Nukes - Mutually Assured Destruction ?

[Kestrel]

With the new events structures and language in Civ2 - Test-of-Time - How hard would it be to build an event structure to replicate "Mutually Assured Destruction".

That is, if a Civ has discovered Nuclear Fission and has built a Nuclear Missile and is then fired upon by an opposing power with Nuclear Weapons, then the attacker also has one or more cities struck in retaliation - or some such thing. This would better replicate the real-world situation where nuclear powers treat each other differently that non-nuclear powers. Maybe also why so far we haven't had a Nuclear interaction since 1945.

At the moment , because Civ 2 is turn based, the attacking nuclear power has the advantage because he/she can destroy muxh of his/her opponents cities and troops prior to the attackee being able to retaliate.

Is there a set of events that we could program , using the various flags, that could wreak a little vengeance on the attacker to replicate retaliatory strike capabilities ? The level of Auto-vengeance might even be scaled to the number of nuclear weapons the attackee has ?

Any Ideas ?

I suspect that the programming difficulty would be with "free-flowing games" rather than "Scenarios" where one couldn't predict the Citynames or Civs that might be involved in the confrontation.

While you're at it, what about an events structure that creates "Universal Outrage" (Along the lines of when a spy is caught trying to plant a nuclear device) for any Civ using Poison Gas or some other such beyond the pale weapon.

See also the Call to Power 2 "General" forum - Topic: Nukes

[Bromley]

Could you edit the units so that a sub cannot be seen by any unit but has a poor attack value? This would allow you to hide your missiles offshore whilst not making the sub a super-weapon itself.

[PapaMonkey]

The only problem I see with that is you have to make sure that the subs and the NUKES that they are carrying are from cities that are not taken out. Any unit that derives it support from a city you loose is immediately disbanded. Therefore if someone is nuking you and following in with Paratroopers (common stategy) and you loose a good deal of cities, you may still not have anything left to "Assure his destruction". I think you can even put missile units in airports, using them as missile silos. But this has the same drawback.

[Bromley]

Papa

Doh! I forgot.

Is it possible to edit units so they are built unaligned to cities? If so, you make the sub and missiles more expensive to build initially to offset this.

This also allows you top store nukes in "silos" and works quite smoothly:

1. When you build your first nukes they are based in cities.

2. Then, you build some "silos" and store some there to increase the number of targets that the enemy must first strike.

3. Finally, you begin building very expensive modified subs.

You could even include some sort of helicopter damage model to force your boomers to return for refit.

Of course, if you can't edit the city alignment to NONE then this doesn't work!

Steve

[Bromley]

I've never written an event, but looking at the book it might look something like this (then again . . .). I can't figure out how to change the alignment of the nuke you've just created to NONE (or even to destroy it and create an unaligned one), so this event should create an extra NONE nuke in your capital city.

Of course, nuke production cost has to be modified *2. You can just about justify creating one aligned and one independent nuke by saying that loss of a city would compromise your command and control ability (EMP, codes, communications etc) to some extent!

@BEGINEVENTS
@IF
CityProduction
builder=Anybody
unit=[??nuke no.]
@THEN
CreateUnit
owner=[??Anybody]
unit=[??nuke no.]
Count=1
veteran=True
homecity=None
InCapital
locations
10,10
endlocations
@ENDIF
@ENDEVENTS

[Mark von Wagner]

You can't edit a unit using events to change the home city. You can, however, use events to create a unit with NONE as the home city.

[DarthVeda]

If you're doing a scenario where the first turn is the nuclear shoot-off, there's an easy way to do this.

start the game with the attacking civ and let them launch their nukes. Have them be the last civ on the list of civs so nobodys turn is after them on that particular turn.

Then, when their turn is over and the next round begins, create a whole bunch of nukes for the first player (whose turn comes before the agressor)

[DarthVeda]

OR, if you're doing it so that it isn't the first turn, you could put the player's nukes in limbo, or a second/third/fourth map called the "silo" that corresponds to a "silo" tile (teleport tile) in the real world.

The entire whole of the silo world could be impassible, so that the missile would launch from the silo and be protected.

You could have two kinds of nuke silos, one for the one nation and one for the other, but you would need two nukes so that one country couldn't enter the other's "silo"

There's no guarantee the AI would cooperate though.