Nukes (The title alone will attract you to this topic)

[Vitmore The Great]

Hey everyone! I'm curious if the nuclear missles in Civ III will have unlimited range, as does the ICBMs (Inter-continental Ballistic Missles) of today. That will make the game more realistic because in Civ II, if you got nuclear weapon capability, you couldn't nuke your enemy because he's on another continent. You would have to develop subs or carriers just to send the nukes, which takes time and gives the enemy a chance to do something. Nuclear war does not work that way. It is fast, devastating, and SUDDEN. With in-game type ICBMs, MAD will be a viable foreign policy. Designate the Civ II type nukes as IBMs (Intermediate Balistic Missles), which would be cheaper than ICBMs. What can also be done is a Civ has aquire a higher tech level than neccessary for IBMs to aquire ICBMs. Look at India and Pakistan. Both have nukes with range to hit each other, but none with the range to hit North America.


Vitmore

[The Brain]

They need to have three different Nukes...

1) Nuclaer Bomb, needs a bomber to carry it.

2) Normal Nuke, same as in the game.

3) ICBM, you know.

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[Michael Dnes]

ICBMs would need silos to keep them in- a terrain improvement like an airfield.

Also the level of damage should increase with technology, from just 1 square just after the Manhatten project. By the time you have reached the same state as today they should level a 2 or 3 square radius (the electromagnetic effect, see below) and even more pollution.

The it was calculated that the soviets could use three nuclear warheads detonated in the upper atmosphere to short out every circuit in the USA, but how you'd do this I don't know.

Also there should be a capability for symiltaneous launch, in turn meaning you'd have to target them earlier. This could be fun in multiplayer (I've got 30 ICBMs pointed at your capital, so be nice).
[This message has been edited by Michael Dnes (edited July 19, 2000).]

[jdlessl]

It'd be nice if unit design followed the same model as in SMAC, so you could simply have different types of missiles and then put in various types of warheads. Have cheap, short range cruise missiles and more expensive ICBM's that can basically go anywhere on the map. For warheads, they'll go from tac nukes that destroy everything in one square (or maybe just do massive amounts of damage to them), radiation bombs that take out population but not buildings, all the way up through fusion city-busters and, if you do future tech, antimatter bombs. How should an EMP attack be represented, anyway?

There's also the question of dropping a nuke from a plane, which you can't do in Civ 2 or SMAC. If the timeline goes into the 21st century, you can also have orbital weapons platforms that just drop a bomb into the gravity well.

Jared Lessl

[phunny pharmer]

Hmm...I think that the nuke needs to be upgradeable. Hey, Fat Boy and Little (something) were only a fraction as powerful as later atomic bombs. (For those of you who don't watch the history channel or read books, those were the names or codenames of the bombs dropped on Japan.)

I think nuclear weapons bring up several issues. First of all, they should be enormously more powerful then they are in civ2. This should represent the repeated uses of nukes in certain areas. For instance, a nuke hitting a city would represent a nuclear barrage targeting the military airfield in the area, the municipal airfield, the military base(s), and/or other important military areas. Rather then represent this as separate nuke units, the Civ3 nuke should represent a nuclear barrage.

For this reason, a nuke hitting a square should blow up one square for an early nuke (because only a few would be built as prototype technology), increasing as hydrogen and neutron bombs come into play. I think that later nuclear barrages should blow up circles with three-to-five square radii.

For this reason, the nuke unit should be vastly more expensive. A large empire should only be able to build a few nukes mainly because they are expensive. However, by the end, only a few nukes would be necessary to blow up the major production centers of an empire (and then create enough pollution to destroy the entire globe).

Also, I think an interesting feature for Firaxis to explore is the statement 'we won't fire ours first'. Make this a voluntary statement that empires can say if they want to. This could improve relations dramatically with empires that do not have nukes. However, it could make an empire very vulnerable!

[CornMaster]

Weren't the nukes dropped on Japan called Little boy and then Fat Man??

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"I'm too out of shape for a long fight so I'll have to kill you fast"
"If the great Emperors of Rome, Egypt and Greece were alive today, do you think they would prefer Coke or Pepsi?"

[Evil Capitalist]

quote: Originally posted by CornMaster on 07-19-2000 01:51 PM Weren't the nukes dropped on Japan called Little boy and then Fat Man??

