preventing nukes

[slothman]

I just took the Sioux city of Little Bighorn. It doesn't have SDI though. When I went to the next turn he broke the cease fire and nuked me (arg they always break it to nuke my 1 city without SDI). Should I "cheat" by surounding the city with my guys so the AI can't get a nuke to it (he won't nuke the actual units next to the city to achieve a simiar effect). Or should I just pretend I didn't save the game and just let him take it. Since it's the only city I have on that continent then I want it badly but, of course, I don't want to cheat. I was also thinking of bribing a nearby city to act as a decoy. When I tries that he nuked both cities but only took the decoy. I won't do that method since it costs too much in gold and units.

 

[Smash]

nah..just recapture it and then use your "cheat",which is not a cheat btw...then try rushing an SDI and cross your fingers.You can rush improvements after a capture.Just not units for some reason.

 

[slothman]

From the strategy guide when a city is rioting you can only buy happiness and defence improvements and no units. If you start working on the right improvement, rush build it, then switch to a unit you can get the unit right away. Unfortunitely it takes at least 1 turn. I couldn't of done that since I knew he was going to attack the city the next turn.

 

[ArcticWolf]

*sigh* My goal is often to disable nukes by not allowing anyone to build the manhattan project (HARD)..since the computer really nukes anything without any remorse

I think you should surround the city with units, so it won't be nuked. I only allow my cities to be nuked when I want to destroy them, if the city position sucks.

 

[slothman]

That's what I did but only because 2 of the 3 cities that I just captured that had wonders had SDIs lost. I think it is supposed to be around 50% so I used that as my rational. Sometimes when I play I save it just before I take a big city so if the SDI gets lost then I can try again. I think the improments are devided into 2 groups in which all the ones in one or all the ones in the other are gone.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

They will always go after that one city of yours w/o SDI. It's one of the commonly-complained about cheats employed by the AI civs. I guess you'll just have to live with it and rushbuild your SDI while keep pluming one or two units into it, hope they don't nuke and take it back again. That's why warmongering after the Manhattan Project is built is pretty ugly.
One alternative is to conquer them all before the arrival of nuclear weopans......... It's achieveable......if you are very good.

 

[starlifter]

Note: All my tests and comments relate to Deity level, Civ II MGE, 5.4.0f, 31March1999. It is possible the AI behaves diffrently ad Warlord...

It seems most of you don't understand how the AI nukes (it is yet another AI "cheat"). It does not fly missiles along a ground path! Units won't stop an AI nuke. The AI nuke will even ignore airfields you use to block them.

The AI can manufacture a nuke in any city in its empire, and when it is completed, it can instantly appear in any other city in the empire, and be launched, even a size 1 city halfway around the world.

by Smash:

You can rush improvements after a capture.Just not units for some reason.

Slothman and Smash... LOL, you can buy units when the city is in disorder, but it is expensive! Buy a temple/barracks (160g), rush city walls/market/coastal fort/library/aquaduct/courthouse (80g). Switch to Rifleman. Now you have a unit for (160+80=240g). That is a cost of 6g/shield, which is very expensive.

If you want an Alpine/Mech, then buy a Palace (100 shields, 160+100=260g) and switch.

 

[Odin442]

They will always go after that one city of yours w/o SDI

Actually, last time I let them get nukes, I saw them try to hit one of my cities that was protected five, six, maybe seven times. In succession, no less.

On the original question, though, personally, I'd never attack an outlying continent without a fully loaded Carrier Battle Group with submarines and nukes/cruise missiles for escort. If for whatever odd reason, you find yourself in the situation where you don't have forces immediately available to retake the city, I'd chalk it up to bad planning and keep trying. But then, I'm just a little paranoid, and what I consider a fully loaded Battle Group is truly a sight to see. So your mileage may vary.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

What I did to get a foothold on an AI contient during the Nuke phase of the game was to land some troops along with an engineer or two.

Have the engnieer build a city within three squares of the city you want to capture. The AI typically doesn't nuke cities under size 3 unless there are a lot of units in it. So, try to defend the city by putting defensive units on key terrain outside the city if needed. Disband a unit in the city to get some shields in the box and then rush build an SDI. Next turn that SDI will cover the city you are going to capture so you don't have to worry about it getting nuked right after you take it. Well, they might actually try to nuke it, but you will be protected so they will just be wasting their nukes.

FYI, although starlifter is right about the AI being able to use any nuke from any city anytime, they are in a city. That means if you attack the city the nuke is in, and get through the other defenders, the nuke can then be killed while on defense. A nice group of spies and a developed rail syaytem make this very easy to do.

 

[starlifter]

Actually, last time I let them get nukes, I saw them try to hit one of my cities that was protected five, six, maybe seven times. In succession, no less.

