Nuclear Weapons

[Symphony D.]

But in the real world if a country used Nukes other countries WOULD declare war on them! Not all, but like in the game some do. Especially those that have Nukes too. Because once the genie is out of the bottle it ain't going back in easily.

Doesn't work that way. If, say, China were to nuke Russia, or Pakistan were to nuke India, the United States wouldn't automatically nuke Pakistan or China. There'd probably be extremely severe economic reprocussions and maybe ( ) some kind of international alliance against them, but a country in general does not use nukes on another unless there's no option, they were nuked first, or the nuked party was under an alliance with a nuclear power that has "same as direct strike" clauses sort of like NATO does.

Nukes need to give penalties, too. Your rep should be affeted by your use of nukes.

They do... it's somewhat unrealistic though. Civ isn't, nor likely ever will be a great model of "situations" - but in the game, if you use a nuke on another civ, they will essentially be furious with you forever. This is rather unrealistic if you look at, say, the usage of nuclear weapons against Japan in WWII and their current relationship with the United States. Of course, it's just a game, so oh well.

I think nukes are fine as regards their destructiveness. They are also quite realistic as to the level of destruction and pollution that would be caused by hydrogen bombs.

Not really. A 100mt nuclear weapon (upper level of megaton limit employed by humans to date) blast overlay would more than encompass the entire greater metropolitan area of LA, Tokyo, or Mexico City. In Civ terms, depending on map scale, that could be up to the full 21 tiles of a city radius rather than just the 9.

The tactical nukes on the other hand, are actually overpowered. A tactical nuke should destroy units in only 1 square, instead of 9. In real life tactical nukes have much less powerful warheads than the strategic nukes.

Again, not really. Nuclear warfare by ballistics depends on two things: accuracy and warhead size. The more accurate, the smaller the warhead. The less, the bigger. A Pershing II IRBM had anywhere from a 5 to 50kt warhead. A Minuteman III ICBM would have multiple 300kt warheads. For comparison, the WWII weapons were about 20kt. Now, the Soviet equivilent to the Pershing II, the SS-20, had a 250kt warhead. So the difference isn't really all that great - it's only in the older ICBMs (eg: Titan II) that you see absolutely gargantuan warheads (5mt - 100mt) to offset the inaccuracy. The fact remains that any given "tactical" nuclear weapon, unless it's designed to be small (say, 1 - 15kt range) will be as strong as a later-generation MIRV on an ICBM.

1. Early Nukes, 75% of pop, units+buildings in 1 square
2. Tactical Nukes, 90% of Units, 40% of pop +buildings in one square
3. Hydrogen bombs, Target City, 90% of units in target square, destroyed : 50% of pop, units+buildings in surrounding squares destroyed

I kind of like this, but I'd switch it around some:

1.) Atomic Bombs - Plane carried? X pattern (city tile, NE, SE, NW, SW) 65% of pop, units/buildings in city square, 25% chance of units in outlying tiles.
2.) Early IRBMs - Tactical nukes. 9-square pattern like current nukes. Bigger atomic or limited hydrogen bomb attacks. Should have longer range than current. Sub-loadable. 75% of pop in city, units/buildings in square, 50% change in outlying tiles.
3.) Early ICBM - Big, bad hydrogen bomb. Either 9-square with 1-square "prongs" NE, SE, NW, SW, or a 21-square blast. However, due to the inaccuracy, 80% of pop in city, units/buildings in square, 50% in inner 8-tile non-city radius, 25% in outer 4/12 tiles. Unlimited range.
4.) Modern IRBM - 9-square pattern, longer range, 90% of pop in city, units/buildings in square, 75% in outlying tiles. Reflection of greater accuracy and kill efficiency.
5.) Modern ICBM - Smaller warhead, either 9-square or 9-square with 1-square prongs. 90% of pop, units/buildings, 90% in outlying tiles. Strongest concentration and accuracy, unlimited range.

These aren't absolutes but they reflect the fact that ground zero for a nuclear blast is pretty bad, period. One needs only look at Hiroshima and Nagisaki's after-effects - if a tank division had pulled up there would've been no resistance period. It reflects nuke evolution toward more concentrated killing blows too. Some would say these might be too powerful, but there's a reason nuclear weapons are feared. Their use should be a lot more devastating than it is currently - if you unleash a nuclear strike on all major metropolitan centers of an enemy, it should be game over for them unless they've decentralized their units.

