Nukes And ICBM

[PapaLenin]

What do u guys think about thizz!!

First of all Manhattan Project should be small wonder...there is no point in building it if all get the advantage. And it is much more interesting to compete who will get the nuclear power first..

Second nations shouldn't get that pissed because of using them...Now when u have an alliance against some civ and use a nuke against itur friend should only become happier...Though I agree that Neutral civs would become angry...but not that angry if u throw 2 nukes they declare war!...I mean if u try to get Nuklear War in that game in the end everyone is in war with everyone

[Dida]

My opinion is the opposite of yours.
I think Man. Proj. should remain a GW.
And, the consquences of using nuke should be increased, after all, nuke has been used only once since it is made.

[Kassiopeia]

Second nations shouldn't get that pissed because of using them...Now when u have an alliance against some civ and use a nuke against itur friend should only become happier...Though I agree that Neutral civs would become angry...but not that angry if u throw 2 nukes they declare war!...I mean if u try to get Nuklear War in that game in the end everyone is in war with everyone

Isn't that the point in Nuclear War? Everyone dead? Though, it is silly that this is implemented, since the nuclear weapons are very much underpowered.

I would prefer nukes wiping out a city entirely from the map instead of the "all surrounding squares covered with goo, all units in city destroyed and city pop halved" effect. You can throw ten nukes at a 30-size city, but to no avail.

Also, the environmental effect ought to be increased, as surely a nuclear devastation would cause a nuclear winter and large clouds of deadly radiation.

But the diplomatic results are fine as they are. And, if another player shoots even a single nuke at you, even if it is shot down, you can retaliate with a mother load of nukes without a diplomatic penalty.

First of all Manhattan Project should be small wonder

That's been IIRC discussed over and over again, but I do agree. What self-respecting nation would divulge nuke technology to others?

[Terser]

Changes I would make:

1. ICBM's would be much more powerful. Cities below size five would automatically be destroyed. Larger cities would have a percentage chance (say 10%) of being completely destroyed. Even a city that survived would lose 50%-90% of its population and each city improvement and wonder would have a 25% chance of being destroyed

2. Fallout should be treated differently than pollution both in appearance and effect. I think it should be represented by the death's head symbol used for pollution in CivII, and should take at least 10-15 turns to clean up.

While I'm none to fond of the disease in jungles and floodplains I feel a fallout contaminated area should be hazardous for units. Every turn that a unit spends on a radioactive square there should be a percentage chance for it to die of radiation sickness, and units should be unable to heal damage while standing on fallout This would make cleaning detonation sights risky and expensive. No shrugging off a nuclear attack after 10 turns.

3. Tactical nukes should actually be less powerful than they are now. They should not have the same effect as an ICBM--instead I think they should only destroy all units and terrain improvements in the one square they are targeted at and cause fallout in that square and the four squares to the north, south, east and west. They should destroy any city of population size one or two and kill 25%-50% of the citizens in larger cities. All wonders and improvements should have a 10% chance of being destroyed.

Just my ideas. Some may be impossible to implement, others may seem unnecessary. But it never hurts to speculate...

[Spook42]

On one earlier game, I used city investigation to pin down where a potential opponent's own nukes were based at. At a later time, just to see the effect, I went ahead and fired away, concentrating on the cities with the ICBM's.

The opponent had only three ICBM's to start, and I hit each owning city with 3-4 nukes (tactical or ICBM). But it didn't matter, all of his ICBM's were untouched, and he returned the favor next turn (although, with my having also missile defense, only one of his got through.)

Apparently, ICBM's may be invulnerable to destruction by nuke attack. Appropriate? Hmmmmm......maybe, on the premise that if the opposing nation was advanced enough to have nukes, then it'd be presumed as advanced enough to track my incoming strike. But I don't think that having SOME chance (however small) of wiping an enemy ICBM with my own nukes is a far-fetched strategy.

[Captain]

What we really need is MAD.
This alone would make nukes better.


Spook, nukes are invulnerable to prevent first strike from being too powerful. There must be retaliation otherwise nukes are not deterrants. What they are trying to simulate (badly) is the idea that other civs can detect your missiles in flight and they sure as hell aren't going to wait for them to land before launching their own right back at you.

Human players wouldn't like it much if the AI pulled the human trick (much used in civ 2) of nuking everything so enemies had no chance at retaliation.

[Captain]

Re: Changes I would make:

Originally posted by Terser

2. Fallout should be treated differently than pollution both in appearance and effect. I think it should be represented by the death's head symbol used for pollution in CivII, and should take at least 10-15 turns to clean up.

While I'm none to fond of the disease in jungles and floodplains I feel a fallout contaminated area should be hazardous for units. Every turn that a unit spends on a radioactive square there should be a percentage chance for it to die of radiation sickness, and units should be unable to heal damage while standing on fallout This would make cleaning detonation sights risky and expensive. No shrugging off a nuclear attack after 10 turns.

Definitely a good idea. It'll make you think twice about nuking if you've got to live with the consequences for a long time. Many of the radioactive elements have extremely long half-lives.

[Dom Pedro II]

I think that nuclear winter is a bad idea for one nuke... it's unrealistic. The U.S. has detonated dozens of nuclear bombs and we have yet to be thrown into such a situation. On the other hand, a full-blown nuclear war between two nuclear powers is different.

Furthermore, I don't think nukes should wipe out cities, or at least not all of them. Hiroshima was bombed with an atomic weapon, yet the city is still there. But the Hiroshima bomb was a 20 kiloton bomb. Most today are 1 MEGAton or more. So a tactical nuke ought to cut a city's population into 1/4 of its original size. All units should be destroyed, and the surrounding tiles should become wasteland.

