Nuclear Weapons

[Tantor]

I agree that there should be more disadvantages to using nukes. One suggestion I have is that diplomatic and cultural victories becomes impossible for those civs that have nuked someone. I would also like to see some diplomatic features to represent a "missile crisis". It is unlikely that everyone starts nuking each other without any warning what so ever. For instance I would have liked a "Defcon system". Nukes are active at Defcon 1 only. Defcon also reflects the readiness of normal units as well. At low readiness the units have lower maitenance cost and lower HP. This way we could have intelligence and diplomatic options before a war break out. One could negotiate for readiness status; " I demand that you stand down or we will go to Defcon 1 !! " or " We mutually agree to back off and set our readiness to Defcon 5". And the spies or the military advisor could give you info like " President, our spies report that the filthy Zulus are mobilizing to Defcon 2 and they are preparing to launch nukes". These features will of course not be activated until the modern age with a tech.

 

[NP300]

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 wouldn't even annihilate half a tile.

The region of near-100% casualties appears to be the air blast radius. For 100MT this is 12.5km. It gives 77km for thermal radiation radius, but this is not a 100% casualty zone. A 77km radius is about a 100 mile diameter circle. Thus such a weapon would be enough to level the city proper and cause widespread destruction in an entire metropolitan area. No doubt a 100MT nuke would be very destructive. Nevertheless, is is only a theoretical exercise as such weapons were not even built, not even for testing.

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 18 100mt nukes on them, or a whole hell of a lot of smaller ones.

I might accept your statement if it used a typical ICBM of about 0.1-1MT. Furthermore, sometimes Civ does represent single units. Arguably the naval and explorer units can be representing a single unit. I certainly think of my naval units (excepting transports) as single units.

Unless you happen to be out in the boonies in an all out nuclear strike, you'll be vaporized, and even then you'll probably die of radiation sickness.

The 500rem radius for your hypothetical 100MT nuke would be 7.5km or 4.7 miles. According to the following site you need 800rem for 100% mortality: http://web.princeton.edu/sites/ehs/osradtraining/biologicaleffects/page.htm

Thus, unless I have erred, it appears that even a hypothetical 100MT nuke would have a 100% mortality-by-radiation of radius of less than 4.7 miles. And even this does not take into account people lucky enough to be in subways, basements, deep inside concrete buildings and the like.

For a more typical 1MT ICBM, the 500rem radius would be 3.1km(1.9miles).

To put those 500rem into perspective, according to the linked site, 500rem would produce 50% casualties if good medical care were available (unlikely if an entire city were nuked). With minimal medical care 350rem produce about 50% casualties. I suppose this goes to show the importance of civil defense even in nuclear war. Perhaps the civil defense improvement could reduce casualties during air and nuclear attacks?

I may be nitpicking here but to be literally vaporized you would need to be in the fireball, which would be about a 500 meter radius for a 100MT nuke.

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.

Your suggestions are reasonable although I still think 5-tiles may over-represent the power of an atom bomb.

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 think civ3 also models the radioactive pollution pretty well. The area that would be positively mortal (as opposed to merely increasing the cancer rate by a small amount) would be relatively small. And due to the half-lives of radioactive materials it would get progressively smaller year after year.

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.

I think they still need to be expensive for game-balance purposes.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Perhaps the best way to model early vs modern ICBMs is this: The early ICBM has a single warhead of considerable power. When it hits a city it kills 75% of the population, smashes almost all the buildings and destroys nearly all units in the city, severely damaging the rest. It pollutes adjoining tiles; however, since no warheads hit these tiles, damage to units and structures in these tiles is light or nonexistent, maybe they lose 1 HP at most, unless they sit in the fallout over the next few turns, which can kill units.

A modern MIRVed ICBM drops several smaller warheads on the city radius. Only 50% of the population is destroyed, and many of the city buildings survive. Units in the surrounding tiles take severe damage or are destroyed by the multiple warheads raining down. This can be the theoretical equivalent of MIRV targeting enemy miltary infrastructure, the warheads automatically go for units within the 2 tile city radius. They could also go for vital tile improvements, like coal mines, oil rigs, what have you. These smaller warheads only pollute the square they hit.

It would be nice also to have a gradient for any rep hit you take for using nukes. Thus hitting a pure military target is not seen as so much of an outrage as wantonly hitting population centers. Say the Zulu have a large naval task force off your coast, and land a force of tanks on your land. You declare war, and nuke the naval group of carriers, transports, and cruisers. Other civs get upset, and maybe cut off your trade, but don't outright declare war on you, as they would if your first act of the war was to drop an ICBM on Zimbabwe.

It may be amusing to mod a cobalt bomb into the game, that causes horrific population loss from fallout, but I don't see any practical use for it in epic games. I recall seeing a study years ago in which someone proposed building a 1Gt level bomb (yes, 1 Gigaton) for use against incoming meteors. Such a bomb in theory could be built, but the warhead would be enormous. The fireball alone would be miles in diameter, I imagine it would put a hurting on everything within a 40-50 mile radius.