I guess if you really wanted, it could also be set up that a minimum population level could be totally wiped out by a given level of nuke (say: Atomic Bomb wipes out <5 pop cities, Modern ICBM <11, or what have you) for added realism. I don't see any way to model MIRVs accurately though, unless there was a little popup after firing the nuke to designate targets... hrm, that'd be really cool. It would accurately reflect the proliferation of MAD too.

I acknowledge however the above is mostly wishful thinking (though it reflects the exponential increases in technology development in the Modern Age - It'd be much better if that age was crammed full of units and required upgrading every couple of turns [depending on tech rate] to be cutting-edge - might balance things out some and make it more interesting), and the things I would definitely like to see removed/added are the following:

1.) Manhattan Project giving all countries nuclear capability. It should be a very expensive small wonder. Just look at the current issues with North Korea and Iran pursuing nuclear weapons programs. Or India and Israel - they've had nuclear weapons for over two decades, yet only approximate American nuclear arms as of the 1960s.
2.) Nuclear fallout counting as normal pollution. It's very strange to see a nuclear war contribute to global warming. If anything, a well-timed nuclear war would counteract global warming by virtue of an opposing nuclear winter.
3.) Nukes can destroy nukes. Have a "Silo" tile improvement like Airfields are now for ICBM storage. That way a first strike becomes an option if you, say, steal the enemy's plans.

[EDIT] Depending how far they went (I don't expect any of this since it's really far too specific for Civ) with it, a neutron bomb would be an interesting weapon in the Civ world. Kill all the units and rebellious nationals, keep all the infrastructure.

 

[Bluemofia]

That reminds me of the Cobalt 60 bomb...

 

[mastertyguy]

I think nuclear pollution should be another type of pollution. It would vanish by it self, but by this time, it would have caused LOTS of damage. At a certain point of nuclear pollution, the world would be destroyed.

 

[Bluemofia]

Like 10%? And water squares can be affected?

 

[mastertyguy]

Probably, why would atoms stop because there is water? If I'm wrong, correct me. I'm not nuclear physician, or I'm at Homer Simpson's level! And I don't understand 10% of what.

 

[Bluemofia]

10% of the world covered in the Nuke pollution, then everyone loses. And, make it so that water can get the nuke pollution.

 

[mastertyguy]

Now I undestand!!!

 

[Symphony D.]

Well, it could be a pretty big percent. If you had WWIII today, with Cold War era targets, roughly the entire northern hemisphere would be unihabitable. Eventually fallout winds up in the southern hemisphere too, but it's not as bad, though nuclear winter would put whoever was left pretty close to extinction.

Civ doesn't really have weather and such, but I imagine they with rudimentary "fallout" polluiton with associated counter (sort of like global warming) you could very easily setup a "nuclear winter" scenario that would screw things up just as badly as the entire planet turning to desert. You could also probably have have the fallout spread west-east or east-west depending on wind currents in a preprogrammed way to mimic windpatterns.

Again, more complex than I'd expect Civ to be. Manhattahn Project as a great wonder has got to go though.

 

[Bluemofia]

I mod all of my scenarios as the Manhatten prodject as a small wonder.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Civ wouldn't be civ without nukes. I want to see the leaders in civ4 telling me "Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!" again. I agree that they should launch as a last resort, but any nation with a sizable nuclear arsenal should try to bully you more, demanding tribute, that you pull your troops out of so and so's land, etc.

We do need:
A) A nuke bomber.
B) Actual silos out of cities.
C) Gradient effects for older nukes vs more modern weapons.
D) A nasty form of worldwide nuclear fallout pollution should too many nukes be launched.

 

[lbhhh]

I like the ideas being put forth on the early nukes dropped by long range bombers and the neutron bomb idea, as the ultimate weapon. I hope to see these concepts make it to civ4.

 

[sir_schwick]

I always thought of the ICBMs, and even tactical nukes, as MIRVs that had a very small differentiation of targets. While a single warhead would not destroy NYC, the couple dozen warheads would evenly spread the pain. Also, I think building nukes themselves should be a lot cheaper, but developing them would be very expensive. That way once super-powers have the technology, they can build huge arsenals(US and USSR) and risk MAD.

 

[Symphony D.]

While a single warhead would not destroy NYC

Again, that really depends on the warhead. A 20mt airburst will level pretty much everything in a 17km radius and cause extensive damage out to 47km. The biggest warhead ever tested was approximately 57mt in size its severe damage radius was out to approximately 35km (same as the 17km radius in the 20mt). That's a fairly linear progression.

