when to use nukes?

[Norlamand]

I've rarely used them, and generally as The Last Conformist described. It usually results in massive destruction and, as a builder, I hate it when my tidy empire gets f-ed up.
I'll nuke my enemies after I have won the game and scoring has stopped or in the rare circumstance that I am pressed seriously by an opponent. I target their troop concentrations, core cities and resources (especially uranium). No great suprises....

 

[skywalker]

[q]Want to hurt your enemy with nukes without retaliation? Get right of pessage, get a worker next to everyone of their major cities and nuke your worker!!!! Or find a major gathering of troops and get RoP just to nuke them. fun as hell. Well maybe not hell[/q]

Obviously you haven't actually tried this. It can't work, because it's an act of war if even a single tile of their land is within the nine tiles, or a single one of their units. Probably also one of their colonies.

 

[Puzzlinon]

It works for me surprisingly often to have lots'o'nukes but not use them. On larger games that still have multiple powers in modern times, they often go to nuclear war with one another - even when I'm involved in conventional fighting - without nuking me. It makes for a pretty nice power shift in your favor when that happens.

This works best if you are not directly at war with any of the psycho powers or the desperate losing AI's at that time. The AI's on the other side will expend their arsenal making pepperoni pizza out of the civ that fires first, and leave you alone.

It's not the friendliest strategy, but the idea is to align your modern wars so you're fighting the nice guys, and have the crazy and desperate militarists on your side. They'll nuke the nice guys, the nice guys will nuke them.

(From that point on, your first nuclear priority, should you choose to use them, would be to make sure the AI's never have uranium ever again.)

 

[Kaiyo]

I've only used nukes once. The setting was diety, on a huge map with 16 civs left (archipelago, 70% water). By the time nukes came, there were 10 civs left and everyone had a military alliance against everyone with mpp's pulling everyone into unwanted conflicts, including myself. There were two superpowers - myself as the Great Tokugawa and the communist bastard Catherine of Russia. It was my belief that Russia was the aggressor, as most military alliances were tied with her against, well, everyone else. There hasn't been peace since the Middle Ages, I swear. I decided to end the war as soon as i bought the tech for nukes from my Chinese buddies, and immediately switched my capital to the Manhattan Project and switched my productive coastal cities to subs. As soon as I could, I pumped out as many ICBM's and Tactical Nukes as I could for the next ten turns, most of which were made of gold (my science was at 10% the whole game and I bought about all my tech). As nobody had any money, and some cities on both major landmasses switched between 4 different nations, and I doubt anyone else could build nukes as my productive home island was never before invaded (well, successfully anyway), I thought I could end the war in one turn with my 30 or so nuclear warheads. I completely turned Russia into a wasteland and razed the majority of their cities (I sure as hell didnt want them). Two turns later everyone was at peace as I think I scared them all to hell by turning Russia into a nuclear winter wonderland, although my rep was shot as a result of my many Hiroshimas, yet I never saw a nuke fly over my great empire. Well, anyway, thats my nuclear war.

 

[amirsan]

I sadly haven't realy ever used nukes in my games, maybe an ICBM a couple of times but that was it...

 

[MooFreaky]

I have had some great times with these guys... they were most useful. I had a small island to begin with and couldnt expand to the next ones. So i had a really phat core of cities, mass production like you wouldnt believe. They all had factories and hydro power (at the end of the game).
After a while i got another smallish island (killed Mongols, Japan and China mwuhahaha) around start gunpowder. put a FP where Kyoto once stood and later built hoover dam. So i had some really productive empire. The time was running low and a long war with the 2nd largest empire (iroques) was just ending, with their leaders head on a pike (oh yeah!!). Anyways All i had left was Egypt who had killed Cartage and had over 1/2 world's land under them and they were very powerful. Huge airfoce. Anyways with time running out, i was behind and needed to kill this most powerful civ. However as i had like the top 10 productive cities, since i didnt have much to do with them for so long except get em damn fine (production wise). i got nukes to go with my fine fleet of nuclear subs. As there was alot of water i could target any city in their epire. In one move their capitol and all their best cities around it were wiped out. With these cities went their airforces, alot of their fleet, which were all positioned nicely together. hehehe. From here i got a chokepoint city, and then used the railroads over the rest of the empire to wipe them out in a matter of 4 turns. (the rest of their empire was crummy as it was all carthaginian captive along way from capitol).

America was too weak to do much, so they didn't respond until i nuked them and removed around 10 of their best cities in on move too. Ahh... such a sweet ideal world... America keeping their noses out of other people affair... also america being nuked out of existence... if only it were real... hehe
no offence to Americans, ur people are nice but your government is really @#$%ed up.

 

[kb2tvl]

You can nuke your own land safely. If an invasion force enters your land, you can drop two nukes per stack of units and pretty much obliterate them. You can also use nukes to take out a surface fleet.

About the only way to make sure that others won't nuke you is to ally with them against the country you want to nuke....

 

[ss3goku]

I only use nukes when needed and even then, the most i've ever had is 3 tactical nukes and 2 ICBMs. They're quite useful to gain a lot of territory. As much as a warmonger i am, i'm also a builder and culturist. I don't like my literacy levels falling or anything. Before i use nukes, i steal troop postions, and nuke the heaviest amount right after ROP. Then i move within squares of major cities, taking a lot of territory. However, i'll say it again, i've never had too many nukes cause the by the time they're built, my armies have destroyed the civilization i was saving them for. They just take too long. And i also hate those damn Cathrine Russians. Peter the Great or Ivan the Terrible III would have been better.

