Culture points vs The use of Nukes

Borels · February 25, 2002, 13:31

I don't think it is realistic to throw nukes everywhere on the map. There should be something to confine the use of nukes other than "the AI hates you more". In particular, this isn't going to work in MP games. Human players would not help out the victim like the AI does, they would throw more nukes to the victim like fireworks and grasp their share of the land.

I suggest that the use of nukes should lower the culture points of the nation e.g. -10% for every nuke used. With lower culture points, other AI nations hate you more and it would be increasingly difficult to keep the empire intact.

I think it's feasible because there's always people in the country who dislikes the use of massive weapons (and wars). Strong countries with immense cultural influence in the globe (e.g. the Americans try to put their values as the global standard) can tolerate the use of a few nukes (e.g. against Japan) but definitely not 20 nukes. There will be strikes everywhere in the country. Also countries with minute cultural influence in the world (e.g. Iraq) is difficult to tolerate the use of nuke because their values are not widely accepted in the world which makes it difficult for them to justify their use of nukes. They would face political pressures from all other countries...etc.

What do you guys think?

Adagio · February 25, 2002, 13:43

Sounds interesting, that might make me stop the use of nukes

Todd Hawks · February 25, 2002, 14:58

Instead of reducing culture (which doesn't really hurt you), I think it would be better to add some kind of nuke-resistance in your own population.
So whenever you use a nuke you will get lots of unhappy people and have difficulties in keeping your empire productive.

Maybe with some retaliation check so the penalty isn't as big if you don't strike first.

Yodasplat · February 25, 2002, 15:16

All that plus this:
every second or third nuke you chuck at an enemy you are going to have a catastrofic increase in pollution squares planet-wide.
So much that after 5 or 6 nukes you are going to have world-wide starvation and if you keep that going you are going to have the whole planet covered in pollution.
Don't know what the AI would do about it but
#1 it's realistic cause 10 nukes going off in the space of a month would definetly do something NOT-nice to the world climate in the real world IMO.
#2 human players would not just stand aside and let you wreak their own civilizations by chucking nukes at somebody else. Only risk in this case is that you are going to have a human player trashing an MP game in nuclear winter just cause he's bored.

I say all this of course in the hope that someday we will have MP games with CivIII.... *sigh*

ACooper · February 25, 2002, 15:18

Maybe something like 2 unhappy faces per city when you nukes and 1 unhappy face made content when you are attacked with nukes?

Spec · February 25, 2002, 15:24

Quote:

Originally posted by ACooper
Maybe something like 2 unhappy faces per city when you nukes and 1 unhappy face made content when you are attacked with nukes?

I agree. And it should also lower the gold/per turn you get or loer commerce somehow because other nations could stop dealing with you and all. Just a thought.

Spec.

Worthingtons · February 25, 2002, 15:37

1 unhappy face content when you are attacked!?!??!

I'm not i'd make me very happy if someone nuked Sheffield or summat and killed a load of my friends!!

Whoha · February 25, 2002, 15:51

6 tanks are a much better buy then one "ruins the whole world, causes global warming destroys all life and turns it into a desert, but only has a 50% chance to kill each unit in a stack and doesnt destroy cities" nuke, now they do have a cool animation, but its just not worth it. tanks can also raze cities.

korn469 · February 25, 2002, 15:54

just add in M.A.D.

mutally assured destruction would stop all of the nuking especially if you combined it would more powerful nukes
as it is right now you could nuke a size one city an infinite amount of times and it will never dies, basically if a town (a level one city that is 6 population or less) gets nukes it should be wiped off the map...that coupled with M.A.D. and cheaper nukes (no more than 300 or 400 for an ICBM) and suddenly we'd have REAL incentive not to start nuclear wars

EDIT:
whoha i completely agree with you

(though iirc i think they lowered the cost of nukes to 500 in 1.16f but still they are WAY to expensive for what they do)

Captain · February 25, 2002, 17:21

good ideas all, but I have to say that MAD is best idea so far.

without MAD, you can still have first strike attacks that are too advantageous - even with nukes as weak as they are.

with MAD, you could up the power and lower the cost to better values without worrying about first strike being too strong. it would also allow for a cold-war type feeling.

here's a simple way to do it:
1. set each nuke you own to a target city.
2. set retaliatory settings (which would automatically run when a nuke goes off, even if not your turn)
a. if N# cities hit, launch M# retaliatory missiles
b. if N#cities hit, launch all missiles targetted against aggressor
c. if N# cities hit, launch all missiles at everyone (holds entire world hostage)
d. if N# allied cities hit, do a, b, or c.