The Titan II, the biggest American ICBM, is recorded as having a 9mt warhead. However, happening to reside near the Titan II museum in Arizona, I brought that figure up on the tour and was informed that the actual warhead size was still classified but bigger than that. It should be noted the biggest warhead designs ever postulated for warfare were 100mt - which would have a "severe damage" radius of about 70km. Even a 9 - 10mt warhead, however, would still have approximately 9km complete destruction radius. That is, eyeballing it, enough to vaporize all of Manhattan island, and a good deal of the Bronx and Newark too (ignoring that population centers weren't generally targets - it was usually military/industrial facilities, they just happen to usually correspond).

A bigger singular warhead (20mt+) could easily take out the entire greater metropolitan New York city area. Which, given that Civ is only a rough parallel of real life, is plenty of reason to assume that the Zulus ("Never trust a Zulu with nukes!") have no compunction with engineering 20 - 100mt yield ICBMs. In which case, current representations might be a bit small.

But it can definitely be all the work of one warhead. If anything, Civ is more vicious than real life, and honestly, for "fun" I'd recommend assuming larger megatonnage just to make them more interesting units.

Definitely agree on the nukes themselves being cheap, but the project (and upgrades if their development path is tiered) being terribly expensive though.

 

[StavrosMelb]

Agree with everything said by Symphony. I also like the suggestion made by Ivan about having a silo in a city before you can build/launch nukes from there, makes it realistic. I always thought nuclear bombers should be in the game.

I personally despise nukes myself, hardly ever build them at all. Brings me back to a game ages ago with only 3 other civs left, we all had nukes, one decided to nuke the other, it ended up with some crazy amounts of pollution and every turn thereafter led to 'grassland turns into plains due to global warming!'. This game put me off building nukes for most games. I would like to have the option to disable nukes to be honest, they can ruin a perfectly fun game.

 

[Bluemofia]

An option to disable nukes?

Hmm...

 

[NP300]

yeah, it annoyed me that everyone declares war or hates u after using nukes - in wwii, the world didn't declare war on the us after using nukes - diplomacy shudn't be anymore affected by the use of nuclear weapons than any other act of aggression - diplomatic reaction's gonna differ from country to country. the reaction of britain if the us was to hypothetically use a nuclear device if let's say the us and russia get into a war is diff. than if n.korea hypothetically sends a nuke to japan.

a possible effect of a nuclear device may be the domestic reaction at home (altho i think this shud be dependent on gov't) - a totalitarian regime may be able to propogandize the war, perhaps even resulting in happiness (destroying the enemy) while a democratic country may face riots and unhappiness from its own people (don't need to look far for examples of this)

Polls were taken when the US used nuclear weapons against Japan. A majority of Americans supported it because they believed Japan deserved it. So I don't see why democracies should have more problems using nukes. In fact, I don't even see much evidence in favor of the notion that democracies suffer from more war weariness than other governments (with the possible exception of communism).

Civ 3 is totally unrealistic in its portrayal of war weariness by government. In real life the citizens of democracies have often favored aggressive wars of conquest (even against other democracies). In a similar manner, some monarchies have suffered from serious war weariness. The most notable example might be the Russian Tsarist monarchy that collapsed due to war weariness in 1917. Likewise the Kaiser's government collapsed due to war weariness in 1918. Similarly, in WWII there was a plot against Hitler in 1944 due to war weariness. There was no plot against Churchill in 1939-1941 when England suffered defeat, after defeat, after defeat.

Thus, when we look at WWI we find that it was the monarchies, and not the democracies, that collapsed due to war weariness! One could even make the argument that Democracies may be more resistant to war weariness, as the the example of revolutionary France may show us. Revolutionary Republican France of around 1800 was fighting wars all the time, much, much more than the monarchies around it.

If the world worked like Civ 3, France and England would have collapsed due to war weariness in 1915. There would have been an unsuccesful plot to kill Churchill in 1940 and a succesful revolution in 1941. The US government would have fallen in 1942 due to war weariness. Likewise, Tsarist Russia would not have collapsed in 1917, Germany would not have had a revolution in 1918, and there would have been no plot against Hitler in 1944. In turn, France would have become a peace-loving nation upon the success of the French Revolution.

