Too many meltdowns!

[KoBushi]

Has anyone noticed that there are WAY too many nuclear meltdowns in Civ4?

It's pretty common to see 4 or more in a game in just my civ. I think this is a bit much. Especially when all the ities are celebrating "we love the X day".

The civilopedia claims they only happen rarely, but they happen all the time for me.

Anyone have this problem?

[soulfire777]

I never used them because I was afraid of that. It's either coal or hydro for me.

[marvinkosh]

To this day, nuclear power is not without its pitfalls, although it's more the method of disposal of spent fuel which is of concern.

In Civ 4 the loss of the reactor and other buildings due to a meltdown is actually not such a big deal considering how little time it takes to get the city back to normal. A more lasting effect on the environs would have been appropriate.

[Imminence]

Now come on.....I had 3 meltdowns within 30 minutes shortly after the nuclear power plants went online.

If it causes great problems or not: This is IMO just too much.

And if that would not be enough, I noticed many more meltdowns in my neigbour's terrains, too. It was about 1995 AD, IIRC.

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by marvinkosh
To this day, nuclear power is not without its pitfalls, although it's more the method of disposal of spent fuel which is of concern.

Have there really been any other catastrophic, full-blown meltdowns other than Chernobyl, though? And as far as I know, modern reactors just *can't* melt down like that, by design. You shouldn't be having several meltdowns a game. Although, the jury is still out on other old Soviet reactors like Sosnovyi Bor.

[Lomi]

i have yet to have a single meltdown in any of my games

[KoBushi]

Yeah... though I could see mayb having meltdowns if say, you are rnning into a deficit for too long, or having a lot of unhappyness, or some combination.

Or even espionage (which isn't possible )

But they just shouldn't happen as often as they do.

I wonder if there is a way to modify the likelyhood of a meltdown?

[Blake]

I suspect this is a case of a statistical principle at work (dunno if it has a fancy name)

When you get thousands of players playing a game, statistically unlikely things happening to a few are INEVITABLE, and these anomalies are much more noteworthy.

Firaxis did try to reduce the impact of this though, through mechanisms like how Great People are generated. You are guaranteed to get a Great Person when you put work into it, but the randomness is in which one(s) you get. I generally support this principle and it would be a good idea to for example make it so you can't have more than one meltdown in a game, or that each meltdown makes subsequent meltdowns much less likely (ie your engineers learn from their mistakes).

I've had games where Barbarians just win every single fight, even REALLY unlikely ones. I sometimes think it'd be good to have a "Luckbar" in a game, and that it fills up when unlucky things happen, and the more full it is, the luckier you get. Done right, it would even out the bumps and as a bonus make players really superstitious and/or paranoid, it would be absolutely hilarious to deny the existence of any such luck system, especially when people start prattling about "statistical anomalies"

[Kassiopeia]

Heh, that would be a bit like the luck point system in the computer rpg Arcanum, you got luck points based on, err, something (maybe from quests and you could spend stats points to get them when rolling your char) and you could use it to get extra modifiers, health, or other bonuses when you really needed it.

But I do agree in that such statistical anomalies will happen, and the illusion of them being frequent is amplified when the people whose games go normally don't mention it. The same goes for many other things, like "the game is unplayable and full of bugs!" or "the enemy spearmen keep pwning my tanks!", I suppose.

[djpsychonaut]

Difficulty Levels?

Hey all,
I'm wondering at what level of difficulty you are playing at? I have yet to see a nuclear meltdown...

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia


Have there really been any other catastrophic, full-blown meltdowns other than Chernobyl, though? And as far as I know, modern reactors just *can't* melt down like that, by design. You shouldn't be having several meltdowns a game. Although, the jury is still out on other old Soviet reactors like Sosnovyi Bor.

3MI wasn't exactly a walk in the park, although it certainly wasn't chernobyl...

I haven't yet built a nuclear plant though, so i have no clue

[Xerxes712]

If it is a great problem, It should be changeable in the XML or Python scripting language. It can be done now, but it would be nice to have the SDK in 2006?

At my age, well that I may not be around, I am going to have a look at the raw unpacked XML and stuff. Maybe I can tell you the script logic and probabilty.

I once had very rare a Mounted Cavalry unit destroy my Tank!! odds (30 to 2) something. It is rare, but it does happen, there is always a chance.

I guess the Tank commander got out of his tank and said politely "Surrender, no chance to live!" then the Cavalry Unit promtly shot him in the head "Never! thanks for the advice".

[QuantumPion]

I've had two meltdowns in my games, which is accurate I guess, but the damage they do is not realistic. It's dumb that meltdowns destroy all the buildings in the city. This is especially devastating for your core cities, which take the entire game to develop but then are reduced to rubble.

What meltdowns should do is cause the city population to reduce, like by 75%, to simulate an evacuation. If the city's infrastructure is unharmed, it wouldn't take too long to regrow at a fast pace by working all the farms.

[Dis]

Re: Too many meltdowns!

Originally posted by KoBushi
Has anyone noticed that there are WAY too many nuclear meltdowns in Civ4?

It's pretty common to see 4 or more in a game in just my civ. I think this is a bit much. Especially when all the ities are celebrating "we love the X day".

The civilopedia claims they only happen rarely, but they happen all the time for me.

Anyone have this problem?

I had one in my one game I built the damn things. That's too many for me.

I'm paying higher cost for something that melts down?

[Dis]

TMI wasn't bad at all. It made the plant unusable, but no one was really affected by the release of radioactivity.

chernobyl on the other hand. but I have seen news reports of highly inflated figures. Really, not that many people died from chernobyl. The biggest effect was the loss of the land in the surrounding area (which I guess the loss of all the city improvements represents).

And I don't like the idea of unhappy citizens causing more meltdowns. . I'm glad they got rid of that. How many meltdowns did the U.S. have during the Rodney King riots?