How do you know if a civ will use nukes?

G

generalawal

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 3, 2004
Messages
49
The title pretty much explains it... I've noticed that some civs threaten to use nukes while others condemn it. I'm guessing that it has to do with the civ 'traits' (i.e. aggressive - rational, civilized - militaristic, perfectionist - expansionist).
 
Personally I hate it when the computer uses nukes, so I never build the Manhattan Project. I also attempt to sabotage attempts at other civ's building it. It's not so much the threat of being attacked by them that bothers me, it's that the AI never bothers to clean up all the damn pollution.

As for when will a civ use it, I'm not too sure. I'm guessing that an aggressive & militaristic civ would be more likely to.
 
If the AI civ has nukes, you can bet it will use them. If you have a nuke missile, it will stall it off for a while, but, eventually, the AI will try to nuke you.
 
What I don't get is that the AI never uses them properly when they do use them. Since the nuke kills all the units inside the city, why not follow, on the same turn, with a paradrop to take the city? Is there some reason this won't work? I tend not to use them myself so I've never tried it but it seems sound in theory.
 
Isn't it fun to spend 10 turns listening to "We have Necular Weapons and will use them!!?
 
Prof. Garfield said:
A civ will condem nukes if they don't have any, but will use them if they have them.
Click to expand...

How not unlike the real world!

I don't know how the ai decides when and where to strike, but in one game it went on the rampage, nuking about three cities, so I had to rush buy SDI in all my other cities.
 
DSN said:
!

so I had to rush buy SDI in all my other cities.
Click to expand...

It is much more fun to build a 'nuke trap': you choose your biggest city close to the AI and you DON'T build SDI in that city. You build SDI in a tiny city less than 3 squares away (thus protecting your big city) and you look at the AI nuking your big city again and again with no result at all :lol:
 
Madroc said:
What I don't get is that the AI never uses them properly when they do use them. Since the nuke kills all the units inside the city, why not follow, on the same turn, with a paradrop to take the city? Is there some reason this won't work? I tend not to use them myself so I've never tried it but it seems sound in theory.
Click to expand...

It works like a charm. The only reason the AI didn't use paras against you is that the target city was out of para range. Remember, nukes have a range of 16 hexes, while paras only go 10 hexes. I have been on both ends of this trick. Way back when I was just learning the game, the AI nuked me and para dropped into that city. Since then, I have used it on occasion, but in most of games now, the AI never gets nukes.

Oh yeah, it could also be that the AI launched from a sub, therefore, no paras.
 
scloopy said:
Isn't it fun to spend 10 turns listening to "We have Necular Weapons and will use them!!?
Click to expand...
Especialy if you have invested in an exstensive missle defence system. I find it kind of odd that SDI doesn't kill regular missils, just nukes. It does, however double the def of the defending unit. Imagine a cruse missill attacking an AGIES in a city with SDI and SAM...
 
I've had the same experience with the AI NEVER cleaning up pollution. It rather makes me mad because global warming is getting closer to happening and I'm searching the map to find out which idiot didn't clean up his pollution. The AI is rather unstrategical with nuclear warfare. It attacks cities I can easily take over again and with no real relivence to my stability. Not only that, it seems that your nuclear weapons don't really act like a deterent like they would in real life. Oh well.

@Ace: By the way, as curiosity strikes me, why do you call the squares "hexes"?
 
They are not squares, but they are not hexes either. Perhaps we should start calling them parrallelograms if we want to be specific...
 
They are squares; the map has just been rotated 45 degrees to give it a more 3D appearance. Very common in the early 90s as an alternative to hexes. Put it this way: how many tiles surround any single tile? Eight - therefore they are squares. Hexes discourage 90 degree movements, and the distance between two hexes at right angles are not the same.
 
It took me a while to get used to the off-set of the squares. Still find myself leaning my head over to make sure I have the correct perspective.

By the way, why does a city never grow beyond the increase thefof first time? In reality cities sprawl, some quite large.
 
@Ace: By the way, as curiosity strikes me, why do you call the squares "hexes"?


:) Because I grew up playing board wargames before the age of computers! Stuff like "D-Day, Stalingrad, War In the East", etc. and the maps usually were made up of hexegons, hence "hexes" and the term stuck. Therefore, it is just automatic to call them hexes, even if they are squares.
 
Sad that we are 20 years from those hex maps of the 80's and games like Victory In The Pacific are still coming out with computerized hex maps. Must have been some fun coding the subroutines for 60 degreee axial movement, too...
 
ElephantU said:
Sad that we are 20 years from those hex maps of the 80's and games like Victory In The Pacific are still coming out with computerized hex maps. Must have been some fun coding the subroutines for 60 degreee axial movement, too...
Click to expand...

Yeah, but I meant the 60's!!! 40 odd years of habit dies hard. :crazyeye:
 
It took me a while to get used to the map being rotated 45°, especially since I had been playing colonization before that. However, I like the new look, and I've almost fully adapted. Still, when in doubt with planes or missles, I use the map grid :) (I'm still trying to imagine a map made out of hexagons...how confusing!)
 
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