c174# NUCLEAR WARFARE IN CIV3

[Rasputin]

nuke war doesnt hav ethe same consequences i nTurn based games, as you can stockpile enough nukes to tkat the enemy out without him having time to launch a retalitary strike.. in real world as soon a sa launch is detected by satellites , your enemy will launch back ...

[Your.Master]

Nuclear War

I think that in a way Nuclear War SHOULD be an end of the world type thing, not really ending the game, but a huge regression. You're going to lynch me, I know. Some of the most fun games I had in Civ 2 involved a Nuclear War with a long-time (from an ally-war shortly after contact) enemy resulting in massive global warming. At first, it would be a very tense war with HUGE destruction. Then, global warming would strike and war would slow down considerably. Cities would starve, small ones would disappear, major cities nuked would also disappear with the devastated population, infrastructure, and polluted desert surroundings. Until masses of engineers could be produced to clear pollution and transform the terrain immediately around your civilization, every civ in the world would decline, military would disband as cities disappeared and production was truncated by pollution and land-transformation. The situation was very tense. I suggest that in civ 3 technological regression should take place, and as empires are split any spare civ slots should be filled by outlying members of former civs who have lost contact with the central government (If the central U.S. was nuked, I'd imagine the East and West would emerge as separate entities). Also, EVERY civ should be afflicted with a severe and undying hatred of the nuclear aggressors. During the war, other nations will get PO'd and will either take a side or try to destroy the countries. Launchers of Nukes should receive severe social backlashes, great possibility of civil war, and partisan spies trying to dismantle nukes. If the end of the world happens, the planet will just have to rebuild. If you don't like Nuclear War by another 2 civs destroying your world, your just going to have to capture one of the civs (or maybe the new diplomacy options will allow you to broker a peace treaty).

[Ralf]

Below is a deliberate doube-post - but, it fits in under this topic as well. It was originally posted in the Revised Nuclear Warfare for Civ3 thread.

I like the idea of of point-and-click targeted ICBM:s provided that...

A/ You cannot exploit the limitations of turn-based games, by completely destroy a similar ICBM-equipped empire, before it is his turn to counterstrike. Point-and-click ICBM:s must be connected with the simultaneous attacks MAD-feature - that is: all ICBM attacks only gets executed after the attacked empire also have had a change of launching a similar point-and-click sequence (IF he has ICBM:s, that is) In short: MAD = Mutually Assured Destruction.

B/ the SDI-defence is still there for nuclear-attack immunity. The more nucs you have though, the less effective these SDI-defences becomes. For complete SDI-safety you cannot build & own any nucs at all. I realize that some civers gets pissed off by this weighted trade-off. But, I lend my arguments from the man himself:

"Those who make use of the sword, shall die by the sword" (Jesus Christ).

In other words: You cannot launch huge amounts of ICBM:s, and then except to sit tight & safe behind 100% effective SDI-defenced cities. Its also about game-balance and better game-challenge.

C/ they dont try to "make a game within a game" of this. Keep it simple - just implement the quintessential idea, without too many distractive details.

[dennis580]

I like your idea of making nuclear weapons much more devestating. Though I totally disagree with transfering the wonder to the closet city. That's just stupid. The wonder should also be destroyed too.

On the flip side the penalty for launching nuclear weapons should be absoloutely extreme. All Civs in the game immediately delare War on you for the REST OF THE GAME, although they are not allowed to retaliate with nuclear weapons be cause the pollution,radiation or a nuclear accident could harm neighboring civs.

If somebody does choose to retaliate with nuclear weapons they would face the same penalty as mention above.

[korn469]

dennis580

check out the Revised Nuclear Warfare for Civ3 thread...that is where most of the discussion is going on right now about this

[Executor]

Originally posted by dennis580
I like your idea of making nuclear weapons much more devestating. Though I totally disagree with transfering the wonder to the closet city. That's just stupid. The wonder should also be destroyed too.

On the flip side the penalty for launching nuclear weapons should be absoloutely extreme. All Civs in the game immediately delare War on you for the REST OF THE GAME, although they are not allowed to retaliate with nuclear weapons be cause the pollution,radiation or a nuclear accident could harm neighboring civs.

If somebody does choose to retaliate with nuclear weapons they would face the same penalty as mention above.

This is a great idea, now I won't have to worry about the Senate signing any more peace treaties when I begin my final offensive.

[JellyDonut]

You shouldn't be at war with the target civ for the rest of the game. Japan is one of America's closest allys right now.

[Dida]

A good way to prevent the Nuke-and-Paradrop thing and to implement the MAD is to make it such, that the nuke you launched at another player does not hit him until that player's turn.
So, if player A launches nuke at Player B, it does not hit until player B's turn. At the beginning of B's turn, he will be informed that a nuclear missle is coming in, and is required to respond. After he enters all the command, (launch back, evacuate, etc), the missle hits his cities, and the game procceed as usual.

[Spoe]

Perhaps a new wonder, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, automatically built in the first city hit by a nuke that makes subsequent nuclear usage more expensive in outrage?

I'd like to see a two tier system of tactical nukes that would kill a stack but at most kill a building in a city and strategic arms that need to be pretargeted on a map location and cannot be launched until a turn after retargeting and would cause large amounts of damage to a city and surroundings. Both would cause pollutions of some sort in surrounding locations.

FWIW, some nuclear weapons triva.
The current US arsenal (both active and inactive stockpile) ranges in yield from 300 tons to 9 megatons (.3 - 9000 kilotons), with 700 of some 9600 with yields over 350 kilotons. That's 2000 warheads on ICBMs, 3456 warheads on SLBMs, 1750 warhead on strategic bombers, 1670 tactical warheads. In all of US nuclear history the largest device in the inventory was the Mk-41 bomb at 25 megatons; the smallest was the Mk-54 warhead for "suitcase" nukes and the M-388 Davey Crockett recoiless rifle at 10 tons yield and weighing approximately 50 lbs. The heaviest was the Mk-17/Mk-24 at 21 tons weight.

The Soviets exploded a 50 megaton device (also one of the cleanest devices) in 1961. This is the largest nuclear explosion in history. This was a lower yield version of a 100 megaton design, that if detonated, would have released 25% as much fallout as all other nuclear explosions combined.

[Sandman]

Regarding the nuclear aspect, I'd like to see a civilian nuclear bunker which would allow most of the population of the city to be saved from the blast. Both sides in the Cold War considered building them, but they were dropped because the other side would view it as an act of aggression.
The city and the surrounding terrain would still be wrecked and the survivors would still have to deal any of the suggested radiation effects. The bunker would have to be very expensive and time-consuming to build, and would not work against a nuke planted by a spy.
Perhaps the bunker could also reduce the number of citizens made unhappy by nuclear weapons.
How does this idea sound?

[Mech Assassin]

If the targeting/hitting percentage idea would be used, I think, there should be an ability to develop more missile technology. As you develop better missiles, the hitting percentage goes up (till 95% at least). Then, you should also develop better nukes (like in AC).

First you get WWIIish Nukes (Fission Warheads), that can only destroy wooden cities (it light up all buildings in fire at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It didn't just wipe them out as todays nuke would), then today's Nukes (Fusion Warheads) that wipe out any city and surroundings with one strike. Then futures Anti-Matter Warhead, that just annihilates everything in the area and turns the entire area into pollutated ocean.