An ICBM, on the other hand, should be considered on of the city-destroying, Armageddon-causing big boys. These should destroy all cities and units within a three square radius (presumably there will only be one city). All squares in a five-square radius should become those wasteland squares, and the pollution problem should increase drastically everywhere on the map.

Like in CtP2, there should be Mutually Assured Destruction, and, most importantly, the AI should be aware of the implications of a full-scale nuclear war and try to avoid that at all costs. It does very little good for anybody if in a game with MAD, the AI casually drops one bomb and then sets off a dozen others thereby ending the game. The MAD system should let the player pre-target enemy cities in ICBM and tactical nukes to go off in the event that the enemy strikes first.

[Thrawn05]

I think it would be ludicous (That word was inspired by kassiopeia's avatar ) to decrease the effect of an ICBM or nuke. It should be increased so that everyone will be furious at you and pull out of any trades or agreements right away. And start being nicer to the one you attacked.

[player1]

I'll tell you one story.
My first second game on Emperor, standard map.

Me (Russans) on south, English on north and French in the middle.

Needless to say I played passivlely and become one of 3rd rated civs. I had sevral wars with France, but I only got one or two cities. I also had a resource crisis since the WW on second contitint made my trade routes go borken.

Alther a while when I got stabilized (got all resources, started building Space Ship), I saw that if I want to be FIRST I'll net to get extra territory, not to mention that losing Aluminium or Uranium would be disaster.
Then war with French started, Manahatan Proj. was completed by English.
Then Nuke race started, at one momnet I had 3 tatcical nukes, French had 2 on them.

We were in WAR.

I stole plans and see that his tacticals are on subs in north sea?
Ha, ha...

I made allies with whole world against French and started nuking big, close, resource cities.

After that I easlity taked those cities with my armies.

After a while, when things settled (french destroyed) I easliy finished my Space Ship (Forbidden Palace helped)


P.S.
Nukes are great for softening enemy defese, taking out resource routes (try one on capitol), and making anybody to hate you.

So make alliance with everybody exept victim.

And, NEVER put tactical nukes on subs if your main enemy is on your continent.
That's the reason why I destoryed French, since he couldn't strike back because his nukes where out of range (later I killed his subs with battleships).

[Mannamagnus]

I think workers should not be able to clean pollution caused by nukes. We are talking about large areas of land, cleaning up only one square would cripple even the largest nations economy.
Look at the area surrounding Chernobyl; it will be thousands of years before it wil be habitable again.
So I think we need a new terrainsquare which produces nothing and kills of any unit that stays there for one turn or more. Workers should be able to build (rail)roads there though that would kill them in the end.

[aahz_capone]

I agree that the manhatten project should be a small wonder, I mean the russians and the british and french had to work just as hard as the americans to get their nukes.

The only change however I would make to the nukes themselves is that after a city gets nuked it losses peeps every turn for x turns depending on the nuke.

I am reminded of the first time I got nuked in SMAC... I literealy was a hair's bredth of sh*tting myself, crying into the crater that was my industrial center and swearing vengence on the Hive. Now THAT game had nukes. FOUR types to be exact.

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

Banning nukes?

Risking having my head served as aperitive/boxing ball during the first MP-tournaments, I wonna make an impopular suggestion:

JUST BAN THOSE NUKES!!

I mean, if used in real word it could probably lead to a chain reaction, killing and wiping off almost anything alive ...
In my civ-games, I never build/use nukes at first and I'll do anything to stop the AI using it against me. It's so sad: working on and building up your empire during the whole game and then turning the world map into chaos and destruction, reducing once top cities to villages, ...

Nukes aren't funny for me (and the real world) and in world history were, so far, only used once ...

NO THANKS TO YOU, MR NIXON (As we know now he suffered from the effects of manic depression ... I'm curious if we'd still consider the Americans friendly and rational if they had done that ... But this is off topic, of course ....

Of course some crazy, despotic dictator might use them one time in the future, let's hope we can cope with that then ...

Have a nice day ...
AJ

[Spook42]

Originally posted by Captain
What we really need is MAD.
This alone would make nukes better.


Spook, nukes are invulnerable to prevent first strike from being too powerful. There must be retaliation otherwise nukes are not deterrants. What they are trying to simulate (badly) is the idea that other civs can detect your missiles in flight and they sure as hell aren't going to wait for them to land before launching their own right back at you.

Human players wouldn't like it much if the AI pulled the human trick (much used in civ 2) of nuking everything so enemies had no chance at retaliation.

But as you will note in my initial post, Captain, I had opined that a "first strike" be allowed SOME chance (again, however small) to take out an opponent's ICBM's. It needn't be a BIG chance. Cold-War era targeting was heavily guided to targeting each other's missile silos, given that it wasn't a certainty that all ICBM's would've been expended in the first exchange.

Like several other elements to Civ3, the "nuclear weapon" model could stand some better treatment. The ideas given here by others of different "classes" of nukes in destructive power, or of specialty pollution, are interesting. I would say that for nuke pollution, not only should it be harder to remove, but workers working to remove it suffer some "attrition" unless that country with the fallout has sufficient tech advances.

I's also like the ability to modify, via the editor, the percentage chance of how well units survive getting hit, or the effectiveness of "Missile Defense" (MD) as a GW. (At first, have MD with a initial lower value --- say, 50-60% --- improving with steady increases in Tech levels that continue past the Tech tree.)

Increase the options for potency, defenses, and consequences all together, and allow these for the gamer to modify via the editor. The present nuke model is a bit contrival to me.

[godinex]

When You destroy a nuclear sub it provoque a nuclear explotion...