New Beta Version - April 20th (4-20)

[Bhawb]

Some people like an extended late game and these kind of tweaks are important.

Once again, I repeat that nobody is suggesting balancing the game around the late game..

?

You literally are.

 

[Borussia]

I'd like to point out, landmarks don't need to be in your territory to receive the bonus, but there is also the factor that new cities (either built or conquered) weren't benefiting from past landmarks/concerts, so that is what made (for me) late game domination so hard, because when you start going really wide (30++ cities), at that point the projects won't be enough, and you will have to rely on other sources to stay afloat, as every new city is a big burden on your whole empire. Looking back, I think I should have just puppeted more cities, and kept some key ones annexed, puppets do have some happiness negatives but its way lower than what an annexed city gives, unless you starve it off to low pop.
Landmarks are advantageous to wide play, but because wide play is the one that suffer the most from the needs increase, so for me that part seemed balanced. Artifacts from archeologists seemed to be a thing I would get for tall empires, as +1 on 5-8 cities isn't such a big deal, but theming is useful if you want to go for culture win.
I understand the system can't be balanced everywhere, but I think some values could be revised for huge maps.

Puppets themselfes should never give you happiness problems because they should always have 75% happiness (1 unhappiness for 4 citizens). They just increase the needs of your real cities because of empire size I think.
In my current game I have 6 cities and 16 puppets and it works out until now.
On the first two dig sites I took the artifacts. I will test out landmarks with the next few.

 

[tu_79]

Puppets are happier, but earn less money. So there's a choice for you.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Puppets themselfes should never give you happiness problems because they should always have 75% happiness (1 unhappiness for 4 citizens). They just increase the needs of your real cities because of empire size I think.
In my current game I have 6 cities and 16 puppets and it works out until now.
On the first two dig sites I took the artifacts. I will test out landmarks with the next few.

On the global level, only POSITIVE happiness is counted and compared vs unhappiness. Puppets are always 75% neutral and 25% unhappy, but never generate any happiness, they are always a happiness drain.

Puppets are happier, but earn less money. So there's a choice for you.

Normal cities can have much greater unhappiness than puppets, but their unhappiness is capped (Most of my cities in my last game reach their unhappiness cap at around 2/3 of their population) and they can generate happiness.
So if you have only size 30 cities with a unhappiness cap of 20, generate 10 happiness normally and get 10 landmarks, you are immun to unhappiness penalties. Is this the target?

 

[Rafs]

Puppets themselfes should never give you happiness problems because they should always have 75% happiness (1 unhappiness for 4 citizens). They just increase the needs of your real cities because of empire size I think.
In my current game I have 6 cities and 16 puppets and it works out until now.
On the first two dig sites I took the artifacts. I will test out landmarks with the next few.

Of course, you have to understand at some point it's not a matter of having enough buildings in your city, the problem you face is that because you have too many cities the needs have increased too much and you aren't able to meet them, specially on cities without GPI. I can see puppets helping just because they can't generate so much unhappiness, but if they still increase your needs across the whole empire the pupetting is similar to annexing a low pop city, not that useful imho. In the england game I shared screenshots of, when I was about to end the game I think I had over 50 cities under my control (I know at some point Spain had over 35 cities and couldn't get past 40% happiness). Even cities which had all buildings were at max unhappiness (countered by happiness from landmarks+concerts and policies). The big problem was any new city I would take would get like 10 happiness from policies+beliefs, but the rest of the pop was always unhappy, so any city over 10 pop was a net drain. Nothing dramatic in my case because I had snowballed quite a lot, but I could see people running into problems late game in a more balanced game. Guess it's more of a huge map problem than anything else.

Puppets are happier, but earn less money. So there's a choice for you.

I didn't run into much poverty problems, but then again, I had trader sid's corporation, with over 200g per office and other gold sources poverty was luckily in check. Only reason I wasn't pupetting everything was because I wanted to buy the religious buildings from the Spanish faith, convert it and buy mine, so I wouldn't be troubled by enemy pressure. Maybe puppetting would have been a better choice overall.

 

[Borussia]

On the global level, only POSITIVE happiness is counted and compared vs unhappiness. Puppets are always 75% neutral and 25% unhappy, but never generate any happiness, they are always a happiness drain.

