Do you use nukes much?

Ryika said:

I usually use a mod that disables them. They feel like cheating imho and make later wars really boring.

I hope they do a better job at restricting orbital/suitcase-nukes in BE.

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It's fascinating how different people's experience of things can be! I find exactly the opposite: nukes really spice up late-game wars, and make them much less boring by introducing extra risk and uncertainty.

It's a much more serious decision to DOW someone if you know they've might have nukes - much knottier to try to evaluate the potential costs and benefits. And you need to put a whole lot more thought into both preparation and also tactics while you advance: how should you spread out your units so that a single nuclear strike can't completely crush you militarily? Where does the enemy have vision, and where else might they hit?

I think it also makes for some of the most tense, exciting and memorable end-games. I expect everyone can remember vividly the crazy times when they were so so close to victory before the stomach-turning sight of that horrible orange glow ruined everything, or when an AI was on the verge of a science victory before a judiciously placed warm nuke gave you the couple of turns leg-up you needed to pull it out of the bag.

Then there's the fact that uranium is a strategic resource that you might really want and really not have enough of, so what are you going to do about getting some? There's no other resource that's often an issue in that way apart from iron right back in the very early game.

Yes, in many ways nukes definitely add a whole lot of depth to the late game, in my opinion.

I rarely do but there was a deity game in GnK where the Aztecs had consumed over half the planet and I had to goto war with them or lose (epic pace, large map). Their units marched to my lines and filled hexes to the horizon, no matter how many I killed they just filled in against my defensive lines. The Aztecs didn't have much of a navy so I sent mine around with some troops and pillaged all their uranium plots, then I released hell on earth. Felt like I had nuked a circular band around the planet. That bought me a 3 hex advance before they had filled in again, so had to build 20+ more nukes and do it again before I was able to break them down and start taking cities enmass.

Was epic and probably the longest civ game I ever played.

As far as i remember i only used nukes 1 and a half times.

The 1 time was because i had heard how cool the animations looked so i decided late in a game to purchase some and see what it looked like.

The half time i was way behind with Russia as a massive runaway on a different continent and her capital was 4 tiles inland with a carpet of doom covering the land tiles to the capital as well as a naval raft of doom covering the sea all around and finally a huge air force so i aimed to build nukes as my only real chance of taking Moscow and winning the game.
I say half because i didn't actually get to build or use the nukes.

Silverman6083 said:

Lately I've been role playing as America & playing "Arsenal of Democracy" style so nukes are a pretty big no-no unless it's on strictly military targets. What I often do is to buy up all the uranium, buy all the City-States w/ uranium, build all the A-Bombs & ICBMs I can, & then ban em! So no one can use them on innocents

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You do realise that US is the only country who has yet used proper nukes on cities.

Back on topic, I use them rarely. Most of the time I can live without them unless some AI really annoyed me a lot (backstabbed me or DoWed me continuously through out the game etc) or I when I feel bloodthirsty & want to see the mushroom cloud before ending the game with the capture of the last capital!

I love nukes, but the game is always over by the time to get to them, and if you're going Domination you're better off with Radar anyway. It's a shame, really.

The poll results are what I expected.... Unlike in Vanilla and G&K, in BNW I seldom even build them and I can't even remember any recent games where the AI have used them...I've been "threatened" on occasion, though...

Almost all of my victories are cultural or diplomatic and I'm able to dominant militarily sufficiently once I have Artillery.....occasionally I'll get a few Rocket Artillery units but not often and I generally don't travel very far along the bottom of the tech tree once I get Artillery and seldom even build space ship parts....a big difference from G&K....

Lots of different ways to win at this game, particularly with BNW....

The bombs dropped were actually atomic bombs and a nuclear weapon has not been used.

Im more like russia, spend all money on them and parade them around in subs and cruisers. I dont like using them and dont want them used against me so I tend to start gifting people when they discovery Manhattan project.

Im with the Ferengi I look down on the human race for using them.

Largely depends on mood,need and/or convenience,i definitely like to use them on backstabbers though (Especially those who were until then,afraid of me )

I've used them once but in true military fashion for the intended goal. I was fighting against Japan as the US, and I was winning, but at an extreme cost, so my objective much like WW2 was simple but on a bigger scale, I dropped 23 nukes on Japan, most launched as SLBM's, and destroyed 11 cities and reduced Kyoto to 2 pop, he then was no longer a threat.

My games rarely last long enough to see nukes. If I win, it's either diplo or cultural victory before nukes become a meaningful part of anyone's arsenal, the same is true if i pursue scientific victory and am far ahead of everyone else. I guess it would be a little different on deity but I'm too much of a peaceful player to enjoy deity.

When I was a much worse player, I used to use nukes to eliminate enemy capitals for a quick domination victory but this type of victory is not only the ultimately most boring one (when you are able to obtain domination, it's 50 turn of slow, inevitable pursuit of the goal) but also a very sleazy one if you just grab enemy capitals you wouldn't be able to hold long after you see the victory screen.

Haven't used a single nuke in the last ~500h of gameplay.

JamesCivFan said:

I love nukes, but the game is always over by the time to get to them, and if you're going Domination you're better off with Radar anyway. It's a shame, really.

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Exactly, most games don't get to the stage of nukes or xcom. I've used them only a handful of times. Which is sad really.