Found a use for nukes

[walkern]

I was thinking the same thing... but I wonder if having mutual assured destruction really adds a lot to the gameplay when there's only so much you can do with diplomacy and the AI might just decide to nuke you anyway. Multiplayer I could see it, but if you are against the computer, they might just nuke you anyway. You aren't instilling fear in anyone if you're just playing the AI, and that's what would make it fun.

[LzPrst]

well.... look at history. the cold war for example. the number of nukes.... staggering. enough to destroy the world hundreds of times over. despite the simple obvious fact that it only had to be destroyed once for it to be destroyed....

however I would like to see 2 consecutive effects. first the global warming as in civ1/civ2. rising sea levels, (and desertification as is), then followed by nuclear winter tundra turns to ice and areas close to the poles turn into tundra. that way you would have tundra and ice on the north/south edges of the map, and desert in the middle and the coast would all be swamps. DIE EARTH DIE!!! MAN HAS SHOWN HIS POWER UPON YOU!

of course, the earth itself doesnt really care. its us people that would deem the world as destroyed. the rest of the planet would in time adapt and evolve and eventually thrive. we humans on the other hand would suffer and die. slowly. fighting for scraps of unradiated food and water, degrading into barbarism.

(anyone for signing a nuke ban treaty?)

[Caligula 37 AD]

Originally posted by LzPrst
fighting for scraps of unradiated food and water, degrading into barbarism.

When Phoenix' lifespan ends
He builds a nest of cinnamon twigs
Both he and his nest burn to ashes
And from the ashes of the old world
The new bird Phoenix arises
Collects the ashes from the fallen earth
Embalms the ashes in an egg of myrrah
Keeps it safe in the sun city Heliopolis
The heart of the renewed Sun
Death, Resurrection and Immortality

"The year 2007 AD.
Alexander, you have risen to become leader of the New Greek tribe. Your people have knowledge of Mysticism, Fishing and Hunting. May your reign be longer and more prosperous this time."

[fed1943]

Ah history.The cold war and nukes.
A war with nukes would probably kill,not just billions,but billions+2 (the President of USA and the GSecretary of URSS.There was no global war.
In civ,I hate nukes,they can spoil my game.
Best regards,

[Solver]

I think this is because one ICBM does 50% damage (or has a 50% chance of destroying each thing in the city) to an unprotected city, i.e. reduces units to half-strength, halves population, destroys half the buildings, contaminates half the surrounding squares etc. So two nukes is enough to reduce almost any city to a near helpless state.

Actually, if each nuke destroys exactly 50% of what's in the city, then 25% of original buildings will still be standing after two nukes.

Another thing is that, without modding, nukes will never kill an enemy unit. Drop a dozen nukes, they'll all be at 0.1 HP, but not dead.

[LzPrst]

theres alway a few soldiers hiding in a burnt out tractor factory no matter how much you bomb\nuke\wreck it :P

[Son of David]

Originally posted by Solver
Another thing is that, without modding, nukes will never kill an enemy unit. Drop a dozen nukes, they'll all be at 0.1 HP, but not dead.

With bomb shelters maybe?

I just loaded up a game, entered worldbuilder and gave myself some medieval nukes. I could destroy units in cities no problem.

Mind you it's a big of a joke to launch a nuke against a medieval town and see it only reduced to half-strength. And you're right, it does little damage to buildings.

[Solver]

It either got changed in 152, or works differently than I remembered, damaging units from their base strength, not their current strength. Probably the latter. Then yeah, you can kill with nukes.

BTW, if you're playing in the worldbuilder, give yourself 5-6 nukes, select them all and launch simultaneously. The effect will be great. You can try doing that with 20 or so, too, but you'll get 3 frames per second .

[Yosho]

Bah...nukes were GREAT fun in Civ III, when you didn't care about diplomatic relations. I just remember sending my tanks in across the radioactive wasteland of tiny, starving cities, and watching the AI produce longbows to throw at my tanks because he had no resources left. Now THAT'S a nuclear holacost.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Solver
I actually think the nukes are too weak with the default settings. They won't even kill enemy units. They are good to cripple the enemy economy, but not that great militarily. I don't think the benefits of using nukes really outweight the negatives in the default settings. I spiced nukes up a bit though .

Oh, if you're nuking someone without bomb shelters and the SDI, chances are, you could run over them with conventional forces, too .

If you see each individual nuke as one warhead (and sending multiple nukes at once as a MIRV), I think they are pretty realistic, although some of the countermeasures against them seem a little too strong or cheap. A one megaton weapon is likely to kill 90% of the population within 1.7 miles of the blast, but once you are further out, that percentage drops to 50% and lower - at 4.7 miles the death rate is under 5%.

Unless a nuke hit a military unit almost directly, the unit would probably survive, though it would be weakened. Considering a city as represented in the scale of CivIV represents a greater metropolitan area and other nearby cities, it's reasonable that one nuke is not going to hurt a city like they have in previous Civ games.

Take my city for instance - the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and it's suburbs would certainly count as only one city in Civ4, and probably not a large one as the combined populations are about 1/5 that of Mexico City. It's over 50 miles from one end to the other, to wipe out half the population in the initial strike would probably take a dozen warheads, and the way the military bases are scattered you would definitely have plenty of surviving troops.

Now, a nuke that only killed 500,000 or so out of the few million who live here would definitely do enough damage to infrastructure and cause enough radiation that there would be a much larger loss of population after the strike, and this is represented by the way city populations usually take a nose dive due to the fallout effects after a strike. If anything, the nukes are too powerful, and they probably represent multiple warheads.

[Solver]

Ahh... but modern nukes aren't one megaton, they're stronger than that. Also, cities like Dallas ARE pretty big in game terms - I don't have the population formula here, though. Then again, you're right, big cities are really big as far as land area goes, and military units could certainly survive, though if a unit were close to the detonation it would be wiped out.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Solver
Ahh... but modern nukes aren't one megaton, they're stronger than that. Also, cities like Dallas ARE pretty big in game terms - I don't have the population formula here, though. Then again, you're right, big cities are really big as far as land area goes, and military units could certainly survive, though if a unit were close to the detonation it would be wiped out.

Most of the USA's nuclear weapons have a yield under 1 MT, with the vast majority having a yield between 100 and 400 kilotons. We still have a few big bombs (like the B53 at 9MT), but these are all gravity bombs that have to be delivered by a bomber. All our ICBM warheads are under 1 MT.