 1 Scientist
- Req Uranium and Lead and Concrete, Produces Nuclear Waste Resource yuck:/), lots of , Can melt down, 1 (4 with Green)

Hydro Plant
1 per city (there is a limited amount of energy in a river)
+ Medium PO
- Req Steel and Concrete, River in City Radius

Biofuel Plant
2 per city
+ Medium PO
- Req corn OR Wheat OR Rice, -10

Solar Plant
3 per city
+ Low PO, 1 with Green
- +10% Maintenance

Wave Plant
3 per city
+ Low PO, 1 with Green
- Req Coastal City, +10% Maintenance

Windmill park
3 per city
+ Low PO, 1 with Green
- Req Steel, +10% Maintenance

Waste (Bio gas) Plant
2 per city
+ low PO, 4 , 1 with Green
- +20% Maintenance (there is a lot of sorting trash for this to work)

Geothermal plant
1 per city
+ medium PO
- Req Geothermal Resource (in city if possible code wise)

Hydrogen Plant
1 per city
+ medium PO
- Req Hydrogen Ice resource (or what's it called)

Three Gorges Dam
National Wonder, 1 allowed
+ Very high PO
- Req Steel and Concrete, lots and lots of

Fusion Plant
National Wonder, 3 allowed
+ Very high PO
- Lots and lots and lots of , Req Collieder (or what's it called)

Next step is the Power Plants of the Future

 

[Afforess]

I was thinking of a status bar of some kind, like food, production, culture, Revolution etc. and thinking of how many that don't play with the revolution mod on, it could be placed there. Other places it could be placed was below the production progress bar or the building list could be changed to like the trade route list, where you can switch between different views.
If the solution with just the status bar is chosen, we make the break down as a mouse over feature, just like the production bar. When I say we I mean "someone", because I have no clue on how to do it But I'll try to produce a sketch of my idea so you better can see what I mean.
[/quote

A brief picture would be very helpful.

I didn't mean to distribute the power shortage to all the cities, only to the ones that are already suffering a "local" deficit, because with a national deficit they now can't cover it and will suffer blackouts. The cities with powerful PP and a large power surplus should not be effected by the power shortages, and therefore I didn't think they should be effected. And I feel its better, game wise, to "punish" the cities who haven't build adequate PP, than the ones how have.

How do you determine which cities don't have sufficient power? Take this scenario for instance:

City 1: Produces 1000MW, Consumes 730MW
City 2 Produces 0MW, Consumes 1200MW
City 3 Produces 570MW, Consumes 700MW
City 4 Produces 2500MW, Consumes 1750MW
CIty 5 Produces 700MW, Consumes 700MW

For a net production of 4770MW, and a net consumption of 5080MW. How does the missing 310MW get taken from? I think you would say City 2 and City 3. But at what ratio? City 3 makes most of its power. City 2 makes none.

How about the Electric Company as a Corporation? It could provide a large amount of power and perhaps some sort of bonus based on the amount of power produced in the city. That way you can spread electric power quick through you lands, especially if you run the Corp. Civic. And the you can spread it to cities with a low amount of hammers, at the expense of gold.

A few Electrical corps would add some nice flavor, so I'm all for this.

We could try for a different type of resource... instead of one that can be used by every city off of 1 item of that resource we could have a number pertaining to a building like +100MW (new XML tag +for giving watts -for using watts) this new 'resource' will be intra-city, after all the building calculations for that city is done, it will have a static watt surplus (meaning it is not stored but a consistant number based off of how many + and - watt buildings there are) after, you can use a Power Grid screen to redirect power between cities (must be connected by wires) at a cost for distance. Also, the total surplus not used for your country could be traded for other things. (Living in the US, trading electricity to other countries is a very weird concept for me). The weight for power usage may also be adjustable in the Power Grid screen (controlled amount allotted to certain buildings or cities in general, if you wanted to redirect an automatic sum of power toward a specific building or wonder from nearby cities)

That's pretty much what I had in mind. I was going to add a "MWGenerated" and MWConsumed" tags to a bunch of the XML files.