The game of Civ II uses an algorithm that checks the target city for the presence of SDI. If SDI exists, the nuke will not be launched. The game does not check to see if the city is protected by another city's SDI (from any civ, within 3 squares). The AI will even send dozens of nukes against one of your cities that is protected by it's own SDI in a nearby location 3 or less tiles away.

Civ II does have many unusual bugs. It can create/upgrade its own land units without Leonardos at times, roads and irrigation appear "out of the blue" with no settlers/engineers, the AI can divert shields from one city to another (the human cannot!), dozens and even hundreds of AI shields can magically appear in their production boxes, their ships see subs all all the time, their triremes never founder, cruise missiles are aware of all enemy units within 12 tiles (but will not follow a ground track when striking), etc. etc. etc. So it is possible, I suppose, the AI might strike an SDI defended city if there is some obscure section of the source code that is invoked in a highly unusual circumstance. But I have never been able to find or trigger it, and I have actually done a lot of looking myself (the "magical" nukes really hacked me off one day last year!).

If you happen to have the specific game where you saw this behavior, please upload it and I'd like to take a look at it. I've tried extensively to get the AI to nuke an SDI city, and have never succeeded in hundreds of games/tests. And if I discover their secret, I'll post it ASAP for you to see. Thanks!

PS, The upload function is very easy to use now!

 

[Smash]

Ya I was aware of "buy an improvement change to unit".Thats makes for an expensive musket or whatever but yes that works perfectly.
Most of the time,I immediately rush walls.Then barracks(perhaps).Then some units..Most of my units come with me.Needless to say,I do most,if not all of my warfare using units with 4 legs.
That would be for a city I'm not sure I can hold.Or...sometimes I'll protect my mainland by maintaining a city in the ais backyard.They seem to prefer to deal with these cities first..leaving my home soil free to develop unhindered.

You cam surround your city with airbases.Then when the nuke mysteriously appears next to a city,it lands.Nukes on the ground are easy fodder.Kinda hard to do in the middle of a battle though

 

[starlifter]

You cam surround your city with airbases.Then when the nuke mysteriously appears next to a city,it lands.Nukes on the ground are easy fodder.Kinda hard to do in the middle of a battle though

The nuke "appearing" next to the city is an illusion, created for the human. AI missiles use no ground track, and suddenly strik their target, and will not even expose tiles outside the 8 around the target. Units and airfields around the city will not stop AI nukes. If the AI wants to nuke, those will not stand in the way of the missile. In fact, the missile attack by the AI will only reveal (or update) the target square (city/battleship/cruiser, etc.), plus the up to 8 adjacent tiles. Blockadeing units will be ignored, and adjacent units will be destroyed by a nuke. Blockading airfields will be ignored, and sometimes destroyed. The AI nuke will not land at an adjacent blockading airfield, but the Human's will. As I always mention, this applies to Civ II MGE 5.4.4f, 31March1999 (for the PC). .

 

[thealien_83]

As for one AI cheat I've only yet experienced once luckily, is that it launched a Nuke from longer away than it possibly could. Now I was playing the Mongols on a random, large map, and had gotten myself into a war with the Russians. Unfortunately they'd stolen Rocketry from me and I had built the Manhattan Project, so I knew Nuclear war was a possibility. Therefore I built as many SDI projects as I possibly could quickly, spread out destroyers to hunt down subs and yadda yadda, generally tried to protect myself.

And suddenly, smack dab from nowhere a nuclear missile appears right next to my capitol and bombs it to smithereens, and I was mighty surprised. So I loaded, let it run 'til the end of that turn, saved it and run it again. Of course, it was bombed again. I checked and found I had no SDI defense there, clumsy me. But neither had I the money to rush it, nor would it have helped. But then I start thinking about where he would launch it from, getting mighty curious as my city was a bit into my land, and he had no apparent "launching sites" nearby. So just for the hell of it I cheated and switched to the Russians, checking their units and cities out. And mark my word, there was *NO* place he could have launched it from. All of his cities were a lot more than the effective range of a nuke away, he had a few Carriers, but they were all waayy somewhere else. So I went looking for a nuke-loaded sub in the Russian navy, but 'lo and behold, he had none!

So the silly bastard somehow nuked me from faaar-faaar away, at least some twice the actual range of a nuke in Civ2. And it was no scenario, so the range was the old usual.

 

[starlifter]

So the silly bastard somehow nuked me from faaar-faaar away, at least some twice the actual range of a nuke in Civ2.

I'd like to see the .SAV file, and take a look at it, if you want to zip it and upload it as an attachment to your post. Also attach the rules.txt file that is used for the game, if it's been modified by you or others. Odds are pretty good I can tell you how/why it is doing that.