Tall empires are extremely vulnerable from nuclear weapon. Disbalance?

[stealth_nsk]

I don't think intercept with probability is somehow a good choice. The nuclear weapons are so powerful, what you usually want to build your tactic around them. Having a chance roll in a heart of your plans is just plain not fun.

I think the defense should be more tactical to counterplay, like the solution I've described above. Or it could be some terrain improvement - I think it would be fun. Lots of ideas possible.

 

[Spatzimaus]

The nuclear weapons are so powerful, what you usually want to build your tactic around them.

And you just explained exactly why it SHOULD be probabilistic. Nukes are powerful, extremely so, to where you can build an entire strategy around using them. If nuclear attacks had no randomness to them, to where you knew that missiles would either always get through or would never get through (based on what sort of deterministic defense you DO come up with), then the player has a huge advantage over the AI. All you'd need are enough missiles to overcome whatever barrier is added, and you'll be capable of completely gutting an enemy empire, while an AI that simply launches missiles as they become available would never get through.

I think the defense should be more tactical to counterplay, like the solution I've described above.

Then go program that. Oh wait, WE CAN'T.

We're limited by what's currently possible in the Lua functions we've been given. There are no stubs other than the by-player nuke interception chance that can be used for this. The aircraft interception chances are done by unit (as in, what's the chance that my current attacking unit gets intercepted, or how many intercepts does the defending unit have left), neither of which helps here.

The biggest problem is the triggering event. The only combat-related events we have are RunCombatSim and EndCombatSim. These have no positional information in them. Normally, the defender will either be a unit (in which case you CAN extract position) or a city (in which case you can't tell which city is being attacked), but nukes don't have that; nukes target a hex, not a city or unit, and so there is no information about the defender at all. That's why, in the nuke interception model I added (the math for which I posted earlier in this thread), all civs at war with the attacker pool their interception chances (with a diminishing return); it's not that I wanted to do it that way, it's that you can't actually do it any other way. The only way to actually identify the victim would be to loop over every unit in the game and see if they're currently the victim of a nuclear attack, and since that flag lasts for a turn it's easily possible to screw up even worse.

Talking about how you'd like the system to be is well and good, but at some point you have to actually try and make a system that WORKS, and the deterministic tactical systems simply don't. Once we get the DLL, that'll change, but until then the probabilistic systems are the only way to do it.

 

[bcaiko]

Something like this:

- SDI defense. Building. Allows fighters from this city to intercept nuclear bombers. The building could require Uranium, just for fun and favoring small empires more.
- National missile defense. National wonder, requires SDI defense in all cities. Allows fighters to intercept nuclear missiles.
Both should be visible to opponents so they'll know whether they need to clear the sky to attack or not.

I really like this idea.

 

[Sonereal]

I really like this idea.

Why would you need to build an SDI for fighters to do what they're designed to do?

 

[trueblue]

Im cool with the setup mostly but they can ruin a late game. where ruin = lose

1. Buy all the uranium you can all the time.
2. Play the AI's off against each other when you see who has nukes.

 

[stealth_nsk]

And you just explained exactly why it SHOULD be probabilistic. Nukes are powerful, extremely so, to where you can build an entire strategy around using them.

The power of nukes is balanced by their single usage, cost, resource requirements, etc. That's not an argument.

[/QUOTE]If nuclear attacks had no randomness to them, to where you knew that missiles would either always get through or would never get through (based on what sort of deterministic defense you DO come up with), then the player has a huge advantage over the AI. All you'd need are enough missiles to overcome whatever barrier is added, and you'll be capable of completely gutting an enemy empire, while an AI that simply launches missiles as they become available would never get through.[/QUOTE]

This statement confuses me. You want to remove tactical component from the game, so stupid AI will be in the same conditions as human player? The game is designed for completely opposite - to benefit clever tactics.

 

[Captsac]

Future techs need to be thought up. I'm sure we can come up with sci fi techs. Populating the planets and meeting another intelligent races. MMO? Eve but with planet population. Take over your continent. Take over your planet. Take over the Universe. Haven't played the Facebook game, but definitely more attention needs to be payed to Civilization 6 and behind.

Edit: Haven't read all the post yet. But if your opponent builds the Manhattan Project assume nukes are coming soon. With any victory you need at least the minimum amount of Military to protect yourself. Nukes require you to have a strong military to attack and hopefully sit on his uranium or take cities. If you are already at war you should absolutely find uranium first. The easiest counter to nukes is to attack early and not let them get past the Renaissance age . Or get there first and nuke them first.

 

[Jim Bro]

tall empires are lame. cultural victories are harder than ever with the new patch so having 4 cities is stupid.