Why did I get nuked by the Mongols?

[godot]

I thought that unless you built the Manhattan Project first and used nukes first they wouldn't be used against you, but I got flattened by the Mongols!

I was playing King/medium map/5 civs. I WAS way ahead, but of course everyone was envious and traded to match me later in the game. Other civs built the Man Proj but I didn't think anything about it until the nukes started flying. And all of them directed at me!

I normally go for world conquest, but waited too long to move off my continent and by that time the Mongols, Carthagenians and Egyptians became busy dousing my cities with nukes round-robin. I didn't build SDI because of my erroneous belief they wouldn't launch without prior nuclear provocation.

Can someone tell me what prompts civs to nuke you and how effective the SDI Defense is?

Thanks. Waiting for Godot, but not in the dark because I'm lit by a radioactive glow.

 

[BlueMonday]

They nuked you cause they're bastards.

On lower levels your assumptions are correct, but once you jump to king, forget everything you think you know about the game. The enemy will stop at nothing to kill you. SDI works, build it in your best cities. However, know that the comp cheats and it knows exactly what cities have SDI and which ones don't. So if you have a buildup of units in a city without SDI, the enemy will know about it and everything will be vaporized.

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[starlifter]

The AI knows exactly which cities have SDI, and will never waste a nuke against a city that has SDI in it... and that goes for human or AI target cities. It does not know, however, if a city is protected by a nearby city's SDI. If you want a totally unfair advantage over the inadequate programming, try building a small city within 3 squares that has SDI, and leave the big juicy target without an SDI. I once did that by building a size 1 city with an SDI in it to shield my big 32 size city... In one turn, 5 civilizations launched over 25 missiles against my 32 city. Of course, all missiles were shot down by SDI. This "SDI Trap" is grossly unfair to the inflexible AI logic, but it does "get even" for their seemingly infallible knowledge of exactly what to nuke!