Atomics: up close and personal?

[TomChick]

So I see that atomics aren't nearly as powerful as the infinite range ICBMs in vanilla Civ IV. They have a range of only 4 tiles, and as near as I can tell, there are no mobile units that can carry atomics to move them up to the front.

It seems that the only option is to deliver atomics is from within your own cultural borders, and even then, it seems you'll often have to build a forward outpost from which to launch them at anything other than an attacking army. Which will then seed the area with fallout.

Am I missing anything? I suppose this is consistent with the fiction, where atomics had been prohibited and therefore weren't used much. But I'm not convinced that it's worth all the hassle of Breaking the Great Convention. How do you guys use atomics? As strictly army killers?

-Tom

 

[Ahriman]

Hi Tom,

Honestly, we haven't put a ton of design work into the very late-game, including Atomics. I've never done that much testing in the late game, because there's normally something else I want to test and so I start a new game, or I've already become the dominant player by then, and gotten bored and quit. Partly because I tend to play Epic game-speed too. And we haven't received much feedback on the late-game, I suspect for the same reasons; the late-game isn't normally much fun in Civ4 anyway IMO.

So thanks for raising this.

I'd have no problem with extending their range, its a simple XML change. I agree that with 4 range they're not terribly useful, and not worth breaching the convention. Do you think that extending the range to 8 or 10 would be sufficient? I think their primary use should be for obliterating large enemy army stacks; by the late-game armies are very large, and so it would significantly ease an invasion or defense if you could take a big enemy stack out.

Perhaps we should also increase the stoneburner range from 6 to 8 or so?
Could we make the suspensor carrier (aircraft carrier replacement) also able to take missile slots? Or maybe the suspensor cruiser, and give it whatever AI nuclear subs have in vanilla?

 

[Crighton]

I think having a suspensor missle cruiser carrying the missles would be a good idea, as well as increasing the range a bit.

As a side point in regards to atomics, there ought to be an espionage option for a spy to try and covertly slip a nuke into someone's city, Civ II had this back in the day (I know CIV didn't have it, don't know about civ's III and V though).

As for the late game, the game is a bit spotty on letting you start in later eras (I mentioned this in another post elsewhere).

 

[Ahriman]

As a side point in regards to atomics, there ought to be an espionage option for a spy to try and covertly slip a nuke into someone's city

I'm not sure that this would be easy to add. Also; which faction would get it? We've tried to make espionage faction-specific and flavorful (though I'm still disappointed by the relative inability of the AI to use it effectively - I think the basic discovery chance for finding enemy spies in your terrain might be too high, and that espionage mission cost might also still be too high; I could see us reduce detection chance, reduce EP costs, and increase the hammer costs of the spy units, so you couldn't just spam them wildly).

As for the late game, the game is a bit spotty on letting you start in later eras (I mentioned this in another post elsewhere)

I don't think this is functionality we can really support.

The game balance and design is based around the difference between early and late religions (Qizarate is powerful but late, Shai-hulad is weak but early, Imperial has high core spread-rate but is otherwise weak), between factions that have early game power (Fremen in particular) vs late-game power, terraforming is something that happens slowly over time, etc.

 

[clearbeard]

I think having a suspensor missle cruiser carrying the missles would be a good idea, as well as increasing the range a bit.

I'm not sure the range needs to be increased if there's a mobile platform. In vanilla, the AI is quite good at loading tactical nukes (which also are range 4) onto missile cruisers and making your life difficult with them. Hopefully this would translate into the mod as well, if suspensor cruisers (and perhaps destroyers as well) could carry missiles. The Death's Hand may need a range increase, since it is available so much earlier and may not have a viable delivery mechanism for a long time otherwise.

I'm not sure that this would be easy to add. Also; which faction would get it? We've tried to make espionage faction-specific and flavorful (though I'm still disappointed by the relative inability of the AI to use it effectively - I think the basic discovery chance for finding enemy spies in your terrain might be too high, and that espionage mission cost might also still be too high; I could see us reduce detection chance, reduce EP costs, and increase the hammer costs of the spy units, so you couldn't just spam them wildly).

