Electricity in Civ5

[Heraclitus]

This thread is about disscusing ideas for how to impliment it in civ5. I would take the opportunity to comment a suggestion already made.

My wishlist cont...
This is assuming that my ideas in my previous post were effective in the next civilization, and broaden on the sense of nation-building and domestic and economic management.

In depth power production from industrial age and beyond.

Modern age facilities such as factories will not function without a source of power. Electricity should be a basic default demand for industrial age cities and modern age cities require it or suffer severe happiness penalties. Meeting the power requirements for cities should provide luxuries. You should also be able to build multiple power plants per city and be able to run power lines across your nation. So a City that naturally has lots of uranium stores should stack several nuclear power plants providing power to other cities in your nation.

Examples:

Coal Power Plant: Provides mediocre electricity, causes lots of pollution, causes some unhappiness in the modern age.
Requires: Coal resource
Costs: Low

Oil Power Plant: Provides mediocre electricity, causes lots of pollution, causes some unhappiness in the modern age.
Requires: Oil resource
Maintenance: Low

Nuclear Power Plant: Provides LOTS of electricity, causes no pollution, causes severe unhappiness in large cities.
Requires: Uranium resource
Maintenance: High.
Special: Creates plutonium resource needed for nuclear weapons.

Hydro Electric Dam: Provides Mediocre electricity, causes no pollution, no effect on happiness
Requires: City built on river tile (Max: 1 per city)
Maintenance: Extremely Low

Solar Power: Provides little electricity, causes no pollution, causes happiness.
Requires: none, produces 3x more electricity if the city near a desert
Maintenance: Low

Fusion Power: Provides LOTS of electricity, causes no Pollution, no effect on happiness.
Requires: Uranium resource
Maintenance: Extremely High.

This would cause the player to think hard and manage resources not only does he need them to power his/her military might, but also to keep his industrial and modern age country working. I also would like to see the ability, as mentioned before, to build multiple power plants in a city to take advantage of resources and be able to channel electricity through power lines to a city in the plains that has access to no power producing resources. The city receiving this power would have its facilities functioning; however, it would not receive the happiness bonuses or negatives of the type of plant producing that power. This may also stem into a different idea of trade: electricity, a country that has no power resources can be taken advantage of by one that produces excess.

In conclusion: I would like to see the next civilization strike a happy medium between conventional civilization "conquer the world" and Sim City "builder" type.

Why in the world would Fusion Power plant need Uranium? It makes no sense.

[SDKane]

I used uranium as a resource to power it due to the similarities between fusion and nuclear generation.

It's only an idea really not to be taken to the extreme literal point. Another more viable resource like Deuterium could be used but I can't see it being useful for anything other than a fusion reactor - although it could spontaneously spawn later in the game I suppose.

I apologize if my original post didn't seem to make scientific sense in terms of the fusion plant. My only intent was really to provide a viable way to make electricity production and selling a game-changing factor a fraction of the amount it is in real life.

If i were to go back and change one thing:

Nuclear Power Plant: Provides the most electricity, causes no pollution, causes severe unhappiness in large cities.
Requires: Uranium resource
Maintenance: High.
Special: Creates plutonium resource needed for nuclear weapons.

I would make this change ONLY based on potential game-balance issues. A fusion plant in my previous list would completely nullify a Nuclear power plant in terms of general usage.

Also I would like to add as a possibility to my list:

Clean Coal Power: Provides mediocre electricity, causes minimal pollution, no effect on happiness
Requires: Coal Resource,
Maintenance: Medium
Special: In Democracies and republics this plant renders coal power plants obsolete.

PS: I'm happy to see my point spawn a thread to broaden on the idea, even if it was criticism.

[Heraclitus]

You do realize that the civic system of civ 4 (or should I say the SE system of SMAC) is going most likely to be featured in civ5? Democracy and Republic are governments ala Civ 1-3.

What you are saying about clean coal would be much easier to implement by simply saying all coal plants built while running environmentalism are more expensive but clean.


Your system could also be simplified by removing the happines from the power plants themselves and tagging it to the polution the city as a whole produces. What do I care my city gets clean electricity if I can't see sunrises due to the smog?

This leaves nuclear power out of the picture, but I have a solution, just script an event that always when:
a) The first time a nuclear weapon is used
or
b) A meltdown occurs

Create +2 unhappiness in all cities with nuclear power for X turns. These would stack.

[Heraclitus]

Also one of the really big advantages (theoretical) of Fusion power is that it doesn't require any special resources (practically all nations in the world have access to hydrogen and lithium), much like the Civ4 UB of Japan the Shale plant it would be possible to balance a power plant that doesn't eat up any reasource.

