did YOU ever get nuked?

[bismarck_]

hey board,

the other day i had a nice game going on with russia. i was in a long, protracted cold war with the americans and chinese until suddenly things got hot over some border incident.

here is the thing: all three of us were armed to the brink with nukes. the chinese used them, the americans used them, lastly, i used mine, too.

if only i ever got some part of the radiation cake! not ONE single nuke ever came down on mother russia. SAD.

why does the AI not attack the player with nuclear weapons? they use them in a bounty against neutrals and other AI...so why not bashing my teeth in with some good ol' WMD?

even CIV2...yeah..THAT one..could get it done. why not this mod? (i also sadly miss the spy mission "plant a nuclear bomb in this city)


maybe you guys can explain it to me...

 

[Baur]

I was nuked and it is not very pleasant thing to clear all these fallouts. AI definitely uses nuclear weapon against player.

 

[Ecthy]

First cut thought: maybe it's from deterrence. Maybe some folks just start building nukes so early and have so many stacked up that the AI won't use them out of fear of retaliation.

 

[Baur]

I don't know, maybe it depends on your military ranking, when you are lower than your opponent. In my case I was lower than Russia. They nuked me only once. The target was my capital. And they nuked my ally Japan. Also I mentioned that they had only one IBCM and used it. All their tactical nukes were far from my borders

 

[Malchar]

You need visibility to launch nukes, right? Maybe the AI aren't prioritizing their navies, so they cannot actively see their opponent's cities.

If we're talking about AI strategy, they should definitely prioritize launching 2 nukes on an enemy army stack. If anyone isnt aware, nukes tend to deal random damage to units that get hit, but two nukes will guarantee to kill all units. Similarly, it's pretty easy to wipe out the AI army with a nuclear first strike since they usually stack it up during peacetime for no good reason.

 

[Baur]

In my case, AI wasn't definitely targeting stack of units. I reloaded the game one turn before the strike and removed my units (not so many in there - 4 or 5). Result was the same - capital was nuked.

 

[need my speed]

If I remember correctly, the AI would instantly use them the moment they are built. Imagine you have a unit able to attack your enemy's units, completely dwarfing their strength (Modern Armour versus Spearman, for example) - you would instantly do that, and so would the AI. We, as humans, see the difference between ICBMs and more conventional units, but the AI does not. The AI sees an extremely powerful weapon capable of killing its enemy. It would be a fool not to use them. Perpetually. For even the tiniest slight.

 

[need my speed]

Exactly. Just give a barbarian city nukes...

That would be nice.

 

[Theodorick]

How would you script in a cold war anyways? Having the AI make weapons they rarely ever bother using, unless very specific events become the breaking point, sounds like a bit of a challenge to script in properly.

 

[MechatronicJazz]

How would you script in a cold war anyways? Having the AI make weapons they rarely ever bother using, unless very specific events become the breaking point, sounds like a bit of a challenge to script in properly.

Well, if you wanted you could probably create a sort of "Doom Counter" that ticks up and down based on certain actions. I believe various iterations of FFH have a similar concept. Not sure if it would fit in this mod, but it's probably possible.

 

[Leoreth]

I don't have much to add, I agree that this doesn't work well right now and I'd like to improve on it, but it's not on my priority list.

 

[Malchar]

It's hard to figure how the AI "should" act because there are so few examples in history. Our timeline might be the rare 10% case where two powers got nukes and there was a standoff. Maybe the other 90% of the time the correct decision is to shoot them all off and try to destroy the rest of the world as quickly as possible.

After we have a good idea of exactly how we want the AI to behave, then we can try to model it in the game.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

A very simple fix for now could be something like preventing AIs from using nukes against civs which have less than half their power rating.

 

[Royal Tenenbaum]

Is it hard to add a command that says, the AI should stockpile nuclear weapons unless it's losing a war very badly? or if they threaten nuclear war in a demand in diplomacy?

 

[Zaduzai]

I think main problem - like said - is that for AI nukes are as any other military unit. For trying to be historical I think using nukes should be possible after certain event(s). And using nukes should give massive negative impact to relations to other Civs. In too many of my games Russia nukes pretty much everything: independents, much weaker civilisations etc.
I never use nukes because it is too easy to beat AI if I do.