c174# NUCLEAR WARFARE IN CIV3

[MarkG]

174# NUCLEAR WARFARE IN CIV3

Nuclear warfare needs big improvements. Here are some ideas

By Tim ( scottishrogue@juno.com )

[Fidel]

this was an odd post. the suggestions disregard the fact that this is a turn based game ("one minute before the blast...", etc) plus this kind of nuclear war would pretty much end the game abruptly. realistic, but this is just a game...

[Deathwalker]

Though I like the idea of improving the nuclear war model. Making any nuclear war a end of the world type situation would not help the game. As the computer would use it. It should be used as a pwerful weapon with repercusions but not a end of the world type weapon.

[dainbramaged13]

There has been much discussion on this, and two very good, and wel-thought-out posts on this, which i think actually were better than this column, and may even have taken more time, (no offense tim) by korn469 and one other poster whose name icant remember...

sorry, im too lazy to find links

[Father Beast]

I think these are some good suggestions, although this may be taking it a bit far for game purposes.

destroying everything within a 2 square radius seems a bit excessive. Destroying tile improvements makes sense, though.
(Sir! After our nuclear bomb fell on Hiroshima, we were able to get our troops in almost immediately via railroad, which miraculously survived the blast!)

in civ2, nuclear war resulted in pollution, which was easily taken care of if you have enough engineers, and the limited damage means we don't really take nuclear war seriously. it's just another weapon. my cities survive the blast. not a big deal.

the "cloud of doom" suggested by Tim seems a bit excessive. maybe just on the point of impact, and only for a few turns. make it deadly to troops on the next turn, with a diminishing effect. that would also cut down on the "take the enemy with 10 nukes and 10 paras" strategy.

the "charred" terrain seems interesting. CTP has a feature where pollution transforms squares into unusable terrain. while I don't agree with taking it that far, I think a separate form of pollution that does that to squares would be in order for nukes.

besides, think of all the fun Smokey will have with a new nuke system like this!

[connorkimbro]

the nuclear bombs dropped over hiroshima and nagasaki had a more than 80% chance of hitting, didn't they? they pretty much had a hundred percent chance of hitting. now, if your talking ICBM's, that's different. but it seems like you just conjured up some percentages without much though.

2nd point. . more than halfway around the world? from here (central cali) to los vegas is almost ALL the way around the world. . if you go the wrong direction. it seems to be that halfway around the world is as FAR as you can get, without starting to come back again, eh?

3rd point. . wonders move? please. . if anything, they should be destroyed, but not moved to the closest city. that doesn't even make sense in game terms, let alone realism terms.

[ancient]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21071

[War4ever]

while your imagination on this topic is interesting , the only point IMO that would be viable to implement would be the way we deal with radiation.

i like the idea of permanent land damage from radiation.... like a sim city melt down.....

However to implement this would be tricky. You have to completely overhaul the combat system.


i do firmly believe that your people should be outraged at nucleur use, as well as those members of all other countries...

[Father Beast]

Ancient- thanks for the link

in that other thread, Diablo says he has posted a column on nukes in civ3. is he the "Tim" of this article?

[TechWins]

One thing is for sure there has to be MAD. I remember that topic about a month ago and I hope Firaxis has or will implement a lot of the good ideas posted. I mean there were a lot of good ideas on the subject, the whole thread went at least 3 pages.

[Fidel]

but then again, you have to have a solid AI to have any chance to survive with MAD or devastating nuclear blasts options. i think it was rather sound to make for weak nukes in civ 2 since a trigger-happy, dumb AI (as they all were) would use MAD and megablasts to simply end the game. that way, one would be forced to a pre-emptive world conquest at about panzer tech level....

[NeoBlade]

My ideas

My ideas differ.Nukes should move around 1 space per turn when "packed" or on a truck being moved to where ever.(thats 3 on road and unlimited on rails)Then have a set flying range before running out of fuel.As for the destructive power of Nukes I think they should kill 3/4 of a citys population and seriously hinder growth for years with a lessining effect as time passes.Also units should slowly loose health in a bombed city,with lessening effect over the years.ALLimprovements,roads and everything should be lost with a 1 tile area and pollution should run rampant over a large area around the base,maybe up to 10 square radius of scattered pollution,dense around the base,light at the outter reaches.

