Dropping the Nukes - Ethics or strategy?

[Blackbird_SR-71]

of course i wil get sweet revenge against them hehehehe

you can say that all those civs in my next game wont be reaching the Modern Age ever, Bluemofia

i will rule the world :devil2:

 

[Mr Furious]

I like to think of using my nukes a lot like the way Americans play Gridiron. The players will tackle each other off the mark to make it easier for the ball carrier to get to his goal. A few well placed ICBM's at AI strongpoints makes it all the more easy for a lightning war against the enemy I found; spread out groups of Modern Armor and Paratroopers with Stealth Bombers (to mop up whatever mess they call an army is left) storming the proverbial beaches after an initial nuclear "softener."

Similarly, if they're holding a city and I can't seem to capture it, and I've got no air assets in the immediate area, it's time to break out the nukes.

As to the morality of it, I never really thought about it. Basically, my nation and my allies are more important than my enemy. Why waste good Veteran armor when you can just use a one million dollar missile to do all the dirty work for you?

(Wow, all that after my second game of Civilization III Conquests. Aren't I a strategician? xD)

 

[dresdor]

You've been thinking about this way too much. Here's my thoughts on the subject-matter:

The nuke is just another unit. A hellishly effective unit at that. It's no different than using a tank to destroy and pillage.

And what lives? Do you feel remorse when you kill an enemy unit? What about disbanding a unit? What about building a settler? 2 population units disappear to give you 1 in a new city.

 

[Commander Bello]

You've been thinking about this way too much. Here's my thoughts on the subject-matter:

The nuke is just another unit. A hellishly effective unit at that. It's no different than using a tank to destroy and pillage.

And what lives? Do you feel remorse when you kill an enemy unit? What about disbanding a unit? What about building a settler? 2 population units disappear to give you 1 in a new city.

Actually, the settler gives you two citizens - the one of the center tile, and the one somewhere in the great X.
You cannot load a settler into a curragh, either... since the curragh holds only only open slot.

 

[necrosmith]

Nukes are Equalizers in this game. Even the most hopeless civs can hold some power to deter an invasion by having a few nukes.

Kinda like real life..

Providing evidence that nuclear weapons are inherently defensive weapons.

 

[dresdor]

Kinda like real life..

Providing evidence that nuclear weapons are inherently defensive weapons.

It works against the AI pretty well, but in a "real world" situation, defensive nukes are suicide. Especially in our terror ridden society today....but that's off-topic....

Anyhow, deterance warfare is very, very innefficient...you spent thousands of shields to build these weapons that you'll (hopefully) never use. Sure, it might stop the enemies from attacking you (probably not) but if you actually had the gall to use them, then that is a different matter all-together. Guess I'm an advocate of using nukes when you have them...they're just another weapon.

 

[Bluemofia]

well, once i didn't build any nukes at all, except for 3, and the AI keeps threatning me and i have to give in because of his 10+ nukes.

anyways, nukes can be used to start world wars, as in there are actual sides, like in one of my games, just before i built my spaceship, i nuked an old enemy, and only about half of the civs declared war on me because of that, and because of MPPs. the other half was on my side. the world was messed up after that. an about even amount of superpowers on each side. no one else had a nuke ready though, and i only had 1. conventional weaponry was much more efficient at the time.

 

[Drakan]

Normally I try to avoid using nukes because I feel it is all too easy, but that's just me. If I happen to use them, I target the key resources of a civ (namely uranium, alluminium, rubber, petrol) but not their cities. Nothing is going to stop me from the pleasure of crushing militarily that one civ which has been on my nerves through out the game .
In one game my World was divided in three massive continents. The French were my rival Superpower. They were really strong and very, very agressive. They only had one resource of uranium ; so in the war that was unleashed that was the only thing I nuked and kept doing so, so as to stop them from building dangerous toys .

 

[Sukenis]

I nuke when I can (and not get nuked back). I raise cities when I can not hold them, the cviv ihas more culture than me, or I have the settlers to fill in the gap. When I do not raise, I enslave the people by rushing a worker every round until I am no longer at war with the other civ, the city is size one, or I start getting my own citizens in the city.

In the last game I won, I was the mongol and rasied every city in took (except the Dutch, do not know why the Dutch were special) and nuked anyone who stepped to me (mainly Suaria). On Large and Huge maps, invading with units can take to long and nukes are a much quicker way to end a war. When you do invade, the cities will not help much and other that an "airport" city, you do not need or want any more.

Nuke'em til they glow, and enslaved workers cost no upkeep. Those are two of my hardcore civ concepts I play by.

 

[King PJ]

I tried to nuke once, just to see what would happen. Next thing you know 35 nukes rained down on my cities. That sucked.

 

[amtrick]

I don't usually use them because it gets too messy but.....

