The Case for Nukes

[Echo]

This is a more apropriate thread for this post.

I want to see the option for a Tac nuke, ICBM "standard" nuke, AND a hydrogen bomb.

Tac can work as it does in the game now. ICBM should be devastating like it was in Civ2, and an option to build a costly hydrogen bomb that wipes out everything within 2 squares of a city.

A Neutron bomb would be cool too, wipe out the population with no damage to city improvements.

The bombs are much to weak as is now.

(Give me realism over "game balance" any day.)

P.S.
There is no modern day combat formation capable of surviving a nuclear strike. Save a submarine or a unit in a silo/ hardened bunker. 50% chance of wasting each unit also means there is a 50% chance that NO unit will be eliminated.

[ken01]

I personally think the nuke system is fine, though unrealistic.

What I'd like to see (like alpha centauri, or was it Civ2) is other civs wimpering when I threaten them with nuclear attack in the diplomacy screen.

As it stands, recently I played my first game with nuclear arms. I built the wonder, built a tactical nuke. The realized they have a range. Loaded it onto a nuclear sub (was building nuclear subs since they were as cheap as regular subs in many of my cities). Sent it over to the Zulus. Opened up diplomacy and....

It was as if I didn't have nuclear arms at all. They laughed me off the diplomacy screen!

I'd get a better effect with my "land 4 mech inf on a mountain" strategy.

[korn469]

posted by HugoHillbilly
Nukes arent designed as common place weapons meant for actual use on the battle field. Its the threat of nuclear attack not actual nuclear attack that makes them effective

My point is that nukes aren't threatening
The largest size city you can have in civ3 is I think around size 42 (unless you have multiple food specials in your city's radius) so if you nuke that city yes it would lose 21 population, a few buildings, and some of the troops garrisoning the city and then pollution surrounds the 8 squares bordering the city, and those squares are turned to desert, but the city itself wouldn't be completely crippled, and when compared to the expense there isn't much of a threat at all, yes it is slightly different on deity level where the AIs get major production bonuses, but on regent if the AI is trying to threaten you it has instead set back its war effort by wasting tons of shields on nukes

posted by jgflg
I think nukes work well as they are, but you need to use them right. The benefit that they provide over spending the resources elsewhere is that you can simultaneously take out massive amounts of resources in one swipe. Reducing a city population by half and polluting the two square radius around it means that that city won't be building much of anything anytime soon. Assuming you can nuke 10-15 major cities at once, you can pretty much grind weapons production to a halt for another civ. You can also use nukes to quickly take out resource squares that are located deep within an empire. You can't do any of that with tanks.

The strategy I generally follow is to wait until I have enough nukes accumulated to strike most major cities of my opponent, usually around 10-15. I then use espionage to uncover his military locations and plan my strikes accordingly. Even with a 50% survival chance, odds are pretty good that you should be able to chop his strength down substantially. If you take out resource squares as well, then your opponent will be easy pickings when your armor rolls in.

jgflg have you actually played the same Civ3 that I have? If so, what level are you playing on? It sounds like chieftain...so far I have only played civ3 on monarch and deity, and your strategy sounds highly suspect

If you are going to build 10-15 tactical nukes this is going to cost you somewhere between 3,000 and 4,500 shields with another 800 being spent on the Manhattan project...if you are going to build between 10-15 ICBMs that is going to cost between 6,000-9,000 shields with another 800 for the Manhattan project and then you are going to build a conventional army on top of that?