Since such a project would be headed into C++ land anyways, shouldn't tile improvements also have an impact on power. Windtraps and the like produce power and Cottage Improvements and Workshops (or Modular Industry) get bonuses with power.

The only thing is that if your country is dependent on a lot of power from improvements, you are even more susceptible to wars that involve lots of pillaging. I don't know if you want this or not.

Also, power should affect happiness and health with buildings, or be a requirement to be built. Example: Pharmacy and Shopping District gives happiness with power (Convenience of 24-hour economy), Public Transportation and Personal Transit gives increased health by having power (powered by electricity rather than combustion), and Movie Theater and Computer Network requires power (obvious).

Indeed. I was planning on adding PowerHealthChanges and PowerHappinessChanges to the XML.

 

[Baskedyt]

(Living in the US, trading electricity to other countries is a very weird concept for me).

It happens in the US as well, just between companies instead of countries.

Here in Denmark we sometimes have a problem during windy nights because we produce more Wind Energy than we can consume. And the nabouring Countries knows this, so they won't pay anything or close to nothing for the surplus power. And because of distribution cost the selling of surplus is actually costing us money. How about that

 

[Supercheese]

Well, with the issue of power shortages, shouldn't the player have the option of specifying which buildings to switch off if there is a shortage? I think it would definitely be better to micromanage buildings to turn off the less-useful ones rather than risking shortages of power to structures that are vital to national security/resource production/etc. Or if you're running Fascism/Communism, you could just deny the citizens power and take the penalty while still keeping production structures powered.

I was planning on adding PowerHealthChanges and PowerHappinessChanges to the XML.

That would be very cool; I can even see many potential uses for it outside the scope of this Power-project.

Here in Denmark we sometimes have a problem during windy nights because we produce more Wind Energy than we can consume. And the neighboring countries know this, so they won't pay anything or close to nothing for the surplus power. And because of distribution cost the selling of surplus is actually costing us money. How about that

Yeah, sounds nuts. Denmark is lucky to have plentiful wind available for power generation, but I suppose sometimes it can be too much of a good thing, eh?

 

[Galacticat42]

How do you determine which cities don't have sufficient power? Take this scenario for instance:

City 1: Produces 1000MW, Consumes 730MW
City 2 Produces 0MW, Consumes 1200MW
City 3 Produces 570MW, Consumes 700MW
City 4 Produces 2500MW, Consumes 1750MW
CIty 5 Produces 700MW, Consumes 700MW

For a net production of 4770MW, and a net consumption of 5080MW. How does the missing 310MW get taken from? I think you would say City 2 and City 3. But at what ratio? City 3 makes most of its power. City 2 makes none.

Well in my short little recap of the ideas here, it could be determined by the player, by weight ratios, what buildings or cities in general are more important. (much like the weight system used in the spy screen to determine what sp goes to what country) Usually the city with the more advanced buildings and production gets the most attention leaving cities 1, 3 and 5 (lowest consuming rates) with the shortages since the city with a computer network would take more power than a city with the mini mart. However by default (all weight ratios zeroed) cities 2 and 3 would both be left out in the cold (cities 1 and 4 would redirect all surplus power evenly to 2 and 3 unless otherwise specified by weight).

 

[Afforess]

Well in my short little recap of the ideas here, it could be determined by the player, by weight ratios, what buildings or cities in general are more important. (much like the weight system used in the spy screen to determine what sp goes to what country) Usually the city with the more advanced buildings and production gets the most attention leaving cities 1, 3 and 5 (lowest consuming rates) with the shortages since the city with a computer network would take more power than a city with the mini mart. However by default (all weight ratios zeroed) cities 2 and 3 would both be left out in the cold (cities 1 and 4 would redirect all surplus power evenly to 2 and 3 unless otherwise specified by weight).

Weight ratios? Like the espionage page? I completely forgot about that. That's an excellent idea. I'd vote for that.

 

[Galacticat42]

espionage, that's it. I forgot the name of the screen