I'm just finishing a game that has come down to the Arabs and me. Close to domination win (about 62% of people and land) but actually aiming for a Space Race victory. War started with my 6 nuke subs waiting off his coast and about 8 ICBMs in the homeland...Arabs had three tac nukes on subs and three ICBMs. Ground forces mauled each other and then he broke through my defenses with an SOD of about 20+ TOW infantry, 30+ regular infantry and an assortment of Mech Inf and MA. No way to stop them (ground forces too depleted .. fighting on his continent) so I did what I had too. I backed off from the SOD, nuked it (taking one of my own cities) then counterattacked again. Followed up by reducing his big coastal cities to radioactive rubble. His response was to nuke my aluminum resources ... now I couldn't build MA or ICBMs or lots of other neat stuff. After about four more turns we were both exhausted and he finally surrendered.

We are both picking up the pieces and trying to get the Space Race started again, but it is late 20th century and time is running out.

In short, we went nuke and everybody may lose.

That eerie wind blowing when you nuke someone sorta gets to me, but I don't really mind vaporizing a few cities (apparently including my own) when the situation calls for it

 

[King PJ]

Why waste good Veteran armor when you can just use a one million dollar missile to do all the dirty work for you?

BTW, nukes cost ALOT more than a million dollars. A single tomahawk cruise missle costs a million dollars.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Well, I was using the zero-science strategy in one game and proceeding quite well. I could tell that a world war was soon to begin because of all the MPP's being signed left and right.

While I was friendly with everyone and nobody would even dream of harming my harmless but well-guarded civilization, I was actually in war-time mobilization and building ICBMs non-stop.

When the inevitable war began, I joined a side and proceeded to nuke every single enemy city.


After the cleanup process, I built up even more nukes. The rest of the game consisted of me glassing all the enemy cities down to 1 population and then razing them.


So much satisfaction.


P.S. I was nuked back a few times but only a grand total of 3 nukes made it through my SDI defenses. My worker and slave horde repaired the damage quickly enough.

 

[Mr Furious]

BTW, nukes cost ALOT more than a million dollars. A single tomahawk cruise missle costs a million dollars.

BTW, nukes cost ALOT more than a million dollars. A single tomahawk cruise missle costs a million dollars.

Let me rephrase that...

I should've said, "Cost several turns of production to rebuild a shattered Modern Armor army."

 

[Hunter]

I find that I will use them to create a barrier of destruction to slow enemy troops as I take a city or prepare my defenses. I almost never nuke a city unless it’s a major production center or the capitol and I just want to make a point (I know the computer doesn’t get it but I do).

I will blast the you know what out of a whole line of dirt (from sea to sea or a ring around the costal city I just took) that forces their troops to move slowly across the pollution or funnel through one gap that I leave for them. In ether case it gives me the ability to pound them with bombards and then paratroops until their army is crushed.

Do I feel bad about the sometimes near TOTAL global destruction… I know its weird but usually I do after it’s all said and done. Especially if I do nuke cities. :shakehead

Poor little digital people and their even smaller digital children… O WHY DID HAVE TO COME TO THIS!!!! Why couldn’t they just give me what I wanted.

Poor little digi families, they always pay the highest price.

 

[ciphrix]

Heres my two cents:

I like to play the game like if it was real, like I am actually a ruler of a real nation in a parallel digital universe (think matrix..sorta), I enjoy the game more that way and my therapist tells me its good for my condition . Although the unpreditable AI leaders sometimes ruins the fun, so I just pretend everyone is crazy except me.

So after many hours of consulting my digital advisers, especially AL (his my military advisor and my best friend ), my policy for the use of nukes is quite simple (these were formulated with the assumption once I use nuclear weapons, everyone will declare war on me use their nukes against me):

1. Retaliation - Nuke me (regardless the scale of the attack) - I (try) nuke EVERYONE to the ground

2. The total defeat of my nation is unavoidable - Nuke EVERYONE to the ground.

When I nuke, there is no half measure, its all or nothing. If I use nukes, I try and make sure there is no one left to nuke me back.

As you can see once in the modern age, I spend a great deal of resources on stockpiling nukes, rarely have I ever unleashed my stockpile of nukes, but in the times that I have, it was bye bye to everyone, including me. (a few of those were in mutiplayer games, ppl weren't very happy with me afterwards, I believe some even went as far as questioning my sexual preference and commenting on my mother's sex life)

 

[mac224]

ROFL! Yea, it's a little unnerving when my kids (age 7 and down) watch my games, which ALL seem to involve killing the other guys more or less abstractly. "Daddy was that person a bad man?". "Yes, he's my enemy and I have to kill him to win the game." What else can I say? Makes you think!

At the end of the game any civ that has been getting on my nerves gets sent back to the stone age. Although I find this satisfiying I was a little concerned to find my 10 and 12 year old sons laughing hysterically as they did the same thing.

 

[Hunter]

Well mac224 I wouldnt tell them anything other than "its just a game kids". My home area is very gun loving banjo payin bit of back country, where drinken or killing is all that kids talked about... o and girls . And I tell you 99% of us would NEVER hurt anyone. So since it sounds like your realy interested in your kids being good people (which by the way we need more people doing the same) they will be just that no matter what they see in a video game.

O and to keep it on topic "NUKEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT"