What was the biggest nuclear war you've ever been in?

[johncmcleod]

What was the biggest nuclear war you've ever been in? What was the world like afterwards? And who won? Screenshots would be nice. The only times I have ever nuked another nation is when I had nukes and they didn't. I hate global warming, and nukes cause a ton of that. I've always been to scared to war with another country with nukes.

[Trifna]

I guess it's when I mass produced nukes... my goal? RAZING. China and France had big and ancient cities next to me, with strong cultural influence. I also wanted an important island that I possessed half to become only mine.

So, me the machiavelic greek, ICBMed and nuked many, and sent tanks to put raze the cities. Results? All capitals were nuked, most important cities, I got my island, etc.


I was bored of the game and wanted to see what would be the result.

[Aramis]

Only involved in 1 nuclear war. I dropped 12 ICBMs and several tactical nukes (from nuc subs) on the Iroquois in one turn. I targetted their capital, and certain resources (to wreck roads&rails). Result: Their capital was reduced back to a town (pop:1), and they lost use of the targetted resources (oil&uranium). They launched their 3 ICBMs at me, targetting insignificant cities (????). Result? I'll never know--the game crashed.

Haven't reached the point where nuc war is possible in any other game since.

[Lucarse]

I had a Nuke war recently which had a strange side effect.

(this was PTW to) I was launching an assualt on Korea they had only ROP treaties and no nukes as they did not have uranium, and could not trade it (by luck i had 90% of the worlds uranium stocks).

They had a big military so for my invasion to be effective i nuked all their key cites (about 18 of them) and rolled my armour in getting 4 cites in the first go.

The moment the first nuke fell Rome declared war on me! even though they did not have an MPP with korea.

They had a shed load of nukes and even with integrated defence they got quite a few through and really stuffed my war effort, i had to pull out of korea to face Rome's considerable military.

(Late Game Warlord) Has any body seen this happen?

[Jamski]

Every time I've used nukes all the Civs in the world have declared war on me. Even ones with MPP with me. That can hurt if they're tooled up too.

-Jam

[Lucarse]

Ooooh yeah, i was cleaning up pollution for the next 10 years.

They also went out for some naval units (i had them massed together) i have never seen the AI do this before.

[pedrojedi]

The AI hates nuclear wars; good to me. I hate them as well!

[Verto]

I've tried to use nukes on a small scale, ie just taking out a large city or army, but it seems impossible to do just that. Everytime I launch a nuke, the entire world turns against me. So, I've found it necessary to build around 15 nukes. That way, when the world declares war on me, I can take out their key cities and prevent an onslaught.

[Killazer]

im in a nuke war now and it isnt going to be pretty. We are each on a very large continent to our own and we have dozens of ICBMs each.

[pedrojedi]

That must hurt.

[BigDork]

Hi everybody...

Attached is a screenshot from my AU204 game. I was in a close race with France to see who would blast off into space first. It came down to the wire but in the end I won. What happened below is what I would have done if I wasn't able to pull it off. Don't you love all the ooze?

BigD

[pedrojedi]

I can feel the heat. Nuclear summer season coming!

[Aramis]

In my only nuke war game (briefly described above), civs I had an MPP with did not declare war on me, but joined me after my (surprise) first strike against the Iroquois, the common foe. Rome, the only civ w/out an MPP w/either side, declared war against me. When the Iroquois struck me back, Rome then declared war on them as well. That, sigh, is when the game crashed.

[pedrojedi]

Usually when my game crashes, I try doing something different with a reload to try to avoid the crash and continue the game. People here seem to declare the game over. Is it just some people, or there's a lot of people who declares the game's over when the program crashes?

[Mad Bomber]

Ive fought a few too many nuc wars, seems like any game I start ends in at least a limited nuc exchange. Thank god for the SDI SW!

My favorite game was when I was racing India to Alpha Centauri. It was literally neck and neck, then I nuked Delhi, signed a ROP with the Iroqouis, and razed Delhi to the ground. Then I blasted off to AC, content with my victory


Lucarse:

Any civ that is not at war with the civ you nuke will declare war on your cv after a first strike.

Petro:

It depends on what happened before the crash and if it is still playable (would it still be fun?)

[Verto]

Usually when the game crashes on me, it's been about 3 hours since I last saved, and I just couldn't bear to do it all over again.

I have this same problem when playing Star Wars Rebellion - ach!

[Arrian]

I've only used nukes once in CivIII, if memory serves. It was shortly after the game came out, playing on warlord or something, as Babylon.

I had gained an English city via culture flip in the late ancient or early middle ages. I then spent millenia building it up. In the modern age, after all the work I put into it, it flipped back on me.

Instead of coming to 'poly and opening a thread to ***** and moan about it, I nuked London. All hell promptly broke loose, but I was able to finish and launch my SS before too much damage was done.

-Arrian

[Verto]

Excellent move.


I wish the AI would build more nukes, thus a MAD situation.

[Wycoff]

I am about ready to unleash a major nuclear war on the Persians (Major being about 20 ICBMs, 15-25 tactical Nukes). We are the only two civs left, and both control giant continents. Persia has repeatedly declared war on me throughout the game, recently trying an invasion of my continent (which I crushed mercilessly). They are a monarchy and I am a democracy, and I am about 5 techs ahead of them. They have over 160 MIs, so the only rasonable way that I can conquer them is through a massive Nuclear assault . It will be in about 20 turns or so. I'll post before and after pictures to show the destruction.

