Do nukes ruin late game?

[Tamed]

Just a quick question here, they sort of devastate entire military stacks and make your advances worthless if both civs have nukes.

The solution is to move your troops in advancement in a non-stack fashion, but then the turns take literally 20-30 minutes to move all the units in a way that a nuke would only hit one.

Even then, the planes usually whittle down your units. How are you meant to wage succesful war once the game reaches nuclear stage? Especially when people have capitols that make ICBMs in 1 turn?

 

[wilebill]

I think it was Kissinger ... someone ... who said that there was no viable political doctrine or military strategy for use of nuclear weapons or nuclear warfare.

Anyone remember who said that and what was said exactly?

The use of nuclear weapons in reality is a no win situation. They can only exist to serve as a threat and project power.

 

[Tamed]

Yeah. I'm under the impression that most games are meant to be decided before the fact, but man, if two civs go to war and both have nukes, both using them defensively, it's impossible to take cities or even siege them.

 

[AlphaShard]

Nukes are the finishing touches to a war.

 

[Dhaulagiri]

Anyone remember who said that and what was said exactly?

Colonel Jack Ripper?

 

[HappyFunPal]

The solution, instead is to limit the number of nukes by modifying the xml

If you can add code to limit them in the way that missionaries and executives are limited, then no one country can have say more than eight at any one time.

if you search the threads, you'll see that most players stockpile tac nukes and use them as war openers then send in the paratroopers on the NEXT turn. Makes for short wars.

I prefer to have all my killing and vassaling done before fission.

 

[karadoc]

In the games that I've played it's actually very rare for anyone to use nukes at all. So I don't think they come even vaguely close to "ruining late game".

As for success war using nukes - it's worth keeping in mind that those cities that can build ICBMs very quickly will be building significantly less quickly after you've nuked them once or twice. Also, one needs access to uranium to build nukes at all - so you could try nuking their uranium mines... (they'll have to scrub the fallout before they an rebuild the mine). You don't need to move your units so that only one can be hit by a nuke at a time, but it helps not to have huge stacks of troops. Just split the huge stack into a few smaller stacks and nuke the defences of the city before you attack it!

Nukes are just as powerful for offensive as they are for defence, if not more so. So I'm not sure why you think that you can't successfully wage war with nukes.

But like I said, the games that I play very rarely have nuclear wars. Often it's because the UN forbids building nukes; but sometimes it's just because no one builds the manhattan project.

 

[Tamed]

if you search the threads, you'll see that most players stockpile tac nukes and use them as war openers then send in the paratroopers on the NEXT turn. Makes for short wars.

Not quite sure how those sort of games go down, but I've never really had a war with someone with a city so close to mine that I could tactically nuke it, atleast I don't think so. That'd be crazy, though. XML idea is pretty cool.

Edit: As for the no nuke thing, all the games I play lately end up with 2-3 people all sitting on 20+ nukes and no one can attack because as soon as you declare war and have any units anywhere near them, they just get nuked to death. The uranium mine nuke idea is very cool and I will keep that in mind. You can't really counter nuke either, due to SDI. I'm not really saying you can't HURT the other person's Civ, I was more implying that actually taking a city is nigh impossible.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

To take out nukes you have to think outside the box.
Get your self some defensive pacts and friends and use spies to provoke a war. (if playing against humans)
Once he attacks you get everyone to nuke him.

As for the SDI the solution is simple, build more nukes. It can only intercept about 50% of your nukes and even less of your tactical nukes. Get subs to take them into enemy coastal watters and... well the rest is history.


I don't realy see them used that much thou. But that is my personal experiance.

 

[Wlauzon]

A game I just played ended up being nothing but nuke on nuke, which pretty much negates all that you have done up to that point. It was between two other civs, but the net result was massive global warming and pollution for all.

I wish there was an option to turn off nukes. I suppose an easy way would be to just edit the xml file to raise the cost of the Manhattan Project by a factor of 100x.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

There is an option to turn them off. Just vote them away in the UN.

 

[Nares]

Colonel Jack Ripper?

Who's that?

Speaking of Jack and Ripper, apparently Jack the Ripper moved to America.

 

[hexem3117]

Yeah nukes are pretty annoying. I played a game earlier today that I had in the bag, sending in two stacks of 80+ units composed of artillery, tanks, and infantry. Unfortunately, i saw two ominous earth quaking visuals and one of my stacks was kaput. Needless to say, I was miffed. Luckily he had no more nukes and my other stack dominated his cities easily to a quick capitulation. The weird thing is that Joao had only built the Manhattan Project about two turns before, and I decided to declare immediately to prevent the nuking. I guess he rush bought or something.

That being said, nukes are frustrating when both players have them. It shouldn't get to that point normally, IMO.

 

[SewerStarFish]

I am almost entirely a single player civver. I have never had Nukes ruin a game I wasn't already going to lose, but I have a few where they saved me. Obviously I can see where they give a huge advantage to the first multiplayer to get them; but in the games where I have had a nuclear slugfest with an AI, like any other unit the human has the upper hand.

Defensive nukes come from somewhere, you must use offensive nukes strategically. Biggest cities must be reduced, enemy uranium resources should be targeted as well. There have been several games where an aggressive more advanced AI nuked me and I had to buy time by surrendering a city so as to obtain nukes. It's an ugly global warming way to win, but it's a win.

 

[Scoottr]

Just finished a game that the AI used nukes first in. I was second in points and we were both gunning for a space race victory. I was wrapping up two thrusters for a launch and Ramses launched a huge nuke attack on me. I forgot that the UN hadn't outlawed them and I had not built an SDI system. Luckily he was on another continent and I just strung it all out long enough for my ship to make it to Alpha. Really close though..he was nuking the hell outta me and sending in tons of troops on my butt

 

[SewerStarFish]

Just finished a game that the AI used nukes first in. I was second in points and we were both gunning for a space race victory. I was wrapping up two thrusters for a launch and Ramses launched a huge nuke attack on me. I forgot that the UN hadn't outlawed them and I had not built an SDI system. Luckily he was on another continent and I just strung it all out long enough for my ship to make it to Alpha. Really close though..he was nuking the hell outta me and sending in tons of troops on my butt

So you were sort of cruising along in the late game, and suddenly things got exciting. It doesn't happen often, but nukes are more of an asset than a detriment. At least IMHO. The only down note is your "strung it all out" implies a tedium that I know many players are not fond of.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Well, nukes definitely ruin the late game for the receiving civ...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Too much blathering nonsense about them . Nukes change how wars are fought, but the better side still wins. In this case, the side that gets them earlier will tend to win.

If you're talking a nuke v nuke war, flinging nukes en-masse into enemy territory (or having it done to you) sweeps their ability to...produce more nukes. Pounding on them a little further cuts into their ability to build ANYTHING. Then, send in small skirmish stacks. Lead by nukes, these take cities just fine.

Generally one side should just admit it's screwed after getting nuked to hell though...you don't recover if your opponent can keep doing it to you.