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Update Nukes to Destroy (temporarily) Cities


Talus
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Problem:

Nukes should feel more impactful. They destroy a good amount of infra, but in wars infra is not nearly as important as the improvements that they helped support. Destroying 2 improvements is a slap on the wrist and does not reflect the true devastation of a real nuke.

Solution:

Nukes destroy 90% of a city's improvements, 90% of the infrastructure, and completely disables the city (improvements and income). To bring a city back online, the nation must invest in Radiation Cleanup. Radiation Cleanup requires a variety of resources like lead, gas, food, and cash. The cost varies based on the number of cities that the nation has. The radiation is too intense for cleanup efforts for the first 10 days after being nuked. Nothing may be done to the city until Radiation Cleanup is completed (no buying infra, land, improvements, etc.) While the city is irradiated, it contributes nothing to the nation score.

Balance Thoughts:

There have been concerns that nukes do not feel significant enough in this game. Some people were recommending that nukes should destroy (delete) a city and this would be the next best thing.

Some people have been asking to delete cities. Presumably this is so that they can drop down and participate in the war grinder or find better raid targets. Rather than deleting their city, they could just leave a nuked city to its green glow indefinitely.

This also addresses concerns about wars lasting entirely too long. If a nation gets nuked, their fighting capability is seriously diminished since they no longer have access to that city's improvement contributions. Additionally, the cost of Radiation Cleanup could help burn through nation/alliance war chests more quickly to facilitate a swift resolution of the war.

A nation could have a bunch of irradiated cities, declare on someone, and then pay for Radiation Cleanup for all their cities suddenly boosting their score. While this could be done, it would be incredibly expensive and not worth it unless someone just really wanted to fight that person who is normally out of range.

Larger nations may be able to shrug off a nuked city more easily than smaller nations since they contribute a smaller amount to their overall military and resource production. However, the cost of restoring the nuked city will be much higher for the larger nation since Radiation Cleanup varies based on the number of cities. They will also find themselves more easily pulled down into the grinder as their NS decreases due to the 0 NS contribution of their nuked city.

This style of nuke may be viewed as overpowered, but really nukes SHOULD be overpowered. However, the cost of nukes may need to be increased to reflect their new destructive force.

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How about we just make it so nukes lock you out of your account for 24 hours so they feel more impactful

also if you actually want to make a suggestion buffing nukes I suggest not starting with going from destroying 2 improvements to destroying 36 improvents (vs 2k infra) which most nations will start with if nukes are being used.

Edited by KingGhost
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1 hour ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

This would just lead to people nuke turreting each other, as that'd be a lot more effective than fighting conventional wars. If you're destroying 9/10ths of the city's imps, you're invariably also destroying any max capacity mil in there.

Duh, nukes should be more powerful for their cost. Currently it cost about the same amount in resources as it does in infra destroyed, if you target cities with <2000 infra.

 

1 hour ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

It's simply bad game design if you can undo the substantial amount of effort and coordination that goes into winning conventional wars by engaging in a style that's not much more than just click a button to buy the nuke, and another to launch it.

This tells me you don't know how and when nukes are launched. You can only launch one per day and disables you for 24 hours to even do anything else with that opponent. It's not like you can spam click them.

 

1 hour ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

Furthermore, the recent changes, whether for good or bad, are already going to make wars more resource-intensive to wage. So I think that you're overlooking the impact that update is going to have by wanting YET ANOTHER (on top of the several that have been added by this point) resource sink to be added. 

Okay, it's not like top 50 alliances have infinite cash flow or anything. Why should getting a tax from 200+ members ever complain about resource costs?

 

41 minutes ago, KingGhost said:

also if you actually want to make a suggestion buffing nukes I suggest not starting with going from destroying 2 improvements to destroying 36 improvents (vs 2k infra) which most nations will start with if nukes are being used.

Better build a vital defense system if you don't want to be nuked. Don't get on here and spread those tears of 2500+ infra cities.

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Sure make the nukes cost around 1-2 billion dollars each, and then I will think about possibly supporting the OP.

Nukes do an appropriate amount of damage for their cost, I personally pay more resources to launch a full naval attack than launching a nuke.  If you wanted to increase the number of improvements they kill to like 5, to make them more viable, I would support that. 

