Why are nukes so weak?

[Dominian]

I just entered the war as the U.S. and then I detonated 45 nuclear devices over Italy. I threw about 5 of them on Rome.

Nothing happened. No army dmg, no infrastructure dmg, no population dmg, no warscore, no penalties, no fallout... a little news article popped up.

I was the firs to get nukes and then I use them on my enemies. How in the name of Gaben does this not end the war? Or the existance of the Italian people, if it's really 45 nukes.

[Wyrtt]

rts rise of nation did it right, Nukes were rare and powerful. But you couldnt spamm them. If total of 10 nukes were used during match all players would lose due to world getting destroyed.

[Unexpected]

it's a new twist on WWII, it's called "the war where no special snowflakes get offended by nukes or germany"

[Freelancer]

Actually, even though the US practically surrounded Japan by 1945, invading the Home Islands would almost be akin to suicide since a fanatic population and fierce resistance would make US casualties spike. An estimated 1 million casualties was expected and that's almost too much for the US. I mean, they are already crazy about their existing 500k casualties. Operation Downfall, the codename for the invasion of Japan, was swept aside for nukes for above reasons

[Mountain Man]

691neil a écrit :

Mountain Man a écrit :

First of all, claiming that there was no "real need" to quickly end the war against Japan exposes your ignorance of history and the atrocities being committed by Japan at the time. As far as the US was concerned, dropping The Bomb was a desperate last resort gambit against a vicious, implacable enemy bent on world domination -- a literal "Do or die" scenario -- and was not done lightly or without a full accounting of the potential consequences. As you said yourself, please don't be stupid.

Secondly, you're still making the mistake of comparing the real-world to a video game. Paradox's number one goal in every game they design is to make it fun, and reducing Hearts of Iron IV down to "Whoever gets nukes first wins the game" would make it not very fun at all

Then don't put them in the game or make them difficult to research - i.e design and balance the gameplay properly. At the moment they are pretty close to useless.

Design and balance the game properly... you mean like toning nukes down so that they're not an instant "I win" button? Good idea. ;)

[Mountain Man]

OGNeutron a écrit :

Mountain Man a écrit :

First of all, claiming that there was no "real need" to quickly end the war against Japan exposes your ignorance of history and the atrocities being committed by Japan at the time. As far as the US was concerned, dropping The Bomb was a desperate last resort gambit against a vicious, implacable enemy bent on world domination -- a literal "Do or die" scenario -- and was not done lightly or without a full accounting of the potential consequences. As you said yourself, please don't be stupid.

Secondly, you're still making the mistake of comparing the real-world to a video game. Paradox's number one goal in every game they design is to make it fun, and reducing Hearts of Iron IV down to "Whoever gets nukes first wins the game" would make it not very fun at all

I would have to disagree, USA by that point pretty much crippled Japan, they were in range of Americans planes, British pushing them back in Burma, China bogging them down, and once the war was ended with Germany, Russia(which actaully did push in) would have gone in and installed a Soviet styled government.

Many argue that the two reasons why USA drop the bombs, was to save resources and stop Russia from taking over, in essence to stop what happened to Korea but without the partitioning.

Learn some history. Japan showed no inclination to surrender (in fact, Japanese culture at the time actually considered it dishonorable to surrender), and it took two nukes before they finally agreed to end hostilities. Tens of thousands were killed in the nuclear attacks, but it's estimated that this saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives that it would have cost to continue fighting Japan through conventional warfare.

[Radioactive]

I'd think the ideal solution would be to make the process of getting the final nuclear techs a lot more difficult in addition to making the eventual process of building and stockpiling nukes massively more resource intensive (perhaps even add some uranium to the map as a secret end game resource)

At that point it would be fair if nukes alone could cause a country to capitulate. Right now the system is a joke. In my 2nd playthrough I managed to get nukes in 1945 as Falangist Poland and I was looking towards ending the war after a victory over Russia (thanks to a rather lucky set of events that left Russia extremely weak). So, I nuked London. UK is demoralized but they fight on. Fair enough, it was only 1 nuke.

WWII ends in 1960. 1960. I've dropped over 50 nukes, at one point in the early 50s I literally nuked every single province held by Ireland... NOTHING. At that point Ireland should be an ocean and yet even they didn't surrender. I can understand that nukes being too powerful would spoil the fun... but when you nuke EVERY single province of a nation, something should happen - if at least nukes affected soldiers or military manpower that would be at least something.

