Nuclear Issues

It's always bothered me that Nuclear Missiles had such a short range. Stealth bombers have a range of 20. Nuclear missiles should be able to reach just about anywhere on the planet. The forward positioning shenanigans in Turkey and Cuba was mostly to try and reduce your enemy's potential response time, which would make no sense in Civ V when every time you hit Next Turn a year goes by.

Of course, this would give first-strike capabilities massive advantages over retaliatory strikes. This is why I always enable "Complete Kills;" hiding a nuclear submarine with nuclear missiles under the ice at the top of the map is a great insurance policy, unless it vanishes in a puff of verisimiltude-breaking game mechanics.





But all that aside, I have a few suggestions:

*Extend the range of nuclear missiles to 30 hexes (or, a better approximation, 10 * (n-1), where n is the standard number of civs for that map size.)

*Enable a 'hair-trigger mode' for nuclear missiles and atomic bombs, where a hex is selected for the unit to deploy to if an atomic bomb or nuclear missile is launched against the unit's city, or if the city would be captured by regular units. If the attacking missile or bomb comes from a different civ than the selected hex, the units default to attacking the launch point, then the civilization's capital, then other cities in order of size. If the attacking missile or bomb comes from within 6 hexes, the chance of retaliatory strike is 25%. This goes up by 5% for every additional hex of distance between the city and the attacking missile's or bomb's origin city.

*Atomic bombs gain a range of 20 upon entering the Information era. Upon discovering stealth, change the graphic from a B-52 to a B-2.

*New Building: Breeder Reactor
Prerequisite tech: Nuclear Fission
Hammer cost: 500
Maintenance: 3 gpt
Requires Nuclear Plant in city
Gives 2 Uranium resources, +100% production of nuclear missiles and atomic bombs in city, +100 production on Manhattan project in city.

*There needs to be a HUGE diplomatic penalty for completing the Manhattan project, big enough to discourage everyone besides Attila, Genghis, Bismarck, Alexander, and Gandhi (lol) from taking it unless someone else does so first.

*If you have completed the project, but have no missiles or bombs, reducing your uranium to 0 by trade, building power plants, or both removes this penalty.

*If you have 0 uranium (uranium spent on nuclear plants still counts toward your total), you cannot build the Manhattan project. I mean, seriously. Come on.

 

Way too much complexity and you're trying to put too much realism into a game that pretty much laughs at realism. Will be mildly interesting to see if they tinker with the nuclear aspect of the game any though, in the xpac. Oh, and regarding this statement: "change the graphic from a B-52 to a B-2"... it's currently a graphic of a B-29, from the WW2 era, not a B-52.

 

Is there a diplo hit for using nukes? I get the feeling that the AI is way to nuke happy. It really needs to understand MAD because trust me if they pull one nuke on me they disappear in a haze of radiation They also build citys too close together which makes it rather easy as you can often drop a nuke on a tile and take out 3 citys with it.

 

Yes, if you nuke an AI civ, you'll notice you get the negative modifier "You nuked them". Or something close to that. But it doesn't apply to the rest of the world, just the civ you made glow.

 

I think you can go into the xml files and change the numbers for missle range and building cost. pretty easy...