Or make different kinds of nukes, one that targets infra, and one that targets improvements and a balanced one that targets both, I would also be supportive of that.  But to just make them super overpowered is silly, and as stated above it will turn wars into people launching nukes at each other every 12 turns.

Also Deulos, the VDS really doesn't do much, and I can say this as one of 5 nations in the game that has eaten over 100 nukes and has had the VDS for about 95% of those nukes.  My VDS went 4 for 48 at one point during Knightfall.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Deulos said:

Duh, nukes should be more powerful for their cost. Currently it cost about the same amount in resources as it does in infra destroyed, if you target cities with <2000 infra.

Yea, no surprise you can't nuke a low infra city and walk away with a profit. Do you want to be able to naval 1000 infra with 300 ships and walk out with a positive too? All attacks have a threshold where if you dip below it, the economic damage you inflict upon a foe is lesser than what it cost you to do that attack in the first place. This isn't a bad thing (given proper balance, and not some stuff you see going on currently. E.G: Naval casualties). And if it were to be an issue (which it's not, for reasons I'll elaborate below), the sensible approach would be to simply reduce the cost of nukes, and not make them doomsday devices as OP suggested.

It's also a good thing that they're a bit on the pricier end. For one thing, it makes it so that they don't completely render missiles obsolete, given that most people view them (and do indeed treat them) as a step up from missiles. Especially given that ID's are often built due to their inexpensiveness and good enough reliability at what they do. This is in contrast with VDS', which are substantially more expensive and less reliable at what they do, and thus aren't built as often as ID's. Secondly; yes, nukes (and to a lesser extent, missiles), should be more expensive to use relative to conventional attacks, in regards to value destroyed in contrast to resources spent. For one thing, conventional attacks require you to have said unit to inflict damage with, which is a higher upfront cost compared to that of one-off weapons. Secondly, that military often has to face off other military in order to do their attacks, incurring further losses on themselves, and mitigating the damage they do in turn. Missiles/Nukes have none of these considerations when you're using them. The only ones they have is whether the other guy has an ID or VDS, and whether the infra you're killing is valued more than the ordnance you're using. Given all the above (plus guaranteed improvement killing, and radiation for nukes, and selective improvement killing for missiles), it is a fair trade off that you have to consider whether using one is economically viable or not. Especially since, again, this is a consideration for all attacks.

And as a final note regarding that, as it's worth mentioning; the threshold is relatively high at the moment due to the inflated nature of the current market. Usually, it'd be at least a couple hundred infra lower. That threshold is also not that big of a problem given the current situation, since a lot of people stacked infra higher than they otherwise would, due to the duration of the NAP. So it really balances itself out in that regard.

2 hours ago, Deulos said:

This tells me you don't know how and when nukes are launched. You can only launch one per day and disables you for 24 hours to even do anything else with that opponent. It's not like you can spam click them.

I know exactly how and when nukes are used. To the point where I elaborated exactly on how and when to use them on internal guides (which I reckon is more than what 95% of the alliances out there write about them, which would be "don't use unless you're losing and want to shred some infra"). In fact, and just as an example, you can use nukes as a way to get rid of a would-be pinner, and allow yourself to use your beige time to build stuff (either conventional military, or nukes/missiles to turret more). I've myself used nukes for that exact purpose, and to do either or of the listed (usually both at the same time) several times last war.

It wouldn't be done overnight. Obviously not. But wars aren't over overnight either. They go on for weeks, if not for a month or two. Which is ample enough time to get the volume necessary for what I mentioned. Never mind if you already have a stockpile built up prior to a war.

And because I think you didn't actually realize it; that snippet you quoted was elaborating based on the the functionality OP suggested they should have, rather than the functionality they currently have. I wouldn't mind them killing more improvements, as was suggested above. But the focus of my text was why the OP's suggestion was a bad suggestion, rather than a comment on how to rebalance nukes.

2 hours ago, Deulos said:

Okay, it's not like top 50 alliances have infinite cash flow or anything. Why should getting a tax from 200+ members ever complain about resource costs?

