Noob Q: what's the point of 3 Gorges Dam?

[Underseer]

By the time I can actually build the 3 Gorges Dam, I've already got coal power plants in virtually all of my cities, so what exactly is the point?

Does the power from the dam replace the coal plants, thereby reducing pollution? Or would I have to actually destroy all the relevant coal plants manually?

Or is there something else that I'm missing?

[JackRudd]

If you're going to build coal plants in all your cities anyway, it may well be not worth building. As a corollary, if you're going to want to build the Three Gorges Dam, you may want to not build coal plants everywhere.

[Sabre2th]

The dam provides power for all of your cities on the continent (I believe) and eliminates the pollution from the coal plants. If you're having difficulty with health, it can be fairly helpful

[Drogue]

Does it actually eliminate pollution from coal plants?

[CerberusIV]

Yes, the pollution from coal plants (2 unhealthy) stops in all cities with coal plants that can get power from the Three Gorges Dam.

Personally I have usually switched to the Environmentalism civic long before Plastics so don't need and don't try to build the 3GD. If I have a Great Engineer to burn I will most likely save him for the Space Elevator.

[Underseer]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
Yes, the pollution from coal plants (2 unhealthy) stops in all cities with coal plants that can get power from the Three Gorges Dam.

Personally I have usually switched to the Environmentalism civic long before Plastics so don't need and don't try to build the 3GD. If I have a Great Engineer to burn I will most likely save him for the Space Elevator.

That's good to know. Gaining the health makes it worthwhile then.

The way I usually play, I can build coal plants long before the 3 Gorges Dam gets built. I pretty much have to build those coal plants because otherwise I'd lose a lot of production over such a long period of time. (I generally race for factory techs so I can have enough production capacity to handle all those late-game wonders.)

[Will9]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
Yes, the pollution from coal plants (2 unhealthy) stops in all cities with coal plants that can get power from the Three Gorges Dam.

Personally I have usually switched to the Environmentalism civic long before Plastics so don't need and don't try to build the 3GD. If I have a Great Engineer to burn I will most likely save him for the Space Elevator.

I have Space Race off so I'll alway use one on the Three Gorges.

[Shadrach]

Since we're on the topic of the power grid -

If I build a hydro plant after a coal plant has already been built do I get hit w/the unhealthiness penalty?

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by Shadrach
Since we're on the topic of the power grid -

If I build a hydro plant after a coal plant has already been built do I get hit w/the unhealthiness penalty?

No, the unhealthiness disappears AFAIK. Same thing if you build a nuclear plant to replace a coal one.

[popejubal]

Re: Noob Q: what's the point of 3 Gorges Dam?

Originally posted by Underseer
By the time I can actually build the 3 Gorges Dam, I've already got coal power plants in virtually all of my cities, so what exactly is the point?

If you're building coal plants in virtually all of your cities, then you're building too many coal plants.

First, I'll just ignore the health penalty and only look at production cities. The health penalty is enough on its own that you'll want to avoid coal plants in any city that is both A) near its health cap and B) focused on commerce or food and therefore not focused on production.

A coal plant costs 150 hammers. A coal plant in a few cities makes sense. A coal plant in 10 cities costs 1500 hammers. For 1500 hammers, you could have
15 settlers,
10 Infantry and a Fighter
10 Bombers and a Fighter
7 Destroyers, a Worker and a Workboat
6 Banks and 1/2 of Wall Street
Hollywood and the Kremlin if you have Stone
Pentagon and an SS Casing (you do have Aluminum, right?)
or
Statue of Liberty.

That's a lot of different things that you could have gotten instead of those 10 Coal Plants. You can even still build those coal plants later if you feel like it. In the mean time, wouldn't you rahter have those extra units to conquor your neighbor and have even more cities to build Coal Plants in?

Edit: And if you already have enough units built, then why haven't you conquored your neighbors and won the game yet?

[ColdPhoenix]

I think it's good to build the power plants as early as possible in every city that has a factory (any city with half decent production, I usually build in half or more of my cities). If you've already invested in a factory then it's definitely worth it. It gives the same hammer increase as the factory for a cheaper price. Build them early and you get to use the additional hammers for longer.

If I've got a good city for the three gorges (and hopefully a great engineer to help) then I'll only build a plant in that city and get to plastics as quickly as possible.

[zeace]

One nice thing about three gorges is that it take effect immediately in new cities you conquer on the same continent. Just whip in or buy a factory and even newly conquered cities are very productive. If you're planning on leaving your neighbours alone until a modern war, the 3 gorges can be great.

[zinfab]

3 gorges dam is (and hoover of the past) central to every Civ game I play. I'll limp along on a factory until I can build 3GD, rather than waste production on some other form of power.

[popejubal]

Originally posted by ColdPhoenix
I think it's good to build the power plants as early as possible in every city that has a factory (any city with half decent production, I usually build in half or more of my cities). If you've already invested in a factory then it's definitely worth it. It gives the same hammer increase as the factory for a cheaper price. Build them early and you get to use the additional hammers for longer.

Even though I spoke ill of building Power Plants in every city, I do agree with this. I think building a coal plant is a good idea if building a factory was a good idea... as long as building the factory was a good idea in the first place. I do want to point out that it's a lot of extra hammers, though, and you may want to focus your efforts on other things in the short term in many circumstances.

[sjm]

The bigger the continent you build it on, the more the dam is worth. If you're playing a huge map with continents, it provides a great ROI. Especially if you're a warmonger and your target is on the same continent and has already built you your factories.

It's especially nice with state property - which provides you with a good production base to start off with and is geared to a production-heavy strategy.

I will build a coal plant in my top production cities, and factories anywhere with halfway decent production (say 20 turns or less on marathon for the factory). Then I'll use a city with a coal plant (and ideally iron works) to build the 3GD. If you have loads of lesser cities that still need infrastructure in them, you'll finish the 3GD before you can build up to coal plants in them. Furthermore, if you're warmongering, you'll want to be building units in all these cities after the factory.

It's not as helpful if you're playing a slow builder game on small map, and have a low number of highly developed and specialised cities. But on a huge map with big continents, you might have a number of hybrid cities to flesh out your empire, and these then all reap the production bonus from power in one fell swoop.