What about NUCLEAR WAR?

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

OK guys, don't know about you, but I DEFINITLY feel that nuclear weapons are WAAAAY underpowered in this game!
So, in order to redress this imbalance, I would suggest the following changes.

1) i. If you hit a city of less than 3 pop (civ3 equivalent) then it is destroyed-leaving in it's wake a single colonist with 1 hp!
ii. If the city has <8 pop. then the population should drop by 1/3 (rounding up).
iii. If a city has >8 pop. then the population is halved (rounding up!)

2) The city square, and all squares within a 1 hex radius are 'polluted'-but with a special kind of pollution. There is an absolute minimum amount of time it takes to depollute such a square-no matter HOW many workers you put on it-and it takes twice as long to clean up as ordinary pollution. Plus you need a new tech in order to clean this pollution type.

3) Every turn that a city square is 'radioactive', there is an X% chance of a citizen becoming unhappy, and an X/2% of a citizen dying. These chances are increased for every tile, in the city radius, which is also radioactive.

4) If a city loses ALL of its population, due to radiation, then the city remains intact, but with a population of zero (meaning that it can be repopulated).

5) Each turn, one random hex-adjacant to a radioactive hex-has a % chance of becoming radioactive as well (fallout spread). The number of consecutive radioactive hexes will determine the chance of radiation spreading.

6) Units at the epicentre of a nuclear blast are totally destroyed-unless they are within a city, in which case 75% are destroyed, and the rest are reduced to 1 hp! The latter also applies to units 1 hex away from the epicentre. In addition, any unit trying to occupy a radioactive hex (or city) has a chance of losing 1hp per turn! This would prevent the use of nuclear weapons from being used as a means of taking a city from an enemy-as the radiation is JUST as likely to kill your units as theirs!

7) It should be possible, in the editor, to give different nuclear weapons variable 'attack strengths', to reflect both their different uses, and their increasing, overall strength over time. So some might be built to destroy cities, whilst others are intended to kill people, whilst leaving buildings intact. This same editor feature could likely be used to design biological and chemical weapons as well!

Anyway, those are just a few of my ideas, does anyone have any more, and do people think that my ideas will make nuclear weapons more 'fun', or less 'fun'?

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[lajzar]

You have a strange idea on radiation. After the initial explosion and windbourne dispersion, radiation doesn't really spread.

However, some kind of spreading pollution model would be useful for persistent biowarfare/nanobot attacks. Nope, these don't exist either yet, but could conceibaly exist, and nanobot plagues are a staple of SF.

As for radiation causes unhappiness, ordinary pollution should be doing that too, as well as reducing population growth. After all, pollution is quite literally, stuff that kills people if you hang out where it is at. Slowly, to be sure, but still lethal.

As for how much damage, a nuke does, I'd say first, any population over X is lost automatically. Second, make Y checks. Each failed check (50% chance) indicates an additional population point lost. So a city buster nuke might have values of 12 and 10, meaning that first, reduce the population to 12, then make 10 50:50 checks to kill an additional point. Cities with a population of 5 hit by such a nuke would very likely be destroyed. Obviously, once a city goes to 0 population, it is considered razed.

I agree we need a detailed WMD model so we can design our very own WMDs.

I wonder if the FBI is monitoring this thread yet?