 

[Shirastro]

When i'm one turn of wining space race i use all my ICBM. No practical reason just FUN.
I choose one civ and if i have enough of ICBMs(wich i usualy do) and his teritory isnt to big i like to transform them into one big fat polution mass by ICBMing all their cities and also all the space in betwen.........evil

 

[MajorFallout]

I been known to use nukes on several occassions... but mainly when I was pushed into a corner, or when I've had enough of a certain civ's bullying tactics, so I nuke the b*****d.

Here are a few situations when I had to use/felt like using nukes:
1) There was a smallish (no civs on it) island with a barb camp on it, and since I hadn't seen the effects of a nuke before, I blasted the island to kingdom come.

2) Used a nuke or two to destroy a fleet of Jap battleships and subs - about 6 in all - so that my small invasion fleet could get to it's destination, unmolested.

3) I spotted 2-4 huge stacks of enemy land units, that were just outside my borders, so I nuked them with 4-5 ICBMs. Fortunately I was already at war with them.

4) Had to use 3 nukes to keep an enemy's troops from overpowering my town (on another continent), so that they couldn't take my only source of oil or iron, that it was guarding.

 

[solid b]

ive made the experience that you dont have to be scared of a nuke attack because the AI seems to refrain from using them...i didnt have any but was about to build some but the AI did...i attacked the AI and got far in that war but the AI never attacked me...

 

[SinisterDeath]

I like to get my opponent at the end of the game surounded by forces so he can't leave his borders, preferably a land bound city, where you can stop him from trying to flee by ship.

After you have 10 or 20 of the finest nuclear missiles money can buy, and your borders in the other captured cities have expanded (to get a max. score in a win by conquest), I let his spearman and archer in his pathetically backwards civilization see what a nukes feels like.

Imagine what the spearman must think, as he sees the ICBM coming right at him. Sure 10 or 20 ICBM's at the same target is mass overkill, but I don't care. What do u think I made them for anyways? Then I take his now deserted city with an MA (nuking kills off the units inside it), and I stroll right down Main st. to capture and win.

 

[budweiser]

I dont think the ai will nuke you unless you nuke them first. So if you want to nuke them and dont want to get nuked back, you need to make sure they never get nukes. The best thing to do would use nukes to totally get rid of a civ. I dont think the other civs will nuke you, but I am not sure. I knw they wont like you much.

You will also want to capture or interdict any uranium sources. Trade embargoes against your target would be good, but you may need to be ready to go to war with other civs to keep them from selling uranium to the target. When searching the map for uranium, dont forget to check the terrain that enemy cities are built on. They often build cities right on top of resources.

When using nukes, try to achieve a decent mass and target their land in such a way as to totally blanket their tiles with pollution. The blast destoys all tile improvements. This will starve them out eventually. If you target the land and not the cities you can cover more sqaures with pollution. If you target the city, you get the city and everything in a one tile radius, its better to target between cities. This will also slow down any enemy forces that try to stop you invading armies.

Tactical nukes are far cheaper than ICBMs as long as you have a comon border with the target civ, use the tacticals. Always keep a few nukes on hand in case something goes wrong and you need a quick solution. That includes ICBMS.

Becareful not to nuke your own armies and watch the blast radius so that it doesnt hit another neighboring civ.

 

[zeeter]

I would say that it is not uncommon for me to use nukes. Rarely will I use them as a first strike weapon. If I'm so far behind that I need to use nukes to even the playing field, then I've probably restarted the game long ago.

I did have one funny game a while back, though. Germany was at war with me, and they kept on sending nukes at me. I had SDI, so it wasn't much of a worry. The interesting thing was that they kept on trying to hit this one city that was formerly Aztec and had a pop of 8 and was of little interest - except apparently as a nuclear testing ground for the Germans. Meanwhile, my capital and other large industrial cities were unbothered.

Once he nuked me I just kept on building nukes and counterstriked a few times. Eventually, the Chinese declared war on me for my "atrocities", but stupidly, they didn't even have nukes, so I nuked them. End of Chinese problem. Eventually I out nuked the Germans and won.

As a general rule, though, I try not to use nukes. Even as a last resort, if he hasn't nuked me I'd rather die with my rifles and tanks than send a few nukes out at him as a last ditch effort.

 

[SinisterDeath]

Zeeter, you are not using your nukes correctly. As others have stated, use nukes to smash his SOD's, pillage his resources/rails/roads, and pollute his tiles. Try and create a buffer between you and him so there are no roads/rails for 3 or 4 squares. That will slow him down a lot. Also, try and damage as much infrastrucutre as you can. They can't nuke you back if they have no pop. to build ICBM's or resources to build them, nor can they build units very fast.

 

[kb2tvl]

Sometimes a civ will start throwing around nukes. I can remeber a diety game that I was playing and Greece demanded something and I told him to shove it. Anyway, he started to nuke me. I would get one city cleaned up and he would nuke another. The scientific civs seem to go a little nutty when you enter the modern era. Note, greece was getting beat up bad and the other civs would probably take him out in a few turns.

 

[Justin_Sane]

Is there a way to *NOT* use nukes correctly? I love the things! I've had to use them on several occasions, or rather gotten to use them, and great fun was had! I remember one game recently, the Spanish I discovered were building parts of the spaceship in their capitol. I will not stand for losing to a dinky ship-sailing civ in a space race, and they knew that! So I launched an ICBM at each city, and when the Aztecs on the other side of me declared war and started sending in massive tank columns, I nuked the tanks too! Luckily for me the Iroquois had been sufficiently frightened by their butt-kicking after I eradicated France from existance with conventional forces, so they helped with the Aztecs...

 

[smalltalk]

Never.

I'd rather lose.