SDI Defence Radius

[atomant]

A simple question reall, what is the radius of the city improvement SDI defence?I have seen comments that one unit will basically protect all other cities ina six square radius.

[Cyrion]

I thought it was 3 ??

[Scouse Gits]

IIRC the radius is 3 squares - so if your cities are close it can protect more than one, but they do need to be close...

SG[1]

[Cyrion]

Thanks for confirming, SG, I really wasn't sure!

[atomant]

Next question, does the AI get its usual 'fudge' factor?

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by atomant
'fudge' factor?

What's that???

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Fudge factors with SDI:

In the AI's favour: The AI will unerringly find the one city that doesn't have an SDI in it, and launch nukes at that. Range does seem to be a factor, but I think that so long as the AI has any city within range, it will hit you.

In your favour: While the AI can tell which of your cities has an SDI, it will keep shooting at cities that are covered by another city's SDI. I've seen dozens of missiles wasted against those 'indirectly protected' cities.

[rah]

That led us to use the stratagy of building a city three square away from a targeted AI city and rushing an SDI in it prior to attacking/taking the AI city using force. After taking the city the AI would all out launch against the captured city to no avail. The secondary benifit of this strategy is that the turn that you are waiting for the SDI to be rushed, you could usually count on the AI to mass attack your "bait" city with any spare unit, thereby thining out the force that you would bel attacking the next turn. (So a mountain location always worked best for the bait city, and using a couple of set/eng. to immediately boost it to pop 2/3/4, in case the ai got lucky on an attack. ) Of course if you were at peace with the AI, the defense part, while still recommended, was not always needed.

But this was only used as a strat of last choice because of the extra turns involved to steamroll over an AI. 2 other strats were always used first.

1. Never let any AI advance enough to get nukes. This one was the most reliable since it is easy to gain such a superior lead that the ability to steamrolling over the AI occurs ages prior.

2. If #1 is not possible due to the game being a scenario, or your latent desire to experience warfare with an equally armed AI so you allow it to happen, just make sure that the turn you attack the first city, you have done the logistics properaly that you are able to eliminate that civ completely in the same turn. Then retaliation isn't an issue.

RAH

[Scouse Gits]

Yup - I'll second that

SG[1]

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by rah

2. If #1 is not possible due to the game being a scenario, or your latent desire to experience warfare with an equally armed AI so you allow it to happen, just make sure that the turn you attack the first city, you have done the logistics properaly that you are able to eliminate that civ completely in the same turn. Then retaliation isn't an issue.

RAH

Good strategies.... I usually do something similar. The AI generally won't use nukes on small cities, and it never uses them on units outside of cities, to my knowledge. So often, I'll capture a smallish AI city and build a SDI there, especially if it's 2 or 3 squares from a larger city. I've never done the city-on-a-mountain trick for SDI bait purposes - if they nuke me, they nuke me, and 4 engineers used to grow a city will clean up the pollution in 2 turns, anyway. However, I have taken to building fortresses on hills, and parking my howitzer force there - it won't get nuked, and it's as safe from counterattack there as in a city, for the most part.

Otherwise, yeah - land on the AI continent with a large force, attack each city without capturing until they're all empty, capture them all on the same turn, and the partisans vanish

[rah]

I too have never seen the AI nuke anything but a city. (I can't believe they don't use them against ships/fleets )

I didn't make the connection that they wouldn't nuke smaller cities. (I really don't let them lob nukes too often ) That could be a useful tidbit.

RAH

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by rah
I too have never seen the AI nuke anything but a city. (I can't believe they don't use them against ships/fleets )

I didn't make the connection that they wouldn't nuke smaller cities. (I really don't let them lob nukes too often ) That could be a useful tidbit.

RAH

Yeah - maybe it's a coincidence, but if I capture a size 2 or 3 city, it never seems to get nuked. I have no idea if there's a threshold city size - but size 10 cities certainly are nuke targets, while size 2 seem to not be. I'm also not sure whether the units in a city are a factor - ie. if you have captured a coastal size 2 city and parked 5 loaded transports in it, will it be nuked? As I said, I prefer to use fortresses and not run that risk.

I use nukes exclusively against fleets. The way the AI stacks ships makes it a joy to check the casualty list before and after the nuke attack

[SCG]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
Yeah - maybe it's a coincidence, but if I capture a size 2 or 3 city, it never seems to get nuked. I have no idea if there's a threshold city size

There's certainly precendent in the Civ World for threshold size. Those who played Civ I probably remember that the AI would completely ignore islands of size 5 or less. I used to play waterworlds and found cities on tiny islands, so i could completely ignore a military presence - i'd have a city size 24, with 3 wonders and nary a unit, that was in the direct path of the AI attack fleets, and the AI in its military manuvers would go out of its way to avoid the city

[rah]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
I use nukes exclusively against fleets. The way the AI stacks ships makes it a joy to check the casualty list before and after the nuke attack

Yep.

Considering what a cruise missle magnet a battleship is, it's even more suprising that they won't nuke ships. It's a great way to tie up the AI production. A few vet a. cruisers on top of a battleship at sea, and every city seems to build a cruise missle that will be wasted.

RAH

[patrickjb53]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man


Good strategies.... I usually do something similar. The AI generally won't use nukes on small cities, and it never uses them on units outside of cities, to my knowledge. So often, I'll capture a smallish AI city and build a SDI there, especially if it's 2 or 3 squares from a larger city. I've never done the city-on-a-mountain trick for SDI bait purposes - if they nuke me, they nuke me, and 4 engineers used to grow a city will clean up the pollution in 2 turns, anyway. However, I have taken to building fortresses on hills, and parking my howitzer force there - it won't get nuked, and it's as safe from counterattack there as in a city, for the most part.

Otherwise, yeah - land on the AI continent with a large force, attack each city without capturing until they're all empty, capture them all on the same turn, and the partisans vanish

I've never tried this, but it sound like a great idea. Although, I don't understand why the AI won't nuke 'fortresses on hills'. I probably just misunderstand.