You are right.
I guess otherwise puppets would be too strong if they have not such a drawback.
In my current game I have a 22 city empire but my science/culture/tourism cost are only that of a 6 city empire because 16 of these 22 cities are puppets. They generate alot of yields and lead me to a huge technology/policy/tourism lead.
This means a 7 city empire without puppets has higher technology/policy/tourism costs than me as a 22 city empire.

 

[tu_79]

On the global level, only POSITIVE happiness is counted and compared vs unhappiness. Puppets are always 75% neutral and 25% unhappy, but never generate any happiness, they are always a happiness drain.

Normal cities can have much greater unhappiness than puppets, but their unhappiness is capped (Most of my cities in my last game reach their unhappiness cap at around 2/3 of their population) and they can generate happiness.
So if you have only size 30 cities with a unhappiness cap of 20, generate 10 happiness normally and get 10 landmarks, you are immun to unhappiness penalties. Is this the target?

Yeah, I mean puppets are happier than those lackluster cities you've conquered recently, that also increases global empire size happiness penalty.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

1) Madrid (27): 14/15
2) Barcelona (18): 9/18
3) Seville (16): 10/16
4) Cordoba (16): 8/10
5) Toledo (21): 8/19
6) Santiago (18): 8/17
7) Salmanaca (17): 8/14
8) Murcia (17): 8/17
9) Valencia (18): 8/15
10) London (10): 5/10 [recently conquered)
11) Kaesong (12): 0/12 (no courthouse yet)

Are your cities always that size in that state of the game? I wonder, cause mine are often that size 60-80 turns earlier.
Another point Iam wondering is the amount of unhappiness in your cities.
My capital has the size of 31, but its unhappiness is capped at 11.
My 3 smallest cities have all the size of 19, but their unhappiness capped at 4/5/8.
I never have fallen below 90% happiness, Running 90% of the game with 100%. Is my version bugged?

 

[Stalker0]

Are your cities always that size in that state of the game? I wonder, cause mine are often that size 60-80 turns earlier.

I can't say for certain, but will note that most of my cities grow very little now. If you consider the numbers you see up there":

1) Madrid (27): 14/15 - 10% Growth
2) Barcelona (18): 9/18 - 90% Growth
3) Seville (16): 10/16 - 60% Growth
4) Cordoba (16): 8/10 - 20% Growth
5) Toledo (21): 8/19 -110% Growth
6) Santiago (18): 8/17 - 90% Growth
7) Salmanaca (17): 8/14 - 60% Growth
8) Murcia (17): 8/17 - 90% Growth
9) Valencia (18): 8/15 - 70% Growth

And of course if my Global Happiness is below 60% its worse. So yeah I would imagine my cities haven't grown much in a while.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

I can't say for certain, but will note that most of my cities grow very little now. If you consider the numbers you see up there":

1) Madrid (27): 14/15 - 10% Growth
2) Barcelona (18): 9/18 - 90% Growth
3) Seville (16): 10/16 - 60% Growth
4) Cordoba (16): 8/10 - 20% Growth
5) Toledo (21): 8/19 -110% Growth
6) Santiago (18): 8/17 - 90% Growth
7) Salmanaca (17): 8/14 - 60% Growth
8) Murcia (17): 8/17 - 90% Growth
9) Valencia (18): 8/15 - 70% Growth

And of course if my Global Happiness is below 60% its worse. So yeah I would imagine my cities haven't grown much in a while.

The growth modifier isn't still the final one, with enough positive modifiers you can compensate a lot. For India, that's only bee stings.

Barcelona has as much unhappiness as population. Is there a lot of WW unhappiness? As said, most of my cities haf far less unhappiness cap than population.

 

[Stalker0]

The growth modifier isn't still the final one, with enough positive modifiers you can compensate a lot. For India, that's only bee stings.

Here are my actual growth modifiers (factoring in other growth bonus/penalties) with updated happiness numbers. This is turn 346 after my landmark spike, so my happiness much better than before, though still negative in most cities. Also, note that now 10 out of my 12 cities are at maximum unhappiness. This includes a +8 happiness bonus per cities from landmarks.