An alternative limitation may be that a city needs to have an engineer or scientist specialist in order for the hight tech Fusion plant to be running.

The other idea you mention is Helium 3 (another hypothetical future Fusion fuel) which is sound but the problem is that it can only be acquired on in sufficient quantities on the Moon. But I'd be all for expanding the late game to include the Moon.

[NaturalBornKieler]

So this is the general discussion thread for Civ 5 ideas?

I would like to point out one aspect that should not be neglected when designing a Civ 5: When Civ 4 was designed originally, one objective of the developers was to eliminate tedious stuff. That is, they removed or modified parts of the game that only annoy the player and do not add to the enjoyment of playing. For example, the tedious task of sending engineers around to tidy up pollution was removed. The problem of citys falling into complete unrest when they had not enough happy faces was removed, thus reducing the need for happiness micromanagement. And so on.

I fully support this decision and I advocate against reimplementing too much micromanagement. I like to play on huge maps with many cities and I don't want to look into every city every turn.

That being said, I like the idea of the electricity lines, but I don't like the concept of "storable goods" very much. At the moment, the only things a city can store are food and shields. That's sufficient for me in terms of complexity.

To implement the electricity line idea, I suggest a building called "transformer station". This would be a cheap building which is needed for a city in order to receive electricity via an electricity line. This could come with a switch to allow the player to control which city does receive electricity and which does not, in case not enough power sources for all cities are available.

Cheers
NBK

[Ijuin]

Alternatively, intercity power lines could be a terrain improvement similar to roads--a city would have to be connected to a power-generating city using them, and you would have to defend them from enemies during war. However, unless there's some way of quantifying electricity (e.g. each power plant of X type produces Y units of electricity, and each city population above 3 or so as well as some buildings would consume one or more units. Perhaps electric supply/demand could work like health in Civ4?).

On the resource storage thing, let's forget about storing stuff. In Civ3/4, resources are only needed to build stuff, not to operate it. Thus, you can live with having your oil or whatever cut off in a war--you just won't be able to build new tanks/factories/whatever till you get a supply of oil, but anything you build up before the war will run just fine (and anybody who intentionally goes to war without bothering to build up his/her military before declaring war deserves to get his/her butt kicked). However, the idea of needing one instance of a resource for every building requiring it might be good--e.g. four coal power plants would require you to have four coals.

[FrostyBoy]

There is not going to be a Civilization 5, at least not for a while - it's one of the reasons they made Civ4 so moddable. There's no point in making Civ 5, 6, 7, 8, 9... when all you can do is add and fix a little here and there.

If there is ever going to be another Civilization game in the works, it will be something along the lines of an MMO - which Sid himself expressed interest in. The only issue is the mechanics of a Civ MMO, it's not an easy task, but if they can pull it off, it could become even more popular than the behemoth WoW; simply because Civ is unique in that it has attributes found in most games - political, warfare, strategy, trade, science, competition, building, discovery, history, future, etc. So there is something for everyone, but perhaps Civilization has yet to be released in a medium (such as an 3D MMO) where others can get in and enjoy, because at the moment, chess-like game players are the majority who are most interested in Civ.

MMO's are good in the sense that both slow and fast players can enjoy it. It would definitely bring in the new generation.


edit: Glad to see I was proven wrong, but I just hope its not just a facelift!

[Heraclitus]

There willl be a Civ 5 in less than 5 years. The reason is sinmple Civ 4 and Civ Rev made money. SMAC still did some things better than Civ 4, and multiplayer could still use improving. Also espionage could be much improved since it was added rather hastily to the existing system.

[Heraclitus]

OMG I think I just figured out a simple and relativley realistic power system for civ.

Make electricity a form of maitenance cost unaffected by the other maitenance reducing buildings.

"transformer station"- hooks the city up to the grid. The city gets the "power" icon we know and love. Electricity matienance is charged.


Electricity maitenance is calculated like regular maitenance just instead of calculating it from the nearest capital/forbidden palace city, make it calculated from the nearest large power station. This has the neat side effect of making it dependant on three things:

a) is the nearest power station on the same continent
b) how many cities are hooked up to the grid
c) how far away is the nearest "large power station"

I would also add

d) large city populations create extra power maitenance
e) buildings that use power (like factories) would cost electricity maitenance

The more "power" maitenance you have to pay the more a city would get.