While this strategy may work, I assert that you can achieve your objectives much more efficiently just using conventional weapons

Think about it like this
For that amount of shields you could build five hospitals, battlefield medicine, a navy, and air force, and still have shields left over to construct a massive army, also your nuke strike would at best maybe cut their production down to about 40% of its current value, but it certainly wouldn't put a stop to AI production

One other thing you left out besides the fact that global warming will turn your empire to deserts is that every time you use a nuke there is a chance that the AI civs will declare war on you...so if there are five other civs left in the game and you shoot off 15 nukes then most likely they will all declare war on you

Also, I need to check to make sure, but I am almost positive that nukes only pollute the squares adjacent to your city, and that it doesn't actually pollute a 2x2 radius

Adm.Naismith

Your system is good, and if firaxis went that route with nukes I certainly wouldn't be disappointed however I think it would be equally as effective to be able to either give a nuke a certain location or to give it standing orders, the player could assign each nuke a target based on the major criteria already found in the sort feature, like you could assign nukes to hit the largest city by either population, or shields, or commerce, or food output, or total military strength, or science output etc.

So you could either manually set targets for each of your nukes, or you could assign all of your nukes a target based on a specific set of criteria, this could be done with a pull down menu which if it had three choices would be more than enough

So for example you could set a single choice, shield output lets say, and then your nukes would fire one at a time targeting the city with highest shield output, nukes that the player manually targeted would always fire first, and if the player selected more than one criteria then the game would give each city a composite score based on all of the factors and attack the city with the highest composite score

Also, if you are in a mutual protection pact, then your nukes should automatically retaliate against the player launching a nuclear attack on your ally

I don't want M.A.D. to be complicated; it should be simple, yet if it is well done then it adds another level to the game...

Aendolin

your list of wants is virtually identical to mine

posted by echo
I want to see the option for a Tac nuke, ICBM "standard" nuke, AND a hydrogen bomb.

Tac can work as it does in the game now. ICBM should be devastating like it was in Civ2, and an option to build a costly hydrogen bomb that wipes out everything within 2 squares of a city.

A Neutron bomb would be cool too, wipe out the population with no damage to city improvements.

hehe devastating like in civ2? ICBMs have more power (because of their longer range) than they did in civ2, but something on par with a fission planetbuster in SMAC would be nice

btw big hydrogen bombs (in the 5-25mt range) started being replaced in the 70's with smaller but more numerous warheads in the 100-450kt range, and neutron bombs are intended to kill armored formations, and aren't really designed to attack cities

and about building a costly hydrogen bomb, if nukes get any more costly in civ3 they will be virtually impossible to build

but i do agree with you that firaxis has grossly underestimated the power of nukes

ken01

yea it does suck that nukes have no effect on diplomatic positions at all

_______________________________

if you were listing to the news today you most likely heard that Bush and Putin agreed to slash nuclear stockpiles by about 2/3

if you think about it...the US alone has over 6,000 strategic warheads, so that is at least 600mt of destructive power...the united states has more strategic nuclear warheads than it does main battle tanks right now

each strategic nuclear warhead is at least 100kt and that is over five times as powerful as the bombs we dropped on Japan in ww2

civ3 certainly needs some rebalancing

[Roswell]

I have to side with korn. Last game I had nukes built and stacked up in a couple of cities by accident (city governer is in love with them). I knew the Greeks had them too, but I didn't really think about it when I swept into their territory with a large force of modern armor. I was quite surprised when on their next turn they dropped four ICBM's on my largest cities. I fired mine back, of course, but the main point is this: those cities were functioning again very quickly between a healthy economy and an army of workers. If LA, or NY got hit by an ICBM, I can pretty much guarantee you that ten or twenty years later it wouldn't be running at full speed, or even half (don't mean to give the impression that my buildings and pop just reappeared, but my cities were functioning usefully again). It's going to take years to rebuild the WTC, and it was the sole target of that attack. Hiroshima was devastated for decades. Chernobyl is still unlivable. Nukes need to be more powerful. I think the deterrence model is a really interesting idea too.

[MrBlud]

If they were going to have M.A.D and deterence they should also have an option for a SALT like treaty where each Civ agress to cut their nuclear stockpile to like around 1-2 ICBMS and maybe 10 or less Tactical nukes. If you agree to the treaty your world opinion raises and if you refuse it lowers your approval rating in all your cities and throughout the world.