Resources are, in fact, finite; even for top 50 alliances. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of those AA's don't tax their members 100/100 (which is what you seem to be alluding to) constantly (if at all), or necessarily even have a high tax rate to begin with. So those AA's are neither gathering the amount of revenue you seemingly think the do, nor do they have the amount of resources to sustain those PLUS all of the stuff that's been added. There's a reason why you, for example, don't see those AA's spamming Spy Satellites, Advanced/City Planning, or cities outright, in spite of the desirability of all of those.

Edited by Shiho Nishizumi
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I think nukes do a fair amount of damage for their cost. That being said i do think they should disable a city's power for a certain amount of time. Like say 2-4 weeks. This way they can actually have a meaningful effect militarily. Right now they are only really used when you are losing a war and don't have many other options.

Also nukes should destroy some of the military present in that city. For example if a nation with 20 citys with equal military city builds gets nuked then they loss 1/20th of each military unit.

Edited by lightside
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1 hour ago, lightside said:

I think nukes do a fair amount of damage for their cost. That being said i do think they should disable a city's power for a certain amount of time. Like say 2-4 weeks. This way they can actually have a meaningful effect militarily. Right now they are only really used when you are losing a war and don't have many other options.

Also nukes should destroy some of the military present in that city. For example if a nation with 20 citys with equal military city builds gets nuked then they loss 1/20th of each military unit.

Think about this Lightside... if a nuke wipes out a city for say 14 days.  that means that a group of 3 nations in 1 war can completely wipe out 12 cities in a war, if you actually filled your war slots and are fighting 8 people at once, then they can coordinate and take out 32 cities, which means you can literally take a nation out of the game for 9-10 days with a little nuke coordination.   Which again, has just made conventional warfare obsolete, because all people would be doing is launching nukes at each other.

FYI, this is why people are down voting you.

Side note, when did the down votes come back?

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I think the OP has a point regarding how nukes are viewed and their impact in warfare, but at the same time costs need to be raised significantly to keep it from being abusive. Like other people have pointed out, raising building costs is a good way to balance it if it comes to this but I don't think that's enough. If a nuke is going to destroy/disable a city to that extent, it should have larger costs in MAPs so the cap would have to be raised, which itself leads to other problems in warfare. Otherwise imagine if every day you could disable a city for 10+ days in a global war. How long until nations aren't functional anymore?

 

 

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20 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Think about this Lightside... if a nuke wipes out a city for say 14 days.  that means that a group of 3 nations in 1 war can completely wipe out 12 cities in a war, if you actually filled your war slots and are fighting 8 people at once, then they can coordinate and take out 32 cities, which means you can literally take a nation out of the game for 9-10 days with a little nuke coordination.   Which again, has just made conventional warfare obsolete, because all people would be doing is launching nukes at each other.

FYI, this is why people are down voting you.

Side note, when did the down votes come back?

I think there is a fine balance. It makes sense that a city shouldn't just go back to normal right after being nuked. It should take some time. How long it should take I don't know. At minimum it should take at least 7 days. In the example you gave if a nation did that then it would make sense they should struggle for awhile. After all they declared 5 offensive wars badly and at the same time had 3 defensive wars going on at the same time. 

That being said I do think nukes just need more of a military effect then what they currently do.

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29 minutes ago, lightside said:

I think there is a fine balance. It makes sense that a city shouldn't just go back to normal right after being nuked. It should take some time. How long it should take I don't know. At minimum it should take at least 7 days. In the example you gave if a nation did that then it would make sense they should struggle for awhile. After all they declared 5 offensive wars badly and at the same time had 3 defensive wars going on at the same time. 

That being said I do think nukes just need more of a military effect then what they currently do.

They do have a long term effect, the pollution caused by a nuke hampers its ability to make money for what 1-2 weeks?  I dont remember how long it takes for the effect to wear off.

It's not declared 5 offensive wars badly, its declaring 5 offensive wars on nuke capable nations, which at your size should be close to 100% of the people in your war range.

The advantage to this I guess, is now people who are getting nuked, will be beiging their nukers asap, as to not completely lose their ability to fight.  The new meta would be everyone has 50 nukes, and wars come down to whose VDS has better RNG.

Edited by Sweeeeet Ronny D
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4 hours ago, Deulos said:

Duh, nukes should be more powerful for their cost. Currently it cost about the same amount in resources as it does in infra destroyed, if you target cities with <2000 infra.

