Understanding effects of nuking a city

[mexico86]

Hi, I'm in a multiplayer BTS game with a friend, and I'm behind in terms of industrial power and territory, and I'm planning on using a surprise attack using ICBMs to bring him down a peg or two.

Before I do it, I'ev been trying to understand what the nuke will do to the cities I hit. Are there any general rules about:-

- how much population will be lost?

- destruction of buildings in the city?

- blast radius (are only units on the targeted tile hurt, or does the blast also hurt units on adjacent tiles)?

- negative effects on diplomatic relations with 3rd parties?

Thanks in advance.

 

[2metraninja]

- how much population will be lost?

Half the population. If it is size 20, after nuking it will be size 10.

- destruction of buildings in the city?

Not sure about that, might be that nothing is lost.

- blast radius (are only units on the targeted tile hurt, or does the blast also hurt units on adjacent tiles)?

A nuke explosion affects 9 tiles as I remember - the central tile where it lands and 1 tile around it in each direction including diagonals.

- negative effects on diplomatic relations with 3rd parties?

Not sure about that - only used them in a MP, but I think there are some -1

If you are about to use nukes, consider the following too:

- nuking with one nuke only damages heavy the units on the tile, but you still have to bring serious army to actually capture/raze cities, while bombing with 2 nukes at the same tile in the same turn, kills almost all the units there, so you can raze cities with even 1 unit in a transport.

- consider nuking the enemy's Uranium source first - before even his capitol This will cut off
him from building nukes to answer you in the next few hours.

- have in mind that if your opponent have SDI built, the ICBMs become very unreliable - about only 20% of them will hit their targets, while the other will be intercepted by the SDI. Better chances you will have with tactical nukes, launched from submarines. Those have about 50% chance of avoiding interception.

 

[coanda]

- how much population will be lost?

- destruction of buildings in the city?

- blast radius (are only units on the targeted tile hurt, or does the blast also hurt units on adjacent tiles)?

- negative effects on diplomatic relations with 3rd parties?

2metraninja mostly already covered it; I'll fill in a few details.
Pop loss is rounded down (19 pop becomes 10, 18 pop becomes 9, 1 pop stays 1).
They have a chance of destroying each improvement (but not wonders). Nukes are usually used in pairs (so you can actually kill units with them), and I find that two nukes tends to most of the improvements the city used to have.
It does have a blast area of 9 tiles, and none of those tiles can contain a peaceful unit or territory. Sometimes you have to adjust your placement of the nuke to get your target because of that.
It gets you a -1 "you nuked our friend" diplo. malus with everyone who is Pleased or Friendly with your victim (as well as the victim himself).
It has a chance of destroying tile improvements and spreading fallout on squares in the radius; fallout makes the tile useless until a worker gets over there and cleans it.
And nuking increases the odds of global warming (in which some tiles around the map are changed, like replacing some of the plains with desert tiles).

Generally, unless you need ICBMs, use tactical nukes. You can launch them from submarines or cities they can rebase to any sub or city like air units, and it's cheaper to build a submarine and a tactical nuke than to build an ICBM (but they have the same impact when they hit).

 

[mexico86]

Thanks for the information coanda and 2metraninja