[ProfessorPhobos]

Originally posted by HugoHillbilly


duh

Nukes arent designed as common place weapons meant for actual use on the battle field. Its the threat of nuclear attack not actual nuclear attack that makes them effective.

Ok maybe they ruined the 'fun factor' of using a nuke, but at least your not wanting to go build one for each of your opponents cities then wipe them all out in 1 turn.

You mean other than tactical nuclear weapons?(I.E., Torpedoes, where you don't have to know *exactly* where that Submarine is. I.E., aircraft deployed AA missiles- for when you need to get rid of *everything* in a certain stretch of sky. I.E., nuclear artillery, when you want to disperse enemy force concentrations.....)

The only problem with Civ3's nukes is their expense. They should probably be a lot cheaper.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

(1) In reality, Nukes are very effecient weapons. You don't need to train people how to drive, fly, steer, or aim a nuke. All you have to do is build it, and have it serviced. Therefore, civ3 nukes are way too expensive

(2) In civ3, Nukes are efficent because during a war, they do not cause war weariness.

if you were listing to the news today you most likely heard that Bush and Putin agreed to slash nuclear stockpiles by about 2/3

if you think about it...the US alone has over 6,000 strategic warheads, so that is at least 600mt of destructive power...the united states has more strategic nuclear warheads than it does main battle tanks right now

each strategic nuclear warhead is at least 100kt and that is over five times as

Do you feel any safer? Has this really been something which will make Nuclear War winnable? The answer is no.

Each nation has about 7, 000 missiles. Loosing 2/3s means each country decommisions about 4600 missiles, of which are the oldest, least "effective" of the batch. There are still 6 000 missiles total, enough still to destroy the world 3 times over. Its symbolic, but doesn't really do anything, especially since all of the new missiles have multiple warheads. If they can get the count under 1000 apeice, that would start to make a nuclear war 'winnable'

[korn469]

Lawrence of Arabia

i really have to disagree with with you about war weariness...

think of it like this

universal sufferage costs 800 shields and a police station costs 100 shields, so for the price of the manhatten project and a single ICBM you could have built universal sufferage and six police stations, with universal sufferage and a police station in every city, war weariness didn't effect my democracy at all as i began a war in 1884 (a nuclear war no less) and it dragged on till i won the game in 1930...so 38 turns of war didn't cause a single problem

MrBlud

an anti nuclear weapons treaty would be a great addition for the U.N. wonder

[Enigma]

Nice analysis Korn, it is interesting that you, Velocyrix, and Adam_Smith are all economists- that just happens to be what I plan on majoring in in college!

I think that the entire "nukes are not worth the investment" arguement can be applied to virtually anything in Civ3 though, all of the units in civ3 are *individually* worthless, a "tank rush" is almost as worthless as a "nuke rush".

Every unit has extremely little strategic value, IE it is not as if you get the technology for an impact rover and all of a sudden your attack capabilities triple. The same is true with nukes. I will not go over this mathematically because it would be very complicated with all of the different units... but say for instance

You had 1000 minerals. You can buy 3 tactical nukes and a bomber, or 10 bombers, or something in between. For this example I will choose to buy 7 bombers and 1 tactical nuke.

For the long extrended duration conflicts that are not of important strategic value you use the bombers, they can be used over and over again, but are pretty weak.

But eventually your enemy fortifies a lot of enemies in one city that is at a chokepoint. He has routed your navy with a big fleet of his own, so you can't flank the chokepoint. You need to attack him because he is finishing the spaceship in 20 turns.

His continent is seperate from yours so you cannot transport conventional missles there (they can't be airlifted or go in a carrier or a regular transport)

At circumstances like the a nuke can be good. If you factor in the cost for the manhatten project that nukes are almost always worthless...

Use the nuke to reduce his population, the 50% extra bonus that size 12+ cities get is really murderous... you need to get rid of pop points fast.

This situation is rather contrived, perhaps overall nukes are worthless 60% of the time, but that extra 40% might make it worth having a tactical nuke.

They can also be used for as a surprise, or to make your enemy overfortify his bases. If you can make him *think* you have a nuke in an area and he sees that you have a nuke with his spy... you can use this as a diversion and take the other cities that those defensive units were moved for.

Nukes have no strategic value, it isn't like a bunch of nukes alone would win you the game. But the same could be said of any unit....

Combined arms wins Civ3, nukes are just another element of these combined arms forces, and is great for eliminating population.

I doubt that anyone will really find a big use for nukes, but it is best to keep your mind open and try to find ways of working them into your existing strategies rather than planning strategies around them.

*edit* it is not that I wouldn't like to see nukes be better... they are TOTALLY unrealistic in the current system, quite worthless.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Every time i send my units outside my borders in democracy, my people all start revlolting and destroying improvements etc.

[cassembler]

True Romance, Christian Slater:

It's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.

I feel the same about nukes... I mean, if you remove cost from the equation, the ability to strike anywhere on the map is pretty freakin' cool... I'm gonna take a stab though and state that the higher the difficulty level, the less likely nukes will be useful.

Yeah they could be made more powerful, but by the time I've got nukes I usually just want to start fresh on a new map anyways.

[GePap]

NUclear weapons are tools of diplomacy, not war- no one gets nukes to destroy armies, you do it to intimidate others, and if all goes to hell, to annahilate them. NUkes need to be very powerful-and expensive since only 8 nations really have them today out of 187- but be tools of diplomacy. Those that don't have nukes do as you threaten, but then move like mad to make them. Those with them deter you from carrying out wars to totally conquer them, unless you have a death wish. If fixaris really wants a peacefull game,then make nukes the weapons that are so horrible they end war, since diplomatic victory and the spaceship suddenly get much more attractive realizing nukes could wipe you out. Also, make Manhattan project a small wonder, since even if spies get you the tech (which really you could get off the net) the problem is creating the infrastructure to produce fission material- (it took years to get the U235 we needed, not to come up with the science or design) so that each nation must go throught its own nuclear program to build it (in any treaty, forbid players from making this small wonder).
As it stands, the best use of nukes is to blast resource squares and roads to them to cripple the enemies production economy- especially resources deep in their land you ccan't get to with tanks.

[korn469]

posted by enigma
But eventually your enemy fortifies a lot of enemies in one city that is at a chokepoint. He has routed your navy with a big fleet of his own, so you can't flank the chokepoint. You need to attack him because he is finishing the spaceship in 20 turns.

His continent is seperate from yours so you cannot transport conventional missles there (they can't be airlifted or go in a carrier or a regular transport)

At circumstances like the a nuke can be good. If you factor in the cost for the manhatten project that nukes are almost always worthless...

Use the nuke to reduce his population, the 50% extra bonus that size 12+ cities get is really murderous... you need to get rid of pop points fast

here is a save game that both illustrates the point you made above and it also disproves Lawrence of Arabia's complaint about excessive war weariness please download it

yes in this situation nukes do save the day...however i had disbanded a couple of ICBMs, a few tactical nukes, and maybe 20 jet fighters...instead of building nukes and jet fighters in the first place i should have been building ground forces...i was playing in a subpar way this game...i just began to lose focus instead of pressing an advantage

I think that the entire "nukes are not worth the investment" arguement can be applied to virtually anything in Civ3 though, all of the units in civ3 are *individually* worthless, a "tank rush" is almost as worthless as a "nuke rush"

this argument is false...if you purchase a factory for example every turn it generates additional shields and will in time depending on the industrial output of the city it will pay for itself

while any individual unit has the chance to either pay for itself or not, the overall cost of a nuke, especially an ICBM is so great that it does has an impact on the game...for one thing shields don't carry over so it ties one city down for a number of turns, and the player is forced to stick to that strategy until the ICBM actually gets built...an ICBM almost cost the same as a wonder...an ICBM cost 1.5 times as much as the great library, which can allow the player to rapidly gain three, four, or maybe even five techs, whereas an ICBM if used against a size 4 city will only kill 2 population

