Nuclear War

[Heraclitus]

I haven’t had a fulfilling strategically or tactically sound nuclear war since civ3. And the last strategically or tactically sound nuclear war in which I used more than 5 warheads was way back in civ2.




Can anyone give me some advice how I can use nukes as part of an effective strategy?

[lordrune]

Hate nuclear war, hate nuclear power, in Civ 4. (Nuclear power looks like it could be good at first but one meltdown will ruin your day)

[Jaybe]

1. To totally destroy units in a city, use TWO (not one, not three) nukes.
2. Use only when needed because of global warming (unless you mod global warming probability and/or global warming terrain (in GlobalDefines.xml), of course).*

Note: this was before BtS 3.13

* GLOBAL_WARMING_PROB changed from 20 to 5.
GLOBAL_WARMING_TERRAIN changed from TERRAIN_DESERT to TERRAIN_TUNDRA.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Jaybe
...1. To totally destroy units in a city, use TWO (not one, not three) nukes...

Are You sure You are not confusing them with the holy hand grenade ?

[Fleme]

So if I want to actually end up improving my terrain by using nukes I'll just edit it to TERRAIN_GRASSLAND?

Heh. I'd really want for it to spawn fallout instead of changing terrain types. Bleh.

[realpolitic]

In the book Heroshima it said that the grass grew back surprisingly fast, as the fires made nutrients very avaiable, maybe this is accurate.

Since cockroaches are unaffected by radiation, we could add a new improvent: cockroach farm .

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by Fleme
So if I want to actually end up improving my terrain by using nukes I'll just edit it to TERRAIN_GRASSLAND?

Heh. I'd really want for it to spawn fallout instead of changing terrain types. Bleh.

Hum, I wonder, If one could make proper armageddon weapons... First turn the terrain into coast or something to *really* destroy everything, then to desert or something... Or perhaps grassland. "Nature returns", as they used to say.

[mkorin]

I actually love using Nukes in a tactical way to win wars and a strategic way to win vassals. I just won a game in which I was way behind an alliance of two civs, that were going for the space ship win. However, they didn't have uranium and I did. I built a bunch of ICBMs and used them to weaken cities to the point were my tank SOD could easily take a city or if there were a lot of enemies, too nukes to destroy the enemy. I'll bet I used at least 20 nukes. Severely weakened the AI alliance by taking all non island cities of one partner, calling a truce, sending in cleanup crews, building the cities, while I was doing that I attacked a weaker civ that was in my way to the second ally. Made him a vassal. Moved my forces to the new border and launched a nuclear attack against the other ally. At this point the UN asked for a diplo win and I got it. Once upon a time Mr. Colts Peacemaker was called the great equalizer, now the ICBM is, at least in the game.

Mike

[Chemical Ollie]

I just thought this picture could fit the topic

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
Hum, I wonder, If one could make proper armageddon weapons... First turn the terrain into coast or something to *really* destroy everything, then to desert or something... Or perhaps grassland. "Nature returns", as they used to say.

The first part of what you describe has a name: planet buster. IIRC, the preferred kind was the singularity kind.

Then, you send in terraforming crews to raise the terrain.

[mkorin]

Chemical Ollie, you mean (in real life) you can't just send in some guy in a radiation suit and a couple turns later the area is back to normal? What kind of simulation game is this?

[Chemical Ollie]

It takes 2 millon years

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
It takes 2 millon years

That's nuclear waste (as in, the gunk they take out of fission reactors), not fallout.

Wodan

[Yosho]

Re: Nuclear War

Originally posted by Heraclitus
I haven’t had a fulfilling strategically or tactically sound nuclear war since civ3. And the last strategically or tactically sound nuclear war in which I used more than 5 warheads was way back in civ2.




Can anyone give me some advice how I can use nukes as part of an effective strategy?

Well, I recently won a game of Beyond the Sword I otherwise would have lost because of nukes. If an AI is heading towards cultrual victory, and you can't take one of the three cities, the next best thing is to hit at least one of the three cities with multiple nukes; 3 nukes usually does it. That lowers his population down to like 2, and he probably can't even clear the fallout because AI's going for the cultrual victory usually stop getting tech before that point. So with almost commerse in that city (because no people and very little good land left to work anyway) and no population left to make artists with, and no real way for the AI to recover, you can increase the number of turns left before the AI can dramatically, giving you pleanty of time to win some other way.

Basically, there's two main uses for nukes. You can either use nukes to destoy the defense in one of his cities so your soldiers can take it (usually tactical nukes), or you can use destroy his economy basically forever (usually using either ICBM's or sometimes tactical nukes on a submarine if his big cities are close enough to a ocean).

[joncnunn]

Personly I think of Nukes in the Civ Series like the Empire's death star. Sure you could build it, but it's probably much more cost effective to use the same resources to build a lot more conventional forces.

Instead of 6 nukes to knock out two of his top three cities (since his 4th best is likely to not be far behind the 3rd): invest the same hammers into Modern Armor primarliy with colaterial damage and raize one or two of those cities to the ground in a sneak attack starting with his best cultural city (usually his capital).

Since the AI mostly places units along cultural borders and his best cultural cities are probably deep inside his territory (by land) there's not too many defenders to knock out if your sneak attack is from the sea.