What to do when the nukes fly?

Hi all. So I am in an unusual game. It has extended into the modern era with no clear winner. I am on standard continents, 9 civs, 30 CS (I know...), and immortal difficulty.

In a typical game, I have already come way ahead of the competition and don't have to worry about nukes, because the game is all but over. However, this time there will be a fight to the death since there are three civs all pretty much neck and neck in terms of science, culture, etc.

The AI is constructing manhattan like crazy (why wouldn't you), so the gigantic nuclear weapons are going to begin to rain down. I don't believe I will be able to side step it this time. Given that this will be my first real fight with nukes on the table, does anyone have advice or a strategy for making it out of the situation? I would prefer it if my citizens weren't glowing in the dark when it's all over.

Specifically, how do I advance on a civ who has nukes and how do I defend my territory from them. I am hesitant to use them much myself, but I will if that's the way to victory.

First strike nukes are the way to go. Strike first, strike hard. Or propose the anti nuke legislation in the world congress (my preferred option) but build some before it passes in case the ai has some and you need torespond.

Patrol your borders to look for any errant aircraft carriers with nukes.

Illianor123 said:

First strike nukes are the way to go. Strike first, strike hard. Or propose the anti nuke legislation in the world congress (my preferred option) but build some before it passes in case the ai has some and you need torespond.

Patrol your borders to look for any errant aircraft carriers with nukes.

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Yeah, I usually run to advanced ballistics so that I can proposed nuclear nonproliferation, and I will, but I think there will be big exchanges before that comes around. Probably won't get passed for another fifty turns or more. In the meantime, someone's going to burn.

So one route is to rain that uranium death in a massive way first? I'll have to backtrack some research but it's do-able. I can't guarantee that I'll get there first, though, so is there any advice for surviving an opponent's attack?

Nice tip about patrolling the coasts for carriers. I wouldn't have thought about it.

If the ai wants to nuke then let the ai nuke.. Nukes do good damage especially when you have a large stack so making your own nukes could be useful. Just because the ai has nukes doesn't mean that the ai will use the nukes against you, so be nice and maybe the ai could let you slide.. If nukes don't get away from your lands then you can take citizenship and use your workers to clean the nuclear mess up quicker.

Just curious, is Gandhi in your game?

Nuke and Paratrooper them first . Try and get DoF's with the civs closest to you (they might think about it twice with the massive diplo hit), don't do it if you're going to strike them though, unless you don't care about the diplo. Bomb shelters. Patrol looking for carriers, etc

Rather than a pre-emptive strike I would try to get the AI's to expend all of their Nukes on one another while I stockpile enough to take out whoever thought they just won WW3

In addition to sniffing out carriers, place spies in enemy cities that are within nuking range of one of your cities. If you see they have any bombs there, nuke that city and destroy it.

Most AI are generally pretty hesitant to be the first to strike with their nukes though, so even if they have a crapload of bombs, you could still be safe. It might be worthwhile to reference the chart of the AI flavors.

Well, the war is over. Thanks to those who gave advice. I managed to keep the exchange away from my core, so when the map started to glow it was all on the other folks' territory. I learned three things:

Do not forward deploy your highly experienced units. Use lesser units for visibility or simple clearing attacks.

Move units away from cities at the front. For some reason the AI won't nuke troop concentrations; it focuses on cities.

Nuke troop concentrations. Best money I ever spent.

I tend to use blitz attacks with a small mobile force of either Carrier+Battleship groups or Bombers+Paratroopers. The idea is to strike deep into the enemy territory, take a city in 2 turns and than let the AI nuke his own lands instead of yours.

Knowledge is the key here, since they can't move and strike with nukes in the same turn you must always know where those nukes are, or at least where they are not. If you feel like the AI might bomb your home towns be extremely careful where you place your bomber stacks, they are your most valuable units, you do not want them nuked. Everything else is expendable.

And build shelters for you cities. They recover relatively quickly from a nuke attack with those built.

