Nuclear Whiffle Ball

[Knecht]

I just tried something that I've never done before, though mainly just to see what would happen. The results were both unsatisfactory and peculiar. The situation is this:
It's about 1990. I'm playing on a huge map as China and am in second place on points (playing with Conquest as the only victory condition). In first place is France with maybe a third more territory and a couple hundred points on me. I'm thinking it's going to be hard to catch up because they also have a good cultural lead (well, they are French). The only solution seems to be taking them down a few notches so I decide to try nuking them. This is, of course, very naughty but, what the hell, it's only a game. It is only a game, isn't it? Anyway, after a lot of prep, I finally launch an all out attack and hit about thirty of their cities with ICBMs. This makes a big mess. The other two remaining Civs, America and England, both declare war on me, so now I have my hands full. While I can't say I didn't see this coming, I also thought it wouldn't matter. My plan was to flatten all these French cities and then roll over them in one turn. Didn't work. First of all, all that nuking a city seems to do is reduce population. It doesn't do much to the defensive units and, more importantly, doesn't seem to reduce the cultural borders. As a consequence, I couldn't get my Modern Armor close enough to attack in the first move and by the next turn still had to go up against a lot of Mechanized Infantry defending these cities. Basically, I was stopped at the first rank of cities and immediately had to spend all my resources defending against the counterattack. The peculiar thing was that someone (I don't know who, not that it matters) commenced dropping about twenty or thirty ICBMs on Hangchow and nowhere else. Pretty tough on the Hangchowese but rather an odd strategy because they could have hurt me a lot more by spreading those missiles around. In any event, I won't try that again soon. Not only is it unrealistic but also offers very low mileage. I think I could have done much better with a standard assault using combined arms and investing cities as I went. Has anyone else tried this with better results? Is there a way to make it work?

[Panzer32]

IIRC nuking kills about half the defenders in a city. It also pilliages all tiles surrounding it. It is a good strategy on the first turn of a war, to nuke the tiles with strategic resources on them so they can't make lots of stuff. Also concerning diplomatic relations I find that, if someone else starts the nuking, I can get away with 1 or 2 nukes per turn.

[G'Kar]

Originally posted by Knecht
The peculiar thing was that someone (I don't know who, not that it matters) commenced dropping about twenty or thirty ICBMs on Hangchow and nowhere else. Pretty tough on the Hangchowese but rather an odd strategy because they could have hurt me a lot more by spreading those missiles around.

Did you have SDI? IF you are destroying incoming missles the AI will often continue to target the same city. If these warheads were getting through and detonating, that's quite a bug.

[Knecht]

No, I didn't have SDI or any kind of air defense. They just knocked Hangchow back to population one, destroyed all the city improvements (except those I get from wonders) and all the defensive units. Looking back at the saved map, I notice that they also hit two other cities, one missile each. I had earlier destroyed the Zulu and the Greeks and they targeted one former Zulu city and one former Greek city but, as I say, they only hit them once. They dropped at least twenty ICBMs on Hangchow. I stopped playing this game after my plan failed and went back to the prenuclear savegame, so I don't know if they would've continued doing this city by city. If so, it's a bad case of overkill cause I don't think it takes 20+ ICBMs to reduce even a major metro like Hangchow was. It's also expensive. ICBMs are very costly and I doubt they had more than those they already used. I suspect the missiles that hit me were all French because the English and americans were still using infantry and tanks. It took me around fifteen turns to build up the thirty or so nukes I dropped on the French. I doubt if they have more.

[jshelr]

Nukes are underpowered compared with a standard MA blitz, IMO. If you had spent the same shields on MA units, and used settlers to grab land and gain access to cities, you could probably have succeeded in your one-turn blitz and at least could have done a lot more lasting damage. (I tend to use settlers and arty together at this point, but that lengthy process bores most people, evidently.) Knocking out the RR lines that you plan to use for your blitz by nuke bombardment probably does more harm than good. I don't mind lobbing a nuke to another continent, but nearby neighbors are better attacked by conventional means.

[Gufnork]

Nukes have never been designed for conquest. It's pure destructive power. So nukes are for the enemies you don't want to invade, but need to reduce in power.

[Jaybe]

War declaration will occur with anyone who is not at war with your nuc victim or not allied with you.

Personally, I prefer to use nukes as a tactical weapon to hasten to size reduction of a metro I want to take, and only when the political conditions are right. Artillery, bombers, cruise missiles and 4-unit armies are my preferred method.

If someone uses nukes on ME, I have been known to retaliate just because of revenge/surprise/moral selfrighteousness (duh, I get mad).

[realpolitic]

The only time it makes sense to build ICBMs is with a GL, and if you want to pillage try Explorers. Their effect is temporary, but short rnge goals are usually underrated.

[G'Kar]

Originally posted by Jaybe
War declaration will occur with anyone who is not at war with your nuc victim or not allied with you.

Not necessarily. The nuke victim adds +32 hostility points, other neutral civs add +16 hostility points. Thus war declaration is not automatic but nuke useage can send neutral civs over the edge and get them to declare war.

[Yosho]

Nukes are not primarally a millatary weapon, they are more of an economic weapon. With 5 nukes, you can compeltly destroy a civilization's economy. You isolate cities, cut off luxuries, ruin land, slaughter the population, destroy improvements, and can cut off trade if you isolate their capitol. After you nuke someone, you still have to deal with their army, but once you manage to survive the initial attack, they won't be building many more troops for a while, and very often with the loss of rescources the AI's end up building longbowmen or things like that. If someone is to far ahead of you in the tech race, and the other civilizations aren't that important, just nuke the heck out of them, survive the war, cause some other random economic damage if possible (shell their costal cities wit battleships, ect) and make peace. It will be a long time before they recover, and you should be able to pass them in tech and possibly culture.

[Gufnork]

You can also nuke huge stacks marching towards your empire. Then it's a military weapon.

[Verto]

The use of nuclear weapons is justified at times. I wish Civilization realized this.

[LordVipper]

using nukes is a good way to get the lead in either research or culture.you may want to save a couple for later in a war to destroy massed enemy formations.oh you should really have sdi before starting a nuclear holocaust...