Why even put Nukes in the game?

[Morell]

Thanks alot.

 

[Goodgimp]

It seems a lot of the people wanting exceptionally powerful nukes in the game are thinking of it from one perspective only: them nuking another Civ.

Lets flip the tables around, though. Say you've spent hours and hours on your game, building up a mighty Civ over the course of a few days and are getting close to victory. Your opponent (whether Human or AI) sees this and to stop you, drops a nuke or two on your top cities. You five best cities are completely annihilated, buildings are gone, wonders are gone, all from 50 (combined) turns of production.

Yea, that'd be great. Every game would come down to building a few nukes.

 

[Flendon]

Is there a mod that changes the way nukes are handled? I couldn't find any and i think that someone should to create one (Firaxis probably won't change it).
I have seen several interesting threads on how nuclear weapons could be improved but no mod that does it.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3565520&postcount=43 This is the only oone I have seen so far.

 

[Flendon]

I'm just thinking, maybe it's possible to detect the source of the uranium for the nuke, even if the nuke exploded.
That would depend on how much of the fission fuel is actually burned in the explosion and how the weather conditions are after explosion.
If that is possible it's still far more diffcult to identify source compared to having a shot down nuke.

I think it depends on how dirty the bomb is.

Protection against smuggled nukes via geiger counters requires electricity, as uranium is known with physics, radioactivity is known and with electricity a geiger counter is possible.

So geigers with the electricity tech?

Also if a smuggled nuke is detected and captured undamaged, it will help the research of fission/fusion weapon tech or finishing Manhatten Project, though will not give the techs completely, but i have no good idea how much help it would be. My guess is between 20% and 60% for techs and less for Manhatten Project(since it was a lot about getting fission material from uranium and there a finished nuke helps less).

Furthermore one time consuming process in building a nuke is getting from natural uranium, which is afaik 97% for weapons useless U-235, the 3% useful U-238. If one has already a bomb one can simply open it and get the needed fission material, then only the carrier system(e.g. missle) and the ignition system has to be built. Could probably mean more than 50% of nuke build and even nations without access to uranium could build a similar nuke(fission/fusion), receiving the same production bonus.

Scientific method is probably enough to realize a nuke is something important, as scientific method means the concept of scientist putting their nose everywhere and after a few scientists die looking at the inside of the nuke, the entire truck will be identified as some dangerous stuff, which should be understood one day, hence will be kept.

And anyone with physics could have the idea to ask a few polite questions to the captured spy, paint the truck differently and sent it back to where it came from ....
Or somewhere else...

Carn

Nice. So like a GP you have to decide wether you should use the nuke or sacrifice it for research.

It would be probably even more realistic and more fun, if SDI had a price per charge and each charge had a interception chance of 75%.

The civ SDI concept is based on the political propaganda of the SDI project of Reagan, which included stupid ideas about satellites armed with lasers, that somehow shoot missles several hundred kilometers away. Such a laser is not possible anytime soon to fit into a satellite, i think that even a laser not defocussing in vacuum after that distance is well beyond current science(to all trakies out there: even in 100 years people will use chemical powered guns, lasers are even more useless in atmosphere).

So any reasonable SDI system is using conventional armed missles to intercept the nukes(US is just developing such a system for long and short range missle attacks, short meaning here 1000 km), with satelites for tracking.

While the satellites remain, the missles have to be built and they cannot be far cheaper, than the missile part of ICBMs, i guess 20-40% would be fitting.

That would mean for civ, a nation with satellites can build the national project SDI, representing the orbital tracking satellites, and could then build anti-missles with rocketry. For simplicity those anti-missles would be just stored in the building cities, but could intercept nukes everywhere.
If an enemy nuke attacks the closest antimissles would intercept with 75% chance, if it misses it's still gone the nuke hits. Exception could be, if a city would be affected and has several anti missles, then they all could get their chance to intercept, though this is a game balance issue.

And if an enemy realizes through spying that he has twice as many nukes as the enemy has interception missles, he can take full advantage of it, knowing that 50% of his nukes are guranteed a hit.