Passive detection seems too high, yes. Some tweaking to reduce the chance inactive spies get caught, but leaving the chance of capture on action as is seems right to me. EP costs don't seem all that high, at least for "steal water" which is my only experience to date. The high cost actions from vanilla, like sabotage building or influence civics, don't seem to be present? If they're more survivable, increased hammer costs would make sense.

Tangential question: how do the stealth and security promotions interact with detection chance? And with buildings like the poison snooper?

 

[Ahriman]

I'm not sure the range needs to be increased if there's a mobile platform. In vanilla, the AI is quite good at loading tactical nukes (which also are range 4) onto missile cruisers and making your life difficult with them

Interesting. Honestly, I haven't played vanilla BTS in ~3 years or so.
I'd be fine with a longer range on Death-hands, but I do think that missiles should be at least reasonably useful even without a delivery vessel.

I've never seen the AI use suspensor carriers in Dune Wars, so I'm leery about putting too much emphasis on warships.
Maybe both the suspensor frigate and destroyer should have 1 missile slot though, make death hands range 8, and stone-burners range 6 and atomics range 8?

Passive detection seems too high, yes. Some tweaking to reduce the chance inactive spies get caught, but leaving the chance of capture on action as is seems right to me.

Agreed. I'm not exactly sure how this works though.

EP costs don't seem all that high, at least for "steal water" which is my only experience to date.

Well, it varies by ability. But my big concern is that I don't see the AI using espionage against me enough.

The high cost actions from vanilla, like sabotage building or influence civics, don't seem to be present?

Some of them are. Every faction has espionage UU (except Atreides) with its own abilities.
See: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=376783

IIRC, Ordos have sabotage building, no-one has influence civics, but there are some others out there. The idea was though to have one "expensive" and one "cheap" ability for each faction. So the expensive ability is limited by EPs, but the cheap ability is limited primarily by the cost of building spies and the risk of losing them.
So if you build up a big army of saboteurs, you could do a lot of damage destroying improvements.

 

[Crighton]

The later starts should be something that is simple to do and whatnot, but I know it's not and I am not going to complain about it. Dune Wars is not CIV, and the tech tree isn't as long in terms of gametime to get to point where you need to be to start expanding, unlike CIV where you could be stuck by your lonesome on some island teching your way to astronomy (zzzzzzzzzzz). In comparison scout 'thopters and suspensor transports come along early enough to make a positive difference in gameplay by making the ocean of sand manageable. Granted so do stillsuits.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the current espionage system, but if tweeks were to be made I would think that a spy who is inactive would be harder to detect that say a spy moving about enemy territory. I wonder if it would be possible to have the spy travel to enemy city and then basically establish a espionage cell within that city which would lower future espionage transactions in the city and also maintain a line of site. I would also think that for the counter espionage feature that there should be something about carrying it out in the capital should give you and extra cost and and extra benefit. I don't think either of those last two points would be easy to do though.

As a side question, but along the lines of the suspensor carrier, I move two interceptors into the carrier but then was not given the chance to have the interceptors perform the intercept mission. Is that intentional or just a bug?

 

[Ahriman]

I move two interceptors into the carrier but then was not given the chance to have the interceptors perform the intercept mission. Is that intentional or just a bug?

Sounds like a bug. There's no particular reason why interceptors in a carrier shouldn't be able to run intercept missions.

 

[TomChick]

Yeah, I can verify that interceptors loaded on suspensor carriers can't be set to intercept. I wasn't sure if that was something intentional or not, but I definitely noticed it.

I haven't played nearly enough Dune Wars to be making balance recommendations, so I'm reluctant to suggest how to change atomics. I was more curious about how useful they were for you guys. They did turn out to be *incredibly* useful in the game I was just playing. I lost the voting seat on the Landsraad at one point, and then a vote was later passed to ban atomics, but only after I'd already gotten four of them from breaking the Great Convention. I was then able to my atomics against massive armies that were advancing on my cities, and the AI was never able to recover. So they ended up being very useful as defensive weapons.

But it seems to me the flavor of the game should have atomics somehow being sneaked into or onto enemy cities. I'm not sure how best to do this. I love that they aren't simply long range missiles, that there's a sense that you need to finesse them somehow. So I'd kind of hate to have their range extended. And I'm not sure how much Dune flavor there is in turning suspensor carriers into missile frigates. Maybe a single nuke could be loaded onto a suspensor carrier, taking up all three cargo slots?