 

This tells me you don't know how and when nukes are launched. You can only launch one per day and disables you for 24 hours to even do anything else with that opponent. It's not like you can spam click them.

 

Okay, it's not like top 50 alliances have infinite cash flow or anything. Why should getting a tax from 200+ members ever complain about resource costs?

 

Better build a vital defense system if you don't want to be nuked. Don't get on here and spread those tears of 2500+ infra cities.

I'm the econ head of a (just about) top 50 alliance.

 

I want my infinite cash flow.

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5 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Think about this Lightside... if a nuke wipes out a city for say 14 days.  that means that a group of 3 nations in 1 war can completely wipe out 12 cities in a war, if you actually filled your war slots and are fighting 8 people at once, then they can coordinate and take out 32 cities, which means you can literally take a nation out of the game for 9-10 days with a little nuke coordination.   Which again, has just made conventional warfare obsolete, because all people would be doing is launching nukes at each other.

FYI, this is why people are down voting you.

Side note, when did the down votes come back?

If your nation gets nuked 32 times, I kinda feel like you should be out of the game for a while. The cost associated with doing something like that is insane.

4 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

They do have a long term effect, the pollution caused by a nuke hampers its ability to make money for what 1-2 weeks?  I dont remember how long it takes for the effect to wear off.

It's not declared 5 offensive wars badly, its declaring 5 offensive wars on nuke capable nations, which at your size should be close to 100% of the people in your war range.

The advantage to this I guess, is now people who are getting nuked, will be beiging their nukers asap, as to not completely lose their ability to fight.  The new meta would be everyone has 50 nukes, and wars come down to whose VDS has better RNG.

So your 32 city nation is unable to make money for 11 days per nuke and oh no, maybe you lost a farm and a market. There's a reason that people consider nukes to be a loser's last ditch effort.

8 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Sure make the nukes cost around 1-2 billion dollars each, and then I will think about possibly supporting the OP.

Nukes do an appropriate amount of damage for their cost, I personally pay more resources to launch a full naval attack than launching a nuke.  If you wanted to increase the number of improvements they kill to like 5, to make them more viable, I would support that. 

Or make different kinds of nukes, one that targets infra, and one that targets improvements and a balanced one that targets both, I would also be supportive of that.  But to just make them super overpowered is silly, and as stated above it will turn wars into people launching nukes at each other every 12 turns.

Also Deulos, the VDS really doesn't do much, and I can say this as one of 5 nations in the game that has eaten over 100 nukes and has had the VDS for about 95% of those nukes.  My VDS went 4 for 48 at one point during Knightfall.

 

 

Shouldn't a nuke cost more than a naval attack? Right now nukes are just super powered missiles. If people actually want to keep their wimpy nukes, then sure we could add different warheads to the nukes. The current nukes could be tactical nukes and then these improved nukes could by Tsar Bombs. I can't imagine why anyone would actually want to use the old style of nukes though.

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4 minutes ago, Talus said:

There's a reason that people consider nukes to be a loser's last ditch effort.

Ah, yes, let's make nukes the most powerful unit in the game. Sheepy can rename the game, 'Politics and Nukes'. 

Edited by Mr. Goober
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Just now, Mr. Goober said:

Ah, yes, let's make nukes the most powerful unit in the game. Sheepy can rename the game, 'Politics and Nukes'. 

Yes, they should both be the most powerful and most expensive units in the game. Their counter is VDS, spy ops, the cost of creating them, and their 12 MAP cost.

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13 minutes ago, Talus said:

If your nation gets nuked 32 times, I kinda feel like you should be out of the game for a while. The cost associated with doing something like that is insane.

So your 32 city nation is unable to make money for 11 days per nuke and oh no, maybe you lost a farm and a market. There's a reason that people consider nukes to be a loser's last ditch effort.

Shouldn't a nuke cost more than a naval attack? Right now nukes are just super powered missiles. If people actually want to keep their wimpy nukes, then sure we could add different warheads to the nukes. The current nukes could be tactical nukes and then these improved nukes could by Tsar Bombs. I can't imagine why anyone would actually want to use the old style of nukes though.

Completely agree with all this.

