"Our words are backed by nuclear weapons!"

I think the -2 penatly is correct. Although they perhaps could make it more complicated (like if the other Civ changed government at a future date, the effects become less apparent, or the effects dimish over time), this can probably be modded.

I think the global warming is a bit off a non-event. I can't see it having that much of an effect on gameplay, as you would need a load of nukes to be going off for it to start happening, and then, there is a limit to how much it can happen. I wouldn't expect you to have nukes for more than about 50 turns before the end of the game, and I woudn't expect more than 10 tiles to change in these 50 turns. This, while it may damage a small civ slightly, isn't major.

As for roads and railways - it was always my impression that nukes aren't/weren't neary as good at killing infrastructure, as people in the real world. Although it get's pretty toasty at ground zero, the heat pretty quickly disappates, although the radiation effects everybody for quite a long distance, and the areas nuked are uninhabitable for quite a while.

Nuclear fallout. Now, as far as I'm aware this cannot be simply "cleaned up", even with modern day technology. The area Chernobyl, for exampe, is still extremely dangerous (although for some reason the roads are pretty safe, the ground it rather nasty - there is an interesting thing somewhere on the internet about a lady who tours the area regularely on her motorbike - google it ). I think maybe the worker action should be moved away to a later tech, or maybe you should just have to give it time.

Finally - different types of nuke. I can see the arguament against loads and loads of different units, but I personally thing there should be a low tech nuke, very much like the tactical nuke, with limited range, and limited power. The ones dropped in WW2 were nothing in comparsion to the damage a modern day nuke would do, I believe (I don't have time right now to look it up, but I'm pretty sure!), and, unless I'm wrong, which I may be, both of the targets are now inhabitable. I don't think there have been clean-up teams about, though, I know relatively little.

Somebody is going to come along and blow this post into smithereans I know. Damn I wish I knew more about nukes right now

Yes, the fact that workers shouldn't be able to clean up radioactive fallouts has escaped me for a while. And in fact, it could bring a whole new step of dramaturgy to the game : if you can't clean up the fallouts of a nuke, making the area hardly inhabitable, nukes wouldn't be just funny toys in the hand of the civver, but something which would lead to the point of no return. "Beware, this weapon can harm you enemy very hard, but you may suffer the loss of one or many cities forever !" Maybe not just by putting all the tiles to zero economically, but something really nasty nonetheless.

Right now it's merely a bomb-and-clean affair.

It shouldn't be too hard to mod radioactive fallout to be semi-permanent and cause disease.

it should be possible to break the nuclear proliferation, but with even greater damage to relationships

Well I agree there should be a standard fission nuke (carried on Nuclear Bomber) that only hurts one tile

Then an ICBM thermonuclear bomb that hits 9 tiles.

They should both probably turn railroads back into roads, so that only roads and Wonders are not destroyed.

I'd also say that Without bomb shelters, the population should become 50/25% (depending on bombtype) rounded down (with bombshelters 95/75% rounded Up) and Only Population (and perhaps cottage/hamlet/town Improvements) should benefit from bomb shelters. Since the bombs Should eliminate a small, unprotected city

Units should have something like a 80/120% damage done (multiplied by a random number from 1-3), -20% for every level of fortification

Actually only the area immediately around Chernobyl is dangerous and that is because it Wasn't a nuclear bomb (if it had been a bomb, the material would have exploded in the atmosphere and the fallout would mostly have been global. The overall area can be worked in safely (although people who do that will probably die of cancer after several decades, they won't immediately succumb to radiation sickness.) And Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perfectly healthy today (at least as much as people living in Colorado with its high cosmic radiation levels) and that was with no cleanup whatsoever (just rain washing stuff away)

The 'Global Warming' should probably be renamed to 'Climate Effects' or something like that (if pollution is a factor too). And should probably be something like the square of the nukes launched (so with 30 nukes one tile per turn will change)... Or lese each time the dice roll is less then a second dice roll is made to try to get under the difference (for multiple squares changed.)

disappointed by the function of the nuke. roads are immune to nukes?!?!? thats a step backward! if nukes can tear concrete from buildings, they can rip roads right off! if a few measily bombs dropped from a bomber can destroy roads and other infrastructure, then the bomb of all bomb should be able to at least do the same! madness i tell you

Finally a good reason to discover Ecology!!