Is there any way to somehow tie use of an atomic into the espionage system? Like having to burn a certain number of espionage points, or having to use a spy to carry it, or something along those lines? That would involve a pretty significant overhaul, but I too fondly remember the spies nuking cities in Civ II as Crighton mentioned. That has a lot of Dune flavor. I love the idea of a Harkonnen traitor delivering an atomic!

Anyway, just something for you guys to consider going forward.

-Tom

 

[Deliverator]

The role of atomics in Dune Wars is a good discussion to have. As Ahriman says, they haven't had too much attention like a lot of the later game features.

The two main uses of atomics in the fiction that I know of are (i) where Paul and the Fremen use the Atreides house atomics to destroy the Shield Wall just before the Battle of Arrakeen against the Emperor's Sardaukar and (ii) the use of a Stoneburner in the assassination attempt on Paul in Dune Messiah - this is planted by dissident Fremen manipulated by Master Scytale. So both in both instances the atomics are planted by hand so it would be good to capture this.

I have a theme issue with the Stoneburner and Atomic missile being different units since Stoneburner = Atomic in the fiction. Perhaps we can rename Atomic to Stoneburner and Stoneburner to just Guided Missile?

In general, I think manual planting of atomics might be more interesting and thematic than just making Dune Wars equivalents of Missile subs. But having limited short range delivery also seems fair for gameplay reasons.

I like the Plant Atomic espionage mission - I've already added some custom espionage missions to Dune Wars - so I think it's doable. We can have a promotion that unlocks it and limit it to certain factions if we want. We have a fairly basic promotion tree for Espionage Units so we can have it require a certain amount of experience (smuggling in bulky atomics is hard) and a large amount of EPs too. Which factions should get it is a good questions as Ahriman asked?

Other random ideas:
Atomic booby traps could be set up in tiles as another espionage mission.
Atomics could downgrade Mesa to Rock/Rugged to emulate the destruction of the Shield Wall.
Atomics could trigger Sandstorms in the surround area (not quite emulating the fiction since in Dune the destruction of the Shield Wall just let the existing storm in)

I think we agreed to remove the "No Nukes" vote from the Landsraad so I can do that. We assume theme-wise that the Great Convention is in place at the start of the mod I guess.

On espionage AI: I have added some code so that the AI will perform missions if it is already in the situation where it can use them, but it doesn't get itself into the right position enough it seems. I'm not sure I understand enough about AI coding to improve this right now.

Espionage passive detection, etc probably is separate discussion to have. A good start would be to look how the current code is working which I can do at some point.

Also, I have no idea why we're not using the vanilla nuke effect it's way more impressive than the Bioweapon missile effect we have now:

Spoiler :

I can look into why late game starts aren't working at some stage, but it is a lower priority I think.

 

[Ahriman]

I have a theme issue with the Stoneburner and Atomic missile being different units since Stoneburner = Atomic in the fiction. Perhaps we can rename Atomic to Stoneburner and Stoneburner to just Guided Missile?

I'm not sure this is quite right.
From what I recall, Atomics are really nukes like we're used to.
But the Stoneburners are more like a Neutron bomb; they kill or blind people, but leave the infrastructure basically intact, and don't have a ton of longterm radiation.

That was the idea behind the current design; the Stone-burner is a purely anti-military thing vs the big regular Atomics.

But I might be mis-remembering here. Stoneburner certainly sounds like it *should* be melting stone/glassing planets.

I'd be fine with having the Death Hand UU as the only tactical cruise missile (with collateral damage) and making the Stoneburner the standard Nuke.

Atomic espionage is interesting, but seems thematic only for some factions - which seems like a big potential balance issue.
Perhaps this would fit better into Events, if we include those?

But having limited short range delivery also seems fair for gameplay reasons.

Except that as Tom points out, without anything to load them into a range of 4 makes them pretty much useless for offensive purposes - you have to have a city within 4 tiles of the target. So the Convention Breached wonder isn't really worth building, with its large penalties.

