Why I do and don't like nukes

[rodimus6]

To easy to wipe out anyone, that is the main reason, I don't like them. SDI is completely pointless. 75%, I have seen more than once where a hostile enemy will make alliances with other civs. You will be at peace with them, they declare war, and use up 40 nukes, 10 hits and 30 shot down. Then the other civs declare war, use up all their nukes, sometime over 100 more nukes hit your cities and that is all in one turn after you hit the End of Turn button, mean while, you can't do anything, but sit there and watch them blow all of your cities to pieces. I have seen my 25 to 30 city empire completely wiped out with more pollution than you could clean up in 50 turns.

I don't think you should be able to fire all the nukes, then have your alliance fire all their nukes, by declaring war and then 150 nukes go flying. There is no deturrent, because you really never get another turn after this happens and your ability to respond to several civs nuking you is very limited after this happens.

This happened in every civ3 game later in the game. I made alliances, treaties, blah blah blah and everytime they turned on me.

In conclusion, if you get nukes first, waste every civs cities and navies as soon as you can, or just eliminate nukes from the game as they are basically stupid and don't add anything to the game except making you waste alot of time building a civ only to see it wiped in one turn while you got up to get a coke from the frig.

If the SDI was like 95%, then firing 20 to get 1 hit would be very expensive, maybe an adjuster to the shoot down % for the SDI would solve this problem. If it hits however, the city and units in adjacent squares are completely gone and all 9 squares have pollution. You could only fire them until you achieved 1 hit per turn. That would slow things down, but if 8 civs attack you at once, 8 cities completely gone, thx.

 

[Enkidu Warrior]

So you want to face off against an alliance of several major nuclear powers and come out in one piece? That would be a bit daft don't you think? I think that you should be able to immediately retaliate with your own nuclear weapons rather than have them destroyed in a first strike (maybe a missile silo city improvement that makes them survive a nuclear explosion so you can still retaliate). I alos think that a more meaningful detterent and mutually assured destruction should exist between rival nuclear powers. But >75% SDI would just make nukes useless.

 

[Gogf]

Well, the nukes in the game are pretty realistic, but I would like to request two flags partaining to them (and one to normal artillary):

Artillary: Affected by bombard (i.e. you can't kill artillary through bombarsion

Nukes: Affect by nukes (same as "Affected by bombard", but with nukes"), and an AI strategy flag (available for land, sea, or air), "Last Resort", i.e. the AI will only use this if the city is about to fall, or one is used on it. This would also be so much more realistic.

 

[rodimus6]

Why would >75% make them useless? 95% would be more of a tactical strike and take over area kind of playing vs an all out response wiping every city on the planet out and putting pollution across 1/4 of the map. You can easily build alot of nukes on a large or huge map. One time on civ3 on a random start with like 7 civs, I was on a very large continent by myself. A couple of civs got wiped out, probably by barbs early in the game. I was able to almost completely build this continent and I won the space race very easily. I built about 50 nukes and didn't try very hard to build them. I could have easily build a few hundred of them, before anyone else had SDI. If I fired 300 of them in one turn(and they had SDI), 75 would hit and waste their cities. I could put some aircraft carriers and subs in the right places and easily blow up 4 to 5 civs, all of their cities practically. Granted you don't usually get lucky and get that good of a starting position, but I bet most of us have started a new game, when the terrain around your first city really sucked.

With my plan, the nuked city would be completely gone, which in today's 100 megaton warhead, that is fairly accurate. You wouldn't be able to take over the city and use it's railroads and improvements either. You have to build a new city from scratch.

(So you want to face off against an alliance of several major nuclear powers and come out in one piece? That would be a bit daft don't you think?) This reads like you didn't read my post very carefully. I said if 8 nations attack you at once, you are history, (in so many words).

 

[microbe]

I agree, allowing firing 20 nukes before you could respond is too extreme. Maybe make it a tunrable: one can only fire N nukes in per turn per CIV.

On the other hand, that's what nuclear sub is for. You should get a few of them just for this retaliation purpose. That's what it is for in real life anyway.

But in my expience of playing CIV3 I've never used Nuke nor has anyone used it against me.

 

[microbe]

[edit] sorry hit the submit botton twice..there is no "delete a post"?

 

[Civrules]

If you don't like how nukes are too powerful and are causing a problem for you, don't put yourself in situations where you know you're gonna get it. Having an AI nuke you is pretty scary. I also don't think that the SDI having a 95% chance of shooting down nukes is realistic. 75% is pretty good. Not too much, not too little.

 

[lets_not_listen]

what you complain about is exactly what the developers were going for to make nuclear war realistic.

 

[rodimus6]

Microbe, you haven't been nuked? I have been nuked in virtually every game. The computer AI doesn't seem to hesitate to start a nuclear war, especially if you are behind at all on tech.

I learned the sub/aircraft carrier response, but it didn't matter to much. Your economy is so wrecked from an all out nuke attack, that the game isn't much fun to play anymore.

Maybe get rid of SDI and limit each civ to 1 nuke at a time, then it would take a turn to build another one and then a turn to use it. That would mean each civ could nuke a city every other turn. I could live with that, but the 95% idea looks like more fun and makes the nuker pay alot more to nuke. What about computer viruses in your nuke software and blowing up on the ground, wouldn't that be fun, hehe. The virus makes it hit an alliance's city or your own cities.

 

[Pfeffersack]

A question...it is possible to stack nukes on airfields? Then it would be possible to avoid the destruction of your own nukes during a first strike of the AI.

 

[rodimus6]

I don't care about the developers intentions, they are getting rich off us. I want to make the game a tactical thinking game. Thinking is not an AI strong suit. Giving the computer 25% destroy with any nuke and he had 50 of them, that is 12 cities, gone before you do anything. I guess that is realistic to a nuclear war, but except for ending ww2, no one has fired any. The computer player is like a really paranoid Stalin(redundent). The computer is much to eager to use them. AKA---->next point

Just how do you not get into those situations, do you offer and pay tribute to each civ once they get next to you? I refuse to make treaties and kiss a computer players butt. I can defeat any computer on any game, except maybe chess, damn those things are good at chess. Chess is 64 squares and 32 pieces with simple strategies, relatively speaking to a civ3 game.

Well I guess we have to disagree. I think nukes take away more form the game than they add to it, so I don't even have then in my scenarios, thx.

 

[microbe]

Originally posted by rodimus6
Microbe, you haven't been nuked? I have been nuked in virtually every game. The computer AI doesn't seem to hesitate to start a nuclear war, especially if you are behind at all on tech.

No, but I always play in Monarch or below, and I never fall behind in tech at this stage.

 

[Portuguese]

Make nuclear subs and use them

(although Enkidu Warrior's idea ("maybe a missile silo city improvement that makes them survive a nuclear explosion so you can still retaliate") is quite good...)

 

[rodimus6]

I always play the hardest game from day 1. Only way to play, got to beat the hardest level.

 

[rodimus6]

I like the silo idea, but it still doesn't deter the computer AI from nuking. You can respond and you caneven nuke them first by starting the war. If you nuke first, you will still get hit with tons and tons of nukes, then your entire game and economy is wasted.

Isn't there anyone who thinks that nukes take away more from the game, than they add to it?

 

[warpstorm]

Not me. I like them. I think I've only been the target of a first strike once. To be honest, most of my games are won or lost before then though.

 

[Dr Alimentado]

Have they changed it in C3C so that nukes kill nukes then? It certainly used to be the case that nukes were incalpable of killing nukes, so you could retaliate after a first strike.

And I thought the AI was known for it's unwillingness to be the first to use nukes, unless this has been changed in C3C?

I think nukes could do with some improvements, namely perhaps costing some more, but I don't think they ruin games. If you really don't like them just remove them from the build queue in the editor though.

 

[Akka]

Personnally, I consider the nukes to be not effective enough.
It's actually impossible to rase a city with nukes, just to reduce it to 1 pop. A nuke should take a fixed number of pop point (say 10) each hit.

But a nuke should be big deal. It should affect the happiness of your civ, and you should be submitted to the retaliation of your foe.
This could take two forms :

1 - Use of submarines : it's, for the moment, the only retaliation possible when you're under heavy attack. Just make a big fleet of submarines loaded with tactical missiles when you go nuclear.

2 - Immediate retaliation : this should require a patch. The suggestion is :
Putting your ICBM on "sentry" would put them in a "automatic retaliation" mode. When this mode is active, if another ICBM ever land on the city with ICBM on sentry, one of them will immediately be launched against the attacking missile's home city. No rep hit for such retaliation, as it's only automated self-defence.
Kind of a MAD system.

 

[Portuguese]

Originally posted by rodimus6
I always play the hardest game from day 1. Only way to play, got to beat the hardest level.

I always play Regent/King.
Game steals too much above it and I play for fun, not to prove anything to anyone.

@Akka: Good input that "Auto-Response" mecanism...
I wonder if it is possible to implementate, and if it is, why it wasn't till now...

EDIT: Post 2500

 

[IluDeR]

I think that the fact that an civ could be able to build nukes, should be related to the city in question, has improvements, like nuclear plant or fission center, something like that. then, with the resources, this city could build nukes, not all.

I like the ICBM sentry idea great..!!