please make nukes better!

[hossam]

I think Civ needs to improve nukes, when i first played Civ 3, i was really excited about the prospect of building nukes and using said nukes to wipe out my enemies from existence. so when i finally got a handle of the game and managed to build nukes, I'm sure you can all imagine how disappointed i was when i went through all the trouble of building nukes (acquiring uranium, building the Manhattan project, and focusing on nuke specific techs) only to find out they had a 50% of killing enemy units, not razing enemy cities and leading to a very angry Mother Russia attacking the helpless underdog that was me when my key to victory turned out to be a sham . any who, i don't think we should get ICBM's right away, i think first we should start with plane dropped nukes which arent to powerful, and then as we research more advanced techs get ICBM's.

edit: new rant, make it so that every civ has to build the Manhattan project , or steal the technology or buy from someone who has built it. seriously sid how many countries suddenly learned the secrets of nuclear technology after America built the Manhattan project?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Yeah, the BTS final patch did the best job of nukes yet, but there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Airplane dropped nukes should definitely appear first and as technologies become researched, sub-launched tactical, and satellite ICBMs.

 

[hossam]

Yeah, the BTS final patch did the best job of nukes yet, but there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Airplane dropped nukes should definitely appear first and as technologies become researched, sub-launched tactical, and satellite ICBMs.

its been a while since i played bts, how did the latest patch change nukes?

 

[Stratofortress]

No global warming due to use of nukes please.

 

[ukcivfan]

I agree that Nukes should be more powerful, but there should be other consquences. If you drop a nuke, international trade should seize up! When Nukes go off, everything should be effected

 

[hardcore_gamer]

I somewhat liked it how Beyond the Sword for Civ 4 handled nukes. The game gave you normal ICBM's that could be launched at any place in the world but became useless once everybody had built ICBM space defenses and thus you were left with tactical nukes that could only be fired a short distance but were still extremely useful since they had a 50% chance of landing and could also be loaded into subs thus allowing me to launch devastating nuke attacks against my enemies overseas.

What I HATED however was how the AI appeared to be completely unable to grasp the international effects that came with using nukes. I have seen entire games where the AI completely ruins its relations with the whole world simply because it decided to launch a dozen nukes against it's enemy while completely ignoring the reputation hits it would suffer as a result.

This SHOULD be fixed in Civ5.

 

[Gamemaster77]

I think Civ needs to improve nukes, when i first played Civ 3, i was really excited about the prospect of building nukes and using said nukes to wipe out my enemies from existence. so when i finally got a handle of the game and managed to build nukes, I'm sure you can all imagine how disappointed i was when i went through all the trouble of building nukes (acquiring uranium, building the Manhattan project, and focusing on nuke specific techs) only to find out they had a 50% of killing enemy units, not razing enemy cities and leading to a very angry Mother Russia attacking the helpless underdog that was me when my key to victory turned out to be a sham . any who, i don't think we should get ICBM's right away, i think first we should start with plane dropped nukes which arent to powerful, and then as we research more advanced techs get ICBM's.

edit: new rant, make it so that every civ has to build the Manhattan project , or steal the technology or buy from someone who has built it. seriously sid how many countries suddenly learned the secrets of nuclear technology after America built the Manhattan project?

Well in one of my civ3 games I bought a bunch of ICBM's and stored them in my cities. I was nuked by this one country a couple times but most attempts failed. Then I got hit like three times in a row so I decided that was the last straw and I nuked them so much they want from about 300 units to about 50. That made my amphibious landing much easier. That being said I think nukes were not to weak but maybe a tad too strong. Oh and they don't raze cities or anything but they do destroy improvements.

 

[J-man]

I wonder how many nukes one can build from one uranium resource....

With limited uranium it can make for some interesting scenario's. A nuclear first strike on the enemies nukes can become very valuable if you can only make a few nukes.

 

[Windsor]

Nukes has to be extremely difficult for Firaxis to get right and the fact that they chose the manhattan project to open nukes for all players really shows how they have struggled with game balance here.

On one hand, nukes should be even better than they are(in Civ4 they certainly are extremely strong), but it's not fun if the entire modern era is about nukes either. It can't just be "get to nukes first = win game".

Simply cutting international trade would certainly not be enough to prevent players from using nukes. When players go into nuke-mode, they rarely care much about international trade and relations.

A better AI would of course help. If the AIs placed nukes in allied countries the consequences of launching an attack would be greater, since the AIs would be in a better position to respond.

I also wonder, how would you feel if Napoleon suddenly declares on you and razes your best 4 cities with 4 nukes? Thing is, it already hurts bigtime to be hit by a nuke. Make it even worse and players will quit in rage. Now, add more powerful nukes AND an AI who knows how to use them...

 

[Esckey]

I would just like the AI to think twice before using nukes. Most games I'm in they fire one off as soon as they get the tech, and eventually you have an entire continent of fallout affected terrain

 

[Grit]

I think that the Manhattan Project should be down graded to a national wonder. Thus requiring each nation to develop nukes individually (like in real life) than poof I finished it and everybody can get in on it. Oh and no more global warming from nuking

 

[grant2004]

I think nukes were appropriately balanced for fun gameplay in Civ IV. Nukes shouldn't be overpowered. From your story it sounds like you tried to build a handful of nukes, with little to no supporting army, and expected to win. That shouldn't happen, otherwise the late game simply comes down to a race to nukes, whoever gets there first would win. Nukes already allow you a significant advantage if you are the first to reach them.

