Effectiveness of Nukes/ICBMs

[ajsciri4]

I mean, what's the point? You land a nuke on an enemy city, it loses a few citizens, but that's nearly it unless you count that adjacent farm disappearing...

It doesn't outweigh the cost of global warming; the fact that you can lose two or three flood plains tiles makes it not worth it at all.

 

[s.bernbaum]

The warmonger players say they can be used to wipe out the enemy armies.

As for me, I always try to build the UN and ban them. I am considering modding them out but the UN method usually works so well that I have not bothered yet.

 

[Archon_Wing]

lol wut.

I think winning the game is worth losing a few tiles. :3

In case you didn't realize, the nuke also heavily damages the units caught in the explosion. It's hardly just a few population points. 2 nukes can wipe out a enemy garrison, which you can then walk in with a warrior. Nuke+ transport is insanely godly as you can raze/capture all the enemy's cities.

Rushbuy a ton of nukes and if they don't have SDI or nukes of their own, they are utterly screwed. It's the fastest way to finish the game if you need to invade another continent.

 

[GGracchus]

TMIT wipes out Stalin in 1 turn(except for 1 city) with tac nukes. These things are amazing, given that they can kill all combat units. SDI negates it to an extent, but before SDI stuff like this can be arranged. In part 9 he one-turn wipes QSH too.

 

[AJ11]

I mean, what's the point? You land a nuke on an enemy city, it loses a few citizens, but that's nearly it unless you count that adjacent farm disappearing...

It doesn't outweigh the cost of global warming; the fact that you can lose two or three flood plains tiles makes it not worth it at all.

1. Remove global warming from the game. It is stupid. According to Civ4 logic, all planets end up as desert worlds due to global warming regardless of what anything on it does. Now, if they didn't tie it to pollution, I'd actually agree with it, but only if it happens in about 20 billion years (i.e., the Sun goes red giant and fries the planet). However, they tied pollution to it, making it one of the stupidest things ever created with the possible exceptions of the East Anglia CRU, the IPCC and the UN.

2. Nukes in Civ4 are not city busters. They are unit stack removers.

 

[Pisskop]

1. Remove global warming from the game. It is stupid. According to Civ4 logic, all planets end up as desert worlds due to global warming regardless of what anything on it does. Now, if they didn't tie it to pollution, I'd actually agree with it, but only if it happens in about 20 billion years (i.e., the Sun goes red giant and fries the planet). However, they tied pollution to it, making it one of the stupidest things ever created with the possible exceptions of the East Anglia CRU, the IPCC and the UN.

2. Nukes in Civ4 are not city busters. They are unit stack removers.

Lol so after you win load up and play Dune Wars!

 

[strijder20]

Yes, nukes are underpowered. Let's give them a blast radius of 21 * 21!

 

[AJ11]

Lol so after you win load up and play Dune Wars!

So-so. Although the Dune miniseries was better than any of its predecessors.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

2. Nukes in Civ4 are not city busters. They are unit stack removers.

Yes. Although nukes will seriously screw up city infra and nobody likes taking one, it is their ability to kill units that makes them shine (and it's why I accompanied them with forces to actually raze the cities in that video ).

A secondary but VERY effective use for nukes is to deny resources (especially opposing uranium!) Without ecology the AI can't scrub fallout and that means it can't replace improvements on strategic resources. The advantages of being the only one with such a key resource as uranium in the time of nukes should go without saying .

 

[AJ11]

Yes. Although nukes will seriously screw up city infra and nobody likes taking one, it is their ability to kill units that makes them shine (and it's why I accompanied them with forces to actually raze the cities in that video ).

A secondary but VERY effective use for nukes is to deny resources (especially opposing uranium!) Without ecology the AI can't scrub fallout and that means it can't replace improvements on strategic resources. The advantages of being the only one with such a key resource as uranium in the time of nukes should go without saying .

I remember from Civ2 (or was it 3?) when Paratroopers + nukes + railroads = kill everyone on the same continent in one turn.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I remember from Civ2 (or was it 3?) when Paratroopers + nukes + railroads = kill everyone on the same continent in one turn.

That's from civ IV, too .

The only exception is that nukes kill workers/execs/missionaries only rarely, so if these happen to be in interior cities you'll have to wait a turn. The reason is that paras can enter an empty city on the turn they paradrop, but can't "attack" which is required to move onto the tile with such units to capture/kill them.

 

[AJ11]

That's from civ IV, too .

The only exception is that nukes kill workers/execs/missionaries only rarely, so if these happen to be in interior cities you'll have to wait a turn. The reason is that paras can enter an empty city on the turn they paradrop, but can't "attack" which is required to move onto the tile with such units to capture/kill them.

That's why it doesn't work in Civ4.

 

[Pisskop]

That's why it doesn't work in Civ4.

ehh, rails get destroyed and the ai isn't nesscessarily smart enough to paradrop their own in (or even keep them on hand.) Just apply more pressure.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's why it doesn't work in Civ4.

It often will though and you can always check beforehand with an airship which is guaranteed to be available in the presence of nukes.

Even if you can't 1 turn insta-kill, the followup turn won't exactly see the AI able to produce a lot of new units...

I once tested to see if it were POSSIBLE for nukes to kill an executive. Apparently it is. I worldbuildered in 100+ tac nukes and just stack-fired them on 1 city . Somewhere in there the missionary died. This leads me to believe that the mechanic is glitched to USUALLY not kill them because they've no health bar, meaning they'd need to die instantly in 1 nuking and not take damage instead. I guess that's a rare thing to happen.

 

[God-Emperor]

There is a threshold of how much damage a non-combat unit must take from one nuke to be killed, NUKE_NON_COMBAT_DEATH_THRESHOLD in GlobalDefines.xml. It is not hard to hit this (odds are way over 50%) unless the unit is in a city with bomb shelters, in which case it drops to something under 10%.

 

[Tyroq]

Nothing in Civ beats the Planet Busters of Alpha Centauri. Seeing that mushroom cloud dissipate to leave behind a smouldering CRATER with nothing living inside it, not even a trace that there'd ever been a city there at all... nothing compares to it. Nukes in Civ are piss poor comparisons to that glorious detonation.

 

[AJ11]

Nothing in Civ beats the Planet Busters of Alpha Centauri. Seeing that mushroom cloud dissipate to leave behind a smouldering CRATER with nothing living inside it, not even a trace that there'd ever been a city there at all... nothing compares to it. Nukes in Civ are piss poor comparisons to that glorious detonation.

Really? When I used it, the city was still there. In the middle of a crater lake because the crater went under sea level, but still there...

 

[AutomatedTeller]

what are the effects of nukes? I can't really find them anywhere.

 

[AJ11]

what are the effects of nukes? I can't really find them anywhere.

Some of the units on the tile gets removed barring those with 0 combat strength. Others gets badly damaged

If there is a city on the tile, it gets a population reduction and buildings gets destroyed. Wonders of all types are immune to this, as far as I know.

Improvements in the target tile and surroundings cop a beating.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^ National wonders are *not* immune.