They can also be used for as a surprise, or to make your enemy overfortify his bases. If you can make him *think* you have a nuke in an area and he sees that you have a nuke with his spy... you can use this as a diversion and take the other cities that those defensive units were moved for

since nukes only have a 50% chance of killing units, there is no need to overfortify a city...overfortifying a city would actually make a nuke more effective, since it would give the player using the nuke a better chance to recoup the cost of the nuke

Combined arms wins Civ3, nukes are just another element of these combined arms forces, and is great for eliminating population

i agree about the combined arms part, except i disagree about nukes having an effective place in a combined arms task force...if you have 1000 shields to build a task force with, spending 600 on an ICBM would be a waste because it would limit the conventional part of the army, and still doesn't present much of a threat

If you factor in the cost for the manhatten project that nukes are almost always worthless

exactly, and you MUST factor in the cost of the MP, because it is required before building nukes

it is not that I wouldn't like to see nukes be better... they are TOTALLY unrealistic in the current system, quite worthless

well i'm glad you agree
my argument is this
When pursuing an optimal strategy against an opponent of equal power who is also pursuing an optimal strategy nuclear weapons don't have a place because of their high price and low performance.

Nukes are still fairly powerful, and a player can certainly base a strategy around them and win the game, however I think any strategy that involves nukes will be less than optimal, and will eventually only actually be used by players who don't want to have a great game.

cassembler

great quote from True Romance! i just wish that firaxis had spent more time on the late industrial and the modern era to actually make the late game in Civ3 the most enjoyable part of the game...powerful nukes and M.A.D. could be a start

GePap

i totally agree with your post except for this

As it stands, the best use of nukes is to blast resource squares and roads to them to cripple the enemies production economy- especially resources deep in their land you ccan't get to with tanks

600 minerals to cut off a special resource supply for ten turns at most seems like a monumental waste, especially since if the resource supply get cuts you can still finish production of the unit you are currently building

what would be cool to me is instead of the Manhatten project being a small wonder if it was a great wonder, however it would then allow each of the other players to build the Nuclear weapons program small wonder which cost like half of the manhatten project (the MP would of course allow the player who built it the ability to build nukes)

[jgflg]

KORN469 wrote:

"jgflg have you actually played the same Civ3 that I have? If so, what level are you playing on? It sounds like chieftain...so far I have only played civ3 on monarch and deity, and your strategy sounds highly suspect "

The game was on Regent, 8, Standard size, I was playing as the French and used the strategy on the Egyptians and Zulu to win through eliminating everyone else. Not quite monarch or deity, but hard enough where it would have been extremely time consuming for me to take them out conventionally. My conventional forces about equaled the Egyptians in numbers before I started nuking them. Afterwards, they had about a quarter of my strength. The real key was using espionage to locate military units because this allows you to really maximize your damage.

Obviously this strategy works best if you have more nukes than they do. I basically switched all my major cities to churning out nukes while the other civs kept producing regular units. You can call the strategy suspect if you want, but it worked for me, regardless of how many squares of pollution get created.

All in all though you may be right that nukes don't provide the same value as an equivalent amount of regular units do. I was merely providing an example of a situation where they can be very useful. The main benefit for me was avoiding having to drag 30 artillery and 50 tanks and 50 mech units all over the place every turn to bombard some new cities. I can't stand the microunit managing and this strategy allowed me to reduce it substantially. I don't know if there's a way you can factor that into an economic equation.

[korn469]

jgflg

if what you said is true then you built 10-15 ICBMs

that is more than double the cost of the space ship...so why didn't you just build the space ship and win the game?