1) Madrid (30): 25/22 + 25% Growth
2) Barcelona (19): 16/19 - 20% Growth
3) Seville (18): 18/18 +0% Growth
4) Cordoba (18): 16/18 - 20% Growth
5) Toledo (23): 16/23 -65% Growth
6) Santiago (20): 16/20 - 40% Growth
7) Salmanaca (19): 15/19 - 40% Growth
8) Murcia (19): 15/19 - 40% Growth
9) Valencia (21): 15/20 - 45% Growth
10) London (17): 15/17 - 20% Growth
11) Kaesong (17): 14/17 - 5% Growth
12) Kiev (15): 13/15 - +5% Growth

 

[yogiebere]

Hi guys, hopping back in for my first game since about October.

I like the new happiness changes but I don't seem to be managing it well at all. I'm playing as Ethiopia on Frontier 8 civs Emperor. I'm next to England and Korea who I surprisingly haven't had DoW on me yet even though I've taken 8 cities that border their empires, they both seem to be doing tall with only 5 coastal cities each.

But I'm struggling to get above 45-50% happiness, finished Progress, now 2 into Fealty. I'm spending all my hammers trying to get infrastructure in my cities, most are about 4-6 unhappiness deficit each.

Is wide that viable these days? Maybe I should've picked a better wide civ.

 

[HogarthBacc]

Hey all,

New beta version inbound. Some minors revision and additions since the last one. Continuing to clean up and optimize code as we move ahead with the happiness overhaul. Feeling very good about this one.

General
    AI bug fixes and performance improvements
    Fix for high seas AI naval performance
    Smaller fixes for tactical and homeland AI
    Adjustments to AI diplo logic
    Fixes for deal AI logic in some situations
    Improvements to AI selection criteria in some situations
    Github issue cleanup
    UI adjustments for happiness system
Balance
    Happiness
        Added a new happiness mechanic for buildings: local urbanization reduction
            Two new types: local and 'global' (i.e. a wonder that reduces urbanization unhappiness in all cities)
            What it does: allows cities to work x # of specialists without incurring the urbanization unhappiness penalty
                Specialists are fun, but a little too rare right now. This will help.
            Current buildings using this mechanic (value in parentheses is # of unhappiness-free specialists provided)
                Throne Room (2)
                Garden/Candi (1)
                Workshop (1)
                National College (1)
                The Guilds (1 each)
                Wind/Nuclear/Solar/Hydro Plants (2)
                Factory (2)
        Artistry:
            Refinement - moved 10% Culture from GA to Cultural Exchange; 2 Specialists now no longer generate unhappiness from urbanization in all cities
                Will help artistry civs 'jump start' GP generation a little more quickly
    Units
        Cruiser-  now 1 range (was 2)
        Ironclad - CS bumped by 5
    Buildings
        All 'plants' now mutually exclusive in a city (except coal)
    Civs
        Dutch
           Polder - can be built on marshes now as well
    Bullying
        Now uses pathfinding to just unit distance, instead of 'radar'

Not savegame compatible.

Link: https://mega.nz/#F!2Jdw3aQT!Z49gV7KAyMq6YiG5BD9jaA



G

I do not know how forums work but I do have the question of whether the next beta will be updated to the newest version of EUI... it is causing me some problems.

 

[chicorbeef]

Hi guys, hopping back in for my first game since about October.

I like the new happiness changes but I don't seem to be managing it well at all. I'm playing as Ethiopia on Frontier 8 civs Emperor. I'm next to England and Korea who I surprisingly haven't had DoW on me yet even though I've taken 8 cities that border their empires, they both seem to be doing tall with only 5 coastal cities each.

But I'm struggling to get above 45-50% happiness, finished Progress, now 2 into Fealty. I'm spending all my hammers trying to get infrastructure in my cities, most are about 4-6 unhappiness deficit each.

Is wide that viable these days? Maybe I should've picked a better wide civ.

It is possible to still play wide. You could be overworking Specialists (each Specialist give 1 unhappiness). Remember that unhappiness now is largely self-regulating: it slows down growth, which will slow down unhappiness. As long as you have one good city (probably the Capital) that has enough happiness to build military at a reasonable pace, the problem should correct itself. Your happiness isn't terrible.

As a side note, focusing on Barracks + Arena (+ Forge) is even more important now, because they relieve the most urgent unhappiness sources in the early game.

 

[chicorbeef]

I do not know how forums work but I do have the question of whether the next beta will be updated to the newest version of EUI... it is causing me some problems.