[Chemical Ollie]

I've seen the AIs nuke each other more often than I've been involved myself. One thing I have noticed is that hey hardly ever have the ground troops in place to take advantage of the deed. I've seen my ally nuke our common enemy so my nearby ground troops could easily take the cities.

But I haven never seen a game with more than perhaps 5-10 blasts in total.

[badams52]

Originally posted by Verto


Excellent move.

I wish the AI would build more nukes, thus a MAD situation.

Must be that you're too advanced for the AI to have the time to build as many nukes as you. I have seen large AI stores, but when he uses them, he's not always too bright. Often bombing the same city over and over and over. My SDI was destroying many of the nukes, but the stupidity of the AI remained.

Best strat, conventionally take out the SDI city, then it's open season...

For a look on the dangers of global warming and nukes, take a look at this thread.

[Aramis]

Originally posted by pedrojedi
Usually when my game crashes, I try doing something different with a reload to try to avoid the crash and continue the game. People here seem to declare the game over. Is it just some people, or there's a lot of people who declares the game's over when the program crashes?

I reloaded the game from auto save more than once, did things different (but admittedly not very) and the game still crashed. Gave that one up. That one only. Because its the only one that ever crashed on my system.

I wouldn't consider the game over due to crash. I would do as you do, but frustration ruled at that moment and swept me up in it.
I was hoping it wasn't a bug in the game causing it. Maybe its just time to upgrade my system.

[pedrojedi]

Oh, my very same problem ...

[Wycoff]

I finished my nuclear war with the AI last night. I completely destroyed the previously dominant Persian forces, something that I could not have done without the nukes. I used around 30 ICBMs, destroying the industrial base of Persia, and 11 or 12 Tactical Nukes, used both on cities and on naval forces. The tactical nukes on nuclear submarines shredded the AI naval battle groups, usually consisting of 4 or 5 battleships, a carrier and bombers. I'll try and post some before and after pictures.

[Wycoff]

Here is the comparison of my Army (the Germans) and the Persian army right after the Persians invaded my continent. They brought in two transports full of Mech Inf and Modern Armor, which they unloaded on a single mountain in the far north near a miinor city. I used a tactical nuke on this stack, moping up the remnants with a few modern armors.

[Wycoff]

Here. Persians control the Green area, and their numbers are on the right side of the screen. Notice the 149 mech infantry! (I had already nuked 12 or 13 of them in that invasion stack.)

[Wycoff]

Here is the result of my combined nuclear holocaust/ MA invasion. I used my 24 original ICBMs to destroy their industrial heartland(the center of the Persian continent) to prevent them from replenishing their forces. I then built 6 more ICBMs to assist my MA in taking cities on the "arms"of the continent that were still well guarded. The war still took about 20 turns, but the Persians were never able to recover their industrial strength. I kept pumping out MAs and overpowered them. Without the help of those nukes Persia would have been able to continuously produce Mech Infantry and I would have never have been able to defeat them. They would have eventually discovered ICBMs themselves, and I would have been on the receiving end of a holocaust.

I razed their cities in payment for 2000 years of Persian extortion and 3 unprovoked invasions of Germany. I now plan to clean up the pollution and win in 2049 via the space race. (I allowed one Persian city to survive on a small island completely surrounded by my navy) I have a save of my game of the turn just after I noked their invasion force but before I used my ICBMs. (The save file is from the same turn as my first screenshot.) If anyone wants to reinact this holocaust I can post the save.

[Arrian]

You made the world a horrible, horrible place. Are you at least putting the Persian refugees to work cleaning up that mess?

Damn. By the way, you could have beaten them conventionally. Take all the shields you invested in nukes, and instead make Modern Armor, and you would have quite a strike force. Unlike a human, the AI does not concentrate its forces properly, so you were never going to see those 140+ Mech Infantry all at once. They were distributed throughout the Persian Empire, and you could have picked off cities one by one.

It probably would have taken longer, though, I'll grant you that.

-Arrian

[BigDork]

Arrian...

You forgot the best part of nuclear war. It's a lot of fun. There's nothing like turning all the enemy territory into orange ooze. Of course you better make sure you are gonna end the game soon or the global warming will hurt but that's not something I generally think about before my ICBM's are streaking through the skies.

BigD

[Wycoff]

Arrian,

Yeah, I might have been able to have slowly ground out the AI through endless MAs, but as you said, it would have taken forever. A fortified MIs supported by radar towers, inside of size 15+ cities with Civil Defense improvements would have taken many MAs to destroy, and the AI would be churning out MIs and MAs the whole time. The shields that I devoted to 30 ICBMs would have given me 135-150 MA's right? The ICBMs did as much damage as those MAs, only much quicker. I built the tactical nukes before I had Synthetic Fibers, and I mainly used them for naval operations, a role in which the MAs would obviously have been useless.

It usually took 2 or 3 MAs to take out a single fortified MI inside of a size 7 citiy. The ICBMs took out multiple MIs at once, along with MAs. When you consider that the pollution in effect "pillaged" the squares around their cities, obstructed unit movement, halved their population making the cities easier to attack, and severely reducing AI productivity. The 150 extra MAs would have done alot of damage, but not as much as the ICBMs did. I would have lost 25 or 30 of them at least attacking their large cities. Plus, the war weariness would have completely destroyed my Democracy. I think that the ICBMs were cost effective considering the scope of their damage, the effects on the AI's production and the fact that they severely weakened each city's defensive rating.(Besides, I wanted to nuke the Persians. They were asking for it the entire game )

I still have 70 or so turns before the end of the game, with hundreds of slave workers that I had captured throughout the years, so I can get my mess cleaned up. That was my first Civ 3 nuclear war, and I really enjoyed it.