Fact about a nuke is,acctual physical distruction is limited to a small area,normally not much farther then a 50 mile radius MAX and thats with some of the best H bombs.However,radiation chould range over a large area,up to 200 miles or more if winds are strong and the bomb produced enough radioactive material.Renember,they did tons of testing not 90 miles away from las vegas and few people suffered.Yet chernoble poisoned places for hundreds of miles.'erhaps reactors make alot more more radio pollution then bombs.I won't say for sure.

[Urban Ranger]

Hard to say. Decades ago nuclear weapons tend to be really huge, up to 100 megatons or maybe even more. However as the technology improved they became more accurate yet smaller. Before the Cold War ended most of the USSR's ICBM's were pointing towards known US missile silos and vice versa. So they really weren't going to do a lot of damage if used.

Maybe Civ could have a better way of handling radiation pollution, e.g. requiring lots of money and a specialised unit type to clean it.

[korn469]

Tim

i agree with your 1st point about silos, i also think that we should be able to load nuclear missles onto submarines...and i agree that nukes shouldn't be able to fly around and do a nuke scout, because that is completely cheesy...maybe a nuke should be able to travel one or two squares on it's own (it's being transported), and be able to travel on railroads...but if a nuke moves then it can't be fired on that turn

i disagree with your last point completely, and i disagree with the implementation of your third point...a nuclear sneak attack on a trusted ally should make your nation a pariah state, but a nuclear attack on a long hated enemy probably shouldn't come as a suprise to your people and when you say 25% of your people become angry, maybe it's better to say something like

"one happy person in each city becomes content, and one content person in each city becomes unhappy for X amount of turns"

about point two you have some interesting ideas in that thread, and i agree with the idea of radiation on a square (represented bu one of the little 3 triangles fallout symbols, and maybe the entire square could turn slightly red to let you know that it is radioactive) however i think it would be a tough sell to firaxis...or that nukes would have a chance of transforming land into desert...however for civ3 i think that having nukes have about the same power as a SMAC fission planetbuster...this means that a nuke would destroy the city and everything in the surrounding square, that's about the right amount of destructive power for my taste

however i disagree with your hit percentages in point 2 and were you being serious when you said

"If a wonder is destroyed in a targeted city, it is automatically transfered to the closest city of that civilization."

that could lead to SO many abuses it wouldn't be funny...

though i think you left out the most important improvement for nuclear war in civ3 and that is MAD

nuclear war in civ2 is flawed in my opinion for these four reasons

1. there is no nuclear deterance
2. nukes don't do enough damage
3. SDI is too effective
4. you nuke a city, your paratroops seize it, then next turn it's people are throwing you a "We love the president day"

here are the fixes that i propose

1. by implementing MAD, where all when you build a nuke you select a target for it and when if even one nuke gets launched all nukes in the game hit their targets at the same time on that turn...also for MAD to work best a nuke should be able to hit anywhere on the map

also if nukes don't fly like they did in civ2, then there wouldn't be any cheesy airbase shields cheats to worry about in civ3

2. increase a nukes damage so that it at least destroys 75% of a city's population instead of 50%, but i would much rather see a nuke just obliterate the city and everything (including tile improvements and units) in the adjacent squares

3. never let SDI be more than 50% effective

4. well if the city gets obliterated we don't have to worry about it throwing a "we love" day now do we?

but i think that the conquest factors firaxis is implementing in civ3 will solve this problem even if nukes do not

i made a big list of suggestions a while back, and while i think it would be nice if some of them (like nuclear winter) got implemented i do admit that the ideas became complicated in some areas (though i tried to make them simple) and that realistically firaxis will only listen to very simple suggestions that one can readily see the value of that idea

but hey i am glad you wrote the article

keep up the good work

and remember one thing about nuclear war

Nuclear war is like sticking your head in the toilet and flushing yourself to hell

[jake03]

Please forgive me for not reading all the links, but what about the cost of the Nukes. I think it should be many many times higher then it is