Atomic booby traps could be set up in tiles as another espionage mission.
Atomics could downgrade Mesa to Rock/Rugged to emulate the destruction of the Shield Wall.
Atomics could trigger Sandstorms in the surround area (not quite emulating the fiction since in Dune the destruction of the Shield Wall just let the existing storm in)

These are interesting, but I don't really see high value here. These just aren't valuable enough uses, particularly in the very late-game.
The only way I could really see terrain alteration working is if they were more SMAC-type Planet-Buster things, that affected say a 3x3 tile zone, and destroyed any city they hit and all the units in it, changed mesa to flat-rugged, flat to sink in a 3x3 zone, maybe sink to desert?, and destroyed all terrain improvements in a 5x5 zone.

Considering that this is the very very late-game and that Nukes are thematically powerful, this might be a way to go. Rather than the thinkable/tactical affects of vanilla nukes, we could make them devastating, unbalanced planet-destroying apocalyptic nightmare weapons.
Use atomics to actually destroy the planet and end the game, rather than as a means of conquering it.

Also, I have no idea why we're not using the vanilla nuke effect it's way more impressive than the Bioweapon missile effect we have now

Agreed.

 

[Crighton]

In the books the stoneburner skirted the convention by only maiming people as opposed to killing them, specifically using J-Rays which had a tendency to melt only the occular tissue leaving the exposed blinded. It was the Quizaret as directed by Korba who moved a stoneburner onto Arrakis, supposedly so Korba could study it. Hijinx then ensued.

I think that we should keep the distinction between stoneburner and nukes though since the books did. Here's my idea: the stoneburner gives a "promotion" of -50% or -75% to any unit caught in it's blast. Basically this would be a much more severe imitation of the Tlalax Plague. Granted for the stoneburner neither the nuke nor the bio-wep explosion really fit. In my imagination it would be a flash of light and a bunch of screams.

Then just beef up the nukes, I especially like the possibility of changing the landscape and setting off sandstorms (it would also have to remove any terraforming in the blast radius). I remember some work being done along these lines in CIV from a few years ago so it's not uncharted territory.

Atomic booby traps could be set up in tiles as another espionage mission.
Atomics could downgrade Mesa to Rock/Rugged to emulate the destruction of the Shield Wall.
Atomics could trigger Sandstorms in the surround area (not quite emulating the fiction since in Dune the destruction of the Shield Wall just let the existing storm in)

Throw in a stoneburner and an atomic option and now we're cooking.

 

[Deliverator]

I think that we should keep the distinction between stoneburner and nukes though since the books did. Here's my idea: the stoneburner gives a "promotion" of -50% or -75% to any unit caught in it's blast. Basically this would be a much more severe imitation of the Tlalax Plague. Granted for the stoneburner neither the nuke nor the bio-wep explosion really fit. In my imagination it would be a flash of light and a bunch of screams.

That's spooky - I was just going to post the same idea - a Blinded promotion for Melee and Guardsman that makes them next to useless in combat which can then be removed by going to a city with a Medical Lab.

I have been meaning to bring over the "certain Buildings remove certain Promotions" code from FFH2. I can now think of a few uses for this:

1) Medical Lab could remove the Blinded promotion - by installing Tleilaxu eyes (it would be nice if this was linked to the Tleilaxu civ, but the trouble is they are such pariahs in this mod that no-one is ever on friendly terms with them - that's why we canned the Slig unique resource idea)

2) Factory could remove the Poorly Maintained promo from goody hut vehicles.

3) I have some ideas for developing Ecaz, one of which to make an Acidmold Ordinance promo for Siege units that works like a plague for vehicles gradually deteriorating them to a low hitpoint level like the Mary Morbus mechanic from FFH2. This promo could be removed via a building as well.

4) Clinic/Medical Lab could potentially remove the Tleilaxu plague promotion. (I also think the Mary Morbus mechanic might be a better way of implementing plague anyway)

Then just beef up the nukes, I especially like the possibility of changing the landscape and setting off sandstorms (it would also have to remove any terraforming in the blast radius). I remember some work being done along these lines in CIV from a few years ago so it's not uncharted territory.

If there's a mod around that has done this it would be interesting to look at the implementation. Perhaps it's somewhere in the mod components forum.

