Burning Uranium?

[CarnalCanaan]

Oops.

Have you noticed that you can fuel your destroyers and other advanced naval units with uranium LONG before nuclear fission is discovered?

And this hasn't been addressed by a patch.

If this were addressed it would greatly extend the Age of Sail in the game and increase the usefulness of the transition unit, the ironclad.

[Tattila the Hun]

Well, I don't think the DD's use a Orion-drive for propulsion...

[Dis]

is this true? If so, then . I thought for sure fission was required.

[Zoid]

Well, some things don´t make sense. It´s just like the horse rescource being discovered after you learn to ride...

[Son of David]

Originally posted by Zoid
Well, some things don´t make sense. It´s just like the horse rescource being discovered after you learn to ride...

Yep, and using similar logic elephants should only be revealed after researching Construction!

[CarnalCanaan]

Originally posted by Son of David




Yep, and using similar logic elephants should only be revealed after researching Construction!

Well, elephants also provide a luxury item before construction.

I like the idea of using uranium as an alternative fuel for modern navies alot. But maybe uranium shouldn't be revealed until Fission.

I never really understood why it was revealed so early, anyway. I guess scientists knew OF uranium well before they knew how to harness its fissile properties. But by this logic, oil should be visible at the classic era.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Son of David




Yep, and using similar logic elephants should only be revealed after researching Construction!

You have to construct elephants?

[Martin the Dane]

Originally posted by Zoid


You have to construct elephants?

Nope, but you can't build War Elephants until you have researched construction.

[Tattila the Hun]

I quess they need re-inforced stables?

[johnmcd]

Yes, I've always thought it should come with Steel personally.

[Gherald]

Pre-patch Animal Husbandry did not make horses appear.

I think uranium powered destroyers is nice for game balance reasons, because oil is so uncommon.

If you want the realism of no uranium destroyers before fission, then you need the realism of about 4x more oil available on the map, but have them "run out" after a certain period of time. This period of time might be accelerated if a city was working the tile.

But of course, such added "realism" would make the game more complicated to play. Sit back and enjoy it for what it is... an enormous abstraction of reality.

[Dis]

oil never runs out

[CarnalCanaan]

Originally posted by Gherald

Sit back and enjoy it for what it is... an enormous abstraction of reality.

I'm all for suspension-of-disbelief, but pre-combustion nuclear powered warships is a bridge too far for me.

[Gherald]

Originally posted by CarnalCanaan
I'm all for suspension-of-disbelief, but pre-combustion nuclear powered warships is a bridge too far for me.

Pre-combustion is going a little too far for me as well

---

I'm far more bothered by the scarcity of oil than by pre-fission destroyers.

Oil used to be cheaper than water, because no one knew WTF to do with the stuff. Then whole economies were built around it, and wells began to run dry. But people used to think it would last forever, and it was priced accordingly. You don't see any of that in Civ4...

Maybe another solution would be to just let destroyers and later ships run on Coal once some arbitrary tech more advanced than Combustion is discovered. Electricity, perhaps? Or is Physics good enough?

[Martin the Dane]

Honestly, I could design a destroyer or a battleship around non internal combustion non oil techs. As long as I had access to some high energy fuel, coal would do and bio oil would be nice, then take a steamturbine, and a couple of electrical motors to drive the (auchilary) propetters and you have a highly efficient and fast ship. It is in principle the same as a nuclear powered ship, just that the reactor is replaced by high temp burner.