While the area near ground zero is completely destroyed, the surrounding land isn't really damaged that much. The shockwave moves horizontally along the ground, so only vertical structures are hit hard. Roads wouldn't be affected because they are flat against the ground.

zeise said:

it should be possible to break the nuclear proliferation, but with even greater damage to relationships

Click to expand...

Maybe all other civs are obligated to declare war on you simultaneously?

Can you you use nukes even though the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty was established? Or are the nukes "locked"?

Can you detonate a nuclear explosive using any other means? (like via spy in civ2)

Tomasz

Nice pretty cool guessing you had a grudge vs the egyptions

Cool TF!

I must agree that about the roads, wonders and railways. Lossing wonders just sucks, and a dirt road is hardly gonna be damadged by a nuke. rails, yes, but only at ground zero. For the rest the balst wave, which is the destructive part of a nuke will just go over them. radiatioon would do fairly little, and the heat disepates quickly, as mentioned by GA.

And now to clear something up: global warming vs nuclear winter.

A nuclear winter is caused by the sun being blotted out by huge amounts of dust in the air. This would happen after a M.A.D. scenario, including thousands of nukes and during a relatively small period of time. I has happened in the past when sufficiently large meteors struck the earth or sufficiently large volcanic chains went of. Thusly: it is not the nuke which creates a "nuklear" winter, and cannot happen gradually: blotting the sun takes a relatively "quick" effect; even using thousands of nukes but over time (as has been done with testing in the 20th century) does not.

Secondly, global warming is caused by greenhouse gasses trapping heat inside the atmosphere as well as the lack of an ozone layer which lets more harmful radiation from the sun through, which kills things. Prolonged nuclear explosions also have this effect too: put enough radiation somehwere and nothing (no, not even mutants) will grow, ie dessert. Immense amounts of heat (from nukes) warm up the atmosphere too, and can theoretically be kept from escaping from earth as all waste heat should by greenhouse gasses, contributing to global warming.

I find that "global warming" is accurate enough of the effects nukes have in civ4. It would be nice to MOD some kind of nuklear winter on the condition that more than X amounts of nukes have gone off in Y amount of turns (like 150 nukes in 3 turns or something). In the end though the effect is the same: desserts. The term nuclear "winter" is misleading as there's nothing "wintery" about it: your tiles will not be turned into tundra or arctic! The only reason it is called winter is because the loss of plant and animal life happens because there's no photosynthesis possible, not because it starts snowing everywhere!

As to the workers clearing the radiation, I agree chernobyl is still uninhabitable, but the science of "ecology" to me is some futuristic thing. I would not say we have "discovered" it yet. Much like fusion, we know the principles, but putting it into practice is a whole matter entirely. So I find this realsitic.

Now that THAT is settled, there's still only one thing on my mind. In a UN resolution you can't build OR use nukes. I understand resolutions can be reversed, but a treaty doesn't stop me using a nuke: If I'm gonna kill thousands of civies a treaty will hardly make me stop and think. I propose that such a resolution would let you use nukes, but if you did then everyone declares war on you for going against it. (Yes, the UN isn't THAT powerful in the real world, but this is more realistic then the UN actually dictating to a state!)

general_kill said:

disappointed by the function of the nuke. roads are immune to nukes?!?!? thats a step backward! if nukes can tear concrete from buildings, they can rip roads right off! if a few measily bombs dropped from a bomber can destroy roads and other infrastructure, then the bomb of all bomb should be able to at least do the same! madness i tell you

Click to expand...

Actually roads and paths tend to survive nuke attack tests. Railroads, however...

aahz_capone said:

The term nuclear "winter" is misleading as there's nothing "wintery" about it: your tiles will not be turned into tundra or arctic! The only reason it is called winter is because the loss of plant and animal life happens because there's no photosynthesis possible, not because it starts snowing everywhere!

Click to expand...

Actually, with enough dust thrown into the upper atmosphere, it will become substantially colder. Not enough that it'll start snowing in the Sahara, but crops will fail and winters become much more severe. (See "The Year Without a Summer" in 1600's Europe.)

