the godly ICBM

barefootbadass · January 29, 2002, 23:25

I have only tinkered with nukes a little after winning a space race and continuing to play, but it got me to thinking about how devastating these weapons could be if used properly. I know there were some threads about nukes being too weak, that they "only" half the population and have a 50% chance to destroy each unit and city improvement. Granted this is not as powerful as they were in civ 2, or so it seems at first glance.

A nuke or ICBM can be devastating if it targets an enemy capital, cutting off trade by land and likely destroying the harbor and airport. If it misses one or both you can hit it again, to disconnect their trade agreements. Then you could use them on strategic resources like aluminum and uranium that they have, crippling them militarily, and in the space race, which is the main reason you would want to do this, and then only if you can't cut them off with conventional means, because the penalties are harsh. Looking at the fallout we see that disrupting luxury trades will force higher luxury allocation for both the target civ and others, most of the others will declare war which will eventually force them to drop out of representative government(you will too, I tried this in a democracy and had instant major war weariness problems), and tradable strategic resources to disappear from the market. You can use the war to seize aluminum and uranium and keep a few cities cranking out ICBMs to isolate capitals and disconnect other resources as needed.

One thing, you have to know you stand to lose the space race soon enough that your isolation and resource denial matters. They really are a 'desperate measure', they suck for capturing cities because of all the pollution and disconnected roads they make.

Ironikinit · January 30, 2002, 01:16

Seems to me if you have enough of them you could exterminate a civ pretty quick (combined with conventional arms).

barefootbadass · January 30, 2002, 01:52

One thing I didn't think of, is that when everyone goes to war with you, you may be targeted with a nuclear counterstrike, so this is very risky, you'd need to disconnect all the uranium of other civs quickly, by whatever means and weather the counterstrike, which probably won't be a cakewalk since you had to resort to nukes in the first place.

notyoueither · January 30, 2002, 01:59

Until 4 out of 5 ICBMs are blown away by SDI.

Reagan lives!

Salve

Stryfe · January 30, 2002, 04:44

Quote:

Originally posted by notyoueither
Until 4 out of 5 ICBMs are blown away by SDI.

Reagan lives!

Salve

Guess which city you nuke first? (this only works if you have units close by to that city--but since this strategy is late game only, you might as well get a right of passage agreement, sit outside their major cities, nuke 'em, and then raze their cities other than the isolated capital).

notyoueither · January 30, 2002, 05:35

That'll work in MP. NOT.

Salve

Stryfe · January 30, 2002, 05:51

Quote:

Originally posted by notyoueither
That'll work in MP. NOT.

Salve

I wasn't under the impression we were discussing multiplayer tactics. Oh wait--we weren't. What's your point?

notyoueither · January 30, 2002, 06:05

Actually, it doesn't work very well in single player either, unless your lucky and the AI civ city with SDI in it is close to the border.

I'd suppose that someone who parks stacks next to AI cities with RoP agreement in order to take them when they declare war doesn't get many agreements with AI by the time SDI is out.

Although, isn't AI agreeability (is that a word?) affected by difficulty level? Maybe it will work at Regent.

Salve

Ironikinit · January 30, 2002, 06:29

Sneak attacks work once a game, every game. You always have that one chance to burn the AI on an RoP.

steelehc · January 30, 2002, 06:35

Even if you fukc over an AI civ, you can be friends with them later. Just give them stuff, money, techs, maps, cities, and help them out when they get in a war.

Steele

LaRusso · January 30, 2002, 06:35

icbms are pretty cool, especially if you want to devastate a civ that is too far away
trade routes elimination is awesome, and works even better if you go to war through a proxy. you just pummel them with tac nukes (from subs) and nukes, while your stupid proxy takes over glowing barren wasteland....

LoneSnark · January 30, 2002, 10:37

Speaking of nukes! I was so proud of the AI a few games ago!
I was playing America and neighbor, Germany, was much larger than I. Well, a war broke out, I cannot remember who started it anymore, and this massive army of tanks was thrust into my territory. (dozens and dozens of panzers and modern armor, etc) Well, I didn't have much of an army to speak of, but I had a few tactical nukes :-) After just two strikes, every unit in the entire invasion force was either dead or dying. (nothing two modern armors couldn't handle)
However, once Germany's turn came around, one could say the war escallated. Every single one of my cities was hit with an ICBM. Talk about being prepared! The AI had been running in cold war mode and I never knew. That is a lot of ICBMs. There was no way I could resist now, (all my nukes were destroyed) Anyway, I will always be impressed by that turn of events I just described.