Are you installing EUI separately? That causes problems. VP has EUI in it.

 

[HogarthBacc]

Are you installing EUI separately? That causes problems. VP has EUI in it.

My beta launcher as well as the official launcher for VP do not install EUI even though I select it. V1.28h must be a version made by VP because I cant find it on the EUI page.

 

[vyyt]

My beta launcher as well as the official launcher for VP do not install EUI even though I select it. V1.28h must be a version made by VP because I cant find it on the EUI page.

I suppose your Steam / Civ5 is installed in a non-standard folder and therefore the autoinstaller wrongly are installs EUI in the default (= wrong location). Please see the 1-2 newest pages of the stickied main install thread. We have solved the same problem for other people there. (so no, this is not related to thw newest EUI version)

 

[Stalker0]

Alright, finished up a new one.

Spain Standard Emperor - Forfeited on Turn 368

This is the game I've been talking about on other threads for a bit. I got to see the AI's raw military mind on full display, and it kicked me up and down the curb for most of the game. Sweden and Brazil took turns beating me up while the Incans and Koreans powered up. By late game they both decided to have their fun, completely splitting up the CS amongst themselves. Korea had fun making everyone of my luxuries immoral, than the Incas sanctioned me. And of course, both decided to keep going to war with me. The AI's warring mind has improved so much lately that I think I'll have to go down a difficulty, its become too much of a slog for me to deal with the endless wave of AI units that actually know how to kill my units now.

I actually went Autocracy this game, decided that "by gum" I would do some serious warring and come back from the hole! Well the AI had other plans

I ended it when Korea went after one of my islands. I used the raw power of Spain + Orders + Veneration + Zealotry to generate 6 bombers out of thin air and defend my island. As soon as the bombers arrived, Korea dropped the first nuke of the game (talk about a loss of faith!) He then showed up with a destroyer fleet 3 times the size of ironclad one...and I decided that enough was enough.

A well played game by the AI, I tip my hat.


So a few key notes:

Happiness: Early to Mid Game happiness was good. The early game has stabilized so that I no longer go into severe unhappiness at the drop of a hat. However, happiness did curb my expansion and I had to settle in waves and stabilize my infrastructure, exactly as needed.

Late Game happiness needs correction, at least for wide play. Towards the later game (Industrial onward), almost all of cities have maximum unhappiness. Buildings didn't help, the only thing that was at all useful were happiness bonuses. To me, needs reductors and unhappiness reductors didn't really exist.

Landmarks: Already said it in other threads but to summarize, landmarks are too good. I know G has already said he's correcting it, but just to make sure That said, that means late game REALLY needs help with happiness. Literally landmarks were the only way I could stay afloat, and that was with 11 cities (I nice sizable civ on Standard Size but certainly not crazy).

Specialist Unhappiness: After seeing them in action several times now...I have decided I really don't like the specialist unhappiness. It has nothing to do with balance per say, but the sheer fidiliness of them. As a civ player, I don't mind a little micromanagement, but managing my specialist constantly felt like a chore. I would constantly go in to cities and adjust them to keep my happiness right, or correct my Global Happiness by changing specialists. And it gets worse once you have urbanization redactors, because no you don't always know if getting a specialist will give you a penalty or not. So I found myself adding specialists until unhappiness increased, and then tailoring from there. BLEH! Now that all changed in the late game, because unhappiness was so bad that I no longer cared about getting more. So I just got every specialist I could until I had no more food (because my growth was in the toilet I didn't bother with food).

Further I don't mind specialist being limited in the early game, but it feels silly to have all of these specialist slots from early buildings and not being able to use any of them due to urbanization penalties.

I would rather specialist had weaker yields / cost more food, and not have any urbanization than what we have right now.

Global vs Local Happiness: GUI wise, its weird to consider that I had a 91% Global happiness towards the end of the game and yet almost every single one of my cities was unhappy.


Spying Weirdness: Maybe this is the luck of the dice, but my first 4 spies were killed by Korea. One after another after another. Part of my struggles this game is I couldn't make up the science gap with spies. Did counterspying get buffed recently...or did I just have a terrible string of luck?