 

[NP300]

But in the real world if a country used Nukes other countries WOULD declare war on them! Not all, but like in the game some do. Especially those that have Nukes too. Because once the genie is out of the bottle it ain't going back in easily.

An agresssor who uses them will have shown that they have no restraint, and will continue to use them. And each time they do more countries will declare. Jut like inthe game.

How many countries declared war on the USA for using two nukes in 1945? I don't belive any did. American reputation does not seem to have suffered that much. On the contrary, it appears that it is the reputation of losers of wars that suffers the most, because the victors get to write the history books. Japan's reputation suffered much more than the USA's, due to WWII.

 

[NP300]

Not really. A 100mt nuclear weapon (upper level of megaton limit employed by humans to date) blast overlay would more than encompass the entire greater metropolitan area of LA, Tokyo, or Mexico City. In Civ terms, depending on map scale, that could be up to the full 21 tiles of a city radius rather than just the 9.

The biggest bomb ever detonated was around 50MT, which was the Tsar Bomba: http://encyclopedia.lockergnome.com/s/b/Tsar_Bomba

And even 50MT is way over the power of any weapon actually put into ICBMs. Symphony says the biggets nukes deployed were 9MT. I'll take his word for it. Using a more realistic typical power of 5MT for a big nuke we get the following...

Here are two sites that calculate the effects:

http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=367
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Nuke.html

According to these a 5MT nuke would produce a fireball 1km in radius. The thermal radiation radius would be 22.6km. This is about a 14 mile radius. Now, keep in mind that the thermal radiation radius is not one of total destruction. You would have a percentage of causalties within it. The radius for near-100% fatalities would be the air burst radius or 4.7km (2.9miles).

Thus, I don't think a 5MT nuke would be enough to totally destroy an entire metropolitan area. It would be enough to destroy the city proper and the city center but would not achieve 100% casualties within an entire metro area.

Keep in mind that more typical nukes used would be less than 5MT, as you yourself pointed out. Also keep in mind that these number assume detonation at the optimal height. Thus, the Civ3 nukes seem appropriate in power to me. In fact, they may even be overpowered because a 21-tile area in the civ-world represents a much larger percentage of the world's surface than do the New York Metro area, the Mexico City Metro area and the like. A 21-tile area in civ represents something more like the entire state of Texas.

Again, not really. Nuclear warfare by ballistics depends on two things: accuracy and warhead size. The more accurate, the smaller the warhead. The less, the bigger. A Pershing II IRBM had anywhere from a 5 to 50kt warhead. A Minuteman III ICBM would have multiple 300kt warheads. For comparison, the WWII weapons were about 20kt. Now, the Soviet equivilent to the Pershing II, the SS-20, had a 250kt warhead. So the difference isn't really all that great - it's only in the older ICBMs (eg: Titan II) that you see absolutely gargantuan warheads (5mt - 100mt) to offset the inaccuracy. The fact remains that any given "tactical" nuclear weapon, unless it's designed to be small (say, 1 - 15kt range) will be as strong as a later-generation MIRV on an ICBM.

The difference isn't all that great if you are talking about big "tactical nukes" with multiple warheads. What I had in mind were the smaller tactical nukes, as carried on jet fighters and submarines, which were intended to be used against enemy forces (and not cities). To put it in civ3 terms, they are intended to weaken a "stack of doom", enemy fortified positions and the like.

These aren't absolutes but they reflect the fact that ground zero for a nuclear blast is pretty bad, period. One needs only look at Hiroshima and Nagisaki's after-effects - if a tank division had pulled up there would've been no resistance period. It reflects nuke evolution toward more concentrated killing blows too. Some would say these might be too powerful, but there's a reason nuclear weapons are feared. Their use should be a lot more devastating than it is currently - if you unleash a nuclear strike on all major metropolitan centers of an enemy, it should be game over for them unless they've decentralized their units.

Yet, the nukes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed less people than the US/UK firebombings of Dresden, Tokyo and other Axis cities... In terms of fatalities a small nuclear weapon is about as effective as a firebombing raid.

 

[NP300]

That's a fairly linear progression.

Let's plug some numbers into the calculator and look at the air blast radius:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Nuke.html

0.1 MT -> 1.3km
1MT -> 2.7km
10MT->5.9km

A 10x increase in MT increased the radius by 2.07x in the first progression and by 2.18x in the second. Thus, it would appear that for every tenfold increase in megatonnage, the length of the radius rises by about 2x. This is very close to an inverse-cube law as the cube root of 10 is 2.15.

