What's with the ICBM?

[Fuzzyevil]

O.K., I got away from playing civilization for a while, and just came back. I was playing a game, and I was next to Montezuma (stupid aggressive Aztec guy). He was worrying me with his city, rather close to my capital, that had 20 calvary and about five SAM infantry. I decided to strike first, knowing eventually he would attack me, and declared war, then promptly attemped to nuke the city.

But it refused to Instead of giving the green target square, it just showed a little mushroom cloud cursor. I could nuke his farther cities, just not this one. To make a long story short, he bulldozed me.

What exactly are the targeting requirements for a nuke? Line of sight? All affected squares enemy culture? Just so I don't do this silly thing again.

[chuckdelicious]

IIRC you can't launch a nuke that will affect any of your own units or land. Sounds like you have a spy in that city.

It's been a while since I used nukes, I'm a tank kinda guy.

[Vampgelus]

Nukes are weak anyway, can't even destroy a pop 1 city

Use tanks next time, works well, and you don't need to decontamin the city once you took it.

[Addled Platypus]

nuke'm from orbit !!!

[Skanky Burns]

Its the only way to be sure!!

[Vampgelus]

I would use them if they would destroy evrything in a fat cross : citys, forests, units, animal bonusses like horses... where you launch a nuke, the should be only ruins, ashes, and remains of the roads.

[Hauptman]

I won my first OCC game with nukes, with a points victory. Nuked the top guys populations down wich killed their scores....

Of course points victory is a nice way of saying "you lose".

[snoopy369]

But you were first loser!

[EPW]

Fuzzyevil

[Eomer]

If you have a unit nearby- within a block of the target, it will not let you nuke that area.
But yea, nukes are stupid- they dont even kill one unit. It hurts them all and then they are able to quickly heal back to normal. The only advantage is it destroys like farms aroudn the target.

[Hauptman]

nukes do kill units. two nukes will kill off a sod to a few remaing units.

[nbarclay]

I've never used nukes, but it certainly makes sense that "all squares affected must be within enemy cultural territory" ought to be, if not an absolute requirement, then something that is important in practice. Nuking your own people would stir up so much anger as to be impractical in any but the most dire of situations. And setting off a nuke so close to the border between two civs that it causes serious damage to a neighboring civ would essentially constitute an act of war against the neighbor.

If there is a territory ownership requirement, the thought occurs to me that it might be possible to set off a nuke just outside a city instead of on the city tile itself as a way of avoiding having friendly tiles in the area of effect. I don't know enough about the mechanics of nukes to know whether that would work or what difference there would be in the nukes' effectiveness.

[Diadem]

In some ways it's logical that you can't nuke your own culture, or units. On the other hand, that makes nukes useless in defensive wars. Which is a bit annoying.

Still, I like nukes. There's nothing that conveys a feeling of dislike quite as effectively as 4-5 nukes on each of his major cities.

[prelynmax]

Originally posted by Addled Platypus
nuke'm from orbit !!!

My point exactly.