You could if you are wealthy enough go through the game without building a single power plant, letting the free market handle supply. It is assumed that the capitalists go for cheap coal/oil (or wood if you are really resource starved), that is why you get more the more maitenance you pay. But not always, gold producing fancy windmills sell the electricity back to the market, rivers also provide a cheap source of electricity for small private hydro plants (see the beauty? It ties these effects that we already have in Civ4 together so they make sense). We could go a step further and have "transformer stations" give an additional bonus for rivers and a health bonus for any windmills (they would give half the amount forests do).


Now to the effects of the buildings:

"Solar power plant" (we had these in Civ3/2) - eliminates the maitenance cost in a city you get from distance from nearest large power plant and from poulation size. But it dosen't eliminate the cost you get from the number of cities hooked up on the grid or the penalty if you don't have a large power plant on this continent.

(logical since solar power can't be the only source of power for a civilization Other cities also don't get their power from this solar plant so id dosen't have the capital like effect large power plants do)

"Hydro power plant" - counts as a large power plant, -1 food in the city.

(land lost that could have been used for agriculture and less fish from the river)


"Nuclear power plant" - counts as a large power plant , gives +5 commerce in city and an additonal +1 commerce for every source of uranium. Has a chance of triggering nuclear meltdown events (the only events not turned off when you choose the no random events option).

(Nuclear power plants generate an insane amount of cheap electricity but the bulding costs are high)


"Fusion power plant" - counts as a large power plant , +5 commerce in city, gives 2 free scientists

(remember this is a late game building, Fusion is one of the last techs you get before future tech. Russia's UB gives 2 scientist and isn't overpowered precisley because it is late, also a civ with lots of coal or uranium would be better to stick to its old power source anyway and even a civ that dosen't would think twice because this plant costs as much to build as do the old Nuclear power plants)

"Coal plant" - counts as a large power plant, creates the same amount of polution electricity upkeep would if the plant wasn't built. Gives +1 commerce for every source of coal your civ has, and +2 for every source of coal in the city radius.

Note that all large power plants:

a) enable 1 engineer specialist.
b) reduce the matienance caused by electricity using buildings and number of cities hooked to the grid by 50%
c) act as "capitals" in energy power calculation meaning they eliminate all the cost power maitnenace costs except b), and since they act as "capitals" they reduce the costs of nearby cities too.
d) you can build more than one plant in a city, but if you don't disband the old one it will have no effect


Wonder:

"Three gorges dam"
-Counts as hydro plant in the city built
-Rivers now add an extra +1 gold
-any previous power plant in the city keeps its effect

Civics:

"Environmentalism" - eliminates power maitenance caused by the number of cities hooked up to the grid (I hope everyone sees the synergy with solar )

"State property"- reduces electricity cost caused by number of cities and by electricity employing buildings by 50% (see the synergy with large power plants? )

"Free market"- cities on the grid (cities with "transformer stations") but no power power plants get +1 gold for any coal and +2 gold for any extra oil your civ has. Such cities also get an addtional +1 gold from any windmills.

(if you have 3 coal sources and 2 oil sourcesl, all cities on the grid but no other source of power would get +4 gold just from the resources)




As you can see there are many many "interesting decisions" one can make in sucha system.

[Gunther7231]

All Civ5 News on this site

https://www.civilization5.blogspot.com

[wodan11]

.......

[giblets]

All Civ5 News on this site
www.civilization5.blogspot.com

Thank you! I can't wait to read all of my civilization news in German.

[Heraclitus]

http://www.firaxis.com/news/news_detail.php?id=761


Civ5!

There is not going to be a Civilization 5

Told you so.

[Kuciwalker]

Woah boy. Why do we need fifteen different power plants? Civ4 did this right - we have the plant that produces pollution, the plant that can only be built in some cities, and the plant that has a chance of catastrophic damage - I don't see why additional choices in this space would substantially improve gameplay.

[Heraclitus]

Woah boy. Why do we need fifteen different power plants? Civ4 did this right - we have the plant that produces pollution, the plant that can only be built in some cities, and the plant that has a chance of catastrophic damage - I don't see why additional choices in this space would substantially improve gameplay.

Previous versions of civ had 4 types. (solar,coal,nuclear,hydro)
Civ 4 did have 3 as you say.


I was always bothered that Fusion either had no effect or simply made meltdowns in regular nuclear plants impossible. This doesn't make much sense. If one is not bothered by this you can take away that building immediately.

The system of electricity maintenance actually can work with just 3 buildings, since you can just put the proposed function of the transformer station to the factory. The maitenance upkeep that building would produce before electricity would simply represent the cost of energy in another sense (coal for steam engines, hydro or oil for internal combustion).