Nuclear Plants

[MasterDave]

I too have seen global warming occur in games where I have lots of coal plants. I have never had a nuke plant melt down, but I usually do the Three gorges or use hydro plants whenever possible.

[Ijuin]

Is meltdown random or does it only happen when your city is too unhappy?

[drsparnum]

I think its random. So the more nuclear plants you've got the greater your melt down risk.

I used to build exclusively nuclear plants and I never had more than one melt down in a game.

[uberfish]

I usually just build coal and replace the ones in cities with health problems with hydro where possible later. It's very rare for my games to last beyond 1950 so I have only seen global warming once. I find it is better to build coal straight away, and get the production boost as quickly as possible to build late game wonders, labs and tanks. If health becomes a serious empire-wide problem, I will research medicine and use environmentalism civic.

I rarely use nuclear plants, they just come too late in the game and a meltdown in a city building spaceship parts is very bad.

[axisworks]

Replace? I was under the impression that, once you build a building, it was there permanently?

[Yosho]

Yeah, it is; if you have a coal and a hydro plant in one city, you only get power from the hydro plant (so you don't get the unhappy faces from coal), so the coal plant is effectivly replaced. It's still there, technically, although the only time I can imagine that mattering is if the hydro plant was somehow destroyed, like if your city got nuked.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

On the subject - what happens to your existing coal and nuke plants once "3 Gorgeous Dames" is built (on the same continent)?

I know it's too much to hope that they'd be sold off for cash. But I would like to think that the mechanics of the game would recognize that clean power was online, and therefore the existing coal/nuke plants were offline. Thus eliminating the unhealth from coal and the meltdown chance from the nuke plants. (???)

[Yosho]

It eliminates the unhealth from coal, yes. I have never built a lot of nuke plants and then built the 3 gorges dam, so I can't comment on that.

[brg bak fanatcs]

Any one thats never seen a nuclear melt down simply doesnt play that much. i see anywhere from 3-8 meltdowns per game depending on game length and as far as recycling plants negating pollution, thats a pipe dream in a duel size map with circa 10-12 cities all with recycling centers i hit modern era around 1700AD and loose 1-3 tiles to global warming per turn

[axisworks]

Indeed, I've had the same problem. Every turn I lose a couple tiles to global warming, and it gets extremely irritating.