Wind/Nuclear/Solar/Hydro Plant ideas

[pineappledan]

I dont think we need to add a new mechanic but i do like the idea of a tidal plant for island or coastal cities

re the new power strategic resource, it solves a few problems:

• XCOMs are incredibly spammable and annoying
• Any late-game production building has only a few dozen turns to pay for itself, so it has to do something else too in order to be worth it.

It's not a new mechanic, really, because it's just a strategic resource that is supplied by a building, and we have tons of those already

 

[a1nosugar]

excluding solar and tidal, I think that there should be a chance of consequences for building a plant, possibly best dealt with by events.

A hydro dam should generate more benefit that most other options but may lead to flooding/drought elsewhere. Like real dams do

Nuclear plants...well, no risks there. /s

Coal plants, should cause global warming, preferably globally cumulative.

Wind, should damage food or gpp to reflect their ecological damage.

 

[FaarmAnimal]

• Any late-game production building has only a few dozen turns to pay for itself, so it has to do something else too in order to be worth it.

That's because the balance is wrong.

The late game units should be so expensive (and powerful) that you should have to build plants to get them.

The exponential for production should be increased hugely, so that building late game units without plants is infeasible.

Otherwise the guy who says remove them is right, and the debate should stop now.

 

[Bhawb]

Or you can do a variety of other things because game design isn't that simplistic.

 

[FaarmAnimal]

Or you can do a variety of other things because game design isn't that simplistic.

That's nice, Bwawb.

I'm not sure what you point is, but I'm always interested to hear more about game design.

 

[Bromar1]

I prefer the idea for tile-based power plants. It gives the player strategic choices and should be explored further. Player choice is always good.

How do terrain restrictions increase player choice? I think they do the opposite. On turn 25 when you are settling your first new city, are you really thinking "I'll settle off of freshwater so that in 350 turns I can build a wind plant for the Great Scientist boost because I want to pursue a science victory"? There is no real choice if you are locked in to one plant type thousands of years before you can build it.

 

[Bhawb]

The issue is when you stack these plants they can sometimes trivialize late game production. This doesn't happen in every city, or even every game, but your answer is to either up production costs of all late game buildings and units, to prevent a single specific abuse case, or remove the buildings entirely. It is very obvious why that is an overly simplistic view. Multiple people have pointed this out and given other solutions, but you still present this black or white "more production or remove, ez" as though that's the only possible answer.

The issue is not production costs of late game units and buildings. Those are basically fine already. The issue is how we properly balance late game production buildings. If you spend 1000 production to build a production building, and it produces 25 production, it will take exactly 40 turns before it pays for itself, and then it needs enough turns afterwards to make up for the economic cost of not having built something else in that time. This is generally true for anything you'd produce late-game, but doubly true for any resource you spend to make more of itself. So for plants to be meaningful, they have to be powerful, but when you stack two huge powerful production bonuses you end up with cities with over 1k production (my capital last game), and those trivialize late game production costs to the point that my civ was beating other civs in world congress projects with just my capital.

But the answer isn't just to delete production buildings, these are incredibly iconic buildings to modern humanity. The question is how we properly balance their production costs and their benefits.

 

[pineappledan]

That's because the balance is wrong.

The late game units should be so expensive (and powerful) that you should have to build plants to get them.

The exponential for production should be increased hugely, so that building late game units without plants is infeasible.

Otherwise the guy who says remove them is right, and the debate should stop now.

I completely disagree with you, just like G did, because that would invalidate previous era buildings. The balance between buildings of all eras and tiles simply does not ramp up like you are proposing. It can't. It won't. Move on.

 

[Bromar1]

Secondly, I liked the suggestion in the main thread "all plants give electricity, so they should have a common bonus". This bonus can be anything, as electricity does help everything, including culture and science.

I think it is worthwhile to consider the importance of plants in human history. They should be represented as the world changing advances they were.

I suggest a massive hike in costs of units and buildings of the late era forcing players to build plants. No more talk of them not being needed - make them essential.

We should settle on one core functionality for the plants. So far, -2 urbanization as a common boost seems good. I think phantomax is onto something as well:

Hydro and Wind Plants not giving +50% seems like the biggest problem already.

Late game units are already balanced around that +50% , and it's a fairly easy bonus to get. If we make it universal, there will be minimal impact to balance.

Also, I think there are ways to diversify the plants without bloating the number of actual buildings.

This is a really good point. Why do we need Hydro and Wind anyway? Why not just have a "Power Plant" building. Remove the river bonus, and just give it a bonus that its prudent.

What if we moved the various proposed boosts to social policies and tenets instead of more buildings?

Some examples,

Power plants receive +33% GP production to all GP that you can normally buy with faith (and not TTGoG).
Tradition Civ -> +33% Great Engineers,
Progress Civ -> +33% Great Writers,
...

Add power plants to existing Industry policy for +2% /

Statecraft finisher: power plants produce +1 power for every 8 CS alliances.

 

[FaarmAnimal]

I completely disagree with you, just like G did, because that would invalidate previous era buildings. The balance between buildings of all eras and tiles simply does not ramp up like you are proposing. It can't. It won't. Move on.

Of course the balance can be adjusted. What a silly argument.

 

[Gazebo]

Hold off on the strategic resource idea - no-EUI VP already has a premium on top bar space, let's not go crazy.

G

 

[Rekk]

Add gas and coal plants (consume oil and coal respectively), are available earliest and produce unhappiness, have no terrain restriction (coal comes before gas and produces the most unhappiness and least power).

Hydro plants and solar plants are terrain dependent, consume aluminum. Reduce specialist unhappiness. Don't boost terrain.

Wind plants produce yields based on unforested terrain, no terrain requirement to build, costs aluminum, reduces specialist unhappiness.