Ironclads: So I saw a lot of ironclad action this game. Frankly the +5 CS buff didn't change anything imo….but also Cruisers were still 2 range for me (if this was changed in a hotfix I guess it wasn't really save compatible). Frankly I think all melee ships from Ironclads to missile cruisers could get a +50% bonus to cities and it still wouldn't imbalance anything...melee ships are just terrible at taking cities. They suffer a triple penalty:

a) Damage on the attack
b) Counterattack damage (which ranged ships avoid). Also people think about the cities but forget the units. Ranged Units and Skirmishers can chew melee navy units that hug the coast.
c) Difficulty with healing

Even the few melee ships I equipped with Vanguard/Naval Siege were just ho hum. Sure they do some nice alpha damage...but they get 2 hits in...and then its off to port to heal for many turns. Meanwhile those frigates/cruisers just get in hit after hit after hit after (sweet logistics!) hit hit after hit hit.

Interception: Again after playing around with this one for a while, I don't like the new interception. Frankly, I don't like any unit that has less than 100% interception....I think its way too random in a combat system that for the most part is not that random. Its even worse when I see a carrier, because I have no idea what promotions those fighters have. In every other circumstance I have a very reasonable understanding of how much damage I am going to do, and how much I am going to take. To me interception should be no different. If you want to block an intercept, use an air sweep...that's exactly what they are there for. Now I am completely fine with nerfing interception damage, and requiring promotions to make it strong...but I do not think it should be a percentage. Interception should always work...on all units that intercept.

Now if people disagree with that, at least make the interception promotions +25% instead of +20%. To me if I am spending every one of my 3 starting promotions for interception on a triplane (whose purpose in life is to kill other planes), than I should be able to get to +100%, not +80%.

 

[Cat-du-fromage]

Interception: Again after playing around with this one for a while, I don't like the new interception. Frankly, I don't like any unit that has less than 100% interception....I think its way too random in a combat system that for the most part is not that random. Its even worse when I see a carrier, because I have no idea what promotions those fighters have. In every other circumstance I have a very reasonable understanding of how much damage I am going to do, and how much I am going to take. To me interception should be no different. If you want to block an intercept, use an air sweep...that's exactly what they are there for. Now I am completely fine with nerfing interception damage, and requiring promotions to make it strong...but I do not think it should be a percentage. Interception should always work...on all units that intercept.

Now if people disagree with that, at least make the interception promotions +25% instead of +20%. To me if I am spending every one of my 3 starting promotions for interception on a triplane (whose purpose in life is to kill other planes), than I should be able to get to +100%, not +80%.

i also think that interception system need a rework, i really feel like having lot of air battery is not that useful since only 1 will try to intercept, it is also an issue where your are not able to protect yourself against nuke launch from a plane, even with 35 anti-air unit, since only one will shoot, it seems very unfair.

I also understand why there could only be 1 shooting an aircraft, but there is maybe a solution to find a balance in order to protect yourself against "spam planes/nuke" without making them useless

 

[Gazebo]

Alright, finished up a new one.

Spain Standard Emperor - Forfeited on Turn 368

This is the game I've been talking about on other threads for a bit. I got to see the AI's raw military mind on full display, and it kicked me up and down the curb for most of the game. Sweden and Brazil took turns beating me up while the Incans and Koreans powered up. By late game they both decided to have their fun, completely splitting up the CS amongst themselves. Korea had fun making everyone of my luxuries immoral, than the Incas sanctioned me. And of course, both decided to keep going to war with me. The AI's warring mind has improved so much lately that I think I'll have to go down a difficulty, its become too much of a slog for me to deal with the endless wave of AI units that actually know how to kill my units now.

I actually went Autocracy this game, decided that "by gum" I would do some serious warring and come back from the hole! Well the AI had other plans

I ended it when Korea went after one of my islands. I used the raw power of Spain + Orders + Veneration + Zealotry to generate 6 bombers out of thin air and defend my island. As soon as the bombers arrived, Korea dropped the first nuke of the game (talk about a loss of faith!) He then showed up with a destroyer fleet 3 times the size of ironclad one...and I decided that enough was enough.

A well played game by the AI, I tip my hat.


So a few key notes:

Happiness: Early to Mid Game happiness was good. The early game has stabilized so that I no longer go into severe unhappiness at the drop of a hat. However, happiness did curb my expansion and I had to settle in waves and stabilize my infrastructure, exactly as needed.

