guided missiles

this is more of a general question, not DOC-specific. But since I play DOC now all the time, I'm asking here: do you find the guided missile useful, do you use it?

personally I don't really see any sense to use it. it does the same as bombers/jets and only has a range of 4. well it has a 100% evasion chance, but that gets evened out already by the fact that the unit and the hammers are lost immediately when it hits a target.

in civ3.. I don't remember if it was vanilla or a mod I played... the guided missile had "precision bombing"... means you had the chance to destroy a certain building in the city when using this. can't we add something like this here too, to make that unit more useful?

and another brainstorming idea on that rocket matter: what about adding bio/chem weapons into the game? could be cheaper than nukes (also less strong), not dependant on uranium, but have a similar deterrent potential... and same negative diplomacy effects when using them. maybe even link them to autocracy. every despot with selfrespect seems to hold an arsenal of that after all

Chem weapons would be difficult. But a bio missile is definitely implementable. More cost than a regular missile, but has a 40% chance to spread plague to adjacent cities, and 80% chance to spread plague to a city at the targeted tile. Not sure what chem weapons would do.

Oh, and BTW, Guided Missiles are supposed to supplement the late-game Missile Cruiser, which is essentially a better battleship that can carry missiles. It's supposed to soften up the ships before you go in.

You have 3 options in Civ IV for a Modern military.

(1) Tanks + Bombers

(2) Carriers + Marines

(3) Nukes + Nukes

I like (3) best because it's effective on any map, in any situation.

Chem weapon:

Deals collateral damage, does less damage against non-gunpowder/melee/ranged/mounted units.

Don't missiles already deal collateral?

The thing about GMs is that they can kill. Bombers can't. That's the only reason I use them. GMs are cheaper than nukes and don't require uranium so they are slightly more accessible.

Really, I only use them in RAND as in DoC I don't usually play that late (my computer in kind of a POS ) and in RAND I don't always have access to uranium.

No, GMs are not dealing collateral damage. However I didn't know they can kill. Thought they are the same as bombers.
Maybe now I can put them into some use... spotting a lone, massively upgraded elite unit.. fire 3 GMs and forget

I didn't know they could kill either.

However, even then, the hammer exchange ratio isn't good enough for a human player. What little usefulness they have (in my opinion), is to take out strategic resources within their limited range.

Yeah, in general, GMs are pretty useless. Something I sometimes do in RAND is build them on continents other than where the war is because they can just be ported in (assuming I already have 15-20 bombers).

So what could improve the GM?
I don't think it should do collateral damage. Not even bombers do that. GMs are either meant to be precise weapons... or at least not that strong to affect several units. However they could do more damage to the target unit... and be more expensive to balance that.
My suggestions would be the precise bombing thing mentioned above. When using it, one could choose a building from inside the target city... and have a certain chance to destroy it.

I'm rather a late game player/war monger - and the GM really bugs me for quite some time now. I never use nukes to attack as I treat them as deterrent weapons and would just use them when attacked with nukes myself.
Maybe we could make a modmod to overhaul the rocketry system:
Improve the (short distance) GM, add non-nucear long distance missiles (conv,bio,chem) and so on. I was thinking about a team-project kind of thing... which can be built many times (getting more expensive each time).. and every time it is finished it improves the range of the long distance rockets - up to ICBMs. This could make modern marathon games a lot more fun
Look at todays rocketry projects - it's all about range, and not every nation is able to build ICBMs.

I don't think it should do collateral damage. Not even bombers do that.

Click to expand...

They do, so it won't be that overpowered to give collateral to another unit.