But i have no idea whether these changes could be possible via xml files, one would have to change at least the original SDI thing from a project into a unit and include a new national project for the satellites, which is requirement for the "unit" SDI.

Probably just increasing tech and cost requirements for sdi/shelter is most simple solution.
Carn

A little complicated that way. Maybe just keeping the missile based defenses as a local or national build and requires satelite for tracking so the same tech level. Then moving SDI with lasers to a future tech. I would put it with fiber optics as a req and parallel to fusion. Sound reasonable?

I think it's not a good idea to have a 20% chance to destroy the city whether its 2 or 30 inhabitants, better in my eyes and more realistic is a minimum pop kill of 5- 10(affected by bunker).
Complete killing of units in the square makes sense, though further away, there should be survival chance, especially for big units like BBs and Subs as they have a decent protection underwater.


Carn

I agree. I think it should be a random number with each hit with a minimum of 5 max of 10. More for fussion.

 

[Flendon]

It seems a lot of the people wanting exceptionally powerful nukes in the game are thinking of it from one perspective only: them nuking another Civ.

Lets flip the tables around, though. Say you've spent hours and hours on your game, building up a mighty Civ over the course of a few days and are getting close to victory. Your opponent (whether Human or AI) sees this and to stop you, drops a nuke or two on your top cities. You five best cities are completely annihilated, buildings are gone, wonders are gone, all from 50 (combined) turns of production.

Yea, that'd be great. Every game would come down to building a few nukes.

Excellent point. Every addition I put in will have something to balance it out.

 

[Mrdie]

I think it's not a good idea to have a 20% chance to destroy the city whether its 2 or 30 inhabitants, better in my eyes and more realistic is a minimum pop kill of 5- 10(affected by bunker).

10%

I don't see why not. I mean, they ARE nukes, and should be feared by both player and AI (As I said)

I mean, even an AI or player BUILDING them should get a (small) diplomacy penalty such as:

"You have built a nuke!"

 

[BlizzardGR]

Lets flip the tables around, though. Say you've spent hours and hours on your game, building up a mighty Civ over the course of a few days and are getting close to victory. Your opponent (whether Human or AI) sees this and to stop you, drops a nuke or two on your top cities.

I'm sure an AI opponent wouldn't do that. As for multiplayer, they could keep the current settings as they are for online play and change them only for singleplayer.

 

[JerichoMyst]

didnt read all the post... but nukes are great for destroying improvements...

 

[Darcia]

The time and resources you spend in 17 nukes, are a wasted of time. and why do you think all goverments are so concer about countries like irak and korea having just 1 nuke.

What im saying is that if you want to have the nukes as an option at least make something good, because every civ would hate after you use one. And i dont find the reason, because if you spend the same time and resources for modern armor and mecanice infantery and some chopers you will find yourself whit and army capable of making a really far more davastating effects than the 17 nukes, and nobody (except the civ you attack) will hate you.

So WHY Would anybody use nukes?

 

[ZiP!]

Posting just to suggest a little idea, i didn't read the whole thread carefully so it might have already been suggested...

Bulding on the interaction between spies and nukes : make a "sabotage SDI" option : costs a high amount of $$, only available for a spy in the enemy capitol. Would make their SDI ineffective for say a hole turn...

Cheers, and keep up the good idea & work. In the end we could finish with a great scenario/script base for a Cold War mod...

 

[carn]

I think it depends on how dirty the bomb is.

Yes, it depends on the percentage of the fuel burned and that is with a dirty bomb far lower.

So geigers with the electricity tech?

Yes, before electricity radiation can only be detected by blackening of film, but that takes a minute or so to show and therefore is useless to detect the exact source, one cannot move just around, one would have to go from place to place and always wait a minute to sea whether one gotcloser to radioactiv source or farther away.

A little complicated that way. Maybe just keeping the missile based defenses as a local or national build and requires satelite for tracking so the same tech level. Then moving SDI with lasers to a future tech. I would put it with fiber optics as a req and parallel to fusion. Sound reasonable?