Nuclear testing usually involves less-powerful weaponry that's detonated (for the last several decades) underground. A full nuclear exchange will involve uniminaginably hideous explosions that displace large amounts of soil.

A couple of comments:

aahz_capone said:

Secondly, global warming is caused by greenhouse gasses trapping heat inside the atmosphere as well as the lack of an ozone layer which lets more harmful radiation from the sun through, which kills things.

Click to expand...

Global warming is not related with the ozone layer problem. The warming is due to the fact that CO2 and other gases doesn't allow the infrared radiation leave the Earth (as the plastic/glass in a greenhouse).

The ozone issue increases the risk of skin cancer, but it doesn't "heat" the Earth.

Prolonged nuclear explosions also have this effect too: put enough radiation somehwere and nothing (no, not even mutants) will grow, ie dessert. Immense amounts of heat (from nukes) warm up the atmosphere too, and can theoretically be kept from escaping from earth as all waste heat should by greenhouse gasses, contributing to global warming.

Click to expand...

I am not sure that the warming effect of a few tens of nukes is comparable to the effect from thousands of factories and millions of cars around the world.

The reason nukes dont destroy railroads and road is simple people. The bombs explode in the air not after they hit ground like normal bombs. Therefore the damage is along a horizontal line several feet above ground. Hence the term "fall"out. Radiation while deadly to us doesn't by itself destroy inanimate objects

That's really not correct. Nuclear weapons can be detonated at altitude (say, 5,000 ft above ground level,) or at ground level. Fallout occurs in either event, although a ground detonation will have much more fallout. Reason: if a weapon is detonated at ground level, it will suck up much more debris, dirt, and other stuff into the atmosphere.

Ground detonations are used for taking out hardened structures (such as ICBM silos, bunkers, and the like.) Airbursts would have the effect of severly damaging above ground structures, troop positions, ground vehicles, and the like. They have the secondary "benefit" of not producing as much fallout or radiation in the immediate area.

If you really wanted to pollute the area, you would hit the enemy with a groundburst with a nuke salted with cobalt. That would get you all your desired blast effects, lots of fallout, and lots of radiation in the area. Presumably, just basic use of nukes as a complement to conventional fighting (against troop positions or a "warning shot" against a single city,) would be a "clean" bomb set off at altitude.

Kids: for more information on nuclear combat, go to your local library and check out the book Nuclear War: What's In It For You?, by Ground Zero Publications. Your mom will be impressed that you're doing research on your own and may cut you a little slack when you devote entire weekends to Civ IV.

I am disappointed that nukes can't be set off against enemy forces maneuvering in your own territory. I hope that's something that can be modified once the game ships. I don't use nukes that often, but several of the times I've done so in the past (particularly in Alpha Centauri,) I had to do it to stave off defeat from invading hordes.

Wouldn't your entire populace go into anarchy mode if you nuked your own country?

Shame wonders can't be destroyed. maybe it was too easy to nuke them as a tactical measure; they could counteract this by having all other civs lose regard for you for every wonder you destroy. For example, in the real world if a nation were to destroy rome, along with all the historic monuments and works of art, the rest of the world would be angry.

Maybe I'll try to mod this (as well as making the manhattan project a small wonder)

jkp1187 said:

That's really not correct. Nuclear weapons can be detonated at altitude (say, 5,000 ft above ground level,) or at ground level. Fallout occurs in either event, although a ground detonation will have much more fallout. Reason: if a weapon is detonated at ground level, it will suck up much more debris, dirt, and other stuff into the atmosphere.

Ground detonations are used for taking out hardened structures (such as ICBM silos, bunkers, and the like.) Airbursts would have the effect of severly damaging above ground structures, troop positions, ground vehicles, and the like. They have the secondary "benefit" of not producing as much fallout or radiation in the immediate area.

Click to expand...

I freely admit I am not a nuclear expert however I do believe even ground burst bombs still detonate several feet above ground because slamming into the ground at that speed would seriously disturb the atomic chain therefore rendering the bomb mostly harmless. I believe contact with the ground in such a way would eliminate the containment around the reaction and the impact would spread the uranium too far apart to be apart of the reaction. I could be wrong though.