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10 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

This would just lead to people nuke turreting each other, as that'd be a lot more effective than fighting conventional wars. If you're destroying 9/10ths of the city's imps, you're invariably also destroying any max capacity mil in there. The remaining mil is unusable due to the city being disabled. As such, there'd be no point in using anything else at all, given that a nuke would materially or effectively wipe them out anyways.

It's simply bad game design if you can undo the substantial amount of effort and coordination that goes into winning conventional wars by engaging in a style that's not much more than just click a button to buy the nuke, and another to launch it.

As for long wars; that issue is a political one, not a mechanical one. Furthermore, the recent changes, whether for good or bad, are already going to make wars more resource-intensive to wage. So I think that you're overlooking the impact that update is going to have by wanting YET ANOTHER (on top of the several that have been added by this point) resource sink to be added. 

And no, there's no reason why nukes should be overpowered. Ideally, nothing should be overpowered, as the main concern in games is to have good balance between the different units/tools at hand. The priorities in games are balance because ultimately, that's what leads to an enjoyable game experience; not realism to a fault. Especially not when "realism" has been forfeited several times by now in this game.

Even now, nuke turrets is still something that happens occasionally. Some people like to just sit at depleted NS levels and lob super missiles to harass their opponents.

The current game meta is, "Nukes are for losers and defeating a nation is bad." That's just silly. This would be a step toward fixing that.

As for making them a better strategy than conventional war, that would be true if you had unlimited funds. Remember though, that even if a nation gets nuked, they're down but not out. Their remaining cities are still very much capable of waging war. The nuked nation will just be dropped down to fight a lower city tier of enemies.

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2 minutes ago, Talus said:

As for making them a better strategy than conventional war, that would be true if you had unlimited funds. Remember though, that even if a nation gets nuked, they're down but not out. Their remaining cities are still very much capable of waging war. The nuked nation will just be dropped down to fight a lower city tier of enemies.

If the city that gets nuked doesn't count for score, then nukes would actually become a really viable method of contracting score for downdeclares. People would legitimately coordinate allied nuke bombardments for that purpose alone.

Rules notwithstanding of course.

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2 hours ago, Talus said:

Even now, nuke turrets is still something that happens occasionally. Some people like to just sit at depleted NS levels and lob super missiles to harass their opponents.

The current game meta is, "Nukes are for losers and defeating a nation is bad." That's just silly. This would be a step toward fixing that.

As for making them a better strategy than conventional war, that would be true if you had unlimited funds. Remember though, that even if a nation gets nuked, they're down but not out. Their remaining cities are still very much capable of waging war. The nuked nation will just be dropped down to fight a lower city tier of enemies.

They're not saying Nuke turreting itself is a problem, they're saying nuke turreting becoming the primary strategy of the game is problematic. It might be a thing that happens in the current game, but it is not an effective means to win a war, just a lazy person's way to deal damage.

The current meta is "Nukes are good for dealing damage against superior opponents with expensive infra, getting sitters off you whilst in beige, and baiting people into beiging you."

Nukes becoming a large part of conventional warfare kills strategy, makes it hard for small/new alliances without large bank stockpiles able to compete in war, and ignores that they already serve a purpose in the current war system, a change in price would be a sufficient change, if any is necessary to begin with.

The new nukes would also make it possible for pinned nations to drag their pinners by destroying the military improvements (along with the military inside).

Edit: Scarf brings up a good point, if I'm a 32 city whale with the score of a city 20, I'm declaring on 5 city 16's right as my cities start reactivating again.

Edited by Hime-sama
added words for clarification
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1 minute ago, Sir Scarfalot said:

If the city that gets nuked doesn't count for score, then nukes would actually become a really viable method of contracting score for downdeclares. People would legitimately coordinate allied nuke bombardments for that purpose alone.

Rules notwithstanding of course.

I do wonder about whether the cost and damage associated with nuking allies would be enough to justify these wars. I do see how an initial flurry of nukes would encourage whales into delaying the rebuild of their disabled cities so that they can fight in the trenches again.

Imagine a 32 city nation getting nuked 12 times which grants the option to fight the rest of the war down in the 20 city range again. Their cities aren't deleted, so they could rebuild once the alliance war is over.

The new nukes primary impact is shifting city tiers. Drag down the enemy alliance's whales into the grinder. The enemy can opt to stay and fight in the grinder or spend resources trying to climb away.

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