I rarely get that far in the game as I usually lose patience and just take all the cap cities, but on those rare occasions when we get to nukes one of things I do is try to starve the ai of uranium resource if possible. I.e. if he doesn't have much make sure he can't ally any city-states that do. If all his uranium is in one small area I may find it worth it to take the associated city from him (especially if it's Gandhi).

Well, Primacide mentioned it already. Keep your armies away from your cities if at all possible because the AI is only programmed to nuke cities. They will prefer to nuke one of your cities over your massive army of 20 Mech Infantry and 20 Rocket Arty right outside their borders.

And if I'm not mistaken, nukes (at least Nuclear Missiles) destroy units, including other nukes in the city that they hit. This is why striking first can be so devastating if you know where their nukes are being kept.

And here's another thing I observed - which may not be important in a standard game, but was quite noticeable in the "Earth 2014" mod I was playing - an AI will not nuke a city if even one tile of a civ they are not at war with will be hit by the blast (which will cause that civ to be at war with them too).

In addition to that, they also will not nuke a city if even one tile of their own territory will be caught in the blast, even though a human player would gladly sacrifice one or more tiles of their own territory to gain advantage. (Yet they will happily nuke one of their own cities that you've just captured, as long as none of their remaining territory is within the blast radius.) You may be able to use one or both of these AI tendencies to prevent yourself from being nuked.

Can I piggy-back a question onto this one, instead of creating a new thread?

I'm in a deity game. I'm a good ways out in front in tech, the only one who has entered the atomic era. Left to myself, I wouldn't bother building nukes. I've been peacefully turtling to a science victory. I've got four uranium, and, again, left to myself, I'd just build nuclear power plants with them. But here's my question.

Would my building Manhattan and nukes early on have a deterrent effect on the other players building or using them? Or would it have the opposite effect, and encourage them to build nukes themselves? Or does it have no effect at all? I already plan on building bomb shelters, so I'll be less disrupted if anybody does use nukes. But should I build my own nukes also?

Ghandi is not in the game, but I share a border with Alex and he's been aggressive all game (though not to me).

(I actually hope Alex attacks now, before nukes, because I'm technologically advanced enough that I think I could cut him down to size in a conventional war.)

Gori the Grey said:

Can I piggy-back a question onto this one, instead of creating a new thread?

I'm in a deity game. I'm a good ways out in front in tech, the only one who has entered the atomic era. Left to myself, I wouldn't bother building nukes. I've been peacefully turtling to a science victory. I've got four uranium, and, again, left to myself, I'd just build nuclear power plants with them. But here's my question.

Would my building Manhattan and nukes early on have a deterrent effect on the other players building or using them? Or would it have the opposite effect, and encourage them to build nukes themselves? Or does it have no effect at all? I already plan on building bomb shelters, so I'll be less disrupted if anybody does use nukes. But should I build my own nukes also?

Ghandi is not in the game, but I share a border with Alex and he's been aggressive all game (though not to me).

(I actually hope Alex attacks now, before nukes, because I'm technologically advanced enough that I think I could cut him down to size in a conventional war.)

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I think the AI becomes afraid when you have manhattan and they don't. and then it's a matter of aggressiveness (good thing you don't have ghandi).
In that case I'd lean towards just taking out some of alex's cities esp if they have uranium

Thanks, Sessy.

I didn't bother with Manhattan while I had the edge, but as soon as Siam and Spain hit Atomic Age, they built it right away, so I'm building it too, now. I'll only have three nukes, unless I get uranium from some city state, because I've already used one of mine for a nuclear power plant.

But Siam just declared on Alex, so that might have been who he was building the the nukes for. I hope so any way. Anything that would disrupt Alex's domination of all the CSs would be welcome. He won't get enough for a diplo victory, I don't think, but it's been hard to get and keep allies.

By the way, I found that it's a very good trick to build a stockpile of nukes, get nonproliferation passed, and then pay those AI who have an arsenal to DoW each other. I wound up as the only player left with them.

Muhahaha...

Saving nukes for way after nuclear proliferation is possible. The only thing that nuclear proliferation does is prevent new nukes from being built.