 

[Ahriman]

That's spooky - I was just going to post the same idea - a Blinded promotion for Melee and Guardsman that makes them next to useless in combat which can then be removed by going to a city with a Medical Lab.

I could see that work, though the AI will never understand it, which means we need to be careful about introducing too many version of this.

If there's a mod around that has done this it would be interesting to look at the implementation.

The problem is that removing terraforming, a mesa tile and making a sandstorm are, well, really really weak effects in game.
Why would the player bother using a nuke just to do this? Where is the value to them?

Booby traps are also something the AI will never understand, and can get hard to keep track of; if agents are going to set off nukes, they should do so instantly.

 

[Deliverator]

The problem is that removing terraforming, a mesa tile and making a sandstorm are, well, really really weak effects in game.
Why would the player bother using a nuke just to do this? Where is the value to them?

I think these are side-effects just for flavour - the main strategic impact of nukes should be as currently.

 

[Ahriman]

I'm not sure its worth having coding flavor effects that are never really going to happen. If we want terrain changing effects, they should be huge (a la SMAC Planet-busters) and the nukes should be balanced accordingly.

Why would a player waste an expensive nuke on a terrain tile, just to change the terrain of a single tile? If they're not going to do so, then the coding effort is somewhat wasted.

I do like the idea of Atomics removing terraforming and reverting to rock.

So with the stoneburner: would it still do damage, or just add the blinded promotion?
Would the AI still know how to use it if it didn't do damage like a normal bombardment attack?
Maybe it has a high bombardment and does damage but only to a single unit, but still blinds infantry and guardsmen in the stack?

 

[Crighton]

I could see that work, though the AI will never understand it, which means we need to be careful about introducing too many version of this..

It would be possible for it to give several promotions with different %'s. Each percentage could be linked to a medical building, for example, have a -10% promotion be removed automatically by a clinic, a -20% by a mushmetal, etc. The idea being that these are city buildings which the AI tends to build on it's own anyway, and therefore when stationed in a city would be removed automatically. The AI can handle this already since it's behavior already has it doing this anyway.

The icing on the cake would be to have the AI prioritize healing those units as opposed to just garrisoning and healing etc them during the normal run of things.

The problem is that removing terraforming, a mesa tile and making a sandstorm are, well, really really weak effects in game.
Why would the player bother using a nuke just to do this? Where is the value to them?.

I have three victories so far, two by diplomacy (no idea how I managed those, totally by accident) and one by Terraforming, using Malky no less. When you look at the victory screen and it shows you need 150 terraformed tiles to win and somebody has 145, nuking the grasslands and forest critters has a certain advantage. Granted this is all late game stuff but it could make things more interesting, I can easily see the Ordos doing this on a regular basis since they really really don't like people who "threaten the spice production." Even at 3x3 that's nine tiles that would revert to pre-terraformed tiles. That 145 just got knocked down a bit, throw a few more nukes about and you might be able to severly curtail someones terraforming ambitions.

Booby traps are also something the AI will never understand, and can get hard to keep track of; if agents are going to set off nukes, they should do so instantly.

I have seen the AI build the Ellaccan Gladiator unit which gets destroyed regardless of whether or not it wins the battle, I think it possible that a unit could be crafted similar to a spy with that coding and using the nuke effect. Or even, just have the city produce a unit with 0 movement that when it dies trips the nuke (the idea being you just lost the city anyway might as well take out the invader). I suppose this could also also be a city improvement that automatically gets destroyed when the city gets captured and thus detonates. Or even tied to a fort. Anyway.

It probably wouldn't be as easy as it sounds, it never is. But the solution to doing it would probably be along one of those lines.

 

[Ahriman]

The AI can handle this already since it's behavior already has it doing this anyway.

Sortof... but the AI won't realize that a unit in its attacking stack has a bad promotion and should be returned to a city.
If the unit is also damaged, then it will be slightly more likely I guess.

Another method which might be better for the AI but worse for the human player is to have a passive removal chance depending on the number of particular buildings you have. Eg each medical lab you have gives a 3% chance per turn of removing the promotion. Maybe scaled for map size?

