Mutually Assured Destruction

[QuixotesGhost]

Something I've always wanted to see in a Civ game are simultaneous nuke launches. Player A launches his ICBMs at Player B, Player B gets a popup informing him that there have been launches detected from Players As silos, Player B gets to pick targets with his ICBMs and the nukes detonate at the same time.

I'd think it'd be pretty cool.

Possible fun ways to play around with this:

Perhaps, Only ICBMs are privy to this rule, so you could park some subs with tactical nukes off his coast and clobber him in a sneak attack. And if you used spies and found out an enemy had a tac nuke within striking range of one of your cities you could use diplomacy to make him move it. Cuban Missle Crisis in Civ!

Or Maybe, you only get the popup after you build the NORAD small wonder, giving you M.A.D. as a deterant before you get SDI as one.

[lajzar]

Having popups asking who to shoot would be impractical under any kind of multiplayer, especially hotseat play. A better idea.

Any nuke can be put under a standing order. This would put it out of active use as if under a sentry order, but the order would be on the lines of:

If city X is hit by a nuke, immediately launch and attack city Y.

Note that this order takes no account of who launched the nuke, or who owns the specified cities. Given the time pressure relevant to MAD scenarios, time to make targetting decisions like that aren't possible. Historically, MAD relied on the assumption that only one other empire (Soviet bloc) could launch nukes. This makes MAD 'interesting' in a multipolar world.

I'd make only city based nukes eligible for MAD orders. Subs aren't generally in constant communication with the home base, and so wouldn't necessarily be able to launch instantly. Besides, being on an advance mobile platform is a pretty powerful advantage for a nuke anyway.

I don't think it should require a wonder though. It should become available with computers. It is a sufficiently risky order that it carries its own penalties if used.

[QuixotesGhost]

Nah, having preset MAD contingincies for each nuke would require way to much micromanagment. Everytime your alliances shift you'd have to change the targeting orders on every single ICBM you have. And what about the one ICBM you happened to forget?

Even though its not relalistic, being able to select your targets during the launches is just an abstraction of having your MAD contingincies already planned.

I don't think it'd cause too much problems with MP if you made it a specialized phase.

For example:

Player #1 does the unthinkable and decides he wants to start a shooting war with nuclear weapons. Immediatley Player #1 turn enters a special ICBM phase. He picks his targets. He doesn't finish his turn now, Instead the phase gets sent to the next player. Player #2, Player #3, Player #4, so on and so forth pick targets for thier ICBMs. After all players have picked thier targets, the ICBMs are resolved. Then Player #1 gets to finish the rest of his turn. Then the Turn gets sent to Player #2 and play resumes as normal.

You might even have a movie to go along with this phase to convey the gravity of the situation to the players. Something like a Dr.Strangelove or 13 Days general informing you that you have nukes inbound and that a massive widescale retalitory nuclear strike is the only decent course of action. You also gotta include some sort of "big board", with ballistic paths arcing back and forth across it.

Even though it sound like this might be kinda inturupting to the normal flow of the game, keep in mind that it would come up very rarely. Most people don't lob nukes back and forth on a whim.

[GePap]

IN civ 3 nukes do not destroy cities, nor do they destroy enemy ICBM's. SO if you attack someone with ICBM's, understand they will have the time and capability to respond once their turn comes UNLESS you coupled your nuclear attack with a lighting ground campaign that destroyed all their ICBM's on the ground.

[lajzar]

Nah, having preset MAD contingincies for each nuke would require way to much micromanagment. Everytime your alliances shift you'd have to change the targeting orders on every single ICBM you have. And what about the one ICBM you happened to forget?

It wouldn't be a problem if within the military advisor there was a seperate MAD advisor who would list all nukes that have MAD orders set.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by lajzar
It wouldn't be a problem if within the military advisor there was a seperate MAD advisor who would list all nukes that have MAD orders set.

This still wouldn't eliviate the problem of having to reset the orders every time your diplomatic relationships change.

[joncha]

There was a pretty good thread on this a month or so ago.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=105498

My feeling on the issue is that on the military advisory screen there should be an option to target the nukes in you arsenal and a "failsafe" switch that you can set that will automatically fire all of your targetted nukes in case of an enemy first strike.

The targetting could be a simple as "select enemy civ" or as complicated as "select target tile." Also, you should be able to set the failsafe to a) "attack all targets" b) "attack enemy and all allies" or c) "attack enemy only."

jon.

[QuixotesGhost]

QUOTE]IN civ 3 nukes do not destroy cities, nor do they destroy enemy ICBM's. SO if you attack someone with ICBM's, understand they will have the time and capability to respond once their turn comes UNLESS you coupled your nuclear attack with a lighting ground campaign that destroyed all their ICBM's on the ground.[/QUOTE]

True, True. But then again I don't really feel that Civ 3 nukes really convey the absolute desperation and madness of a full scale nuclear war. I would like to see their power upped somewhat. Probaly destruction of all military untis within the city limits, and reducing population to 1/4.

A failsafe switch might be intresting if you could quickly and easily set useful perameters for it as in "Attack Egypt's Military Centers" or "Attack Russia's Closest Cities".

[GePap]

Civ 3 does not convey the desperation and madness of ANY wars, so I don't see why so much should be put in into planning one possible eventuality that hopefully would not come up in 95% of games.

[Leland]

How about: instead of in-game nukes, the retaliatory strike would wipe out your hard drive? There's desperation and madness for you.

The thing is, there's no way to portray "desperation and madness" in a game that's played just for fun. Instead of avoiding a mutually assured destruction, you'd want to see the world blow up sometimes, just for the hell of it. Especially if it looks like you're losing, in which case there's absolutely no reason to go for a tie by way of a nuclear holocaust.

[Fosse]

I like the MAD model proposed in the last thread:

ICBMs take two turns to get to their target. If someone shoots one at you, you are notified and have the chance to launch your arsenal before theirs impacts on the next turn. Thus, both sides are hit.

This incorporates MAD, makes nuclear exchanges longer and more exciting, and is more realistic than Civ 3's system in which ICBMs that are on the ground are just invincible.

The only downside was that nuclear exchanges wind up taking an extra turn. More than reasonable sacrifice for such a good system, in my opinion.

[lajzar]

ICBMs take two turns to get to their target...

... and is more realistic than Civ 3's system in which ICBMs that are on the ground are just invincible.

Given that a turn is at least a year, you propose that a system in which an ICB< takes 2 years to arrive is more realistic?

[Fosse]

Originally posted by lajzar


Given that a turn is at least a year, you propose that a system in which an ICB< takes 2 years to arrive is more realistic?

And soldiers take a thousand years to travel across Europe, and it takes six centuries to build a library and... blah blah blah.

Events in Civ type games will always be telescoped one way or another in time. If you are prepared to make the argument that realistic travel times are the way to go then you had better be prepared to argue for giving all units infinite movement for the whole game. Nothing else would be "realistic" given the relationship between turn lenghts and technology levels throughout the game.



And, to be fair, I did not propose this idea. Mrmitchell did in the thread that joncha provided us a link for. I'm endorsing it, though, because it is the best idea I've seen yet to satisfy the general want of a nuclear MAD.

[Agathon]

Just make it so that ICBMs cannot be destroyed by other ICBMs and that is about the only unit that cannot be.

That's always worked for me.