ICBM / Nukes

Hellpig

Chieftain
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Well, I've searched the forum but didn't find any answer so ...

My questions is: how much damage does the ICBM deal out to a city? I know the city will be decimated (but not by how much) and that some surronding tiles will be polluted. What happens to the city improvements and the units inside/outside the city? And what is the real difference between the ICBM and the nuke, except that other civ's will hate you for nuking?
 
Every square around the detonation will be polluted and grassland becomes plain and plain becomes desert per example. Nukes only have a fixed range, but icbm you can use whereever you want them to detonate...
 
OK Nukes-

In the detonation tile and in all immediately adjacent tiles, all units have a 50% chance of elimination (regardless of nationality). It's not clear what occurs if they survive- hit point reduction or zero effect?? Also, a bombed city suffers an instant 50% reduction in population.

This info is straight out of the rules manual, pg. 84. As is a lot of things therein, it may be correct or very very wrong. I have never used nukes so cannot verify the info.

Anyone out there got "experience" with these things (IN GAME TERMS!!!!!)?
 
from my experience with nukes it doesn't matter a whole lot other than the damage is devastating. here's what i do. i have two distinct lines of research that i pursue, those that allow icbm and those that allow sdi. these two are foremost techs to acquire. once MP is completed somewhere (i never build it), i start building icbm's all over the place and continue until i can no longer stand it. on average i wind up with about 4 per city in my most productive cities. i avoid war at all costs until my sdi is up. i also take pride in using them in anger only once. i've been nuked in 3 other games but most have fizzled out from the sdi. i used to wait until nuked to nuke back. from seat-of-the-pants feelings, suffice it to say that nuking all an opponents large cities makes the takeover of that civ a cakewalk. there is no counterpunch to an invasion and very meager city defense units left. this makes conquest way too easy. i prefer to let them nuke me while my icbms lurking in their bullpens only as a last resort. then i punish the aggressor by humiliating them with land forces alone. I also do my best to estimate where other civs are in their icbm development. i've never been the target of more than 12 a turn, 3 of which actually hit. if they are building them, i invade as soon as possible and build up to a point where i can take most of his major cities in a turn or two. i've been at war with civs that have icbms but they don't seem to use them unless they're starting to lose the war. maybe i'm misinterpreting this but i've gone several turns letting the ai whack at my ground forces with his and this seemed to satisfy his desire enough not to nuke. once i start to roll and take several large cities, it's then that i see the nukes fly. i've seen them target cities with the most units in them on my home land (a city with maybe 5 cruise missiles and a few mech inf). meanwhile, my entire army is on their continent wreaking havoc and not targeted. the land war is a lot smoother knowing those big birds are there for backup if needed.
 
Thanks for yer input guys!
Actually I tested the effect of ICBM's after ending my latest game today by continuing after winning (won by spacerace, ca 1940, 2524 pts on warlord), where I just ICBM'ed Germany and Russia on another continent. Well, that went swell and allmost the whole world declared war on me and then came the Persians turn. Kaboom! They launched at least 10 ICBM's at my major cities and it didn't seem to end by that so I just booted out of the game...:lol:
 
ICBM's are wonderful tactical devices if you get them before you opponents do, or if you buy alliances with the other nations that have them.

I like to nuke strategic resources (especially other sources of uranium). If you can control your enemies production you can use them with impunity.

The most effective use I've found for them though is enemy armies. The Egyptians fielded an army of about 50 tanks. One ICBM later there were 8 badly damaged units left :flamedevi
 
yes, try to buy alliance with other civ before you use nukes. it's not good to fight with the whole world.

I usually don't build MP until I discover Satelites. Then when I'm building ICBMs, most of the AIs even don't know what's tactical nuke.

It really feels good to wipe out tens of tanks or bombers with a single ICBM.
 
yes, try to buy alliance with other civ before you use nukes. it's not good to fight with the whole world.

I usually don't build MP until I discover Satelites. Then when I'm building ICBMs, most of the AIs even don't know what's tactical nuke.

It really feels good to wipe out tens of tanks or bombers with a single ICBM.
I used to end up fighting most of the world in Civ2 and 3 all the time. I just couldn't stand the other leaders continous insults. I always embarked on revenge-missions to teach them how to address ME - the mighty ruler of England (usually) :)

Suffice to say that it did not take long until the bastards ganged up against me and I was on the road to imperial overstreatch and strained warchest. My people were pissed off as hell and I just fought to drag my enemies down with me :mad:

Some ruler I was...
 
Ah yes the InterContinental Balistic Missile! My favorive unit! I have used them very little bercause my games end realy quick usually. But once I was the grand Iroiquoi civ(Bad spelling), and I was in the Modern Age and China was in the Industrial age. My army was small and powerful they had alot of troops. I killed them with alot of MA in the early stages
but they finnaly stopped that and went to bombarding my cities with a massive navy. This was so annoying that I had to attack I sent about 20 MA to their country but they were all killed by a 100 medeval infantry , calvalry , tanks , riders and guerrilas. I was so mad that I built 10 nukes and hit them in the outskirts of their city and made pollution. Then with 5 nukes left I bombed the city. The were killed. in 1 shot.
 
The most effective use I've found for them though is enemy armies. The Egyptians fielded an army of about 50 tanks. One ICBM later there were 8 badly damaged units left :flamedevi

thats called tactical nuking and really its the main reason 4 nuking. like unless ur about 2 take a city there is 0 point in nuking it, unless they have a lot of units in it that are a threat.
 
I do not think the statements are correct in regards to damage. ICBM will not change tiles as far as I have seen.

They will kill 1/2 of the pop in a town/city/metro. They will reduce the hit points to all units by 1/2, except for ICBM.

So you can be sure to kill all units with three ICBM's.
 
I think ICBMs used to cause terrain changes in vanilla, but I don't really remember that far back.

[this was a five-year bump]
 
Global Warming will do tile changes, but not the nukes themselves. This was always the case in III.
 
nukes will cause pollution if thats wat u mean, which in turn causes global warming (also renders tile useless)
 
well good thing some1 bumped this discussion cause its making my empty head a bit fuller :p

and do ppl seriously spam porn on here?
 
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