How does the AI choose nuke targets?

[MinutiaeMan]

I just had the weirdest experience. I'm playing Germany, and I'm in the middle of a protracted war with the Russians. I've been razing their cities because I don't want to bother quelling resistance in their size-20 cities. Therefore, I'm moving my own settlers in to immediately occupy the space left by the recently razed cities.

Now, the Russian AI just hit me with a nuke. Just one, mind you, which is weird in and of itself. (Well, not too weird, considering they just had some major anarchy and I've already wiped out Moscow and two other cities, so their infrastructure is starting to collapse.) Anyway, which city did the AI decide to target for its one and only nuke? Berlin, my capital? Munich, my industrial powerhouse?

No, instead the AI targeted one of my pop-1 towns that I'd just settled on the previous turn.

How weird is that?

 

[homeyg]

I've experienced that too, however I have no idea why they don't nuke better targets than size 2 cities on tundra islands...

 

[Durkz]

nukes have limited range so russians droped the nuke on your biggest city in the range of the nuke

 

[taper]

Did they use an ICBM or tac nuke? I can understand the range thing if it was only a tac nuke, but an ICBM can reach anywhere.

 

[JMK]

Although i have a very limited experience, this happenned a couple times to me.
Looklike AI is choosing the city function of the Ressources around.

 

[Bibor]

Hmm, I would never nuke a city that i don't want to raze to ground. A good example is a coastal capital that has a critical lead in 20k culture. One nuclear sub with a nuke (or icbm) + two-three transports of veteran marines. Preferably with cruiser/Battleship escort
+ =

Dunno why AI cannot do this same tactic? It *has* access to nuc. subs if it has nuke (uranium). And since it knows how to load units...

Or, alternatively, he could send a suicide unit to find your 30+ tank stack and double nuke it (or single icbm i think is enuff). hurts more than resource

 

[IceBeast]

The only time I've been nuked by the computer was after I had nuked almost all of there cities. They retaliated by nuking my 2nd largest industrial city twice and then one of my smaller industrial cities once. But they did use there nukes "kind of wisely". (This was a monarch game)

 

[Falcon02]

I've had a simular experience, I had just launched nukes against the AI, approximately half of my 500 ICBM stockpile (had fun dealing with global warming after that). So, of course those I nuked decided to send some ICBM's my way. These ICBM's they sent at me, were targeted at two cities. Since I had SDI at the time, they used up like 5 nukes trying to get just one city, that city... as discribed, not my capital, not my Production Centers, but a relativly unproductive far away city I had at my southern border, the second city was relatively nearby, however it was like 6 tiles away.

I don't remember if there were resources in the area, but at the very least, wouldn't have helped the AI much, my tanks were all ready and I had a large enough empire to ensure I'd have other resources.

 

[Chauliodus]

Only times I've really been nuked that I can remember well is when France used their 30 some nukes and hit my 5 least populated cities over and over again nowhere near them.

 

[Aggie]

They nukes cities with resources in the city radius. These are sometimes not the crucial cities. I haven't seen them nuke a stack of military outside a city yet. One way to avoid a loss of military is to remove them from these possible targets.