c174# NUCLEAR WARFARE IN CIV3

[korn469]

Remember the scale of the game. If the map is supposed to represent a planet the size of the earth, then even in a huge map each square represents an area about 200 miles across. A single nuke is not going to obliterate an area 200 miles across. Also consider the large variety of nuclear weapons available today. They vary from free fall bombs, to nuclear artillery shells, to short range tactical rockets, to cruise missles. to silo launched ICBMs, to mobile launched long range missles. It would be difficult for this game to accomodate all the varieties of nuclear weapons, so it's just as well that there is only one unit that is relatively mobile.

if you think about it, most likely the one nuclear missle on the map represents a number of nuclear missles in real life, and that instead of one nuke destroying 200 miles it is a full nucler salvo hitting that civ

and i agree we need to keep the nuclear model simple, like with only one type of nuke (two at most, strategic and tactical...which should just be an option like nerve gas pods in SMAC) but i still think that the system can be improved, and that MAD if properly implemented would be an essential improvement to adding some excitment to the late game in civ3

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by korn469



and i agree we need to keep the nuclear model simple, like with only one type of nuke (two at most, strategic and tactical...which should just be an option like nerve gas pods in SMAC) but i still think that the system can be improved, and that MAD if properly implemented would be an essential improvement to adding some excitment to the late game in civ3

OK, I guess I agree. but I still think something should be done about the strategy of nukes and paras. or other stuff similar. there was a report of someone suitcase nuking every enemy city and taking them all on RR with a single mech inf on a single turn!

I suppose the biggest problem with nukes as they are, is they are a conquering tool, not a destroying tool.

some form of MAD would go a long way toward discouraging the way things are. right now, I just get teed off when someone builds Smokey, and I should get a chill. like there goes the game...
Destroying, not conquering. that's what nukes are for.

I had a time when I invaded a city and that city was nuked the next turn. 2 squares got polluted, and the AI never bothered to clean them up!

[jake03]

Originally posted by Father Beast


OK, I guess I agree. but I still think something should be done about the strategy of nukes and paras. or other stuff similar. there was a report of someone suitcase nuking every enemy city and taking them all on RR with a single mech inf on a single turn!

I suppose the biggest problem with nukes as they are, is they are a conquering tool, not a destroying tool.

some form of MAD would go a long way toward discouraging the way things are. right now, I just get teed off when someone builds Smokey, and I should get a chill. like there goes the game...
Destroying, not conquering. that's what nukes are for.

I had a time when I invaded a city and that city was nuked the next turn. 2 squares got polluted, and the AI never bothered to clean them up!

I am with you on this, this is no planned invasion with nukes, just nuke everyone and you win. I think they should be outragously expensive and highly inaccurate and devastating if they our used. for instance you build or by an icmb it uses most a huge number of shields to build and you launch it. It misses the target by 2 squares but completely destroys a 4 square area, and should reduce population for all nearby cities.

[korn469]

jake03

i do not understand your insistance on having inaccurate nukes...i mean i'm sure US peacekeeper missles can hit a target within half a mile of where it was aimed at no matter how far away the target is...

i don't think that it would make gameplay any better for nukes to be highly innaccurate, in fact i think it would make gameplay worse

also i don' think that making nukes "outragously expensive" would improve gameplay either, they should have a cost that is balanced

however i do agree with a nuke being destructive enough to incinerate a city, which coupled with MAD would make nuclear warfare something to be avoided...this could amply the effect of diplomacy and economic dominance on the game, and actually make the civ late game something exciting instead of a forgone conculsion

improving nuclear war in civ3 improves civ3 overall

[jake03]

i do not understand your insistance on having inaccurate nukes...i mean i'm sure US peacekeeper missles can hit a target within half a mile of where it was aimed at no matter how far away the target is...



i don't think that it would make gameplay any better for nukes to be highly innaccurate, in fact i think it would make gameplay worse

also i don' think that making nukes "outragously expensive" would improve gameplay either, they should have a cost that is balanced

__________________________________________________ ____
actually the nukes we have can hit a target the size of a dinner plate but that does not make the game any more fun, if we used the reality of nukes at a reasonable prize then you would simple build defensive units and develope icbm's. Sent over four or five and completely destroy someone else, parchute in and take the left over crators. There is not statigy or fun in that. then it is just a race to see whe can get them first.

Now if they were very expensive then knowone could easily build enough to wipe out someone else. and if there were inaccurrate then you could not count spicifically on them as your only strike force.

[Father Beast]

I was just thinking about this subject....

for MAD to be an actuality, you have to be able to launch your nukes at the same time as the enemy. Otherwise an enemy civ could just launch against all of your cities with nukes (or silos) and there you would be without any retaliation.

I'm thinking something along the lines of whenever you build a nuke, you are allowed to target it (or not, for whatever reason. there will probably be strategies built up on why not to), so that if an enemy nuke hits your territory, all your nukes targeted toward the enemy civ are launched and you both sit in smoking ruins. probably with a quick popup on their turn asking if you wish to launch as well, but only a yes/no response. if you haven't targeted your nukes beforehand, or they're all targeted at someone else, you're screwed.

This targeting business could come in handy if you WANT to start a nuclear war (that's you, smokey). you could spend some time targeting your nukes, then hit the red button and they all fly at once. so do the enemies, if they have any pointed at you.

but without some sort of simultaneuos launch, MAD can be got around by an enterprising player targeting nuke locations.

[BorderPatrol]

The silo restriction idea would be good in general, but the russians should get a special unit of mobil launchers since that is how it is in real life.

Anyway there is a ton of information I posted in another forum on this. Here are a couple of links.


http://forums.civfanatics.com/Forum7/HTML/000313.html

http://forums.civfanatics.com/Forum7/HTML/000450.html

[BlackFriar]

And nuclear missiles will be like what seen in civ2 but more powerfull farther distance lower accuracy... 50% chance

No offense but this has to be the worst and most historically inaccuarte idea i've heard. it's just... well... wrong.

Some info for you to ponder:

Accuracy is measured in a unit called Circular Error Probable, or CEP. CEP is the diameter size centering on the target within which there will be a 50% chance of hitting the target.

In 1959, the first ICBM went into service with the US, the Atlas and had a CEP of 3,300 meters...

In 1970, the US MinemanIII got this down to 400 meters.

In 1989, The Trident D5 (on the submarines)got the CEP down to 100 meters.

In 1986 the MX peackeeper got this down beyond 100 meters.

It doesn't take a brainsurgeon to realise that even the Atlas from 1959 could always destroy a city, considering the sheer power of the nuclear blast.

Infact, the MX and D5 are so accurate they can hit specific Nuclear Silo's.. the reason the CEP level was pushed so low in the first place.

Actually, the German A4 (V2) of the 1940's had a CEP of 3-6 Kilometers....

They just don't miss... period

[BlackFriar]

Father Beast,

Your idea is by far the best one I've seen so far. MAD is so dependant apon the quick discovery and reaction of incoming ICBM's. The DEW line in Alaska and later the BMEWS were build for this very purpose to give people in washington time to react when the flight time of an ICBM from Russia is ~25min and from a submarine is <10min.

Having to wait and hold back your only retaliatory responce untill the next turn (in which time tanks and infanty have moved (must have hauled some serious ass) kills the idea.

Or perhaps you could build an impovment/tile thing thats a early warning radar station or a wonder (BMEWS or the KH-12/Lacrosse sailite system) which coveres your whole nation. If an ICBM flies threw it (and is thus detected) you get the following... When the missles are detected, during the opponensts turn, you get an emergency meeting with your Advisors and can descide the fate of your nation, just as the real world president would before the blasts hit.
And of course there would have to be a 'Red button' :-)

Vince

PS. I think the idea of (targeting/firing to) move the ICBM is way better than having it veer course in mid-flight (yeah, right) and use it's range to unblock the black section. It should be a 1-time, 1-course, weapon... IMHO of course :-)

[korn469]

Father Beast

i don't know if i have been hard hard to understand but the crux of MAD is that when one nuke launches every single nuke hits at the same time immeadiately, if that is how you feel then we agree 100%

so basically a player hit the red button and then the very next thing that happens is that every single nuke hits at the exact same time...this has always been my position on MAD in civ3

so if all players have nukes, and player 3 launches his nukes, then every single nuke in the game (that is targeted) would hit immeadiately on player 3's turn, before player 3 could do anything else, this includes both players 1 and 2 who have already had their turns, and player 4 through the last player who have yet to have their turn

that is how i think MAD should work,

so if you have MAD with nukes that completely destroyed a city then players would think twice about using nukes, especially if firaxis tones down the power of infiltrating datalinks in civ3, so you wouldn't actually know if the enemy was building nukes, or how many were pointed at you, or exactly where they were pointed, and i think this represents the realities of nuclear war better than civ2's system did

even a large 25 city human civ would think twice before using nuclear weapons against a small 5 city civ if it had five nukes, because the human player, eventhough the hp would completely obliterate the cp in the nuclear exchange, the hp would lose five of his best cities and maybe a number of wonders...overall weaking his position in the game, and possibly making it much harder to win the game...also players would built supercities would really have to think twice before they put every single wonder in a single city

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by korn469
Father Beast

i don't know if i have been hard hard to understand but the crux of MAD is that when one nuke launches every single nuke hits at the same time immeadiately, if that is how you feel then we agree 100%

so basically a player hit the red button and then the very next thing that happens is that every single nuke hits at the exact same time...this has always been my position on MAD in civ3

so if all players have nukes, and player 3 launches his nukes, then every single nuke in the game (that is targeted) would hit immeadiately on player 3's turn, before player 3 could do anything else, this includes both players 1 and 2 who have already had their turns, and player 4 through the last player who have yet to have their turn

that is how i think MAD should work,

so if you have MAD with nukes that completely destroyed a city then players would think twice about using nukes, especially if firaxis tones down the power of infiltrating datalinks in civ3, so you wouldn't actually know if the enemy was building nukes, or how many were pointed at you, or exactly where they were pointed, and i think this represents the realities of nuclear war better than civ2's system did

even a large 25 city human civ would think twice before using nuclear weapons against a small 5 city civ if it had five nukes, because the human player, eventhough the hp would completely obliterate the cp in the nuclear exchange, the hp would lose five of his best cities and maybe a number of wonders...overall weaking his position in the game, and possibly making it much harder to win the game...also players would built supercities would really have to think twice before they put every single wonder in a single city

In full agreement Korn

[akula]

Nuclear war should def not be as frequently used as in civII. I liked the model in smac!

[The Mad Viking]

I agree Korn.

Just look at nuclear history.

Strategic nukes, which is what we are talking about were only used in one situation. Two small primitive nukes were used. Each utterly obliterated their target city, and killed essentially every inhabitant.

Since then, there was a period of about 15 years where the US as the only nuclear power could essentially push there enemies around. They were forestalled to some degree by the concern that the Soviets vast ground armies could overrun Europe in a few hours, leaving the US with the choice of nuking allied but occupied land. The US also had no need to nuke. Not surprisingly, their fear turned to takeover by stealth from within.

Once the Soviets became a viable nuclear power, it was clear that both sides understood MAD.

I see no reason why nuclear war in CIV should not work the same way.

[ancient]

actually it was more like 7, and umm hasnt this been on the top long enough?

[JellyDonut]

You should have to aim your nukes at likely targets and it should take a turn to re-aim them.

[Rasputin]

nuke war doesnt hav ethe same consequences i nTurn based games, as you can stockpile enough nukes to tkat the enemy out without him having time to launch a retalitary strike.. in real world as soon a sa launch is detected by satellites , your enemy will launch back ...

[Your.Master]

I think that in a way Nuclear War SHOULD be an end of the world type thing, not really ending the game, but a huge regression. You're going to lynch me, I know. Some of the most fun games I had in Civ 2 involved a Nuclear War with a long-time (from an ally-war shortly after contact) enemy resulting in massive global warming. At first, it would be a very tense war with HUGE destruction. Then, global warming would strike and war would slow down considerably. Cities would starve, small ones would disappear, major cities nuked would also disappear with the devastated population, infrastructure, and polluted desert surroundings. Until masses of engineers could be produced to clear pollution and transform the terrain immediately around your civilization, every civ in the world would decline, military would disband as cities disappeared and production was truncated by pollution and land-transformation. The situation was very tense. I suggest that in civ 3 technological regression should take place, and as empires are split any spare civ slots should be filled by outlying members of former civs who have lost contact with the central government (If the central U.S. was nuked, I'd imagine the East and West would emerge as separate entities). Also, EVERY civ should be afflicted with a severe and undying hatred of the nuclear aggressors. During the war, other nations will get PO'd and will either take a side or try to destroy the countries. Launchers of Nukes should receive severe social backlashes, great possibility of civil war, and partisan spies trying to dismantle nukes. If the end of the world happens, the planet will just have to rebuild. If you don't like Nuclear War by another 2 civs destroying your world, your just going to have to capture one of the civs (or maybe the new diplomacy options will allow you to broker a peace treaty).

[Ralf]

Below is a deliberate doube-post - but, it fits in under this topic as well. It was originally posted in the Revised Nuclear Warfare for Civ3 thread.

I like the idea of of point-and-click targeted ICBM:s provided that...

A/ You cannot exploit the limitations of turn-based games, by completely destroy a similar ICBM-equipped empire, before it is his turn to counterstrike. Point-and-click ICBM:s must be connected with the simultaneous attacks MAD-feature - that is: all ICBM attacks only gets executed after the attacked empire also have had a change of launching a similar point-and-click sequence (IF he has ICBM:s, that is) In short: MAD = Mutually Assured Destruction.

B/ the SDI-defence is still there for nuclear-attack immunity. The more nucs you have though, the less effective these SDI-defences becomes. For complete SDI-safety you cannot build & own any nucs at all. I realize that some civers gets pissed off by this weighted trade-off. But, I lend my arguments from the man himself:

"Those who make use of the sword, shall die by the sword" (Jesus Christ).

In other words: You cannot launch huge amounts of ICBM:s, and then except to sit tight & safe behind 100% effective SDI-defenced cities. Its also about game-balance and better game-challenge.

C/ they dont try to "make a game within a game" of this. Keep it simple - just implement the quintessential idea, without too many distractive details.

[dennis580]

I like your idea of making nuclear weapons much more devestating. Though I totally disagree with transfering the wonder to the closet city. That's just stupid. The wonder should also be destroyed too.

On the flip side the penalty for launching nuclear weapons should be absoloutely extreme. All Civs in the game immediately delare War on you for the REST OF THE GAME, although they are not allowed to retaliate with nuclear weapons be cause the pollution,radiation or a nuclear accident could harm neighboring civs.

If somebody does choose to retaliate with nuclear weapons they would face the same penalty as mention above.

[korn469]

dennis580

check out the Revised Nuclear Warfare for Civ3 thread...that is where most of the discussion is going on right now about this

[Executor]

Originally posted by dennis580
I like your idea of making nuclear weapons much more devestating. Though I totally disagree with transfering the wonder to the closet city. That's just stupid. The wonder should also be destroyed too.

On the flip side the penalty for launching nuclear weapons should be absoloutely extreme. All Civs in the game immediately delare War on you for the REST OF THE GAME, although they are not allowed to retaliate with nuclear weapons be cause the pollution,radiation or a nuclear accident could harm neighboring civs.

If somebody does choose to retaliate with nuclear weapons they would face the same penalty as mention above.

This is a great idea, now I won't have to worry about the Senate signing any more peace treaties when I begin my final offensive.

[JellyDonut]

You shouldn't be at war with the target civ for the rest of the game. Japan is one of America's closest allys right now.

[Dida]

A good way to prevent the Nuke-and-Paradrop thing and to implement the MAD is to make it such, that the nuke you launched at another player does not hit him until that player's turn.
So, if player A launches nuke at Player B, it does not hit until player B's turn. At the beginning of B's turn, he will be informed that a nuclear missle is coming in, and is required to respond. After he enters all the command, (launch back, evacuate, etc), the missle hits his cities, and the game procceed as usual.

[Spoe]

Perhaps a new wonder, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, automatically built in the first city hit by a nuke that makes subsequent nuclear usage more expensive in outrage?

I'd like to see a two tier system of tactical nukes that would kill a stack but at most kill a building in a city and strategic arms that need to be pretargeted on a map location and cannot be launched until a turn after retargeting and would cause large amounts of damage to a city and surroundings. Both would cause pollutions of some sort in surrounding locations.

FWIW, some nuclear weapons triva.
The current US arsenal (both active and inactive stockpile) ranges in yield from 300 tons to 9 megatons (.3 - 9000 kilotons), with 700 of some 9600 with yields over 350 kilotons. That's 2000 warheads on ICBMs, 3456 warheads on SLBMs, 1750 warhead on strategic bombers, 1670 tactical warheads. In all of US nuclear history the largest device in the inventory was the Mk-41 bomb at 25 megatons; the smallest was the Mk-54 warhead for "suitcase" nukes and the M-388 Davey Crockett recoiless rifle at 10 tons yield and weighing approximately 50 lbs. The heaviest was the Mk-17/Mk-24 at 21 tons weight.

The Soviets exploded a 50 megaton device (also one of the cleanest devices) in 1961. This is the largest nuclear explosion in history. This was a lower yield version of a 100 megaton design, that if detonated, would have released 25% as much fallout as all other nuclear explosions combined.

[Sandman]

Regarding the nuclear aspect, I'd like to see a civilian nuclear bunker which would allow most of the population of the city to be saved from the blast. Both sides in the Cold War considered building them, but they were dropped because the other side would view it as an act of aggression.
The city and the surrounding terrain would still be wrecked and the survivors would still have to deal any of the suggested radiation effects. The bunker would have to be very expensive and time-consuming to build, and would not work against a nuke planted by a spy.
Perhaps the bunker could also reduce the number of citizens made unhappy by nuclear weapons.
How does this idea sound?

[Mech Assassin]

If the targeting/hitting percentage idea would be used, I think, there should be an ability to develop more missile technology. As you develop better missiles, the hitting percentage goes up (till 95% at least). Then, you should also develop better nukes (like in AC).

First you get WWIIish Nukes (Fission Warheads), that can only destroy wooden cities (it light up all buildings in fire at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It didn't just wipe them out as todays nuke would), then today's Nukes (Fusion Warheads) that wipe out any city and surroundings with one strike. Then futures Anti-Matter Warhead, that just annihilates everything in the area and turns the entire area into pollutated ocean.