I thought tall boy and fat man.

[The Brain]

Checked a website...

It's Little Boy and Fat Man.

Sounds like a super hero team.

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The Brain: Weirdo who takes modern culture and stabs it in the eye
-Founder of DoH!
-Please pull up to the second window
-I see dead people...give me my medication!
-What's your favorite scary mov--Please deposit 25 cents for the next 5 minutes.
-Visit DoH, or else!
-How much longer is my sig gonna get?
-This much.
[This message has been edited by The Brain (edited July 20, 2000).]

[Adm.Naismith]

The bomb names come from the different form factor (they are in fact built with some difference, as concept test arms):
Fat man was larger than Little boy.

The Brain

quote: Sounds like a super hero team.

Men at war have strange, macabre, sense of humor.

Back to the thread, I suppose Firaxis will use enhanced Units Workshop from SMAC, as jdlessl suggested.

I'm not sure if adding in CIV a lot of nuke weapons difference have any meaning.

I mean, apart from some tactical warhead exchange that USA / USSR considered as a realistic war scenario, I think that larger Mass destruction weapons (adding the whole NBC triade) are useful only to add a diplomatic sense of cold war, MAD menace.

I always underline that CIV series has a great strategic vision, changing it to a tactical wargame is not necessarly for good IMHO.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Joe Bourque]

I'd like to see unlimited range on ICBMs. I always tweek Civ 2 so that they have the games max movement ~40 and can stay in the air to try and simulate this.

Joe

[gemini]

Yes, I think that there should be different classes for the nukes, continuing on this point it is a misconception that the nukes of today are dirtier than the nukes dropped on japan in ww2. The nukes of today are alot more cleaner than they use to be and would cause less pollution, although if a full scale nuclear exchange took place today I would imagine that it would be very pollutive.

Also, I think that if you nuked another civ it should be an automatic and full scale retaliation, just like in real life.

But I would like to see the life scale of the nukes limited, since technology could be developed in the future to destroy nuclear missiles inflight, like the sdi defence, then the only way to nuke a city is to send a spy into enemy teritory and plant one in the city, hmm another interesting thought might be to add a unit to the game like "the terrorist unit" which would be able to plant nukes and maybe a little bit more. Hey what about the "Drug Dealer". Happiness could go up but production would go down. Lol

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Gemini
[This message has been edited by gemini (edited July 21, 2000).]

[Vitmore The Great]

I like the idea of a terrorist unit that can plant bombs and do more. That would take away from the spy unit, but it is nonetheless a good idea. Maybe the unit could kidnap the mayor of a city or something like that.

[UltraSonix]

I'm rushing to read a lot of threads (haven't been around for a while) so my responce might not make sense.

But how about the default unit designs for the nuke unit is just a plain old nuke. But for grizzled veterns like us , we can use the workshop to upgrade to a thermonuclear (ie H-bomb) from the "normal" uranium/plutonium bomb.

And also, maybe bombers can be upgraded (once again, only for the pros at the unit workshop, to keep away micromanagement from newbies), so that they can be put into a town, and have a command like build nuke missile. Then when the bomber is used to attack, it can have the option of dropping the nuke. This method would bypass and missile shields, SDI, etc, but would be subject to normal fighter vs bomber combat.

Ah, it's good to be back.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Sirotnikov]

quote: Originally posted by UltraSonix on 07-21-2000 10:47 PM And also, maybe bombers can be upgraded (once again, only for the pros at the unit workshop, to keep away micromanagement from newbies), so that they can be put into a town, and have a command like build nuke missile. Then when the bomber is used to attack, it can have the option of dropping the nuke. This method would bypass and missile shields, SDI, etc, but would be subject to normal fighter vs bomber combat.

Hey, I like this idea.

I was always annoyed that the minute you have SDI, no nukes are possible except with spies, and then the whoe world declares war on you.

good job

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[Spekter]

The workshop is the way to go. That way you can build whatever type of nuke you want.

My problem with nukes is that there needs to be more of a deterent to using them. The pollution that they create doesn't have to cover a large area initially, it needs to last a long time and spread a fair bit before it is cleaned up. Radiation is really hard to contain. Winds carry it. Water carries it. If a nuke is set off in a city on a river, any other city down stream of it should also take a pollution hit.