Nuclear Terraforming?

[chairmanmeow]

Once when I was playing as Persia, and I was in a war with the English, I used an ICBM on a beach tile next to England's last city, and the coastline appeared to change, and it looked like a land tile had become water. Is it possible to change landscape with nukes in Civ 3, or am I just playing the game too late at night?

[DaveMcW]

I know global warming can turn coast into desert, so I wouldn't be surprised if a nuke can too. Do you have a save before and after?

The problem with nuclear terraforming is every nuke permanently increases global warming. After a hundred nukes or so the entire world turns into desert.

[Harovan]

There was an old strategy (IIRC half a year or more ago) posted on CFC, which was called "nuke the river" in order to get high food floodplains to feed more citizens.

Generally nuking tiles takes food away and sometimes adds shields. For instance, grassland turns into plains and plains into desert. River tiles are an exception, as they produce floodplains instead of desert.

[chairmanmeow]

I tried another nuke on a similar coastline, and what appeared to happen was that the nearby area became desert, and the appearance of coastline change apparently came from the change in the tile to desert. By the way, in the world I used for this, I've used probably about 40 nukes in wars with France, England, Zululand, and Babylon, and global warming is a major problem.

[Nakar Gabab]

There is a DEFINITE heirarchy of global warming (and hence nuclear) effects. I think it's based on what the tile started as, and where it is geographically. If you nuke any tile more than a time or two, however, you will get desert (which will be considered Flood Plains if it's on a river, as usual). Anyway, I forget quite what it is, but if can be predicted.

Grassland -> Plains (sometimes Jungle?) -> Desert -> Coast (only near coast and only VERY rarely)

Coast also seems to SOMETIMES turn into desert. This is very rare, but I've seen some screenshots of boats in a totally landlocked city, separated by a single desert tile, so I guess it is possible, if a bit unusual.

Dropping nukes on Tundra doesn't appear to do anything, that I can see. I think once or twice I've seen non-polar patches transform... to plains, I believe. I've not taken the time to throw nukes onto desolate ice fields, as you might expect...

[Worthingtons]

So, theoritically, it is possible, to take an area, and with nukes make loads of little one tile islands?? Cool!!

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Rothy
So, theoritically, it is possible, to take an area, and with nukes make loads of little one tile islands?? Cool!!

loads of one tile desert islands.

is it possible to kill the tile with a city on it?

[Datajack Franit]

I started a thread about this a cpl months ago, you can find it here