Nuclear War=Deserts

[Christantine The Great]

Nuclear war really should cause more environmental damage than in Civ II. All you got from hurling around millions of megatons of uranium was a slight decrease in land and a bunch of jungles. A jungle can eventually be turned into useful land if you spend alot of time terriforming it so if you are a landlocked empire you would able to recover eventually. I think that nuclear weapons in Civ III should cause increadible damage to the land surrounding a city. The city should get surrounded by a new terrain maybe called "Nuclear Flats". These flats would harm things close to it and also the city it surrounds. The circle would go out one square length for more powerful weapons. The Nuclear Flats would only be able to be changed into a radioactive Desert which would have to be cleaned (Long time) then transformed into useful terrain (Extreamly long time). The city that had just been nuked would teeter on the edge of death for years to come until all terrain around it is healed from nuclear war. The ground would not come out perfectly clean, though. The ground would lose one of each property (Shields, ect.) and if it had a special resource it would be lost forever. If the damage is too extensive you could abandon the cities and move away. Any unit located in Nuclear Flats would lose 10% of their health unless they had "Nuclear protection gear" (One reason to have a Unit Workshop). Same with a radioactive desert except you only lose 5% of the unit's health per turn. If a river ran through a Nuclear Flat square than any land on the river would be poisoned by one square per turn. You could have workers build dams down the river to contain the pollution. Of course the river would dry up along with any irrigation/farming. If you chose to build a dam infront of the pollution you could divert the river to reach the land past the pollution. If you let the pollution reach the ocean you would be in big trouble with the other nations on earth. The pollution would spread from the mouth of the river to one ocean square every turn unless contained by using ships to contain it.

[jdlessl]

I partly agree with you, though I think the environmental damage in Civ2 starts far too easily. For instance, there have been several hundred nuclear weapons detonated on earth in the past 50 years. In civ that would turn everything into a swampland, but looking out my window I see no such catastrophe taking place.

The long-term land damage is a good idea. It would certainly have to depend on the weapon used, as well as how it was used. A small tactical nuke detonated say, 4 km up would produce very little fallout and the land would return to normal after only a few years. A 5 to 10 Megaton groundburst would poison the land for a hell of a lot longer and produce fallout that'll cover a large area (3 or 4 squares).

Other than that, I like the Death Zone idea. Modeling wind patterns and fallout in rivers will be really hard though.

--
Jared Lessl

[Shogun Gunner]

quote: Originally posted by jdlessl on 11-18-2000 05:02 PM I partly agree with you, though I think the environmental damage in Civ2 starts far too easily. For instance, there have been several hundred nuclear weapons detonated on earth in the past 50 years. In civ that would turn everything into a swampland, but looking out my window I see no such catastrophe taking place. -- Jared Lessl

Haven't most of those been underground?

The first two (Japan WWII) were very low yield compared to what's out there today. One was over an atoll during a test by US military after WWII. They destroyed a small fleet during the test (accurate to Civ II when you nuke a bunch of ships grouped together!) Besides these examples, most were underground.