Late Game happiness needs correction, at least for wide play. Towards the later game (Industrial onward), almost all of cities have maximum unhappiness. Buildings didn't help, the only thing that was at all useful were happiness bonuses. To me, needs reductors and unhappiness reductors didn't really exist.

Landmarks: Already said it in other threads but to summarize, landmarks are too good. I know G has already said he's correcting it, but just to make sure That said, that means late game REALLY needs help with happiness. Literally landmarks were the only way I could stay afloat, and that was with 11 cities (I nice sizable civ on Standard Size but certainly not crazy).

Specialist Unhappiness: After seeing them in action several times now...I have decided I really don't like the specialist unhappiness. It has nothing to do with balance per say, but the sheer fidiliness of them. As a civ player, I don't mind a little micromanagement, but managing my specialist constantly felt like a chore. I would constantly go in to cities and adjust them to keep my happiness right, or correct my Global Happiness by changing specialists. And it gets worse once you have urbanization redactors, because no you don't always know if getting a specialist will give you a penalty or not. So I found myself adding specialists until unhappiness increased, and then tailoring from there. BLEH! Now that all changed in the late game, because unhappiness was so bad that I no longer cared about getting more. So I just got every specialist I could until I had no more food (because my growth was in the toilet I didn't bother with food).

Further I don't mind specialist being limited in the early game, but it feels silly to have all of these specialist slots from early buildings and not being able to use any of them due to urbanization penalties.

I would rather specialist had weaker yields / cost more food, and not have any urbanization than what we have right now.

Global vs Local Happiness: GUI wise, its weird to consider that I had a 91% Global happiness towards the end of the game and yet almost every single one of my cities was unhappy.


Spying Weirdness: Maybe this is the luck of the dice, but my first 4 spies were killed by Korea. One after another after another. Part of my struggles this game is I couldn't make up the science gap with spies. Did counterspying get buffed recently...or did I just have a terrible string of luck?

Ironclads: So I saw a lot of ironclad action this game. Frankly the +5 CS buff didn't change anything imo….but also Cruisers were still 2 range for me (if this was changed in a hotfix I guess it wasn't really save compatible). Frankly I think all melee ships from Ironclads to missile cruisers could get a +50% bonus to cities and it still wouldn't imbalance anything...melee ships are just terrible at taking cities. They suffer a triple penalty:

a) Damage on the attack
b) Counterattack damage (which ranged ships avoid). Also people think about the cities but forget the units. Ranged Units and Skirmishers can chew melee navy units that hug the coast.
c) Difficulty with healing

Even the few melee ships I equipped with Vanguard/Naval Siege were just ho hum. Sure they do some nice alpha damage...but they get 2 hits in...and then its off to port to heal for many turns. Meanwhile those frigates/cruisers just get in hit after hit after hit after (sweet logistics!) hit hit after hit hit.

Interception: Again after playing around with this one for a while, I don't like the new interception. Frankly, I don't like any unit that has less than 100% interception....I think its way too random in a combat system that for the most part is not that random. Its even worse when I see a carrier, because I have no idea what promotions those fighters have. In every other circumstance I have a very reasonable understanding of how much damage I am going to do, and how much I am going to take. To me interception should be no different. If you want to block an intercept, use an air sweep...that's exactly what they are there for. Now I am completely fine with nerfing interception damage, and requiring promotions to make it strong...but I do not think it should be a percentage. Interception should always work...on all units that intercept.

Now if people disagree with that, at least make the interception promotions +25% instead of +20%. To me if I am spending every one of my 3 starting promotions for interception on a triplane (whose purpose in life is to kill other planes), than I should be able to get to +100%, not +80%.

Triplanes shouldn't be interception masters, they're triplanes. Air power is an area where the force projection is so strong, and especially potentially strong with humans, that a bit of randomness helps keep that projection from being a guaranteed plow-over. I feel that the slight obscurity of air combat, especially early air combat, is a fair trade-off for the power and force projection it allows.

i also think that interception system need a rework, i really feel like having lot of air battery is not that useful since only 1 will try to intercept, it is also an issue where your are not able to protect yourself against nuke launch from a plane, even with 35 anti-air unit, since only one will shoot, it seems very unfair.

I also understand why there could only be 1 shooting an aircraft, but there is maybe a solution to find a balance in order to protect yourself against "spam planes/nuke" without making them useless

Airplanes never intercept nukes.