[Rabob]

Nukes are disappointing yeah. I threw 5 nukes on Oslo as Germany and the National Unity was still 85% or so -.-.

At least let there be a total destruction of a factory or population.

They might only be ok in some situations where you are in a trench war basically or you need to clear the ground before paratrooping.

[Divine]

suddenly a fight emerges xD

but what if you drop nukes and spread them out over the diff VP in a country instead of just 1 city? Will their national unity, factories,infrastructure,etc drop even more quickly?

[Verfuhren]

Nukes are whortless. They do nothing but bump down the unity a little. Which is just insane. My last game, when nuked UK back to then stone age. They just shruged whit unity stuck at 15-25% like it was nothing. I like this game but Pardox ♥♥♥♥♥♥ so much up its almost to much to swollow.

Germanyball a écrit :

suddenly a fight emerges xD

but what if you drop nukes and spread them out over the diff VP in a country instead of just 1 city? Will their national unity, factories,infrastructure,etc drop even more quickly?

Nothing at all whit happen. If you are lucky they lose 10% of unity for every nuke. So ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dissapointed it dosnt do ANY DAMAGE AT ALL.

[Miles]

Riot a écrit :

Yeah, nukes are underpowered. I just threw some bombs on USA, who barricaded on their mainland. Now they have ~5% national unity, but since i cant get any of their provinces - they just keep sitting there and soak nazi divisions.

Nukes should drop unity under zero and make enemy surrender.

This is a horrible idea, for the sake of gameplay a nuke being an "i win" button would be terrible.

[N'Zoth]

Karkoff a écrit :

Riot a écrit :

Yeah, nukes are underpowered. I just threw some bombs on USA, who barricaded on their mainland. Now they have ~5% national unity, but since i cant get any of their provinces - they just keep sitting there and soak nazi divisions.

Nukes should drop unity under zero and make enemy surrender.

This is a horrible idea, for the sake of gameplay a nuke being an "i win" button would be terrible.

Nukes shouldn't be an "I win button", but they should do considerable damage to the Man power pool, the infastructure, factories, etc for a long time due to fall out. It's paradox's "Super PG" version of WW2. Because a few stat numbers=an actual bombing.

[Donttouchmyhohos]

Being able to end a war with a nuke would make the game pointless once you get a nuke. If it made enemies surrender the game would be over and it would just be a race for the nuke. There would be no point in war.

[Radioactive]

donttouchmyhohos a écrit :

Being able to end a war with a nuke would make the game pointless once you get a nuke. If it made enemies surrender the game would be over and it would just be a race for the nuke. There would be no point in war.

If you think that's the case, you're an idiot. Rushing nukes is not possible unless you somehow luck out and no one wants to invade you. Even then you could need to invest heavily into air superiority, that and depending on how far away your enemy is, you may need a ground invasion anyways.

Have you even used nukes in HOI4?

[PFC Chamberlain]

Just want everyone to keep in mind, the nukes the game represents are 10 kilotons or less. These aren't going to make wastelands out of entire provinces. Sure, dropping them on cities should be more effective, but you are not going to annihilate enemy armies with them.

It wasn't until the 50's that the hydrogen bombs were developed, which were 1,000x more powerful. It just might take 5 nukes to wreck all of Rome.


In fact, many late-war bombing raids were more destructive.

p.s. Japan had 5 million soldiers preparing to defend their Island, so while they may have been crushed abroad, the prospect of invading them would have likely been costly.

[Donttouchmyhohos]

Radioactive a écrit :

donttouchmyhohos a écrit :

Being able to end a war with a nuke would make the game pointless once you get a nuke. If it made enemies surrender the game would be over and it would just be a race for the nuke. There would be no point in war.

If you think that's the case, you're an idiot. Rushing nukes is not possible unless you somehow luck out and no one wants to invade you. Even then you could need to invest heavily into air superiority, that and depending on how far away your enemy is, you may need a ground invasion anyways.

Have you even used nukes in HOI4?

I guess you suck at the game? Most of the allies gain air superiorority for me. I nuked germany to end the war with no airplanes but to carry the nuke. Must suck being you if you see rage when someone does something you can't. I was denmark btw. So I defended against germany the entire time.