ICBM - the weapon of the desparate?

[APushkin]

Last game I played I tried using them and found out that the disadvantages of doing so are great:
- diplomatic penalties (-2 from the person you nuked (but usually you don't care) and -1 from their friends) And these points stick longer than nuclear fallout which dissapeared by itself in about dozen of turns.
- Global warming. I used only less then a dozen nukes and within 20 turns lost 3 or 4 productive tiles of my land. Either GW is targeted to the one who fired nukes or others suffered the same ammount of it (and I just didn't receive notifications). Could be becuase I didn't rush in to scrub the fallout ASAP.

So while the animation is cool the nukes are unpractical.

Another thing that I've noticed - first nuclear strike leaves most of the enemy units just damaged. It's double-nuking that makes the city 100% clean from enemy units.
Also if you plan to nuke and invade - keep in mind that fallout tiles have double movement penalty so your tanks that stood clear off the blast will not be able to move in on the same turn.

Anyone tried nuking ships?

 

[gunburned]

I tired droping 25 nukes on 1 CITY! thats right just 1 and out of all those nukes only 1 sucsefuly land. Later on in the game nukes are utterly useless.
BTW that nuke only droped the city pop down by 1!!!

 

[APushkin]

Did the other guy have SDI? What message did the game give?

None of the ones I fired got intercepted.

 

[minger]

Does Nuking stop production? I wanted to nuke someone's city that I knew was making the last SS piece but for some reason it wouldn't let me (b/c i was at peace? nuclear non-prolif?)

 

[FirstNoel]

Where are my Terraforming Nukes from SMAC? Completely take out 3 or 4 cities and create a nice lake where they were before. I thought that an ICBM would completely oblitherate a city.

To me in this game they aren't worth the trouble. Kind of disappointed.

Sean D.

 

[GoRy]

Identify which of his cities he has SDI in, take it, then nuke the rest!

 

[Cyberian]

sabotage bomb shelters with your spies

 

[Seanirl]

Nukes aren't worth the trouble in real life and turn the world against you, it's realistic at least.

... well except in the damage they do.

 

[APushkin]

isn't SDI national? So you only need to build one to protect all the cities?

 

[Thorek]

isn't SDI national? So you only need to build one to protect all the cities?

That'd be gay...

 

[Symphony D.]

I'm still trying to get over nukes causing global warming. If anything they should cancel it out! You'd think since they bothered to make "ice age" maps, they could've added in a "nuclear winter" alternative to decrease health. Oh well. Doesn't sound all that much worse than Civ3 in that regard.

 

[Pvblivs]

So while the animation is cool the nukes are unpractical.

This is truly funny . Put some dozen state-of-the-art ICBMs on some cities and our dear planet will go to waste. But at least the animations in real life are cool as well .

What a pity that the game does not play this out to the last. Real nuclear winter would be much more devastating than your civ climate warmings This isn't unpractical then anymore but simply a real tragedy of mankind.

 

[azurefx]

SDI defence is a national project, which means there isn't any physical structure for you to destroy once it's completed. On the other hand, it carn't be rushed in any way - like the internet and the spaceship parts.

 

[APushkin]

On the other hand, it carn't be rushed in any way - like the internet and the spaceship parts.

I believe you can still chop forests to speed it up Wooden parts for SDI sats and spaceship -

 

[xguild]

Last game I played I tried using them and found out that the disadvantages of doing so are great:
- diplomatic penalties (-2 from the person you nuked (but usually you don't care) and -1 from their friends) And these points stick longer than nuclear fallout which dissapeared by itself in about dozen of turns.
- Global warming. I used only less then a dozen nukes and within 20 turns lost 3 or 4 productive tiles of my land. Either GW is targeted to the one who fired nukes or others suffered the same ammount of it (and I just didn't receive notifications). Could be becuase I didn't rush in to scrub the fallout ASAP.

So while the animation is cool the nukes are unpractical.

Another thing that I've noticed - first nuclear strike leaves most of the enemy units just damaged. It's double-nuking that makes the city 100% clean from enemy units.
Also if you plan to nuke and invade - keep in mind that fallout tiles have double movement penalty so your tanks that stood clear off the blast will not be able to move in on the same turn.

Anyone tried nuking ships?

A lot of things about Civ 4 seem to be more realistic this time around. Nukes seem to fall in line with that design Idea.

The penalties to diplomacy are warrented, I think there isn't any dispute in that regard. You droped a weapon of mass destruction on someone, hell we went to war in the real world right now just because someone "might" be thinking about building some, let alone actually use one.

In regards to global warming, you could expect far worse results in the real world if you launched multiple nuclear warheads today. The fact that you lost some production accurately portrays the reality of nuclear warfare in the game.

Are nuclear weapons unpractical? I don't think anyone has ever disputed that point and Civilization 4 accuratly potrays the "inpracticalness" if there is such a word of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are in fact the weapons of the desperate and it's why they have always been called "deterents" to war. Simply the threat of two nations that both own nuclear weapons assures that they aren't likely to ever go to war and if they did, the world would end as we know it. There is nothing practical about that, and so this fact is reflected in Civilization 4.

In terms of the mechanics of the game of nukes, I think in order to balance them out a little bit, they made them slightly weaker. This time around you need to drop a couple of nukes on a city to truely clean it out. I'm sure that came up in testing and was a decesion made to make the gameplay balance out a bit more. I agree it's not all that realistic, it's likely if you dropped a nuclear weapon on a city that there would be very little left standing, let alone survivers that could continue to fight.

 

[Edmund Fogg]

In my second game, the chinese picked a fight with me in the modern era and were running over my territory with tanks. But once I built my ICBM, they agreed to peace. Without the ICBM no peace. This seemed to be far more realistic use for ICBMs than actually setting them off. My words were backed with nuclear weapons indeed.

 

[Mujadaddy]

This is truly funny . Put some dozen state-of-the-art ICBMs on some cities and our dear planet will go to waste. But at least the animations in real life are cool as well .

 

[Armed_Maniac]

the drawback from nukes are good, however, their dmg is inadequate...

For one it should be nuclear winter...

Also... MORE DAMAGE!!! It should destroy cities with 6 population or less, and reduce by atleast 6 bigger cities, including destroying all improvements. No units should survive if a nuke falls on their heads unless a bunker is there...

Perhaps a mod could be done...