Do you use nuclear missiles in CivII?

[gatomarado]

Nukes are useless!
If your enemy already have sdi in many of their cities you can't nuke them, only the naval forces (no pollution) and units unprotected can be nuked.««NOTE: if you capture a city with an sdi, it's already protected from nukes so, in my strategy it's good to have enemy cities with sdi»» If your enemy doesn't have sdi that's because their much far beyond you and you can take them out with a conventional army.

:soldier::soldier::tank::tank::soldier:

Much better than the nukes are the spies. They can do the same dirty work as nukes even in cities with sdi and with more then 16 squares away (if you get a railroad to that city). Also it's much more cheaper 160/30 and if succesfull your spy is available on next turn.
I only use nukes if a get some in a bribed city. These nukes are used to take out a fleet or simply disbanded (80 shields).


I also think it's a waste of time to have nukes to make other nations pay you tribute. By this strategy they will not attack and if you are in Democracy, you won't get the approve of the senate.
Just simply make other civs hate you, and there won't be problems if you are under democratic government.

 

[unknown_spirit]

You CAN nuke SDI cities! Get a spy to infiltrate and plant a nuclear device! Sure, so it has a low success rate, but hey, who cares. Also, If you can't be bothered trying that 25 times, sabotage the SDI, then fire a missile off. Job's a good 'un!

 

[Darius]

you're right about the spies, but you can't sabotage SDI's.

 

[unknown_spirit]

Oh, fair enough. I just assumed you could. Sorry.

 

[Darius]

Yup. It always says this:

 

[unknown_spirit]

Only in America... In real life, that is!
Still, I've never tried to sabotage it. I assumed u could. You make a fair point, Darius. Hey, can u tell me how to change that damn cheiftan thing under my name? I want something that sounds better!

 

[Darius]

It's right there in your profile editor:

 

[Darius]

God, do I love to post pictures, it's so easy!

 

[unknown_spirit]

Why do I not have that custom title box!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

 

[Darius]

Dunno, you should.

 

[Dark Ascendant]

I don't really "use" nukes, I just demand tribute with them and have spies plant them. With the latter strategy, it's best to kill or eliminate other Civs as potential threats first. This is good, it's just cheaper than building the nukes. However, nukes are very effective in forcing an end to a state of war, and maybe making sure it stays that way, if there are left over nukes still ready for launch. When the AI gets them, wars make me nervous. It hasn't happened yet but I suspect such wars to be sad, destructive, costly on re-building efforts, and short.
:die!: :die!:

[plasma]

 

[geofelt]

My games rarely get to that stage. On occasion, I might use one on a large naval fleet which will not cause pollution. I never use it on land; it is just too messy to clean up.

 

[unknown_spirit]

Who cares about the mess? Sure, I'll clean up around my own cities, but on a World Domination Tour, as I go on, you conquer the Earth, so cleaning up after yourself is not important. Also, why waste nukes on ships? You may as well use a Battleship. You can use this as many times as you like, unlike a Nuke, obviously.

 

[unknown_spirit]

Originally posted by unknown_spirit
Why do I not have that custom title box!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Hey, Darius, could it be that my rank is Cheiftan? (uck, what a horrid word on Civ...) How do I improve it?????

 

[Darius]

That could be it. I vaguely remember not being able to change it when I had chieftain, and now I can change it now that I'm a Warlord. However, maybe I just wasn't interested and I could've, I dunno. Your best bet would be to keep on posting until you get Warlord status. Also, you could consider getting into a PBEM on the forum; that can get hundreds of posts under your belt. I'm now in all three ZWK PBEM's, and those things really use a lot of posts. Just look at the thread info for running PBEM's; they have hundreds of posts on them and counting.

 

[Ace]

Originally posted by unknown_spirit
..Sure, so it has a low success rate, but hey, who cares. Also, If you can't be bothered trying that 25 times..

It doesn't have to have a low sucess rate. change govs to commie for a few turns and build VETERAN spies. And, for good luck, if you do not want to hurt your reputation, switch to fundy and than send forth your spies to blow up the world. much cheaper than nukes, and when you capture the city (s), you have a free SDI to protect you from the A.I. counter-attack.

 

[unknown_spirit]

Originally posted by Ace


It doesn't have to have a low sucess rate. change govs to commie for a few turns and build VETERAN spies. And, for good luck, if you do not want to hurt your reputation, switch to fundy and than send forth your spies to blow up the world. much cheaper than nukes, and when you capture the city (s), you have a free SDI to protect you from the A.I. counter-attack.

Pssh, Communism... I can't be bothered with that after I get Women's Suffrage. I use it before, but not after.

