What do nukes destroy?

[planetfall]

There is no link to what they do. It's primarily a matter of math. 1/2 pop and 1/2 buildings per strike. I don't know what the number is on units injured. It seems like 1/2 also. 1 nuke is 50
% , 2 is 25%, 3 is 12$, etc.

NO, NO, nukes do NOT destroy wonders. But if a wonder is pumping out 100 culture per turn for a city, that city might be a good nuke target. If you need to slow AI research.

Set up your scenario:
2 countries, and give AI 30 citizens in 2 cities, and 12 MI in each metro. I doubt you will see an AI that strong, but that will give you worst case.

Give yourself 10 nukes, 30 MA, 30 Radar Arts.
Put 10 MA 3 tiles away from one city. Put 20 MA and Radars 3 tiles from other city.

Turn on debug mode. Keep track of actions of the two cities and report. I think you will
find the MA plus Radars will give much better results.

Here's what combat calculator shows:
5MI vs 30 RA and 16 MA.

5 mechs are in metro, on hill, across river, with civil defense, radar towers, and fortified.
[best possible opponent, right?]

6 arts take 34% so AI defense drops from 90 to 63
6 arts take 43% so AI defense drops to 35
6 arts take 58% so AI defense drops to 15

4 MA take 24% so AI defense drops from 15 to 1

So 15 Radars and 5 MA take out 5 MI, and extended 30 Radars and 9 MA takes out 10 MI when AI is in best defensive position and you are dumb enough to attack across a river.

So what if used a nuke?

5 MI defense of 90 drop to 45
4 MA reduce to 21
4 MA reduce to 3
1 MA kills. So you used a nuke of 500..600 shields and still needed 9 MA to take the city.


30 RA cost the same as 6 nukes. So if you want more than 6 cities, building 30 RA is more cost effective than burning up 6 nukes and starting all over again.

PF

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Nukes destroy:
Buidings
Terrain improvements
Population
Military units
Non-military units
O-zone
Popularity

 

[starrider]

Nukes destroy:
Buidings
Terrain improvements
Population
Military units
Non-military units
O-zone
Popularity

Just further clarification---
From the manual: "Military units have a 50% chance of survival from a nuclear detonation. Nonmilitary units are destroyed."

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Necessarily, unless you are going for a space win. All other wins should be completed before 1/2 way thru modern ages. That someone gets to SDI is the most obvious sign they are playing at a low coasting play level instead of a challenging play leve.

Close, but no cigar. I was going for my first ever 20k cultural win. when all your neighbors are religious/expansionist, sefaring/militaristic, religious/commercial,religious/scientific, and militaristic/expansionist, that's a hell of a lot harder than you might think, especially with Arabia (religious/expansionist) grabbing most of the AA wonders and Sun Tzu's art of war. I'm going to be posting a recap of this game in the Stories and Tales section. Another note, this was using my Teaked Out mod, which has some... interesting additions, such as hidden nat. mercenaries with stealth attack capabilities. They are fairly useful throughout the indusrial age, but not much more than a nuisance during the MA, although during a late game war with the Arabs I lost a 4 Unit Veteran Modern Armor/Mech Infantry ARMY to an almost endless stream of Arab mercenaries (it was somewhat reminiscent of the siege of Minas Tirith in RotK )

You don't need many. Three to four should be enough. What you lose in volume you make up in both targeting ability and maximizing other resources.

IIRC, I only built about 5 ICBM's (of course there were only 3 opponents out of 7 still alive at this point in the game). I had the 3rd largest land area, 2nd highest overall culture (less than 1000 points behind the Arabs. I reached the 100K mark the same time that my capitol reached the 20k mark ), and 2nd largest population and the strongest military by the time the game ended.

Global warming is a non factor, but with factories and reseach labs building pollution tends to increase wack-a-mole pollution. People pollution can be handled with 10..14 workers. When research labs come, especially with Internet, workers need to be more about the 25..30 range. Not a problem, but do need more units to handle automatically.

The way I play it normally isn't, but it seems that the effects of pollution have been made worse with Conquests, and even with my green policy (note: research labs generated by the Internet not only don't cost any upkeep, but don't produce pollution, either) as well as Incinerators (pollution reducing building available in the Indusrtrial age in this mod) AND recycling plants in all my cities, I still had several tiles degrade as a result of global warming (lost one Rain Forest tile and had one forest change into a Rain Forest, which is one of the things I "Tweaked" in this mod).

To be honest, I've only ever used nukes once, and that was when I was playing the Aztecs in PTW, and the Chinese decided they wanted to plunder the riches of the Aztec Empire. Even with a MPP with India, things were pretty hopless (the Chinese just steamrolled them, too; China was about 6 techs aheadof both of us in research in the modern era, had more cities, territory, and resources), so I just had my core cities all change production to tactical nukes/ICBM's (I figured that since China didn't have any Uranium, might as well), and launched a full-scale nuclear strike against Chinese units and cities. Unfortunately that wasn't enough to stem the tide, and India and I both were crushed under the treads of Chinese modern armor . That's when I decided that nukes just weren't worth it in CivIII. In Civ II, ToT, 1 nuke guaranteed an empty city that could be easily taken with a single paratrooper, and in extreme late game situations was actually worth it just to get rid of the AI's ridiculous stack of units and have a chance of taking the city witout losing every extra unit you own (yeah, I almost never get any love from the RNG ).

 

[planetfall]

Close, but no cigar. I was going for my first ever 20k cultural win.

You could be rigth with culture. I haven't played with culture on since C3 as I could never get to modern era with culture victory on.

The way I play it normally isn't, but it seems that the effects of pollution have been made worse with Conquests, and even with my green policy (note: research labs generated by the Internet not only don't cost any upkeep, but don't produce pollution, either) as well as Incinerators (pollution reducing building available in the Indusrtrial age in this mod) AND recycling plants in all my cities, I still had several tiles degrade as a result of global warming (lost one Rain Forest tile and had one forest change into a Rain Forest, which is one of the things I "Tweaked" in this mod).

Thanks for mentioning this. I've had a hard time figuring out which is better Recycling plant or Mass Trans. Rechecking I see Recycling only effects Building pollution and MassTrans only effects "people pollution".

Internet, doesn't generate pollution from labs. Interesting. The jump in pollution about the time of the internet then must be a delay from building factories almost everywhere. I haven't noticed any GW increase above PTW in C3C.

Any Global Warming effect under 15 tiles, falls beneath my radar. At first I had a huge GW effect with a bright sun and tons of changed tiles. In one game I lose a hugh grassland plot. Now I ususually get 1..4 tiles that change.

Part of what I did for "people pollution" is to reduce to 3..5 the number of cities that grow above 14 and usually only 1 or 2 are between 16..20. Can't recall the last time I had a city above 20. I just pack cities closer as I don't like the MM of starving down pop.

The incinerators idea sounds good. The Modern Era definitely needs another building polllution control to counteract the increase in building pollution and to avoid wack-the-mole problems

PF