Nuclear Weapons

[Gerad]

Am I the only person who has noticed nuclear weapons are a little under powered? It's my understanding that nuclear weapons destroy cities not reduce their populations by half.

I`m wondering if anyone could make an edit or something that would make nuclear weapons as powerfull as they really are.

Now I know why nukes are so weak in this game to balance it but it would be interesting to have some type of cold war scenario and plus if your winning you wouldn`t have take the time to conquer your rivals you could just nuke them to dust.

 

[Psychlone]

I would assume the "weakness" of the nukes in Civ 3 is an abstraction. Figure that a Civ 3 city by the nuclear age is a huge metropolitan sprawl, covering many of the squares of the city radius with suburbs and smaller surrounding towns, and that one nuclear weapon wouldn't kill everyone or destroy everything in that huge area. If say, a 5 megaton nuke were dropped on the city center of Los Angeles, CA, do you really think it would kill everyone in LA and all it's surrounding 'burbs? That's a very large land area that city covers.

Now granted, real life nuclear powers have done everything possible to maximize the destructive potential of nuclear weapons (MIRVs, "dirty" bombs, multi-stage warheads, etc), to the point where a real nuclear war doubtless would bring on massive destruction and effectively kill cities. But then, they might just manage to kill almost everything everywhere, and that, in Civ 3, would be no fun at all. "Everyone is dead! Game over."

 

[sgrig]

I just read that a 10 kt bomb causes severe destruction in the radius of about 1.8 km when detonated at optimum height. The damage radius increases proportionally to the cube root of the power of the bomb. So a 10 Mt bomb has a damage radius 10 times greater, and causes severe damage in the radius of about 18km.

A 10 Mt bomb also produces a fireball 4.8km across and causes moderate burns to exposed skin in the radius of about 32 km.

Of course a small city would be completely oblitaterated but a large city full of concrete buildings would stand a much better chance, as concrete can block both thermal and radiation effects. In a modern city troops would probably shelter in bunkers so I think it is realistic that units only get damaged in a nuclear strike.

As for the population loss, you have to remember that in Civ, the actual population actually increases exponentially with population points (so a size 1 city has pop 10,000, size 2 city has pop 30,000, size 3 city has pop 60,000 etc), so halving the number of pop points actually almost quaters a population.

Pollution effects can bring down a city population even further due to starvation etc, something which could model deaths due to exposure to radiation.

I agree that smaller cities, say size 6 and below should be destroyed or brought down to a size '0' city or something, so a city slot is still occupied with no population, because such cities stand no chance of survival in a nuclear attack.

Mutually assured destruction (MAD) only works if there are LOTS of nuclear weapons involved - by 1980's USA and USSR had tens of thousands of warheads! MAD does not work if you only have 1 or 2 ICBMs.

Imagine if in Civ3 you had 100 ICBM's and your enemy had a similar amount, then surely both would know that in case of war you would be in BIG trouble.

 

[FirstNoel]

In SMAC the PlanetBusters (AKA Nukes) would leave craters, with newly formed lakes...It was great...


You could send one of those to a strategic point between 3 or four close cities and it would totally oblitherate them. Now that was POWER!!! It made you think about launching them out, because there was nothing left when they were done.

Nukes in Civ2 and 3 do seem under powered.

If 1 Aircraft carrier is suppose to symbolize a whole battle group like some posters say, should 1 nuke say represent 10 or so warheads?

Sean D.

 

[Gerad]

I`m surpised people actually would think that a city would survive a nuclear attack. First thing is Modern nuclear usually have multipule warheads not just one. Nuclear weapons today are hundreds of times more powerfull then the hiroshima bomb believe me that would destroy a city. If a large ICBM was lanuched at a major city like L.A. or New York any big city it basically kill 99% of the population now I`ll admit the inital blast would probally wipe half the population probally more but don`t forget they are nuclear weapons which means radation if the blast doesn`t kill you the fallout the radation will and plus even if buildings were still standing which I doubt the area would be irratiated and thus uninhabitiable, or least for the next 50 or so years

so the nukes are really unrealstic in this game and in this case there is no way to justify that the reason the nukes are weak is game balance no other reason. I think the nukes in civ would be pretty patheic representation of what real nuclear weapons could do.

but does anyone know how you could change nukes so they could destroy a whole city they way their supposed to?

 

[Plutarck]

Only thing you can do is cut their cost, and increase their range to 8.

So one nuke wouldn't be any powerful than it already is, but you could build a lot more of 'em.


Personally, if it was mod'able, I'd make nukes more expensive but also more powerful. I think a nuke should reduce a metropolis to a city, reduce a city to a town, and reduce a town to dust. So it would take at least 3 nukes (or perhaps 4-5) to destroy a metropolis, but it would actually be possible.

Might not be planetbusters, to be sure, but it wouldn't unbalance the game, while still allowing some reasonable power to nuclear weapons.


But alas, you can't do squat to change their effects. *sigh*


EDIT: Btw, the USA and the USSR stopped producing any nuclear weapon over 1-2 megatons. There just isn't any point in making something bigger, because it's absolutely just overkill. A 2M nuclear bomb detonated over down-town would reduce an entire city to absolute shambles.

Think of all the things it would make unusable: road and rail systems, no electricity, no phones, probably all communication systems rendered useless (possibly even sat-phones, because of all the interferance caused by the blast).

Basically, the whole place would be closed for business, inbetween the riots, looting, and the rest of the living populace trying to run like hell or hiding in their basements. Not even to mention that there would be more demand for medical care than there would be care available.


So 2M was mostly decided as the idea size of bomb, capable of the greatest tactical and strategic use.

After all, if you've reduce a city to cinders, why bother reducing it to ashes?

 

[Joben]

But alas, you can't do squat to change their effects. *sigh*

*sigh* I realy realy love Civ3 but the list of things ive found that you cant modify and features that were in SMAC but not Civ3 just keeps growing.

I want to be able to add more ages. I want to be able to launch satilites.
i want to modify the travel bonus of railroads. i want to be able to make airbases as terrain improvments. I want to be able to modify terrain so we could have workers dig cannals. And now I find that nukes cant be changed either...

I would just go play more SMAC but i the trade and diplomacy system in Civ3 is way better and i love playing on Earth. Civ3 rules...i just wish they hadnt taken out so many advances they had made in the gener.

Bleh and the rules editor is sloppily coded and doestn fit on my comp screen. cant even see some of the controls and the rules change screen isnt resizable.

*Sigh*

Edit: and were are the awsome voice quotes on the subject of all the techs?

Smac and Civ are from the same company and many of the same ppl.
even in Civ3's text files there is evidence of its SMAC origins.
So why didnt they keep so many of the awsome features from what was in effect Civ3 and put them in this: Civ4? These things should have at the least been options even if they wernt all aplicable to Earth from 4000BC-2050AD;
they should have been things moders with an editor could turn on. and while we are at it i liked the rules files in text format; it made them very easy to browes through and change. (end of edit)