On Power (electrical)

[steampunk1880]

I went looking for the old discussion about the different power plants and how they work. Couldn't find it. Made a new thread.

I seem to remember Hydro wanting each plant to have a set amount of electricity to feed into the "national grid" with power consuming buildings naturally subtracting from that. If you don't have enough power, you can't make it. Not all plants were created equal ex: coal power plant produces more power than wind power plant; adv coal produces more than that but is dirtier; clean coal produces same but is (gasp)cleaner.

Now I share my brainstorm for you guys to laugh at/make fun of. All power plants give you a new full on resource (not a good) called, get this, "100 Kilowatts". Wind Farm makes 1, Coal makes 5, Fission makes 10, Fusion 50. All buildings that currently say require power to build consume, as in subtract from, this resource. If you don't have the kilowatts you can't build the buildings. Buildings can have different power requirements too. Giant data centers eat more juice than a furniture factory.

Why is 100 Kilowatts a resource? Maths. As far as I know you can't add goods together. Having 20 rope makers doesn't get you twenty ropes. You, however, can have more (or less) of a resource. In addition by tacking a set value to the 100 Kilowatts resource and making it always tradeable you can set up to import/export energy from your vict-i mean Neighbors for cash monies.

Problem: You're importing juice and running at capacity. Your provider suddenly nixes the deal. Now you have negative x amount 100 Kilowatts? Does your game freeze? Does stuff start shutting down? What shuts down first and why? Can stuff even be made to shut down like that? Can you even program a building to consume resources in a way like I am describing? Am I crazy to even suggest trying to pull off such a stunt? All these questions answered and more after these commercial messages!

 

[Hydromancerx]

Here are my old topics on this ...

Power Mod (Original Topic)
Revisiting the Power Mod

 

[steampunk1880]

Yeah... yeah... 100 kilowatts is too low. Call it a megawatt instead. Also need to tweak the number that the power plants make. They say that one wind farm can power one suburban tract so Wind Farm+1 + Suburbs-1 = 0 would be a decent ground level. Extrapolate from there.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Well right now 100 MW to +1 . As you can see I did figure out all the MWs for each building. Plants like Tidal Farm only made 8 MW, which I had to round WAY up just to get 1 .

So for everything except for like wind, wave and tide it is accurate. Note that Fusion tipped the sales in the other direction with an insane amount of hammers (1,000,000 MW).

Note that for time travel we will need 1.21 gigawatts.

 

[Koshling]

Note that for time travel we will need 1.21 gigawatts.

...and a DeLorean. Good luck finding one of those any more! You'll need the time machine for that.

 

[Nevets_]

One way you could do Electricity would be to make electricity using buildings require different 'levels' of power be present in the city based on how much they need. The 'level's could be represented by a series of Transformer buildings, each of which requires different types of power plants to be built.

So for example, building a wind or wave or solar farm lets you build a small transformer, which let's you build houses, theaters, small businesses. Building a natural gas or coal or oil plant lets you build a medium transformer, which lets you build factories, skyscrapers, hospitals, etc. Building a hydro or nuclear plant lets you build a large transformer, which lets you build arcologies, spaceship parts, some late game wonders, etc.

I'm assuming the AI knows how to step back along a building requirement chain to find out where to start in order to get to their eventual goal, if not then none of this would work unless you gave every building along the chain some good yields.

Maybe have power plants give + + + depending on their size / technology. Transformers give - + +Power (partly to balance out the power plants)

 

[EldrinFal]

Let's not create too much micromanagement. Having to keep track of total number of power so you can make X number of buildings seems like a bit much. Especially if making too many power-sucking buildings causes blackouts. This is Civilization, not SimCity.

A graded tier using the systems already in place would be easier if you really want to implement additional power requirements.

For example, you have the low level Small Power Plant that provides good/resource power for small/normal buildings in a city. Maybe you can even call it something different, like Low Wattage lW Power or whatever.

Build X number of those in enough of your cities and now you can build a Large Power Plant somewhere that creates high wattage hW Power in all cities on the continent.

Build X number of THOSE and you can build the grand daddy Mega Watt Power Plant in a city that is a pre-req for whatever Super Facility you want in that city.

WW or NW can provide the wildcard Power Plants.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@EldrinFal

The problem is the order that power plants are unlocked. Also the fact that fossil fuel power plants go obsolete with Fussion. One of the earliest power plants would be coal. It gives a good amount of starting power but lots of pollution.

There is also the problem of pre-electrcity. In the past post I had different techs gradually require more power from a city. Since once power was invented not all buildings needed power nor did they need that much.

 

[EldrinFal]

@EldrinFal

The problem is the order that power plants are unlocked. Also the fact that fossil fuel power plants go obsolete with Fussion. One of the earliest power plants would be coal. It gives a good amount of starting power but lots of pollution.

There is also the problem of pre-electrcity. In the past post I had different techs gradually require more power from a city. Since once power was invented not all buildings needed power nor did they need that much.

Maybe I'm not following your argument...

The order just means you can't get the tier system going until the other buildings are available. So Coal provides local power only, for example. Certainly you can make it cause a lot of Unhealthiness for the pollution.

 

[Nevets_]

Another option would be to normalize all power plants to the same wattage by increasing / decreasing their other yields.

So (arbitrary example) if a Wind Power plant now gives -1 and +100 MW, and a Coal Power Plant gives -3 +4 and +1000 MW, then change the Wind Power Plant to give -10 and +1000 MW so they are on the same level.

