Nuclear Tactics

in my last game, there was nothing quite as satisfying as nuking napoleon who had harassd me all game. by the time nukes came around i had 4-5 tech lead, built the manhatten project and dropped about 10 nukes on him. felt so good.

i also used to nuke people on mIRC. but that was kinda sad... and i was young.
 
I don't understand this. Won't your opponents have Bomb Shelters by then? As I said I tried nukes against a city and it did very little damage - apparently due to bomb shelters. Seems that the AI has Electricity fairly early - which is all they need. Playing the original game - no expansions.

I've never used worldbuilder to inspect their cities, but in games when I've done this the AI has had industrialialism which means they have electricity. So they must have had some bomb shelters but either they didn't prioritize them or they didn't have that much of an effect. Even if damage is reduced, hitting a city with 2 nukes is extremely devastating. Troops are badly wounded, buildings are reduced, pop is reduced and tiles are destroyed. The last is particularly bad because there is little they can do to recover them. Those towns aren't going to grow back in time and the food base for the city may be gone.

Do this to their good cities and their war making potential is effectively destroyed. Their production will have dropped to under half and you can probably capture a third of their cities on the first turn of the war.
 
I've never used worldbuilder to inspect their cities, but in games when I've done this the AI has had industrialialism which means they have electricity. So they must have had some bomb shelters but either they didn't prioritize them or they didn't have that much of an effect. Even if damage is reduced, hitting a city with 2 nukes is extremely devastating. Troops are badly wounded, buildings are reduced, pop is reduced and tiles are destroyed. The last is particularly bad because there is little they can do to recover them. Those towns aren't going to grow back in time and the food base for the city may be gone.

Do this to their good cities and their war making potential is effectively destroyed. Their production will have dropped to under half and you can probably capture a third of their cities on the first turn of the war.

I used 2 nukes on a pop 16 city and the pop only dropped to 14. I wasn't able to check the damage done to units/buildings but did notice the radiation squares. Anyway, my goal was reduce the culture of the city - can nukes do that?
 
I used 2 nukes on a pop 16 city and the pop only dropped to 14. I wasn't able to check the damage done to units/buildings but did notice the radiation squares. Anyway, my goal was reduce the culture of the city - can nukes do that?

Thinking a bit more I wonder if the reason I don't have trouble with bomb shelters is that I release nukes so quickly.

If the AI doesn't bother building bomb shelters until the Manhattan Project is built (even though it can), then it has only two turns before my bombs start raining, which isn't enough time for anyone to build bomb shelters. And once the first round goes off their production is crippled.

I don't think nukes reduce culture, but they can badly impact culture generation potential of a city. But probably not enough if they are on the edge of a culture win - especially if they have Sids Sushi since that is immune to nukes. Settled artists are also immune, so you probably want to hit a city with nukes no later than 40,000 culture. Of course nuking and then capturing/razing solves the problem permanently.
 
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