I like the idea of having multiple kinds of nukes, however I think the implementation is difficult, the time between techs in the modern era is very small. Unless the modern era were significantly lengthened they would be obsolete almost as soon as you got them. I think multiple types of nukes is an idea that's best left to 20th century mods.

 

[99wattr89]

To me the power of nukes is fine, but when they reduce a city to 1 population, further nuking should be able to destroy it. That doesn't really make them much stronger at all, since a city nuked that heavily is little better than a fresh city founded from scratch.

I also think that not only should the AI better know how to use nukes, but the AI should not have an unlimited diplomacy penalty for nuking it's allies. Because really, nuking an AI's ally 100 times isn't much worse than 10 times. I think that the penalty should be -1 per nuke to a maximum of -10.

Of course the penalty to diplomacy with an AI you actually nuke is fine, because once you start nuking them there's no way you're going to repair your relations with them.

 

[Windsor]

To me the power of nukes is fine, but when they reduce a city to 1 population, further nuking should be able to destroy it. That doesn't really make them much stronger at all, since a city nuked that heavily is little better than a fresh city founded from scratch.

The city will never be productive after being nuked to size 1, but there is a HUGE difference between being able to stop a spaceship launch with just a few nukes and having to also build an invasion army to capture the city.

If nukes could destroy cities they certainly would be a lot stronger.

 

[99wattr89]

The city will never be productive after being nuked to size 1, but there is a HUGE difference between being able to stop a spaceship launch with just a few nukes and having to also build an invasion army to capture the city.

If nukes could destroy cities they certainly would be a lot stronger.

The spaceship isn't hosted in a particular city, so how would destroying a city stop a launch?

 

[Shiggs713]

if you drop 2 nukes in the same spot, I'm pretty sure all the units always die there. Its still really nice to wipe enemy doomstacks, if you can get a bomber or spy to find them in their own territory.

also, 99wattr89 - It wouldn't, but it sure would slow down production of spaceship components, in any nuked city. With spies, or just high espionage levels, and nukes, you could effectively cripple a civs ability to not only build spaceship parts, but build new military, considering those are likely to be some of the most productive cities. If you caught his doomstacks, and hit them twice, you could really do serious damage, with less than 20 nukes, which isn't unreasonable.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

The decision to make nukes realistic or more balanced for gameplay needs to be made to settle the "how powerful" argument.

Realistically, a single ICBM should be able to completely level a smaller sized city while larger cities should be reduced to extremely low population levels and have a large portion of their buildings destroyed. Whether or not the city has a bomb shelter should take care of how much defense (hit points) the city should have left. Without a bomb shelter, the larger city should have barely any left.

A good way of handling balance issues could be very expensive building cost for such a unit alongside a high resource requirement as well as diplomatic issues with regards to simply building and storing ICBMS. The more ICBMS stored, the stronger the diplomatic penalty is.

Without such measures, though, balancing gameplay would mean sacrificing realism with regards to satellite launched, multiple-megaton-thermonuclear weaponry.

 

[DalekDavros]

A nuclear first strike on the enemies nukes can become very valuable if you can only make a few nukes.

In reality, this doesn't work too well. Silo-based nukes can be placed fairly close to each other, yet deeply enough underground that they can only be destroyed by a direct hit. Such a hit, of course, will release a huge cloud of dust, and the particles in the air are dense enough to demolish anything moving fast (like a missile nearing its target) while simultaneously loose enough that anything moving a bit slower (like a missile being launched) can get through unscathed. As a result, you can launch a first-strike against one nuke, but then you have no way to get at the others for, say, a thirty-minute window during which your opponent is free to launch them.

For more realistic (and playable) nukes, I'd like Civ V to:

1. Break their development into more stages. Early nukes should be difficult to transport (in vulnerable bomber planes). Later nukes should be based on a combination of terrain-improvement silos outside of cities (and that throw up a cloud of dust when hit, preventing future hits for a turn or two) and mobile launch platforms (e.g., submarines).
2. Permit nuke theft. Probably requires adding espionage back in. Alternatively, barbarians cities change to terrorist camps in the modern age and they try to get their hands on them.
3. Add UN inspector units with the ability to disarm nukes and/or sanctions.
4. Add catastrophic local political penalties. It doesn't matter what government-type you have; under most situations, people aren't going to let you launch nukes willy-nilly.
5. Permit nuclear defense agreements via diplomacy, a la "if you get nuked, I'll nuke the aggressor." This would work especially well in combination with the new city state mechanics.
6. Make some victory conditions (cultural and diplomatic, at least) unavailable to a player who launches a nuke (or, at least, who launches a first-strike).
7. Make late-game nukes much more powerful. Combined with the increased deterrence possible with the silo improvement in #1, players/AI will become more realistic in their assessments of when to launch nukes.

 

[BobDole]

I think nukes were fine in Civ IV. Making them too powerful would just make them "must have" and then every game would just be a nuclear holocaust. And I'm not sure if it's possible to balance the cost around an even stronger nuke (too high and they're potentially useless, otherwise too strong potentially) I also disagree with making the Manhattan Project a National Wonder. Yeah, it doesn't really make sense that other civs can all of a sudden build ICBMs, but whoever got it first would probably have too much of an edge over everyone else. The only change should (maybe) be the diplomatic penalty since it's kind of lame that you can wreck your relationship just because you nuked some warmonger that happens to actually have a friend or two, but even then, it still makes sense...

 

[Schuesseled]

well seeing as cities now have health, im thinking nukes are gonna be way better - destroy units in blast, make city conquerable immediately = Very Effective.