Nuclear advice

[soapysouter]

Im currently playing my first ever Civ game, very adictive. Im only playing on Chieftain level, but because Im a newbie It looks like im heading for a defeat after makiing some basic mistakes.

Its currently 1988, And Ive been looking for a Score victory but Fredrick is currently 200 or so points ahead and he has also completed the appollo project and SS casing. So I presume he's going for space race victory. If Im to win I need to somehow overtake him in the last 60 odd turns.

Ive just completed the manhattan project, and Im about 10 turns away from having 4 nukes. So what I need to know is..what actually happens to the city that I nuke? Does it kill all units in the City? Does it take points off the opponent? Will I be able to then try and capture the city?

Will I be able to turn around the 200 point defecit with around 4-10 nukes? I also have around 15 tanks, 5 artillery,4bombers,4 battleships,2 destroyers, 2 subs, 2 aircraft carriers with 3 fighters each( there rubbish, or am i missing something with them?),4 gunships, 8 marine and 15 infantary units..aswell as machine gun units and city defences...

How should I go about trying to win this game? thanks for any help, sorry if it seems like im asking obvious questions, but i guess this is what the forums are for. cheers.

 

[Birdman6]

I admire you sticking with the game. A lot of folks would have quit and started a new game by now, which is always an option for you. There's no shame in starting over. I actually learn more when I start over because I remember the mistakes from my last game and do my best to fix them.

Before you nuke Frederick, does he have nukes also? If you try to invade him he might cook your army in retaliation.

 

[Jedi_Otis]

Your biggest concern is going to be preventing Fred from winning the space race. What speed are you playing on? I believe even at normal level, sometime in the 2000s it will be 2 turns per year. He still may have time to launch if left unchecked.

If it was me, I'd build a massive invasion force and take the fight to his lands. Make him nuke you on his territory. If he launches his ship, you have to occupy his capitol before it reaches Alpha Centauri to prevent victory.

Also make note that bomb shelters reduce the damage to units in a city from nuke attacks.

In case you didn't know, you can load tactical nukes, which are much cheaper than ICBMs, onto subs. You can also redeploy them, to a newly captured city, just like fighters

 

[soapysouter]

I admire you sticking with the game. A lot of folks would have quit and started a new game by now, which is always an option for you. There's no shame in starting over. I actually learn more when I start over because I remember the mistakes from my last game and do my best to fix them.

Before you nuke Frederick, does he have nukes also? If you try to invade him he might cook your army in retaliation.

He doesn't have Nukes yet. Well I thought I'd might aswell see it out to the end, also seeing as its my first ever game I don't know If I can turn it around or not. But by the sound sof your response Im thinking no? lol Oh well Im going to go send Frederick a few mushrooms and see what happens.

 

[soapysouter]

Your biggest concern is going to be preventing Fred from winning the space race. What speed are you playing on? I believe even at normal level, sometime in the 2000s it will be 2 turns per year. He still may have time to launch if left unchecked.

If it was me, I'd build a massive invasion force and take the fight to his lands. Make him nuke you on his territory. If he launches his ship, you have to occupy his capitol before it reaches Alpha Centauri to prevent victory.

Also make note that bomb shelters reduce the damage to units in a city from nuke attacks.

In case you didn't know, you can load tactical nukes, which are much cheaper than ICBMs, onto subs. You can also redeploy them, to a newly captured city, just like fighters

Theres around 60 turns left.

thanks for the Ideas, I don't even think Ive got tactical nukes? just the ICBM's. Im just going to go all out attack and learn from the mistakes on my next game. I Don't think I have enough military to pull it off but better to just go for it and learn for next time than to just start again right?

 

[Birdman6]

He doesn't have Nukes yet. Well I thought I'd might aswell see it out to the end, also seeing as its my first ever game I don't know If I can turn it around or not. But by the sound sof your response Im thinking no? lol Oh well Im going to go send Frederick a few mushrooms and see what happens.

No I didn't mean to sound all doomsday. I don't know if you can win or not, but you've come this far so you might as well play it out. Afterall, the best way to answer your questions is to test them in the field. I suggest you launch your nukes, see what happens, and you'll be that much wiser in the next game.

 

[Jedi_Otis]

On the contrary. A 200 pt lead at this stage of the game is nothing, especially if you have nukes and he doesn't. ATTACK!!!

Take 1 or 2 of his cities and YOU will be in the lead.

