Best use of uranium late-game.

[ahawk]

This is mostly a theoretical question, obviously, given how late uranium appears.

All the same, if one has a choice between the nuke missile and the Giant Death Robot, what should you choose?

I so rarely make it to uranium at all, and out of the few times I have, I've only made it to the GDR maybe twice (once intentionally). As far as I see, the GDR is a throw-back to Civ 4, acting almost like the Stack O' Doom from back then, capable of absorbing/dealing a huge amount of punishment in a single tile.

But the GDR has a penalty against cities, isn't particularly quick, and isn't substantially easier to build than the nuke missile. On the other hand, the good ol' nuke has a long range, hits a number of tiles at once, and does a great deal of damage to cities, even reducing the population.

I guess it comes down to whether or not you want to take the city intact. The GDR will help greatly toward taking the city intact, but that's hopefully not a high priority by that late in the game.

To me, missile seems the way to go, but what's the verdict everyone?

 

[Deau]

My games haven't gotten that late in forever. In most games I would use it for nuclear plants quite frankly. Save a few for a nuke or two to reduce chances of beeing DoWed in the late game. On any game played below my comfort/challenging difficulty levels, I would likely play around with GDR just because they are so much fun...

I usually hate offensive nukes, the pop loss is arguably "strong" if you wish to do rapid conquest in the late game and not giveup pace due to happiness issue but in any other VC type than domination, it is best to take a very late game city without nuke (hell if you are lucky enough to have some big cities surrendered for a peace treaty it's godly as you get to retain every pop and building...which is the same as TONS of free hammers in the late game)

 

[MadDjinn]

nukes.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

We dig...giant robots
chicks dig...giant robots

Actually, nukes.

 

[iggymnrr]

Reminds me of that game in an old movie, "Global Thermo-nuclear War."

 

[Camikaze]

Definitely nuclear missiles. You can get two GDRs for the cost of a nuclear missile, but a nuclear missile can do more damage than two GDRs; given that they destroy all units in the blast radius.

 

[wcbarney]

To answer your question directly: "Best use of uranium late-game," the answer is Nuclear Power Plants. Nukes are OK as a MAD deterrent, but I hate to use them because I hate have to clean up the mess afterwards. The GDR is just an expensive toy -- does not compare favorably in any way to the stealth bomber as a weapon.

 

[basta]

Nukes are a great way to finish off a domination slog--take a civ in 5 turns or less. Otherwise, yeah, the power plants are huge production boosts, but for what? the game's basically over by then (or already over) and you're just mopping up.

 

[Flaviusx]

Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

 

[TommyVern]

Well, lets see here, its kind of a tough decis- NUKE EM!

 

[BranjoHello]

GDRs FTW!
Nukes are for sissies.

 

[w a i n y]

It's kind of sad that GDRs were meant to break late-game stalemates (as stated in some video by the devs), but really they're useless, since nukes have that function too (even more so actually) and come earlier.

 

[Becomedeath]

Depends how you want to play. If you're going conquest, then GDRs make for a nice unit improvement to just crush the remaining civs and quickly bring the game to an end.

Otherwise, I'd recommend Nukes. Their addition to your military score can mean you are able to avoid having to build a large military to keep the other civs off your back.

If you're going for a science win however, the bonus of a nuclear plant cannot be underestimated at that stage in the game. Taking even a turn off spaceship parts is a bonus.