The AI does not respect nukes.

[KaNick]

Alright so here's the deal. I was playing a game recently where there were only 4 civs left. Me, the Romans, Byzantines, and Dutch. The Dutch and I were the only civs left that actually had a chance of winning (myself more than them) I was about halfway through the spaceship and outpacing the AI in tech on emperor.

Anyways The Dutch had about twice the amount of troops as me, conventional at least. I had about 24 tacts. in subs. on the way to positions around their borders. The Dutch had been spending the majority of the game killing off their neighboors (as did I but I did so much quicker) and had finally declared on me. I'm not sure if it was the nukes on their way to their territory or the fact that I was close to winning space race, the point is they should never of had declared war in the first place, I had a massive stock pile of nukes and many more on the way while they didn't ever have the required techs. Needless to day I reduced all their cities to rubble and destroy all thier terrian improvements. The programing needs to be change so that the AI shows proper respect for nukes, I tested this out and after repeated bombings over more than 20 turns the AI wouldn't even give me amphibious warfare for peace!

 

[Blasphemous]

The thing is they had no way to know you had tacts hidden away in those subs...
But I do agree that the whole subject of nuclear weapons is way underdone... There should be a plethora of diplomatic and spy activities related with nuclear weapons... A single ICBM should be enough to force an uneven deal with a rival, even if it does make their attitude towards you worse.

 

[Bart2k4]

I agree with both of you. I also think that the devastation should be a lot more atrocious. Such as terrain craters, non-cleanable pollution (unless you wait 100 years) and actually obliterate a city... unless they have a fallout shelter. The pollution is unrealistic…... and laughable, I think it should be more widespread (4x the amount) OR have the ability to make different sizes of nuclear weapons which would affect the widespread. Another thing about pollution, if a nuclear weapon (I think 2-5) would hit the surface of the world when its sunny, it should take the earth off its natural orbit and cause other catastrophic environmental effects such as more tundra’s and then deserts! Anyway, that’s my opinion.... and from what I wrote, you could image how political leaders should be ****ting their pants when it comes down to nukes and peace!

 

[Blasphemous]

About nuclear pollution, in a perfect world (or rather, perfect world-sim ^^) there would be several sizes of pollution "stains", and different types (natural, man-made, and nuclear). Each would take a different amount of time to clean up, and nuclear waste would have a chance of lowering the HP for any unit that spends a turn in it (in the case of workers, it would kill them). This chance would be much smaller if you use a Decontamination Expert instead of a Worker. Also, if a small stain is not cleaned up quickly, it grows, and if a full-size stain is not taken care of quickly, it spreads to nearby squares...
But as I often say, they have much more important things to develope in future Civ games, and pollution is enough of a pain without all this...

 

[HAND]

I had 60 ICBM's in one game but one of the smallest conventional armed forces. No one dared attack me! I won a cultural victory in the end..

 

[Padma]

Bart & Blasphemous: I take it neither of you are aware of the *true* effects of nuclear weapons. Given the scales used in the game, the effects of nukes seem just about right.

 

[KaNick]

Well if you guys want to take the devastation of nukes that far, it should also be made to affect all countries after a certain amount of nukes are dropped due to radiation in the air. And are you sure that nukes would alter our orbit enough to change the world climate?

And ok they may not have known that I had all those nukes on the way to their cities, but they sure as hell knew that I completly devastated them with nukes and I was going to continue to do so, and they still wouldn't give me amphibious warfare.

 

[Admiral_Tarton]

Yes, enough nukes would effect the Earth's orbit


AND change the climate

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[CIVPhilzilla]

I know nukes are more powerful in real life, but in Civ 3 they are devestating enough. If you made it so that it could oblivirate a city in one blow, then you could win a conquest of the whole world in one turn. Very unbalanced.

 

[Padma]

Are you guys nuts? Nukes are incredibly weak, compared to what you are talking about!

Yes, enough nukes would effect the Earth's orbit

Umm, yeah, if you took *ALL* the nukes ever made, and detonated them all at the same instant in the same place on the earth, you *might* make a noticable effect on the orbit.

AND change the climate

*Somewhat more likely, but not that much....

Nukes couldn't destroy a whole *city*. Not unless certain conditions happen to prevail - like a city in a "bowl", and all buildings made of rice paper ....