Yes, stable(hours, not seconds) fusion is 30-50 years away, by the time lasers can get a lot better.


Carn

 

[carn]

10%

I don't see why not. I mean, they ARE nukes, and should be feared by both player and AI (As I said)

I mean, even an AI or player BUILDING them should get a (small) diplomacy penalty such as:

"You have built a nuke!"

Realistically a nuke destroys everything in a certain radius. Large cities to day have their main population in a radius of 10 km, fission bombs get only 500 kilotons explosive power, thats destruction in 5 km radius, so one fission bomb is not enough to destroy a big city. On the other hand my home city is just 5 km in diameter, so a single nuke can kill everybody, if it explodes around the middle of the city.

For game balance i think it is wrong if it cost the same amount of resources to remove a 5,10,20 and 30 city. If you have a percentage dead and a minimum kill, you would need for the respective cities 1,2,3 and 4 nukes(assuming 50% and 5 minimum). That's still something needs to fear, 4 nukes destroy a huge city.

Carn

 

[joethreeblah]

I think Nukes have a place in the game. They are balanced for Multiplayer however. With some of the changes listed here I think they would be much more realistic. The great thing about this game is the modability of it. I'm planning to fiddle with nukes eventually and try to implement some changes. This is what I think needs to be changed:

Manhatten Project - National Wonder and affects only your civ. Cost 750. Once complete spies able to "steal nuclear secrets" boosting research on fission or hammers towards Manhatten Project.

Suitcase Bombs - Spies are able to use suitcase bombs. High $$ price (I'll have to do some work on balance vs ICBM cost). Success ensures no evidence pointing to attacking civ. Lack of warning means nothing has a chance to reach shelters.

Bomb Shelters - Provides populace, workers, settlers and unmounted unit 75% protection. Units protected are unharmed. Units in the 25% take full or partial damage as normal. No effect for improvements, mounted units, tanks, air units or naval units.

Military Shelter - Enlarged shelter has space for larger units. 75% protection for mounted units, tanks, air units. Naval units and units that can reside in Bomb Shelters are unaffected.

Missle Defense - Missle based defense system. National Wonder 750 hammers. 50% defense vs missles.

SDI - Cost 1500. Worthless against suitcase bombs. May move to later in the game.

Diplomacy - Nukes will affect chances for peace and submission to demands. Use of nukes hurts enemy moral and war wariness.

Chemical weapons - No fallout or improvement damage. Available earlier.

SRBM - Short Range Balistic Missle, similar to the Cruise Missle in earlier Civs.

Subs - Missles launched from subs outside your city radius are untraceable to you.

Fusion bombs - Affects an extra square in all directions. Double the damage of Nukes. Suitcase variety as well.

Dirty Bomb - No damamge to improvements, but double damage to populace and units and double the fallout.

Geiger Counter Checkpoint - All entrances to a city require passing through a checkpoint to be scanned for radiation. 75% chance to prevent suitcase bomb. Fusion bombs require fission for detination so they have the same chance to be detected.

I know a lot of people would not see the points to these, but they make it more realistic to me. If I have success and I don't know if I will or not I will post the mod.

i think the geiger counter checkpoint would work well with an ability for workers to build a wall or fence at the border.

perhaps it would only slightly slow down a military unit at war, but traveling units would have to go around... ie through any checkpoint you set up

 

[carn]

It seems a lot of the people wanting exceptionally powerful nukes in the game are thinking of it from one perspective only: them nuking another Civ.

Lets flip the tables around, though. Say you've spent hours and hours on your game, building up a mighty Civ over the course of a few days and are getting close to victory. Your opponent (whether Human or AI) sees this and to stop you, drops a nuke or two on your top cities. You five best cities are completely annihilated, buildings are gone, wonders are gone, all from 50 (combined) turns of production.

Yea, that'd be great. Every game would come down to building a few nukes.

