What was the biggest nuclear war you've ever been in?

[Verto]

Usually when the game crashes on me, it's been about 3 hours since I last saved, and I just couldn't bear to do it all over again.

I have this same problem when playing Star Wars Rebellion - ach!

[Arrian]

I've only used nukes once in CivIII, if memory serves. It was shortly after the game came out, playing on warlord or something, as Babylon.

I had gained an English city via culture flip in the late ancient or early middle ages. I then spent millenia building it up. In the modern age, after all the work I put into it, it flipped back on me.

Instead of coming to 'poly and opening a thread to ***** and moan about it, I nuked London. All hell promptly broke loose, but I was able to finish and launch my SS before too much damage was done.

-Arrian

[Verto]

Excellent move.


I wish the AI would build more nukes, thus a MAD situation.

[Wycoff]

I am about ready to unleash a major nuclear war on the Persians (Major being about 20 ICBMs, 15-25 tactical Nukes). We are the only two civs left, and both control giant continents. Persia has repeatedly declared war on me throughout the game, recently trying an invasion of my continent (which I crushed mercilessly). They are a monarchy and I am a democracy, and I am about 5 techs ahead of them. They have over 160 MIs, so the only rasonable way that I can conquer them is through a massive Nuclear assault . It will be in about 20 turns or so. I'll post before and after pictures to show the destruction.

[Chemical Ollie]

I've seen the AIs nuke each other more often than I've been involved myself. One thing I have noticed is that hey hardly ever have the ground troops in place to take advantage of the deed. I've seen my ally nuke our common enemy so my nearby ground troops could easily take the cities.

But I haven never seen a game with more than perhaps 5-10 blasts in total.

[badams52]

Originally posted by Verto


Excellent move.

I wish the AI would build more nukes, thus a MAD situation.

Must be that you're too advanced for the AI to have the time to build as many nukes as you. I have seen large AI stores, but when he uses them, he's not always too bright. Often bombing the same city over and over and over. My SDI was destroying many of the nukes, but the stupidity of the AI remained.

Best strat, conventionally take out the SDI city, then it's open season...

For a look on the dangers of global warming and nukes, take a look at this thread.

[Aramis]

Originally posted by pedrojedi
Usually when my game crashes, I try doing something different with a reload to try to avoid the crash and continue the game. People here seem to declare the game over. Is it just some people, or there's a lot of people who declares the game's over when the program crashes?

I reloaded the game from auto save more than once, did things different (but admittedly not very) and the game still crashed. Gave that one up. That one only. Because its the only one that ever crashed on my system.

I wouldn't consider the game over due to crash. I would do as you do, but frustration ruled at that moment and swept me up in it.
I was hoping it wasn't a bug in the game causing it. Maybe its just time to upgrade my system.

[pedrojedi]

Oh, my very same problem ...

[Wycoff]

I finished my nuclear war with the AI last night. I completely destroyed the previously dominant Persian forces, something that I could not have done without the nukes. I used around 30 ICBMs, destroying the industrial base of Persia, and 11 or 12 Tactical Nukes, used both on cities and on naval forces. The tactical nukes on nuclear submarines shredded the AI naval battle groups, usually consisting of 4 or 5 battleships, a carrier and bombers. I'll try and post some before and after pictures.

[Wycoff]

Here is the comparison of my Army (the Germans) and the Persian army right after the Persians invaded my continent. They brought in two transports full of Mech Inf and Modern Armor, which they unloaded on a single mountain in the far north near a miinor city. I used a tactical nuke on this stack, moping up the remnants with a few modern armors.

[Wycoff]

Here. Persians control the Green area, and their numbers are on the right side of the screen. Notice the 149 mech infantry! (I had already nuked 12 or 13 of them in that invasion stack.)

[Wycoff]

Here is the result of my combined nuclear holocaust/ MA invasion. I used my 24 original ICBMs to destroy their industrial heartland(the center of the Persian continent) to prevent them from replenishing their forces. I then built 6 more ICBMs to assist my MA in taking cities on the "arms"of the continent that were still well guarded. The war still took about 20 turns, but the Persians were never able to recover their industrial strength. I kept pumping out MAs and overpowered them. Without the help of those nukes Persia would have been able to continuously produce Mech Infantry and I would have never have been able to defeat them. They would have eventually discovered ICBMs themselves, and I would have been on the receiving end of a holocaust.

I razed their cities in payment for 2000 years of Persian extortion and 3 unprovoked invasions of Germany. I now plan to clean up the pollution and win in 2049 via the space race. (I allowed one Persian city to survive on a small island completely surrounded by my navy) I have a save of my game of the turn just after I noked their invasion force but before I used my ICBMs. (The save file is from the same turn as my first screenshot.) If anyone wants to reinact this holocaust I can post the save.

[Arrian]

You made the world a horrible, horrible place. Are you at least putting the Persian refugees to work cleaning up that mess?

Damn. By the way, you could have beaten them conventionally. Take all the shields you invested in nukes, and instead make Modern Armor, and you would have quite a strike force. Unlike a human, the AI does not concentrate its forces properly, so you were never going to see those 140+ Mech Infantry all at once. They were distributed throughout the Persian Empire, and you could have picked off cities one by one.

It probably would have taken longer, though, I'll grant you that.

-Arrian

[BigDork]

Arrian...

You forgot the best part of nuclear war. It's a lot of fun. There's nothing like turning all the enemy territory into orange ooze. Of course you better make sure you are gonna end the game soon or the global warming will hurt but that's not something I generally think about before my ICBM's are streaking through the skies.

BigD

[Wycoff]

Arrian,

Yeah, I might have been able to have slowly ground out the AI through endless MAs, but as you said, it would have taken forever. A fortified MIs supported by radar towers, inside of size 15+ cities with Civil Defense improvements would have taken many MAs to destroy, and the AI would be churning out MIs and MAs the whole time. The shields that I devoted to 30 ICBMs would have given me 135-150 MA's right? The ICBMs did as much damage as those MAs, only much quicker. I built the tactical nukes before I had Synthetic Fibers, and I mainly used them for naval operations, a role in which the MAs would obviously have been useless.

It usually took 2 or 3 MAs to take out a single fortified MI inside of a size 7 citiy. The ICBMs took out multiple MIs at once, along with MAs. When you consider that the pollution in effect "pillaged" the squares around their cities, obstructed unit movement, halved their population making the cities easier to attack, and severely reducing AI productivity. The 150 extra MAs would have done alot of damage, but not as much as the ICBMs did. I would have lost 25 or 30 of them at least attacking their large cities. Plus, the war weariness would have completely destroyed my Democracy. I think that the ICBMs were cost effective considering the scope of their damage, the effects on the AI's production and the fact that they severely weakened each city's defensive rating.(Besides, I wanted to nuke the Persians. They were asking for it the entire game )

I still have 70 or so turns before the end of the game, with hundreds of slave workers that I had captured throughout the years, so I can get my mess cleaned up. That was my first Civ 3 nuclear war, and I really enjoyed it.