[Enigma]

Korn I also frequently end up with cities producing 100 shields per turn when my economy is mobilized, and that adds up to only 3 tanks for an ICBM... I think anyone would like to add in an ICMB for the cost of 3 tanks into the mix.

I agree with your statement that an optimal strategy probably doesn't involve nukes... my point was that maybe 30% of the time a nuke would be useful.

You drastically underestimate the costs of taking out an enemy civ in the late game. 1000 minerals! My offensive force cost 3600 for air units, 2000 for subs and battleships, 2000 for sea based transports, and 4000 or more for ground units... not to mention the reinforcements I dropped in. That adds up to 1200 minerals total... so I *could* have built 20 ICBMs... this is on a *standard* map. It was overkill to a certain extent, but my economy was mobilized and I was behind in the space race because all 3 of the other civs had allied against me.

The other civs wouldn't trade me for nuke technology, but I would have liked to have had an ICBM or two, 10% isn't a significant percentage of this cost.

The damage a nuke does to infrastructure isn't terribly significant, but if you need to take a city of strategic value it allows you to sacrifice long term goals. 6 bombers really isn't that significant, 5 modern armor is good but not fantastic.

I don't factor in the manhatten project because I would rather let another civ build it... it is rather worthless to have nukes 3 or 4 turns ahead of other people, if that.

Also human players are very different than AIs, I would *LOVE* to have a nuke in a human vs human conflict, I actually consider them much more useful in that context. Say both of you are in the space race, he is slightly behind and launches a massive invasion. You have been focusing on naval defense overall but neglecting your ground defense because you think no one will be able to punch through your fleet.

Well rather than trying to fight your fleet he simply ignored it- made sacrificial destroyers, you simply do not have enough battleships to destroy everything he has. But you do manage to force him to focus his forces in one square.

Nukes can be effective as a deterrant for getting your enemy to stop concentrating his forces- this could be extremely important on large maps, where you might have a lot of units on one square. Rather than having to worry about a massive attack coming from one direction (which could be nuked) you have to worry about much more spread out attacks. Nukes do very little to cities, but 50% of a stack of 50 units is very significant.

I think we will see a tendancy for large stacks like that a lot in PvP conflicts, I saw that AI frequently drop 15+ units at me, but they didn't go on the offensive a whole lot against me. Nukes seem actually QUITE cost effective in naval combat- no player would want to spread his naval units over more than a 8x8 box, you can attack a significant chunk of this box at once with a tactical nuke. A single battleship costs 200! If you manage to take out two battleships that is a good return on your investment, if you are so lucky as to destroy a transport full of modern armor that is 1300 minerals... more than quadruple the cost of your tactical nuke, and more than double the cost of an ICBM.

Nukes are the only thing preventing players from making "stacks of doom"... there is no other attack that damages a percent of a stack... Also nukes are perfect for neutralizing armies.
To summarize-

Nukes aren't that expensive
They are best used against units, especially stacks, especially player vs player combat.
In naval combat or in taking out armies (1 army with 4 modern armors is 880 mins) nukes are cost effective, otherwise they are mainly a deterrant.

Nukes are totally useless in Civ3 if you use them in their real life use of destroying infrastructure and population, but if you use them to focus on naval fleets and unit stacks they have the *potential* to be great.

[korn469]

Enigma

good responce

i'm in class right now so i can't be as long winded as i like to be but a few replies

You drastically underestimate the costs of taking out an enemy civ in the late game. 1000 minerals!

this is based on my experiance...so far i haven't encountered any problems using more than 4-6 modern armor backed up by 4-5 bombers (880-1220 shields) and a few mech infantry for garrisons when necessary (my standard operating proceedure is to burn enemy cities down)

i normally play on tiny and small maps because the game slows down on my computer on larger maps with more civs

however i have only made it to the modern era three times...in my other games i have crushed the AI early in the game got them down to one city and then won through the space ship

Rather than having to worry about a massive attack coming from one direction (which could be nuked) you have to worry about much more spread out attacks. Nukes do very little to cities, but 50% of a stack of 50 units is very significant.