When you look at the victory screen and it shows you need 150 terraformed tiles to win and somebody has 145, nuking the grasslands and forest critters has a certain advantage

Non-issue IMO, because you're better off to nuke one of their cities and then capture it. They only get credit for terraforming within their borders.
Also, that still doesn't give a reason why you'd try to reduce a single mesa tile to flat, or create a small sandstorm.
Atomics should be scary pieces of destruction, not glorified agent Orange. If you're throwing nukes to destroy terraforming, that would feel underwhelming I think.

I have seen the AI build the Ellaccan Gladiator unit which gets destroyed regardless of whether or not it wins the battle, I think it possible that a unit could be crafted similar to a spy with that coding and using the nuke effect.

The AI didn't know the gladiator would die, it just built it anyway.
But that works through combat, which requires a unit to attack (and to be at war).
There's no delayed effect like booby-trapping a particular tile, so I'm not sure I understand the comparison.
Nuking your own cities sounds weird an unthematic. Why not build a defensive unit, instead of a defensive nuke?

I would prefer that Atomics be big, serious world-changing events (a la Planetbusters) rather than through weird defensive effects or just damaging terrain.

 

[Crighton]

I don't think the % chance of removing the stoneburner effect is a bad idea, I think that its better than the effect being removed automatically just by spending a turn in the city.

For cities with the lower tier medical facilities this makes a great deal of sense, if somebody has the higher tier medical facilities there would need to be a greater %. If there's some equivilant to the Red Cross national wonder maybe that one could remove it automatically.

I think that would be a better way to go than having the stoneburner be nothing more than an expensive single use seige weapon causing massive collateral damage.

I don't have any insight into how to get the AI to want to get a unit to remove the effect. And unless there is someone who knows how to tailor the AI to use the effects properly I think tailoring the effects to the AI's current behavior is going to be the way to go.

 

[Crighton]

Non-issue IMO, because you're better off to nuke one of their cities and then capture it. They only get credit for terraforming within their borders.

But then you have to keep the city which may not always be possible or advisable.

Also, that still doesn't give a reason why you'd try to reduce a single mesa tile to flat, or create a small sandstorm. Atomics should be scary pieces of destruction, not glorified agent Orange. If you're throwing nukes to destroy terraforming, that would feel underwhelming I think.

Scorched earth and spite would be reason enough but I get your point.

In all likelyhood, using the nukes to change the terrain or de-terraform it isn't going to be your primary reason for using the nuke. BTW, I am assuming that in the current nuke's 3x3 radius we are talking about the nuke leveling the mesas, etc in all nine squares not just the center target. If your using the nukes to fend off or destroy a stack of doom these side effects on the terrain would be part of the environmental price you pay to kill the stack.

Mainly though, these side effects would add some realism and some flair.

The AI didn't know the gladiator would die, it just built it anyway. But that works through combat, which requires a unit to attack (and to be at war). There's no delayed effect like booby-trapping a particular tile, so I'm not sure I understand the comparison.

I don't think I explained myself well with that. Trying to type at work isn't always a good idea. In rereading it I'm not sure why I mentioned the spy coding the way I did.

I do think spies ought to have the abilitiy to set off nukes / stoneburners in enemy cities as part of the espionage side of the game but that's a seperate topic from what I was trying to get across.

My suggestion to creating a nuclear booby trap would be to create a unit, that has:

• Zero movement ability, but could be loaded onto a transport and therefore dropped off in enemy territory if desired or elsewhere in your territory.
• Can only "defend"
• The unit is hidden / cloaked,
• When the unit is defeated it sets of a nuke / stoneburner effect

An alternative way to create a nuclear booby trap for a city (as opposed to said unit stationed within the city) would be to build a building that, when the city was conquered (which automatically destroys some buildings) then the nuke / stoneburner effect is tripped.

The downside to all this thought is that as is, I don't think the AI would use it with out altering the AI. Otherwise it would probably turn into one nasty nuclear mess with the AI as is.

Nuking your own cities sounds weird an unthematic. Why not build a defensive unit, instead of a defensive nuke?

There is precedent for this actually, in Dune Messiah it mentions a planet, Naraj, that used a stoneburner in their city to try and repel the attacking fremen.