I can't imagine coding it would be more than a few days work, though setting up the interface to look nice might take a while longer.

I'm thinking ICBMs here, not sure what to do about tactical nukes.

Goatguy · February 25, 2002, 17:41

I was reading this book on the cold war, and it talked about the russians having a "MAD boat". In otherwords if the communism fell or lenin died, the entire world would blow up. They should have one of those in Civ3, having 1 defense, 1 movment, and the power of like 100 nukes. When you bombard a square, the entire world is "ended"

It might cost 2000 shields, and be classisifed as a small wonder, but its a hell of a way to "comeback" if your in last place

Yodasplat · February 25, 2002, 17:47

Yeah but how about, instead of ending the game, you are left instead with a polluted world, each player is left with 1-2 cities and each player loses all or almost all of your techs and units, no matter if they started the war or not.

Or maybe most of the cities disappear and all remaining cities just get reduced to 1 or 2 in size and become "barbarian" cities?

So each player will find him/herself with 2 cities in a polluted cold-ridden world, half of the cities of the world are gone, most of the player's techs are gone and the rest of the surviving cities are bararian cities.

A post-apocalyptic civ game....

korn469 · February 25, 2002, 18:19

Captain

Quote:

with MAD, you could up the power and lower the cost to better values without worrying about first strike being too strong. it would also allow for a cold-war type feeling.

my argument exactly! i'm not sure if you were in on any of the previous M.A.D. debates, but they came to the same conclusion as you did

as far as the actual sequence and way in which the nukes hit, while i would actually like to see a simultaneous strike i don't think it is required, right now firaxis has a M.A.D. system but that is only because ICBMs can't die from nuclear launches from my testing, but the city doesn't die either

what i would like to see is either an automatic system like the one you suggested, or a pretargeted system, or simply a nuclear strike turn, like when a player human or AI launches a nuke, all other actions freeze and then the only thing that can occur is nuclear launches, like the player who started it goes first, and then all other players get a launch turn, and then all of the nukes land before anything else happens

it doesn't seem like it would take that much work to implement, and once a form of M.A.D. was in the game, then making nukes more powerful (like kill 75% of a city instead of 50% and they would kill size 4 and smaller town automatically) wouldn't harm the game

wervdon · February 25, 2002, 20:26

Definately, MAD

Don't worry about setting pre-targets though. While its a tad more realistic its extra tedium.

Easiest way. Just make ICBM's take 1 turn to strike. You launch them on your turn, and they land at the beginning of your next turn. Everyone gets notice of ICBM's "in the air" at the start of their own turn so they can choose to respond in kind if they wish. Also, this way allows diplomacy options to negotiate for sending the abort codes to the ICBM

For example:

Military advisor: Queen Elizibeth, the evil Germans have launched ICBMs heading for London and York!

Elizabeth: Contact Bismark at once!

Bismark: By now you've surely noticed our ICBM's are coming your way.....give us 1000 gold and syntehic fibers and we may choose to abort them.....

Elizabeth: No...thankyou. Military advisor, authorize a full launch of our ICBMs. Now perhaps Bismark, you will like to both push our little red buttons at once......

NOTE: The actual abort button should be on the military advisor screen, and you can lie about aborting it in diplomacy, but it should be a HUGE black mark on your reputation

Also, tactical nukes (being short range) should not be subject to 1 turn delay. They should just operate like now, allowing first strike options and a strategic reason to keep nuclear subs and nukes around

Captain · February 25, 2002, 20:54

hey, that's pretty good. i hadn't thought of that type of arrangement.

one question: if you abort the ICBM in midflight, you lose it, right? So this might add some strategy - retaliate with only some nukes so that if you abort, you'll still have some to use next turn?

on the down side, it's a bit less scary since they might just be bluffing, and if you did know where they were hitting, you could pull your units out of the blast radius on your turn.

still, an interesting idea...

wervdon · February 25, 2002, 21:02

You'd still have tactical nukes for immediate surprise attacks

Also, I think we'd have some notice if Russia did launch ICBMs at us IRL. Probally not more than a hour though, I really dont know what the flight time of a missile is

Id guess anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour.....

