I am just wondering what power plant will you use when you start a new city. If me, i prefer the wind power plant. :D It is cheap and environment friendly.

Its always the Coal plant, with reduced funding, placed right in the corner. This decision is probably the one constant that runs through the creation of all my cities.

That depends on the size of the city and what is around it.

If it is a medium/large city I usually start out with Coal and when more stuff becomes avaiable I use it. If it is a small city then I use the gas plant. This is because you only have so much land and coal polloutes!

I put all of my powerplants in one city and then sell it to my neighbors. Keeps that origin of polution down across the majority of my city.

Originally posted by Brizbane2

Its always the Coal plant, with reduced funding, placed right in the corner. This decision is probably the one constant that runs through the creation of all my cities.

Ditto.

The coal plant is the cheapest to run out of the ones you can start out with. Reduce the funding so that you can balance the budget (I always try to have a surplus starting from day one).

The wind plant is good for the environment but they don't generate much power and cost a lot to maintain. Same with gas. My second, third and sometimes fourth power plants are oil, but by then I usually have money to burn.

The reason im so good at growth and creating large stable regions is to try and not send power over the region - the region for this is that there could be a cut due to terraforming (or as I have found - bugs in the game). This is the same for garbage and water.

I start with wind mills - they dont take up to much land, are relaively cheap at the beginning of the game, can be placed in the city centre (no need for coal plants on the edge of maps and extensive power cables), I find that I can get 10 windmills going without much problem, before economic issues push me towards coal. If you jump in at the beginning of the game with coal - you will find that you over produce. You can lower the demand, but this harms the life span of the power plant, and if you dont - you waste LOTS each month on producing energy which is never used. ie its a black hole financially. Dont bother with gas or oil - they aint worth the cost. Stick with coal, until you get nuclear (build it because it saves space and pollution levels) and then when u get fusion..........If you have millions in the bank and have a large power plant such as th fusion that doesn't use all its power - consider turning it down a bit (not to low as to cause blackouts!) and even though u might loose a few years off its life (far less than on any other power plant if u did the same), you will easily recoup the costs financially :)

Solar is a waste also, dont even think of wind power over a city of 40,000! Unless its to add that little bit of energy to keep the city going (but with alrger 100,000+ cities a coal plant is a good "leverage" source of power that can be used as a reserve incase say you fusion went over the production capacity).


Merry X mas + New Year :)

Actually, if you place a coal plant on the edge of a city and you have a neighboor you can grow off of (as in they commute to you, you commute to them) the city grows much faster and the use of the Coal plant is much more than you might otherwise have. I can zone about half the city at once and if I had to use a million wind mills my city would go under, fast.

Also, that 'mess' of power cables is just one cable that goes from the power plant over to the city. Since each tower only costs like $.05 per month it is not a huge cost.


Also, I bother with gas because if I am on a small map and do not want to bother buying from my big cities and the population is not great enough to get nuclear then your only choice is gas. It polloutes in the very small yellow (on the polloution map) and is hardly anything. It is also cheeper than having 1000 wind mills because you got your city up to 80,000 on that small map. :)

I usually start off with Coal b/c it's the cheapest. After that, I always seem to switch over to oil plants after a certain population (30K, maybe?) b/c they pollute less than coal (coal makes the pollution map red, correct?). I'd agree that solar is extremely expensive and inefficient. I never use wind power for the same reason as solar.

Pollution isn't too much of a reason for using wind/solar b/c the cost outweighs the possible gain. Lastly, I always place my power plants off in a corner surrounded by industrial development, and therefore, pollution isn't much of a concern anyway.

Playing SC4 is just about the only thing I can't do at work...and after visiting here, I really want to play! ARGH lol