Nuclear plants give the largest boost, but cost uranium.

Probably DOA, because this scheme relies on trashing coal/gas plants in order to build better ones later on if desirable and I don't know if that's a feasible mechanic.

 

[Stalker0]

If we go with the core 4, I like the idea that the terrain held plants don't require resources.

Nuclear/Wind - Strategic Resource
Solar/Hydro (require specific terrain) - No strategic resource

 

[Bhawb]

I don't particularly think we need a new resource either, especially for such a late game application and to solve very specific issues (XCOM are busted and annoying). I'm pretty sure just fixing XCOM in some way (unit limit, require Aluminum/Uranium, weaken their stats, drop distance, etc.) would be fine, no other unit that late in the game is as busted and annoying. I think opening up to 5 plants, to allow for 4 tiles (grass/plain/tundra, desert, river, coast/ocean) plus a terrain neutral, then what we can add besides production, is good enough as far as plants go.

 

[Enginseer]

I have a better idea(that I will just make into a modmod either way). We introduce the power grid system. All 4 plants require the Electric Power building which is only supplied by a national wonder: Power Grid constructed in the Capital first. The Power Grid provides an Electric Power building in all cities. If an enemy captures a city with an Electric Power with no Power Grid in their Capital, then they can build plants, but they still need the power grid(the power grid comes before these plants become available anyway).

Electric Power: 2 Specialists do not contribute to Urbanization Unhappiness. Receive +1 Production from the Power Grid. Receive % Production Bonus from Nuclear/Wind/Hydro/Solar Plants.

Now here's the fun part, these four plants are still mutually exclusive, but can now contribute to a national power grid. So you don't get penalized for not building the right plant, you get rewarded for trying to power your nation instead.

So if you have 4 cities that have nuclear plants built, they can provide +16% Production to every city.

Hold off on the strategic resource idea - no-EUI VP already has a premium on top bar space, let's not go crazy.

G

I figured why don't we just make a strategic resource icon and have it hover over all the strategic resources to save space. I think that would fix a majority of the problem. I don't think anyone actually hover the resource to check which city has unimproved resources.

 

[Gazebo]

I have a better idea(that I will just make into a modmod either way). We introduce the power grid system. All 4 plants require the Electric Power building which is only supplied by a national wonder: Power Grid constructed in the Capital first. The Power Grid provides an Electric Power building in all cities. If an enemy captures a city with an Electric Power with no Power Grid in their Capital, then they can build plants, but they still need the power grid(the power grid comes before these plants become available anyway).

Electric Power: 2 Specialists do not contribute to Urbanization Unhappiness. Receive +1 Production from the Power Grid. Receive % Production Bonus from Nuclear/Wind/Hydro/Solar Plants.

Now here's the fun part, these four plants are still mutually exclusive, but can now contribute to a national power grid. So you don't get penalized for not building the right plant, you get rewarded for trying to power your nation instead.

So if you have 4 cities that have nuclear plants built, they can provide +16% Production to every city.


I figured why don't we just make a strategic resource icon and have it hover over all the strategic resources to save space. I think that would fix a majority of the problem. I don't think anyone actually hover the resource to check which city has unimproved resources.

We can but we have to edit three versions of the top panel and any modmods that alter it.

 

[Enginseer]

havent heard of a modmod that alters toppanel and it wouldn't conflict since we're just merging resource icons into one.

 

[doublex55]

I have a better idea(that I will just make into a modmod either way). We introduce the power grid system. All 4 plants require the Electric Power building which is only supplied by a national wonder: Power Grid constructed in the Capital first. The Power Grid provides an Electric Power building in all cities. If an enemy captures a city with an Electric Power with no Power Grid in their Capital, then they can build plants, but they still need the power grid(the power grid comes before these plants become available anyway).

Electric Power: 2 Specialists do not contribute to Urbanization Unhappiness. Receive +1 Production from the Power Grid. Receive % Production Bonus from Nuclear/Wind/Hydro/Solar Plants.

Now here's the fun part, these four plants are still mutually exclusive, but can now contribute to a national power grid. So you don't get penalized for not building the right plant, you get rewarded for trying to power your nation instead.

So if you have 4 cities that have nuclear plants built, they can provide +16% Production to every city.


I figured why don't we just make a strategic resource icon and have it hover over all the strategic resources to save space. I think that would fix a majority of the problem. I don't think anyone actually hover the resource to check which city has unimproved resources.

Ok so after all this you still didn’t fix the problem. The 4 plants need to have interesting bonuses that differentiate them.

 

[Enginseer]

Ok so after all this you still didn’t fix the problem. The 4 plants need to have interesting bonuses that differentiate them.

Well I didn't expand it after mid-interrupted by a new post.

It was essentially that solar panels get super strong in desert where it actively and passively gains production from desert tile.

Wind Panels get powerful from Mountains and Hills.

Nuclear Plant is naturally powerful with nearby uranium near the city making it potentially stronger.

and of course Hydro Plant seems strong already as if you have a lot of rivers, most of your tiles can benefit a lot.

 

[wobuffet]

If we go with the core 4, I like the idea that the terrain held plants don't require resources.

Nuclear/Wind - Strategic Resource
Solar/Hydro (require specific terrain) - No strategic resource

How about a 2x2 design?

Build costs vs Building maintenance
Wind & Solar: Expensive to build, but no maintenance and/or discount to Building maintenance (because wind & sunlight = free fuel).
Hydro & Nuclear: Cheaper to build, but relatively expensive to maintain.

Resource requirements vs Geo-locks
Solar & Hydro: No strategic resource requirement, but geo-locked to Desert / River (with some corresponding tile bonuses).
Wind & Nuclear: Require Aluminum / Uranium, but no geo-locks.