 

[Symphony D.]

For a more typical 1MT ICBM, the 500rem radius would be 3.1km(1.9miles).

To put those 500rem into perspective, according to the linked site, 500rem would produce 50% casualties if good medical care were available (unlikely if an entire city were nuked). With minimal medical care 350rem produce about 50% casualties. I suppose this goes to show the importance of civil defense even in nuclear war. Perhaps the civil defense improvement could reduce casualties during air and nuclear attacks?

I may be nitpicking here but to be literally vaporized you would need to be in the fireball, which would be about a 500 meter radius for a 100MT nuke.

Remember, 50% of all the energy of a nuclear weapon is dispersed into blast forces, of which about 35% is in heat. Both of these damage an area far larger than the fireball on its lonesome would achieve. Otherwise how does one explain the destruction in say, Hiroshima, when the fireball was relatively tiny? The pressure and blast waves.

The heat wave will set anything in a large radius that is combustable (wood, fabrics, people) on fire. The blast wave (pressure wave) will then arrive and knock everything that isn't a well concrete building over. These, more than the fireball, are the main local destructive forces of the nuke, and greatly expand its destructive radii. I said "vaporized" as an exaggeration.

This website also has some interesting descriptions of what would happen if you detonated multiple warheads in a small area (it's about halfway down) in a nuclear firestorm, similar to what we're discussing. You were right regarding multiple nukes in the same area as opposed to a single large warhead sir_schwick, my apologies.

With regards to the pollution, it accurately simulates ground effects. What about fallout? That's the ultimate horror of the nuclear weapon, but it's not represented in the least.

With regards to "tactical nuke vs IRBM", it's mostly semantics. You can call it the one or the other, but they need larger ranges than they currently have, as in their main role (Nuclear Submarine carried) they don't have enough range to simulate their counterparts. Basically, in terms of changes, I'd now suggest:

1.) Greater expansion of nukes. Minimum of Strategic (ICBM), Tactical (IRBM), and perhaps some sort of Aircraft, to complete the triad of Missile / Submarine / Plane.
2.) Increased lethality in detonation area, either to buildings or units/population depending on nuke type.
3.) Some sort of representation of fallout.
4.) Increasing range on Tactical Nukes.
5.) Manhattan Project to expensive small wonder.
6.) Nuke costs decreased (though I suppose not bargain basement).

 

[Plug]

I'd guess there needs to be the ability to construct underground bunkers that can store the nukes, so even if your city is destroyed, the bunker would survive and be able to launch the nukes: even if nothing else was left.

Also, i agree that the tactical nukes need a longer distance: the submarines could work as a real threat then. (note: why can't submarines ever be hidden beneath enemy ships? then there would be the possibility of dropping depth charges and you wouldn't be able to find a hidden submarine just by trying to move onto its square.)

not so sure about the planes though, they don't seem to have been very longstanding, how long was it between the end of world war two and the building of the first ICBMs?

 

[Symphony D.]

not so sure about the planes though, they don't seem to have been very longstanding, how long was it between the end of world war two and the building of the first ICBMs?

Bombers are still part of deterrence despite ICBMs. Hence the B-52, B-1, B-2... all designed to deliver nuclear bombs to targets in the Soviet Union (B-1 by speed, B-2 by stealth).

There's a lot of reasons for it, but every major bomber system employed by the United States today, for example, was originally intended to be dropping nuclear death rather than JDAMS or dumb bombs. The same holds true for the Russians. It's just that nobody actually uses nukes for war so instead they dump conventional weapons on whomever happens to be at the target area.

I imagine you could do something like give a bomber a "Nuclear Bomb Capacity" of 1, then make a seperate "Nuclear Bomb", and load it onto the bomber, making it a "Nuclear Bomber" for as long as the bomb wasn't used. Sort of like Nuclear Submarines but more complicated.

Oh, yeah: Nuclear Submarines need their carrying capacity increased to 3 - 5.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Symphony D. is right, all those fancy bombers used to blast the backward Iraqi infrastructure are Cold War relics. The U.S would be as well served with some much smaller, cheaper Fighter-Bombers for this sort of work entirely.

I don't know if a strategic triad is necessary in civ, this is going to go far into the realm of RTS, as bombers must be on emergency standby and given orders to take off if nukes are launched, or already be on patrol. Much the same effect can be given in the game solely through the use of various missiles. An early, 50s-era capacity with only nuclear-armed bombers would be nice, though, as these planes have a chance of being shot down while trying to drop the bomb.

Bomber losses in a modern nuclear war between equals would be very heavy, the US and USSR were constantly engaged in a race to build both planes that could slip through the other side's air defenses and build an air defense cordon that could stop incoming bombers and stand-off criuse missiles. On the other hand, a large missile strike WILL get a substantial number of warheads to the targets, even given good ABM defenses by the opposing side.

It's worth noting that the USSR had no real intercontinental bomber capacity until towards the end of the Cold War, many of the bombers they deployed would have had to continue on to Cuba or ditch into the ocean, as they didn't have the range to make it all the way back to the Soviet Union.