Perhaps though the popup shouldn't even say which city the ICBM is going towards (heck we dont even always target at a city now.....they can target any square I think.....) Maybe the popup should just flash a cross hair on the map where the ICBM currently is. (just make it 1/2 way between its launch point and destination point, and up to the player to try to guess where its going) Just imagine a flashing + sign on the mini-map until you close the popup saying a nuke was launched, that says where the ICBM is now and not where its actually going. That would lead to interesting situations where you don't even know if its actually heading for you or not

The germans could of been going to nuke the french, but you'd have no way to know where that active ICBM is going to come down :P

Mike4879 · February 25, 2002, 22:59

If you use nukes unfairly, there should be something like a golden age but in reverse, maybe a "dark age". "Your civilization has entered its Dark Age" if you use them tyranically... the effects of a nuclear attack in civ3 are too underpowered

I also think the game cuts off way too quickly in modern times... too many things to deal with. The game should not really end at 2050.. they should expand on it more.

Civ4 could be awesome... they could use full motion video and sounds for the advisors and diplomacy screens like they were getting close to doing in Civ2. I would like to see atleast a few more government types and options. Espionage is really lacking and is a crucial component that is missing from the modern age.

There needs to be alot of code optimization and cleanup to allow bigger maps and more civilizations. The memory requirements for a 16 civ game on a huge map are too great. The game could use more realism. Tinkering should be done to make the movement of sea-units better.

Just imagine a game of civ on a true-to-earth ratio with 100 other AI civs, I would drool over a game like that. This game has tremendous potential.

GePap · February 25, 2002, 23:25

The two simplest ways of instituing a MAD like scenerio, are, letting subs carry ICBM's or bringing back airfields (or call the silo's if you want) and giving them a 75%chance of surviving a nuclear strike. Thus, with any cities or settlers left, your civ still alive, and on your trun, you get to launch a retaliatory strike.

The 'two turn' option makes more sense if we instituted a sort of nuclear bomber- without the infinite range of ICBMs but capable of hitting a long range- these planes could be recalled in time. Once you launch an ICBM, its done, no recall, nor even abort.

As for the effects of nukes, I think two changes would make them devastating and realitics- one, the amount of damage is based on city size, so that a town is wiped out (with a worker left, as refugges), city is cut by 75% and metropolis by 50%. Sercond, nuclear pollution should work differently than industrial polution. It behaves like jungle in that units in this long-term may loose hitpoints and casues disease in any city nearby- it can only be cleaned after some advanced tech- otherwise it is there permanently, and it covers a larger area, not just the squares around the city. This way, any city that survived the attack would soon starve down and die. I don't think it is necessary that it kill every unit in the square, sicne battlefield units would survive the attack better than a inmobile population center.

jabroni154 · February 26, 2002, 07:28

I really like the idea of a two-turn ICBM launch with the opportunity for diplomacy. I would think also with Satellites you could see any nuclear missile launches from across the globe.

(Speaking of which, perhaps it would be neat to have a spy satellite system such that you could see all of the world or select parts. A military unit or building to build that you could use to see deep inside enemy territory, perhaps even the equivalent of an established spy for a high maintenance cost per turn?)

For the short term, I would prefer even just having some sort of MAD capability in the diplomacy panel. For example, in my last game, 3/4 of the world had nuclear weapons (I had them first, muhahahaha). When negotiating, it would be cool if the AI could say, we have X nuclear weapons and Y ICBMs pointing at you, make your time, all your base belong to to us

Depending upon the AI, they could also fake the number as well (add in an extra 2 or 3 just to add extra weight to the negotiations).

In that last game, it added quite a bit of urgency to establishing a spy to try to find out what the enemy had. Besides everybody declaring war on everyone (alliances meant absolutely nothing in the game), with other folks having nukes, negotiations for war and peace took on a whole new light. Hmmm, if I don't have enough subs patrolling, does Egypt have enough nuclear submarines to launch an attack on my continent. Or, do they have ICBMs and I need to strike first or just cool it.