 

[Bluemofia]

all the nukes ever made has about the destructive power to end all life on earth, yes even cockroaches, 50 times over.

our current thermal nuclear ICBMs can vaporize an entire city, leave a smoldering crater, and have a bit smaller radiation, because they are thermal nucler, and 1000 times more powerful than the ones used on hiroshima and nagasaki.

 

[cableguy]

Er i disagree u would need multiple nukes to take out an entire city, bearing in mind that most modern cities cover an enormous area. And as for the approach that nukes could change the world orbit i dont think that would happen either prob just irradiate the whole planet shut down any non EMP shielded device and maybe take a chunk out of the planet due to the seismic force they would generate.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/amex/bomb/sfeature/mapablast.html

 

[Bluemofia]

i disagree with the orbit. chances are, the world will be destroyed before then.

 

[boogaboo]

I know that (at least) 2 states, namely USA and russia, can each bomb every point on earth in the same time, thus eliminating life on earth.

With more than 6000 nukes each, bearing some as small as the hiroshima bomb, and some that would blast away everything within more than a 100 miles radius (some H-bombs), I think
the pollution is about right, the tech should take more time, and once available for a country... it should be much much cheaper to have a tactical nuke, and ICBM is about right..

 

[Point13]

spy actvities with nukes would be great, blow one up launch one sabotage... ahhhhhh...

 

[davidwchislett]

There seems to be much confusion as to the actual power, number and spread of nuclear weapons.

Firstly, the average nuclear missile launched from say, a submarine would not destroy an entire city, unless it was really small such as Winchester. (For those of you who are not British, Winchester is a city in the south of England in the county of Hampshire with a population of around 40,000.) Large cities such as London would require multiple warheads to be destroyed, hence ICBMs with MIRVs.

Secondly, the radioactive fallout from nuclear devises varies from bomb to bomb, some produce surprising small amounts of radiation. The Chernobyl incident in 1986 for example, created far more radiation the Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Thirdly, there is confusion as to the arsenals of the world’s nations. Russia, for example, has an unknown arsenal of nuclear weapons, as many of theirs are now obsolete due to lack of care, the true number of usable Russian weapons is unknown.
The same it true of the USA, but this is due to downsizing rather than poor maintenance, actions being in response to Russian actions. The only nations whose true arsenal size is known, is Britain and France. So predictions of changing orbits and nuclear winters are not impossible but increasingly and highly unlikely.

The worst weapons with regards to radiation are the poorly made or yet to be made bombs of Libya, N. Korea, Iran, (not Iraq because the Iraqi scientists didn’t have a clue) and possibly Jordon, Syria and the ????stan countries etc. Pakistani, Indian and Chinese nuclear technology is likely to be pretty stable and reasonably well built simply because of the higher levels of recourses pored into such projects. As to Israeli nuclear potential, not a lot is known, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had studied nuclear weapons technology but I would be surprised if they had acted on it without US consultation, and I trust the US not to proliferate its nuclear technology to anyone. Thus substantially reducing the chance of an Israeli Nuclear capability.

In terms of Civ 3 pollution and damage levels, they are pretty accurate, no change is really necessary. As to price, well, that’s anyone’s guess, the general public is simply none the wiser.

 

[subbss]

So many people complain about not just nukes but other units saying that they are not acurate. They need to realize that firaxis knows what they are doing and researches averything before implementing it.

 

[Zier]

Originally posted by Padma
Are you guys nuts? Nukes are incredibly weak, compared to what you are talking about!

Actually, nowadays there are nukes out there which could take out whole europe in just 3 strikes...

Yeah its a frightening thought.

 

[IglooDame]

Originally posted by Zier


Actually, nowadays there are nukes out there which could take out whole europe in just 3 strikes...

Yeah its a frightening thought.

Got a link?

 

[Zardnaar]

Not many people seem to know the real effects of nukes. In Civ they're nasty enough although the pollution is probably to easy to clean up. The world could survive a small nuclear war although the countries involved probably wouldn't.

However you would only need 1 going off to possably colapse the worlds economy. Imagine if New York went up in an atomic blast. There would be survivors but the economic damage would be alot worse. Among other things the hospital system would collapse under sheer numbers etc.