09-11-2001 22:56									#1
	Razing versus Nuking Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Why is it that you can raze every city on a continent and nobody will care, but if you let one nuke fly, the whole world declares war on you? Let's examine the differences between these methods of mass destruction:

Nukes: kill half population and half of occupying units
Razing: kills entire population after you've killed all occupying units

Aside from the pollution aspect of nuclear weapons, nukes seem to be about equivalent to razing half a city. And if you could declare war for causing pollution, I'd kill every AI civ I ever played against. There's something deeply disturbing about watching the Americans genocidally cleansing an entire continent of Germans... and then Romans... and then Russians....

Suggestions:

1) Razing cities should be an atrocity, with the weight of the atrocity proportional to the number of citizens slaughtered. Nuking a city should still be an atrocity, with the same weighting (according to civilians killed) plus a fudge factor for that extra global warming and because everybody's nervous about nuclear war.
2) Nukes should be more powerful, as many others have opined.
3) Make tactical nukes do something different from ICBMs. Maybe ICBMs are good for mass destruction of cities and tactical nukes are good for picking off a stack of units in the field. Tac nukes would still be an atrocity, but less of one since they don't hurt civilians.

Hmm, that's all I can come up with. I know I was going somewhere with this, but I can't remember now. Let me know what you think.

Xerxes

	09-11-2001 23:01									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

As it is now, whoever's city you raze will likely hate you forever. Whether razing affects the opinion of other, uninvolved civs, I don't know. Don't know if they get mad about nuking either.

	10-11-2001 01:18									#3
	Got spare money?

Well, I don't think a unrelated civ will get mad at you for razing a city.

And I think it shouldn't have an "atrocity" impact on all other civs, since (at least I think so) you convert all citizens in workers, so you don't really kill anybody.

	10-11-2001 01:29									#4
	Increase Your PM Length

So you just turned an entire population into slave labor? Oh, that's not an atrocity

As some other people have said, the UN right now isn't very well developed, except as a means to win diplomatically (not a very fulfilling way to win, either). Perhaps, if the UN feature is expanded, razing cities could become an atrocity.

In the ancient, and middle ages, razing a city isn't really an atoricty - it's standard practice. So in these ages, razing a city would only affect the city's former civ for reputation. However, with the advent of the UN, there could be an option such as "Hold Geneva Convention" or "Establish War Crimes Tribunal", which would effectively make mass genocide or enslavement an atrocity which would severely drop your reputation with all other civs.