i agree with that point, but it seems that attacking in smaller waves is more effective anyway, unfortunantly the AI still seems quite clueless on the tactical level and the attack, make the computer sue for peace then attack again works too good for me, the AI could possibly need to be less forgiving

using tactical nukes against a naval transport task force seems like the best use of nukes, especially if it sinks a transport loaded with juicy units, however against smaller waves of units approaching from a few directions over land makes nukes less useful, especially when you take into account the possibility of nukes causing neutral civs declare war on you

single battleship costs 200! If you manage to take out two battleships that is a good return on your investment

but on average there would need to be four battle ships in the blast radius to achieve this

unfortunantly in two different games i've played one of the best anti-battleship unit has been the ironclad
it almost seems that the odds from those games would be a 1:1 lose ratio when the ironclad attacks...i might have just been unlucky

also i think that all of the air power in civ3 is on the weak side, and that bombard units are less than effective...especially radar artillary, why does it only have a move of 1?

swordmen, horsemen, cavalry, tanks, and modern armor have made up the backbone of my army...i find swordmen to be highly effective until the later middle ages |immortals are good right up to musketmen, but by then the game is already over on a tiny or small map |

[jgflg]

Korn469 wrote:

"jgflg

if what you said is true then you built 10-15 ICBMs

that is more than double the cost of the space ship...so why didn't you just build the space ship and win the game?"

The number probably ended up being more around 20-25 when it was all said and done. 10-15 on the Egyptians and then another 5-10 on the Zulus once I eliminated the Egyptians.

Good question about the space race. The most enjoyable way for me to win is through the destruction of other civs. I don't really see the space race as all that exciting. I never really even considered building the ship. Just my play style. Call me sadistic or what have you, but there is something extremely satisfying about watching the ICBM explode over a city (in the game).

The reason that this strategy worked so well in that game for me was that I went straight for modern armor while everyone else focused on the other tech paths in the modern age. So I had already accumulated a huge modern tank army and reduced my pollution ahead of my nuclear proliferation. Once the nukes were built and used, I already had the quick moving army in place to follow it up with a rapid sweep. Building the nukes was actually quite easy with the productive capacity available from my cities. I had about eight or nine cities turning out nukes and it was taking about 10-12 turns per nuke, so I was able to build them quite quickly. With the French Commercial bonus I had also accumulated a huge amount of money so rush buying things was very easy.

[Pyrodrew]

Originally posted by jgflg
Korn469, "if what you said is true then you built 10-15 ICBMs?"

The number probably ended up being more around 20-25 when it was all said and done.

What did that do to the planet? Were the environmental effects that minor? I would think after that the world would be just small desert islands.

[Wrong_shui]

I changed the cost in the editor to 10 shields, built about 25 ICBMs and nuked most of germanys citys.

Didnt make much of a difference, they still had a horde of knights, if i bothered to wait and see if that pollution bothered them Global warming would have happend and buggerd us all anyway.

So yeah i think they're useless.

[Grumbold]

To my mind the question is one of scale. The 'nuke' pieces seems to be costed as if it represents a cluster of weapons yet have the impact of only one. In the same way some players believe that ships should be sinkable by bombardment because they visualise the piece as representing only a single ship, not a taskforce. That nukes deal out standard and not special pollution is an additional flaw. The construction cost, explosive effects and lasting pollution effects are not in step with each other. Probably the simplest short term answer is to adjust the cost of the nukes so that each nation can build up a significantly larger arsenal even if the diplomatic effects of using large numbers would be catastrophic.

[cassembler]

It's all about company policies...
Think about it, the dudes in the suits at Infrogrames could care less about completely checking out a released product- they might play it for 30 turns or so and say, "Looks fine to me... Good job Firaxis!"

Of course, Firaxis knows this, and Infrogrames is the hand that feeds them, so why would they NOT spend a great deal of time making sure the first impressions of the game are favorable?