People have also realism in mind and in reality nukes are the ultimate power, one side having them means, that side has won. In WW2 Japan could have put up quite a fight for at least half a year or more and they decided to surrender unconditional inside a few days after just 2 nukes had hit them.
If all powers in WW2 had been aware of the full potential of nukes and their rather soon avaibility WW2 would have been a pure race towards nukes.
As only the US/GB/Canada were realy aware of nukes, they could not have lost the war even if germany had conquered GB and Soviets, since there would have been time enough to get nukes before an invasion of US could have been managed.

And also if for some reason US decide India is nasty they can make 5000 thousand years of indian culture and history vanish in a single day, without fear of much retaliation, india has few or no ICBMs.

People here want some off the world changing properities of nukes to be implemented in the game, because so far nobody realy cares if someone else builds manhatten project. SDi and bunkers are built faster than the nukes, its only a problem if there is a tech advantage, but its far less problem compared to being attacked by modern armor, while still researching the prerequisites for the tech.

The big blast scenario of course has to be avoided, as it would make the end-game too boring.

Carn

 

[SPQR300]

So my ideas on making the game as realistic as possible:

Make nukes really expensive projects: they cost 3-5000hammers. They are absolutely devastating, they comletely kill of a city, so everything dies, population decreases to 1, all buildig except wonders are destroyed, and in a 3 square radius every improvements are destroyed. Nukes are mostly diplomatic powers, all rival AI who doest have nukes will do anything you want, no one will attack you etc... When 2 nations have nukes both neither of them will EVER declare war on the other, because nukes would destroy them both. This makes the endgame absolutely peaceful, just like in reality. I believe the only thing made conventional wars in reality disappear is the danger of nuclear warfare. So only wars againgst non-nuclear nations make any sense. The UN could forbid nukes, but I think that should only make the research of nukes 3-5times more expensive.

This wouldnt be so great for gameplay, but clearly it is the most realistic solution for nukes.

 

[BlizzardGR]

So my ideas on making the game as realistic as possible:

Make nukes really expensive projects: they cost 3-5000hammers. They are absolutely devastating, they comletely kill of a city, so everything dies, population decreases to 1, all buildig except wonders are destroyed, and in a 3 square radius every improvements are destroyed. Nukes are mostly diplomatic powers, all rival AI who doest have nukes will do anything you want, no one will attack you etc... When 2 nations have nukes both neither of them will EVER declare war on the other, because nukes would destroy them both. This makes the endgame absolutely peaceful, just like in reality. I believe the only thing made conventional wars in reality disappear is the danger of nuclear warfare. So only wars againgst non-nuclear nations make any sense. The UN could forbid nukes, but I think that should only make the research of nukes 3-5times more expensive.

This wouldnt be so great for gameplay, but clearly it is the most realistic solution for nukes.

That is an interesting idea. However 3-5000 is waaaay too expensive even for a weapon as devastating as this. I think 1-3000 is more reasonable. Also not going EVER into war is a bit over the top in my opinion. Going into war does not always mean use of WMD.

Now before everyone starts talking about balance, i believe these changes should only be available for singleplayer or have them as options for both single and multiplayer:

.....
random personalities: check
devastating nukes: check
and so on.

Balance isn't everything in a game. Fun is a much more important factor.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Not if only there was "turn SciFi SDI off"...

 

[Abdomination]

Because there are nukes in the real world and they're pretty much useless.

It's true, their main use has been defensive except for two incidents

 

[carn]

It's true, their main use has been defensive except for two incidents

No, it's not true, Soviets and US spend billions to keep the other from getting a big lead in nuke tech and numbers.
Countries, which are think they are endangered by superior or equal powerful countries, regularly try to get hold off nukes, e.g. Israel, N-Korea, Iran, India, Pakistan and South Afrika(before 1990). A major political aim of all powerful nations is to deny access of nukes to any other nation, independent of size, unless they are close friends.

Irak with nukes would not have been attacked in 2003 and could have gotten even away in 1991. Iran with nukes will not be attacked. Same with N-Korea.

That nukes were not used are mainly morale issues and the threat of getting a few own nuke hits.

Carn

 

[SPQR300]

Bumppppppppppppppp