A Look at Nukes

Dug around a bit and there's actually a promotion variable that can be used to make units immune to nukes: NukeImmune = true.

If anyone is interested.

G

 

So in theory we could make all aircraft and nukes immune to nukes? Hmm...would that solve the principle MP issue with them?

 

Thanks, Gazebo.

How, if at all, do you think this change would influence the AI's behaviour regarding the use of nukes?

 

Good point. If nukes are nuke immune then the player would understand that nuking another nuclear power is often self defeating but the AI might not understand that. A tweak to reduce the AI willingness to use nukes on opponents that have them as well might be enough to bring about the idea of brinkmanship.

 

It would naht.

G

 

Ah, ok, I thought that perhaps that would warrant some kind of coding changes to ensure the AI know it'll be leaving enemy nukes intact after nuking a city, like crdvis16 mentioned.

Thanks for the reply.

 

To be clear, I'm not currently planning on altering nukes or their behavior. I personally feel that the system is fine as-is.

G

 

Understood.

 

Yep - making changes using promotions would be a dead-simple modmod to do if anyone wanted to try.

G

 

Thanks again. I really appreciate your replies!

 

What about an increase in nuke hammer cost?

Considering the destruction that nukes can do, they are awfully cheap.

I happen to get into a nuke heavy game in my current game (first me and now my enemy is nuking). I had the uranium and considering this thread, I though I would really try nukes to the fullest.

I have found that nukes are amazing when I don’t want to Invade and just knock my enemy down. One bomb drops a pop 30 city to ~15 along with whatever building and terrain destruction.

With a carrier, I can hit a lot of cities st once...and those cities will never really recover. Later era units cost more and do far less. The GDR is a laughable waste of uranium!

Since nukes don’t have the diplomatic penalties like in real life...I think a big hammer bump at least is something to reflect the “actual price” of using nukes.

 

Is this as widespread an issue, though? I don't want to leave late-game war in a weird spot re: nukes, but I also don't want to overnerf them, as it is a fun (ahem) part of late-game conflict.

G

 

Its a fair point. The big thing for me nukes always had a bit of taboo feeling about them. Once I took that off and just decided to use them as any other unit, I quickly realized how astoundingly powerful they are.

 

from a balancing point of view i think nukes are probably the main reason how civs, that are ahead in science can seal the win in a war torn game. that might or not be good.

 

Was there a stealth fix on nukes?

I just dropped 4 nukes on the enemy capital, and there airforce wasn't scratched. If that's intended then I am on board! But last time I nuked in the previous version it took them out, so I was checking.

 

I noticed this, too. However, nukes in the city are still destroyed.

In general for the balance: I think that hammer cost of nukes is not that bad, given the usual build times in the late game. However, gold costs are too low, I think. On epic, I payed something like 2900 for a nuclear missile, which is very cheap considering that they have no buy restriction, you can even buy them when at maximum over the supply cap (unless normal units), and considering the amount of gold still available at that point of the game (e. g., that imperialism policy gives about 5000 gold on city capture late game, that can sustain a nuke invasion almost by itself).

 

Nope.

 

Maybe its a protection of the bomb shelter? I know I have had aircraft wiped out by nukes, but the AI this time did have shelters so maybe that's the difference.

 

Is there any way to have nukes hit at the end of the player's turn? So that you can't nuke a city and immediately conquer it without giving the opposing player a chance to respond?

 

What if using a nuke would automatically end your turn? You could move to the position and then fire the nuke, but only one nuke, before the turn would end. That would weaken the nuclear alpha strike enough i guess.

The AI could simply be told to use nukes last in thei turn. Codewise that should be doable unless im mistaken?