As far as nukes go, I completely agree that they are not balanced correctly... I tend to play until I ether know I'm gonna win or lose, then I start fresh... Early game is much more enjoyable than Civ2. If only the whole game was that way...

[Ancientfool]

nuke shmook.

When id finished contruction of a handful of quantum planetbusters in SMAC I felt like a god whether I used them or not. Veeeeeery high fun factor.

They need to graft a new AI onto SMAC, some pretty graphics and abandon this civIII nonsense.

[Your.Master]

Originally posted by Wrong_shui
If america nuked afghanistan, ppl would ***** and moan but who would have the balls to do anything?.

If America nuked Afghanistan, Bin Laden would be right.

[Jokka das Trevas]

Technical detail here:

Fusion, neutron and hydrogen bombs are pretty much the same. No comparatives here, they REALLY are the same one

[Zanzin]

Originally posted by Ancientfool

They need to graft a new AI onto SMAC, some pretty graphics and abandon this civIII nonsense.

Or maybe jut fix the nukes in Civ3?

[korn469]

yea since they don't have real M.A.D. i would be happy if they increased the chance that the AI will declare war on a player using nukes, and that they increase the destructive power of nukes to 75% with the ability to kill really small cities (size 3 and under)

also i wished they would change the manhatten project to a small wonder

(then change its stats to the following -2 culture, creates 1 unhappy person in every city)

then hopefully in the expansion pack they will add in true M.A.D.

[Yoleus]

Uhm, now I really do not know.
I thoght nukes were too weak (nuke salade thread), but now I temporary suspend my jugdement on actual implementation.
Does somebody care to quantify the Global Warmig effect? Is it the same, better or worse than in Civ2? Any idea on the average effect of nukes on a stack of units? Do nukes affect only the units in ONE (the city's) tile or do they damage a wider area?
What I know for sure is:

MAD please!

[jgflg]

"Does somebody care to quantify the Global Warmig effect? Is it the same, better or worse than in Civ2? Any idea on the average effect of nukes on a stack of units? Do nukes affect only the units in ONE (the city's) tile or do they damage a wider area?
What I know for sure is:

MAD please!"

The global warming effect was pretty bad at first, but you gain so many workers from razing cities that you take over that there are plenty of resources to clean up the pollution.

The nukes affect the city tile plus a one tile radius around the city, so you can really hammer a large amount of units if you know what cities to hit. Using espionage to locate military units is key. I found the 50/50 odds of a unit surviving worked out about right in the game.

[Jason]

Tac can work as it does in the game now. ICBM should be devastating like it was in Civ2, and an option to build a costly hydrogen bomb that wipes out everything within 2 squares of a city.

Actually, ICBMs and tactical nukes are hydrogen bombs pretty much by definition, because of the small size requirements. H bombs are easily minaturized.

However, wiping out a city and the surrounding area isn't practical for one bomb; it could be done with a series of bombs on one town, if you really disliked that town I guess.

Increasing the megatonnage of a weapon beyond 5 megatons is only going to make a bigger light-show, there's diminishing returns at work. The Russians made some silly-arsed 60 megaton job, but just as a stunt.

Incidentally, a nuclear strike on a city, depending on how it's layed out, is only supposed to kill what, 1/3rd to 2/3rds of the population? To my mind the current system is more realistic than what you're proposing. When you bomb a city twice, it's not going to lose the same amount of people. Perhaps if you slavered 5 or 6 mirv nukes on one city it could be made uninhabitable, but when you think about it, a pop 1 city with a few dozen years worth of fallout around it is moderately realistic.

It isn't SMAC, we can't use fictional black hole nukes. I don't see that losing 30 pop or so to a nuke barrage in a turn is such an minor thing. You can say that the AI should have built tanks and radar artillery instead, but frankly, I have an army too. Nuking cities doesn't require winning battles first. I don't have much use for em, but the computer having them makes me a little cautious.