LaRusso · February 26, 2002, 08:02

many excellent ideas
i like the culture reducing one very much.
2 turn ICBM is also cool, but i am not sure if AI would be able to handle it
also, what kind of routine would AI need to weigh pros and cons of nukes vs. culture. how is it going to decide when it becomes 'worth it'? if it is made to work, though, it would be awesome

Barchan · February 26, 2002, 08:53

FWIW:

The US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan in 1945. The decision was strongly, if not overwhelmingly, supported by the US population. While support for this was considerably lower in Japan, within decades it was a strong ally of the US.

There have been over 2,000 nuclear devices detonated since 1945, with more than 500 being atmospheric detonations. No global catastrophes have been observed; no nuclear winter, no melting icecaps, no widespread pollution. Arguably, the earth is at greater risk of global catastrophe from the increasing use of personal automobiles than from nuclear weapons.

Just some observations....

korn469 · February 26, 2002, 16:36

Barchan

Quote:

While support for this was considerably lower in Japan, within decades it was a strong ally of the US.

the firebombing of tokyo was probably just as horrific as dropping the atomic bombs when you consider number of people lost etc.

the thing about it was we had been at war for over three years, a war in which the japanese started by a sneak attack, and plus it was the first use of those weapons, when germany first used chemical weapons in WWI that didn't raise too much protest from neutral nations, it wasn't like the US entered WWI because of chemical weapons, now after having time to reflect on the use of those weapons the world decided that they are unacceptable, if any nation did use chemical weapons then the entire world would condemn them

Quote:

There have been over 2,000 nuclear devices detonated since 1945, with more than 500 being atmospheric detonations.

if there was a full scale nuclear war there could easily be 10,000+ atmospheric detonations in a matter of days

Quote:

No global catastrophes have been observed; no nuclear winter, no melting icecaps, no widespread pollution

the "nuclear winter" (probably more like a nuclear autumn) if it happened would come from burning cities, industries especially oil and gas storage facilities, and the like, look at all of the smoke and dust from the world trade center and the health effects it appears to have caused then multiply that amount by thousands, if there was a nuclear winter that would be why

Quote:

the earth is at greater risk of global catastrophe from the increasing use of personal automobiles

no arguments on that one! it has been the warmest winter here in my part of virginia in recorded history so far (it has only snowed twice) so i think you're right about that

Barchan · February 27, 2002, 04:07

Quote:

Originally posted by korn469

the firebombing of tokyo was probably just as horrific as dropping the atomic bombs when you consider number of people lost etc.

the thing about it was we had been at war for over three years, a war in which the japanese started by a sneak attack, and plus it was the first use of those weapons, when germany first used chemical weapons in WWI that didn't raise too much protest from neutral nations, it wasn't like the US entered WWI because of chemical weapons, now after having time to reflect on the use of those weapons the world decided that they are unacceptable, if any nation did use chemical weapons then the entire world would condemn them

True. I don't think the US could use nuclear weapons (which are legal weapons under the various Laws of Armed Conflict) without international censure. But still, if it did, I'm not convinced that everyone would impose an immediate trade embargo and declare war unless the US attack was totally unprovoked and unwarranted.

Quote:

Originally posted by korn469
if there was a full scale nuclear war there could easily be 10,000+ atmospheric detonations in a matter of days

the "nuclear winter" (probably more like a nuclear autumn) if it happened would come from burning cities, industries especially oil and gas storage facilities, and the like, look at all of the smoke and dust from the world trade center and the health effects it appears to have caused then multiply that amount by thousands, if there was a nuclear winter that would be why

Again, true. But that's for full-scale nuclear war between superpowers. A few nukes, even 5-10mt strategic nukes, here and there would not cloak the planet in a Dr. Strangelove-style "Doomsday Shroud." Tactical nukes, which are much smaller, would hardly even muss up the regional environment. That's why I'm not sure the game should impose draconian penalties for the initial use of nuclear weapons, particularly tac nukes. A better approach would be to have the effects expand exponentially for subsequent nuclear strikes.

Quote:

Originally posted by korn469
no arguments on that one! it has been the warmest winter here in my part of virginia in recorded history so far (it has only snowed twice) so i think you're right about that

Indeed. Thank you president Eisenhower for the Federal Interstate Highway system. Speaking of which, BTW, did you know that Hawaii has an interstate highway? Yep. Boy, Senator Inoue sure knows how to bring home the bacon (pork) to his constituents, eh?