Power Plants

[cpemma]

you can't mine hills, desert, or mountains under a city...

I tried that in my current game, building a city on a mined hill. Result no mine. I suppose it's the same reason you can't irrigate a mined hill (you lose the mine), and new cities come with irrigation built-in.

[ostrander-bellepoint]

Pollution, if ignored long enough, will turn all land squares into swamp except for hills and mountains. I think it takes about twenty or more incidents of the sea levels rising to do this. Pollution never turns land squares into ocean squares in Civ II.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by cpemma
3 sorts of pollution,
Population - Mass Transit cures it
Industrial - Recycling plant reduces by 50%, Solar Plant by 100%
Radio-Active - Engineering clean-up team needed

Actually, IIRC, recycling plant reduces 66% pollution, and hydro plants also reduce pollution (can't remember how much).

[fittstim]

Re: Re: Old version

Originally posted by DaveV

Note that some combinations are not allowed: you can't mine hills, desert, or mountains under a city.

This is strictly true but I thought I read somewhere that you can work around this but you actually have to WANT to have your city on a hill. For example, your city is on grasslands. You move three engineers into the city. Set one of the engineers to mine (this would theoretically change the square to a forest) and two of the engineers to transform (creates a hill). The result is that the square will be made into a hill BEFORE the mining is complete. Then the engineer will continue to mine and, presto, after a few turns you have a city on a hill with a mine.

This also works before building a city. Move 2 settlers or engineers onto the hill. Set one to mine (FIRST), then build the city. The mining will continue and you'll have a city on a hill with a mine.

As to the original question, I have never ever built a power plant because they produce so so so much pollution. I do, however, almost always succeed in building the Hoover Dam...

[Meeko]

Have you tried building solar power plants? I was reading this file in my Civ2 folder about the changes between Civ and Civ2:

It mentioned Solar Power Plants and how they they eliminate the pollution caused by "too much future tech".

I don't know if it's the Future Technology advance that it's refering to (it was in quotation marks in the file as well), but if it is, then you need Solar Power Plants...how much Future Tech do you have?

[Blaupanzer]

The formulae for both population and industrial pollution appear to contain a modifier based on the total number of techs possessed by a civilization. This is how additional future techs can make it worse. There are also four key techs that increase pollution effects. (As I recall these are automobile, industrialization, plastics, and refining. Someone help here with a reference to the formulae, please.)

Hydro plants cut industrial pollution by 50 per cent as do nuclear plants. Note you can only build one kind of power plant at a time (with the exception of solar plants). Thus, if you want to change types, you must sell the current to start building the replacement (or to switch to the replacement if you started out building some other improvement.) HD represents a hydro plant in every city, so power plants and nuke plants are not available once you own it.

Solar plants are available with the discovery of environmentalism and can be built in cities that have a factory and/or manufacturing plant. If you have the tech and either production improvement in one of your cities, then you should be able to build it. Solar plants affect not only the city in which they are built, but also affect the formula for global warming in general, making it less likely.

Nuclear plants can melt down when a city with one is in disorder. Discovery of fusion power prevents this.

[DrFell]

I rarely get far into the future techs because I usually get bored, but I heard somewhere that Future Tech 63 or a nearby tech causes a huge increase in pollution levels.

[EOL]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Nuclear plants can melt down when a city with one is in disorder. Discovery of fusion power prevents this.

Has anyone ever had this happen. I can't recall ever having built one so I have no idea what occurs, just some pollution or is it like a nuke's gone off?

[Rasputin]

Originally posted by EOL


Has anyone ever had this happen. I can't recall ever having built one so I have no idea what occurs, just some pollution or is it like a nuke's gone off?

happened to me once, its just liek having a nuke land on your city, all dead and lots of pollution

[Blaupanzer]

Once created the conditions for a meltdown deliberately in a game that had gone awry. Rasputin is mostly correct. The population/polution affects were like a bomb, complete with sound effects, but the troops in and adjacent to the city were unaffected. Note that if the disorder causes the government to fall, this effect can occur more than once in the same city. In such a case, sell the stupid plant!

[Paul]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Note that if the disorder causes the government to fall, this effect can occur more than once in the same city. In such a case, sell the stupid plant!

I don't remember the last time I had a meltdown, but can I conclude from your post that a meltdown will blow up half the city but leave the nuclear plant itself undamaged? That must be another one of those unrealistic features in Civ2.

[Blaupanzer]

Many (most?) nuclear plants have more than one reactor and corresponding cooling towers. Thus, Chernobyl goes on producing power despite the complete sealing of Unit Four. Three Mile Island apparently could have done the same, but this was politically unobtainable. In my very limited experience the meltdown didn't destroy any improvements. Civ II is not sophisticated enough to include repairs to improvements (or upgrades for that matter), so the disorder and meltdown only killed people and polluted the surrounding territory.