Some power plants would be too big to normalize (like fusion), since they can't really be 'scaled down' so they would need to be national / world wonders. Maybe instead of giving every city on the continent power, they could instead give every city a free 'Abundant Power' building which give +10% or something.

 

[steampunk1880]

I dislike the idea of power plants messing around with the gold supply unless that's a replacement for the maintenance costs associated with all those green power buildings. I avoid building anything with a plus maintenance cost if I can help it. It's really not worth it late game.

 

[Nevets_]

It is. Hydro is going to redo alot of +maintenance buildings into - ones since the maintenance costs get out of control with corporations. The power plants were mentioned specifically.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Maybe I'm not following your argument...

The order just means you can't get the tier system going until the other buildings are available. So Coal provides local power only, for example. Certainly you can make it cause a lot of Unhealthiness for the pollution.

With the tiers you would not be able to build a whole set of building until later. For instance mid power would come first with coal and oil, then later with say solar which would be a lower tier power.

Overall I don't like the tier idea and all power plants should give different amounts of the same thing (aka MW).

Also the amount that a city consumes should be based on its size and technology level. For instance a size 10 city when electricity is first invented is going to require a lot more power than a size 10 city today with all our electronic devices sucking up power.

I dislike the idea of power plants messing around with the gold supply unless that's a replacement for the maintenance costs associated with all those green power buildings. I avoid building anything with a plus maintenance cost if I can help it. It's really not worth it late game.

On the SVN all maintenance costs were removed from power plants already. They were replaced by a straight -1. This is for testing, but so far it has balanced gold better for all civic buildings. For instance maintience buildings like the graveyard now have -1 instead of the maintenance it once had.

 

[Nevets_]

Not sure if it could be coded, but I always thought power plants would be better represented as improvements. You could have a power lines or transformer building built in each city that gives you +X power resource for each watermill, +y for each windmill, +z for each coal plant, etc. in city vicinity, like how boatyard gives you +1 specialist per fishing boats. They would also give that city power, so you could build one in your 'paradise' city and build no power plants nearby, instead build them all in your dirty city and import the power from there.

Factories, hospitals, etc. would each consume some amount of power resource. Not sure how to prevent you from going to -power, but if you need to add dll code to let buildings consume power, maybe add code to prevent you from building a building that would put you beyond your current power supply.

Problem is since power is modeled as a resource, it's shared by your overseas cities too, and you could make a fortune selling it to the AI since you'll have 50, 100, or more. And the AI will need to value power producing improvements more.

But it would be nice to see a landscape that isn't dominated by just farms and mines.

 

[EldrinFal]

With the tiers you would not be able to build a whole set of building until later. For instance mid power would come first with coal and oil, then later with say solar which would be a lower tier power.

Overall I don't like the tier idea and all power plants should give different amounts of the same thing (aka MW).

Also the amount that a city consumes should be based on its size and technology level. For instance a size 10 city when electricity is first invented is going to require a lot more power than a size 10 city today with all our electronic devices sucking up power.

Forcing the player to consider how many Watts are required to build X number of buildings is a bad idea imho. Power, just like other resources in the game, are streamlined for a reason. I think we already have the tools for limiting production and forcing some kind of thought in building (maintenance, gold cost, unhealthiness, etc.) so in this case I think you're just sacrificing fun for ultra-realism.

Techs making certain power plants obsolete can represent their inability to provide adequate power. When they "turn off" you are forced to build the new stuff. If you're basing it on city size, then we're talking about limiting city size based on the level of the power plant you have, and city size caps I think were disapproved of.

I don't think the power SYSTEM needs any modification. Tweaks to building costs, healthiness/unhealthiness, happiness, etc etc likely yes. The tiered system was a suggestion to create something easier to understand and deal with-- an idea based on Nevets comments of buildings requiring different "levels" of power.

Again though, if it's a module or configuration option, it's not a big deal since the player could turn it off. I know I will.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Also the amount that a city consumes should be based on its size and technology level. For instance a size 10 city when electricity is first invented is going to require a lot more power than a size 10 city today with all our electronic devices sucking up power.

I have to assume tat either you have that backward or my dyslexia is in full force, this morning.

BTW, on paper at least, it is more economical to provide every household in a medium to large country with an efficient fridge than to build a new dam to meet growing demand for electricity for the next 10 years. (I can't remember if it was 10 or 100 years.)

I agree that we don't need micro management on power.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I have to assume tat either you have that backward or my dyslexia is in full force, this morning.

Sorry I am still sick and miserable with a cold. I have it backwards. It should be ...

Early Eras = Little Power Needs
Late Eras = More Power Needs

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

...., and city size caps I think were disapproved of.

Not disapproved of, I for one think they would be much better than the current system of requiring a size for a building. I believe the consensus was that it was too hard to do it the way it was in Civ III.

 

[EldrinFal]

Not disapproved of, I for one think they would be much better than the current system of requiring a size for a building. I believe the consensus was that it was too hard to do it the way it was in Civ III.

I might have been thinking of city # limits in civics.

But bearing that in mind, my preference would not be for any artificial cap of any kind. Health and happiness and food would be the limiter on population size of a city, not power, or anything else.

 

[steampunk1880]

So the majority says things are fine the way they are, no need to add any more micromanaging in the form of resources to count or a national grid tab.

But... I like micromanaging. Can energy management (however it comes about) at least become an option to be flipped on and off with a check box? You know like revolutions. Actually exactly like revolutions in that it's an entire module which changes gameplay to allow more sweet delicious micromanaging.