Atomic bombs overpowered?

[Asterix Rage]

Nuke is definitly overpowered as it is in the real life...

The point is :

Win before Nucleare area.

And just in case, focus on taking the WC with many of votes as possible to make sure nuke proliferation will be banned after you built a couple of them...

Nukes add a gorgious threat to the game. It was a major feature in CivI and it will be in CivXX i do hope!

It could be balanced with nuclear fallout hazards, diplo effects and unhappiness...

 

[Mattzey]

Kind of realistic but it can be ridiculous in multiplayer though

 

[Silverman6083]

Are you kidding? Nukes aren't powerful enough! Nowhere near how powerful no devastating they are in real life.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

Compared to real life they are underpowered. A nuclear missile would level a city in one blast, not several.


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[Heart Break Kid]

Nukes take a ton of time to develop, they seem pretty balanced to me, certainly way more things off kilter about Civ than the relatively tame Atomic bombs.

 

[tat501]

They're not op. The problem with them is that there isn't really a disincentive for using them - (i.e. in real life massive guilt for the murder of millions of innocents, polluting the earth and rendering large parts of it uninhabitable for centuries, poisoning food chains and leading to mass deformities and cancers, possibly leading to nuclear winter or destroying all life on earth as we know it, mutually assured destruction and massive diplomatic penalties for using nukes).

 

[CaterpillarKing]

They're not op. The problem with them is that there isn't really a disincentive for using them - (i.e. in real life massive guilt for the murder of millions of innocents, polluting the earth and rendering large parts of it uninhabitable for centuries, poisoning food chains and leading to mass deformities and cancers, possibly leading to nuclear winter or destroying all life on earth as we know it, mutually assured destruction and massive diplomatic penalties for using nukes).

It's difficult to make someone feel remorse for bits of coding you never really see.


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[Acken]

It's difficult to make someone feel remorse for bits of coding you never really see.

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Remorse no, but penalties:
-More DoWs from AI
-Embargos
-Massive happiness hit from your own population
-Every units that end a turn in nuclear waste get some damage, creating a no mans land even you cannot go through easily.

etc.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Probably overpowered vs Armies while underpowered vs cities I would say.
Normal bombing is also way underpowered vs cities and also overpowered vs units.
Nuclear Missile is just ridiculous, not far from an instant win if you get them and use them before anyone else.

One problem is that you can't intercept nukes.

They and bombers should be more strategic in nature, not unit killing superweapons.

 

[Slotharoo]

In conjunction with bombers, I feel they're overpowered. You could have a strong defense with mobile SAM's and such, but one nuclear missile + bombers + paratroopers.. It's all over. But that's probably the point, so a civ lagging behind still has a chance of victory.


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[beetle]

They're not op. The problem with them is that there isn't really a disincentive for using them.

I agree with this, but it’s overshadowed by the larger lack of casus belli. I agree that the game balance of the unit is actually pretty good.

Anyone have reliable configuration options for getting to meaningful wars with GDRs and nukes? Sure, there may be a few around by the end game, but they never seem to really make much of a difference. I enjoy those late ways though, so I often play past the victory/defeat screen.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

Remorse no, but penalties:
-More DoWs from AI
-Embargos
-Massive happiness hit from your own population
-Every units that end a turn in nuclear waste get some damage, creating a no mans land even you cannot go through easily.

etc.

But if you are about to win it doesn't matter


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[danaphanous]

I am for more realism in the penalties for balance:

Civ represents real life therefore nukes SHOULD be devastating. I don't like them in the game, but I don't like them in real life either. That is the ethical balance the player has to keep. I think the annoying thing about them is they get used as a last-ditch way to win if you can't any other way. This works in the game because there is a fixed endpoint and you don't have to worry about the consequences after you win. So nuking away a dozen turns from victory has, effectively, no consequences with the plodding, awful way the AI conducts war. This, really, won't change, but a few stiffer penalties and realism might make players think twice. I've been playing Alpha Centauri from GOG.com ($2.99!) and I like the way they balanced nukes. They are utterly devastating, wiping cities and terrain out, causing holes in continents, but they also cause the whole world to DOW you and the planet to get mad at you. Some suggestions that might work in further balancing nukes in Civ V might be:

1. Nuclear fallout areas should be larger. someone mentioned damaging units each turn that end in it, I think this is a bad idea as it just makes it worse for the target and impossible for workers to clean up without dying. In real life nuclear strikes are bad because they send hazardous radiation/pollution high into the upper atmosphere and it lands all over kinda randomly based on winds and such. I think the blast radii are balanced and fine, but I think waste should be randomly scattered across wider areas. There should also be a chance that upper atmosphere winds drop some farther away, which might mean you mess up some of your own territory, especially on small maps. Using nukes might also alter climate such as the random event mechanic in Civ 3 and cause areas to dry out including farms and terrain worldwide. I kinda miss the fluid structure of terrain in Alpha Centauri.
   
2. Nuclear fallout should reduce all movement to 1 per turn, drastically nerfing your army's ability to move through it after nuking and generally slowing you down and making you vulnerable to bombers and missles while you try to cross. This makes it less useful for conquest victory.
   
3. Diplo penalties need to be bolstered. At minimum, it should have the ability to allow players/AI the choice to immediately embargo you. It's kinda ridiculous that you can only pass through an embargo every 20 turns or so. (That should be changed) I think using nukes should cause some instant DOWs such as it did in Alpha Centauri as well.

All this, plus the already balanced very sparse distribution of uranium should make nukes less useful as conquest tools and make players think more. The changes would be minor from a coding perspective.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

What if the AI knew your habits across games nuke-wise and countered it? Also something like the global warming in Civ IV but done better so it affects everyone not just you. Also not necessarily turning everything into desert but maybe making wind currents part of the game so fallout spreads.


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[qemist]

Well, IRL-Nukes can be intercepted. ^^

When did that happen? In the Cold War, both sides had more than 100x as many warheads as their opponents had major cities and negligible capacity to intercept incoming missiles. CiV nuclear arsenals are tame by comparison.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

IRL nukes can be intercepted. It is not as simple as that though. They can be intercepted but only in certain cases and certainly not en masse. If North Korea launches one ICBM at California it can be intercepted by other missiles or laser positioned on the ground. If Russia decides to make us a wasteland there is no way we can stop them. No one on Earth has the capability to completely keep themselves safe from nukes. There even may be problems with the intercepting equipment. Hence why in Civ 4 the SDI (which doesn't actually exist, it was theoretical) was only 75% successful.

 

[Asklepios]

Maybe its an oddity of my playstyle, but I've never seen nukes used once in many hundred of games, either by myself or the AI.

If I'm playing aggressively I try to win the game with or before Artillery. If it goes past that, then usually the job is finished with tanks and infantry. In the rare circumstances that I'm ending the game with war in the atomic or later era, its been a case of go all the way to X-Com troopers, then win within 1-2 turns.

But if I'm playing to a victory condition other than domination, then atomic era tech is a lot more common, but even then I've never launched nukes or been nuked.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Nukes aren't that great vs military as in the game, maybe a bomb/ICBM should damage the unit in the center heavly but not much more and should probably never destroy units.

 

[CaterpillarKing]

That doesn't make sense because you say they aren't great as military units (which they are very powerful) but they shouldn't destroy units... Without the unit destruction or city destruction then it's just a thing that causes some annoying terrain damage.


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[Socratatus]

I don`t notice nukes in my game much (I always try to avoid using them). However, i notice that once you do use Nukes or another AI uses it then it`s a free for all. there does seem to be a something programmed that makes even really aggressive AIs try not to use them, but i`m just on King.

Personally, I think Nukes should be much more severe as danaphanous said. It rankles me that we treat something so dangerous in real life as almost nothing in game.... `Oh It`s just a nuke, no biggie`.

It should `XXXX! He`s used a NUKE!`