Hurricane · January 30, 2002, 10:55

Wow! Must have been quite some shock.

In my current game I built 3 ICBM:s which I used with much success. I´m playing on a huge map (7 civs), emperor level. All civs except the Chinese are on one big continent, of which I have about 60%. The other civs on the continent are small and much behind in tech. The Chinese, however, have their own island, and have the same techs as me.

When the small civs allied and declared war on me I had to chance to communism because of war weariness. Since I was in the space race with China I felt a bit threathened by them. With increased corruption, advances now took 11 turns for me. So I decided to send a task force to Beijing.

I managed to capture Beijing and destroy the spaceship, but only with severe losses. I only ha 3 mech inf a 2 modern armor left. So instead of waiting for the inevitable counterattack I nuked his 3 largest cities. Guess who immediately showed up at the peace negaotiations?

Now its time to take care of the Germans and Zulus.

barefootbadass · January 30, 2002, 13:10

Quote:

Originally posted by notyoueither
Until 4 out of 5 ICBMs are blown away by SDI.

Yeah, but you have quite a while before SDI is even a factor unless someone beelines for it while ignoring some of the other space race techs, but if your research is that fast it might do better to try to win the space race with a bunch of ICBMs(great pre-builds for the components too, although I doubt the ai switchs production except when it gets beaten to a wonder or an upgrade becomes available for a unit).

Quote:

Originally posted by LoneSnark
However, once Germany's turn came around, one could say the war escallated. Every single one of my cities was hit with an ICBM. Talk about being prepared! The AI had been running in cold war mode and I never knew. That is a lot of ICBMs. There was no way I could resist now, (all my nukes were destroyed) Anyway, I will always be impressed by that turn of events I just described.

Wow. I guess the lesson to be learned here is that if an ai has nukes you need to use all your ICBMs and at least have your tactical nukes out in the field/oceans when your turn ends. And capture several cities for them to waste nukes on(do they use them on their cities you just captured?).

barefootbadass · January 30, 2002, 13:15

Quote:

Originally posted by Hurricane
I managed to capture Beijing and destroy the spaceship

You can still do that? Actually it makes more sense now than it did in civ 2 where you capped a capital while the ship was en route.

I'm glad you can do that, the spaceship has to be somewhere.

Arathorn · January 30, 2002, 13:51

Yes, you can still destroy spaceships "on the ground". Be warned, though, that you have to capture the capital. If you just raze the capital (which is my modus operandi come the modern age, to prevent culture flips), the spaceship movs with the capital to the new location.

This really makes a spaceship destruction mission more of a raid. Zoom in, "capture" the capital long enough to destroy the spaceship, and then watch the inevitable culture flip back to the original civ. Mission accomplished.

Arathorn

Jack_www · January 30, 2002, 14:05

In the game I just finished and won by space race, I played on some more and I have about 14 ICBM and about the same number of tacital nukes. Three other AI civs have nueclear weapons as well. I have SDI. Every time I launch my nueaclear weapons I also get hit by the AI civs and all the major powers in the world declare war on me. One thing the computer does is if you have SDI it keeps trying to hit the same city, even if it takes 4 or 5 ICBMs to do it. Some times the second one they fire hits and other times it takes quiet a few hits before the ICBMs get through. So even if someone has SDI you can get their cities with nueclear weapons but will take a lot of them to do it.

Aeson · January 30, 2002, 14:37

Quote:

Originally posted by Arathorn
This really makes a spaceship destruction mission more of a raid. Zoom in, "capture" the capital long enough to destroy the spaceship, and then watch the inevitable culture flip back to the original civ. Mission accomplished.

A good idea might be to give the capitol to another Civ after you have destroyed the spaceship. All your units in the city will be transported back to your capitol, and the Civ you gave the city to will have a better chance of keeping it. This is because when you give away a city, all the citizens automatically become the nationality of the receiving Civ.