Since the formula for the area of a circle is A=pi*r*r, this implies that every tenfold increase in megatonnage increases the area of near-100% casualties by about 4x (square the radius increase of ~2).

It should be noted the biggest warhead designs ever postulated for warfare were 100mt - which would have a "severe damage" radius of about 70km.

A 100MT nuke would be too big to be of practical use. Probably only an imbecile would use them as it would be more effective to use several smaller nukes, due to the inverse cube law.

A bigger singular warhead (20mt+) could easily take out the entire greater metropolitan New York city area. Which, given that Civ is only a rough parallel of real life, is plenty of reason to assume that the Zulus ("Never trust a Zulu with nukes!") have no compunction with engineering 20 - 100mt yield ICBMs. In which case, current representations might be a bit small.

According to the calculator, a 20MT nuke would have an air blast radius of 19.4km. This is about 12miles. Thus, it would be a circle 24 miles in diameter. Is this enough to destroy the huge NYC metro area? I am not sure. Nevetherless, I don't believe anyone actually deployed anything near a 20MT nuke. I don't believe Civ ICMBs should represent nukes that were never built. They ought to represent a typical ICBM, which is probably more like 1MT, or perhaps multiple warhead ICBMs with nukes in the 100kT range.

Definitely agree on the nukes themselves being cheap, but the project (and upgrades if their development path is tiered) being terribly expensive though.

I read somewhere that the manufacture of ICBMs was actually quite expensive. After all, you are building a rocket capable of putting something into orbit or at least into suborbital flight.

 

[Symphony D.]

they may even be overpowered because a 21-tile area in the civ-world represents a much larger percentage of the world's surface than do the New York Metro area, the Mexico City Metro area and the like. A 21-tile area in civ represents something more like the entire state of Texas.

I'll give some concession on this issue in terms of map sizes Civ3 generates. A "huge" square winds up looking something like 155.5 miles to a side, or about 24180mi² per tile.

Going back to the 100mt example, for the sake of easy math. Something on that scale will level an area approximately 70km in radius, or about 15390km² (3.14 x 70²), or about 5942mi². That's a little over half the state of Massachusetts (10555mi²), which means an absolutely massive nuclear weapon would annihilate 1/5 a tile

But we have to keep in mind two things: a single unit in civ does not represent one vehicle or person. Now, under civ's pre-existing structure that means everytime you nuke somebody you must be dumping 45 100mt nukes on them, or a whole hell of a lot of smaller ones. That brings us to the second point: it's a game. What does a nuke do in the real world? It annihilates things. If not by the single size of one warhead, then as pointed out earlier, by MIRV saturation. Unless you happen to be out in the boonies in an all out nuclear strike, you'll most likely be vaporized, and even then you'll probably die of radiation sickness.

In terms of raw destruction, I guess after looking at the numbers the 9-square system is alright in depicting this, but it definitely needs to factor in some kind of radiation effect since that basically assumes each nuke counts as multiple warheads. It also, at the very least, since it is assuming this, should necessitate a much higher kill-ratio of both structures, city pop, and units (under a nuclear firestorm).

I would therefore like to remove my earlier estimates and place the blast patterns at the following:

Atomic: 5-tile Cross
All Others: 9-tile Box

With higher kill ratios among Early IRBMs/ICBMs than Atomics and higher still among Modern IRBMs/ICBMs.

Given the fact that tactical nuclear warfare is essentially an impossibility (any such engagement would almost inevitably lead to full-blown nuclear warfare) I would be in favor of just replacing tactical nukes with the notion of IRBMs - portable but limited range (though much greater than currently), and lessened kill-ratio compared to ICBMs, which would be silo-locked and more expensive (and easier to kill in a first-strike scenario)

To work properly though, some notion of radiation would need to be developed, or you get large gaps between strikes (as in Civ3) where things miraculously survive unscathed to clean up the mess.

I read somewhere that the manufacture of ICBMs was actually quite expensive. After all, you are building a rocket capable of putting something into orbit or at least into suborbital flight.

Under the START treaty I believe the number of delivery vehicles for both sides was capped at 1600, with 6000 warheads. So, depending how how much you want to imagine a single nuclear unit counts as in terms of launch vehicles, they're still relatively easy to manufacture for superpower status civs.

Putting something in space is relatively easy with sufficient industry unless you need a person onboard.