Another thing you'll have to be wary of in these late stages is some quiet, mellow Civ trying to sneak a cultural victory in on you. Keep an eye on the victory screen. Right above where it shows Freds spaceship progress, it shows the Rival civ with the 3 most cultured cities. If those cities are heading toward 50k cultural, he's trying to win a cultural victory.

Another tell-tale sign is when you have enough espionage points on a Civ to see what he's researching and the scoreboard tells you it's taking him 200 turns or so to research something. If that's the case, he's turned off research and turned the culture slider up to 100%.

I personally can find no more satisfying a way to use my nuclear stockpile than on some tool like Tupac...or K-Pax....or WETF that Incan dudes tag is when he's going for a cultural victory.

 

[Jedi_Otis]

If there are only a straight 60 turns left, I doubt Fred will have enough time to research and build all the necessary spaceship stuff. Take some of his cities and you'll be in the drivers seat. If you have enough marines, you can launch a surpise attack, take one of his coastal cities and just go from there.

Declare on Fred, nuke one of his coastal cities which should eliminate his cultural defenses, assault the survivors, if any, with marines, then unload the rest of your force in the newly captured city all on the same turn. Stay there and wait for his counter-attack. You might want to even nuke the surrounding area to destroy the roads, making it more difficult for Freds forces to get at you.

Once you defeated his counter attack, you can move out and assault another city or 2.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1 nuke tends to badly damage the target city. Unless they have a bomb shelter, 2 will kill almost every unit in the city and make it a sitting duck to capture.

Nukes destroy some buildings, kill some pop, and irradiate surrounding tiles as well (need ecology or a long time before they can be worked again). Since score is based heavily on pop, just nuking his large cities will reduce, probably not by enough. Capturing his cities WILL do the trick though. You probably only need a couple to get 200.

Unless he's pretty close to space its unlikely they'll get it on chieftain. If he needs 3-4 more techs on that difficulty there's no way he'll make it in time. Still, since he's ahead in score kill him to win!

 

[soapysouter]

So I went for it... I assembled my units on the borders ready for an assault on 3 of his cities... I then nuked the cities, and went ahead and captured all 3 of the cities i targetted,Including his Capital. Unfortunately though, the Indians also declared war when I declared war on the Germans so I was left a bit thinly spread. The Indians destroyed one of my lesser important cities, and the Germans captured one of the 3 back. I had about a 150 point lead so decided to call for peace. So I think Ive done enough to stop the Germans winning a spacerace, and no one is near winning a Cultural victory so it looks like a straight race for a time win now, with me about 150 ahead of the germans and 250 up on the Egyptians...Ive got a few Nukes being developed incase i need them before the end, but theres only 35 turns left now.

Thanks for the info people.

ps how bad are the aircraft? Ive got fighters( rubbish) bombers(pretty rubbish) and gunships( alright). But I would have thought these would have been a bit more destructive? Are there others that I haven't found yet?

Cheers

 

[Birdman6]

Nice job. With a little more experience you'll learn to how fend off a secondary attack like the Indians did. Just keep battling and you'll pick up the nuances.

I'm not the most experienced with air units, but I've found that just about every unit in the game is valuable if used properly. Sometimes you gotta think outside the box. What kind of fighting have you been doing with your air units?

 

[Jedi_Otis]

Yeh, industrial age aircraft leave alot to be desired. Unless of course you're the only civ to have them. Bombers can be effective as a substitute for artillery-reduce cultural defenses and cause collateral damge to defenders-so your quicker units like tanks or even cavalry can swoop in and seize cities without having to wait for your arty to catch up. This assumes the enemy Civ don't have a good counter, like fighters or SAM troops

Modern era aircraft are a bit more effective.

Gunships can be extremely effective at pillaging key enemy resources or railroads leading to your point of attack, preventing quick counterattacks.

 

[soapysouter]

I ended up with a time victory. It gave me some kind of ranking at the end, Dan Quayle?? and it recalculated my score to 1730. I suspect this is a very low score

Still a wins a win. Going to try it on the level up next time as I made a ton of mistakes and still managed to scrape a win. Will try and aim for a different type of scenario win.

Cheers for the help guys.

 

[mechaerik]

It also takes into consideration your difficulty level in the final tally IINM (If I'm Not Mistaken).

 

[cardgame]

You should reload it to turn 30, and just totally pump out military and nukes. See how much of the rest of the world you can take over before time runs out!