 

[David Dwyer]

In Civ2 the key to using nukes is pollution management.
You have to realize that the Solar Plants act as anti-pollution in the global warming calculations. Two Solar Plants will cancel out one square of pollution. Therefore, 16 Solar Plants will cancel out eight squares of pollution. At this point, global warming is much less of a problem, because the polluted squares around the ex-enemy city you just nuked will not be sufficient to trigger any global warming at all. SDI is the bomb when tossing nukes back and forth. As someone pointed out if you've another city within three it can build the SDI to defend the newly conquered city against nuclear retaliation, but then I prefer to play without nukes and even on deity will usually be so far ahead of the AI by the time nukes are available that SDI will already be in place everywhere it needs to be. Smacking the AI around in modern combat is not that hard. Armor as the general killer 'em all tool. Stealth fighters for partisan elimination if you don't want to bribe them with diplomats/spies so they can defend the new city or be disbanded to help rush something -- walls/SDI/happiness-building, etc. And Mech Inf for defense. Most enjoyable scenario I played before moving on to Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire was the WWIII one where the West and East blast each other into oblivion. I played the Japanese neutrals and got to enjoy the Russians nuking my cities too. After we cleaned up and built up we then moved out and eventually conquered China and the Soviet Far East along with Southeast Asia. Staying neutral until we had working SDI was our primary goal for the longest time. At that point the Americans declared war on us for a while, but in the end we were victorious. Global warming struck a total of five times that game. The AI doesn't seem to care much about pollution when it's in the middle of a nuclear war. The resultant global warming episodes would usually cover the home islands and large swaths of territory in our part of the world back up in jungle which would take forever to clear and then rework. It was the WWIII-1979 scenario with a win in 1991 at deity level (one month turns with slow tech advancement). But that was years ago, before SMAC/X came out.

David Dwyer

 

[unknown_spirit]

First things first, David, If you research Environmentalism and build Solar Plants, then you can nuke all day & pollute as you wish and global warming either doesn't happen, or takes a lot longer. Also, If you use nukes, presumably you're having a world war or a SERIOUS war with just one or two civs. This would also imply you have stacks of modern troops. Simply nuke them, take their cities, flatten the civs in question and if you haven't conquered the planet, THEN clean up after yourself. That way, you don't put your Engineers at risk, or waste time that could be spent KILLING :ak47::rocket:

 

[David Dwyer]

Originally posted by unknown_spirit
First things first, David, If you research Environmentalism and build Solar Plants, then you can nuke all day & pollute as you wish and global warming either doesn't happen, or takes a lot longer. Also, If you use nukes, presumably you're having a world war or a SERIOUS war with just one or two civs. This would also imply you have stacks of modern troops. Simply nuke them, take their cities, flatten the civs in question and if you haven't conquered the planet, THEN clean up after yourself. That way, you don't put your Engineers at risk, or waste time that could be spent KILLING :ak47::rocket:

Yes, that's the idea. With enough solar plants, the engineers don't have to move up immediately to clean up the mess to prevent global warming. You can wait a turn or two until the city and its surrounds are secure and an SDI has been rushed to avoid any 'accidents' befalling your engineers.

Of course in this era the rail nets make quick campaigns very possible without nukes. If you're in an on-going war as a democracy, what will usually happen is you attack or threaten a few cities and the next time your troops are adjacent to the enemy a peace treaty is signed behind your back. Or at least a cease fire. Nukes then become the way to get all those pesky units out of the way so you can occupy the city instead of getting shanghai'd by the Senate. This is why I like cleaning up partisans with stealth fighters, though bribery is good too. If you don't have the UN and are a democracy, you're gonna have a hard time fighting anything but a one-turn war. Which is ideally enough artillery to empty all enemy cities at once followed by the forces to occupy all enemy cities simultaneously, exterminating them and their partisans. But on harder levels such amusing wastes of units are rarely worth the effort due to the unhappiness large armies subject democracies to and the difficulties of diverting sufficient production to the military. Small focused forces that grab a wave of cities, clean up the partisans, heal up and move on are far easier to arrange, especially the occaisional fortress with good defenders that serve as a sponge on which to soak up the enemy counter-attacks.

True with Statue of Liberty you can bounce between Fundamentalism and Democracy all day long; or, alternatively, if the Senate won't let you go to war, you can always ask the neighbors who'd they like to gang up on.

But then the last Civ II game I played was months ago. Deity level LOTR scenario. Sauron had a rather large force, but the good guys were ultimately triumphant. I even managed to finally exterminate 7 of the 9 Nazgul despite their insanely high stats and respawn ability. Of course, once the One Ring gets slapped into Mount Doom the worst of Sauron's forces evaporate as an event triggered by the Ring. Challenging scenario.

These days I've fallen from the true faith and am now trapped in the toils of CivIII.

David Dwyer
"Faith and purity are inadequate substitutes for Kevlar and good cover." -- John Ringo "A Hymn Before Battle", "Gust Front", and "When the Devil Dances" [dance]