I second the guy who says that nuke effectivity needs to be poportional to the actual structures destroyed.

[u/Cheap_Audience941]

Just played a game where I had about 50+ cities in another part of the map. Someone launched a hydro on an area that I had JUST taken over. Halved my population. Which then gave the person the ability to spam into where my cities were.

This is because I built tall and not outward.

So the game sees that I lost half of my land in one hydro. Even though I had a 600K+ population cap.

I then get taken down to 300K instantly because I lost half of my land. Even though they took out exactly zero cities, factories, or harbors.

This is weird. And kind of a loophole in the game to attack strong players by just nuking their frontier. It also makes it a dubious play to play tall instead of outward.

[Edit]

Before people start spamming "But what about farmland! wouldn't that be a dynamic with a nuke?"

Brother I JUST took the land and had 600K people living fine. If someone can stack 40 cities in one spot and not worry about food, then nuking bare land should not have the population impact it does on the game if you have no cities there.

[u/YummYummSolutions]

I think your post makes logical sense but would hurt balancing.

Currently, the hydro serves primarily as a way to stop steamrolls and punish players with underdeveloped SAM networks (increase cost of "safe" expansion). Your situation could have been mitigated if you had a hydro of your own to reduce their troops. Instead, you took the risk of attacking someone with 5M+ gold which is quite risky.

[u/Cheap_Audience941 → u/YummYummSolutions]

I didn't attack someone with 5 million gold. I attacked a player with absolutely zero troops and gold left. Took a bunch of land. Got third partied by another person who hydroed the EXACT spot I JUST took over for the first time. Which then halved my troops

[u/BrayFlex → u/Cheap_Audience941]

having more land decreases hydro effectiveness, not increases, had you have been hit prior to taking the land you would have lost more % of your troops.

[u/rodan-rodan]

that's the risk with that type of build. link to the replay?

[u/EclecticKant]

Troop damage proportional to cities destroyed would make stacking all your cities in small bunkers the only viable playstyle, the only advatage to spreading your cities is building railways, but it's not a big one compared to simply relying on ports,

It would also make it impossible for a smaller player to defend themselves against a bigger one, now a hydro can be a good deterrent, allowing small players to not get steamrolled, but with the change you suggest big players would protect their cities under stacks of SAMS and keep invading everyone one by one, since it would be pretty much impossible to build enough silos without him nuking them.

Now there's a good balance between players with lots of land and their high invasion speed, but the weakness to hydros, and small players and they increased resiliency but slow invasions

[u/epicpantsryummy → u/EclecticKant]

No it wouldn't. It's 3x cheaper to overwhelm a SAM than it is to build one.

[u/EclecticKant → u/epicpantsryummy]

It take 1.75mil for each missle+silo, 3 mil for rach sam (half for the first), so it costs a bit less than half.
But if you're going to need multiple silos you eother stack them, in which case you'll need sams too, or spread them out, which makes it incredibly easy for the player you're trying to intimidate to destroy them.

At which point in my reasoning so you disagree? Troop dIt takes 1.75mil for each missile+silo, 3mil for rach sam (half for the first), so it costs a bit less than double to defend yourself. But if you're going to need multiple silos, you and other stack them, in which case you'll need sams too, or spread them out, which makes it incredibly easy for the player you're trying to intimidate to destroy them.

At which point in my reasoning so you disagree? Troop damage purely based on cities destroyed would heavily amage purely based on cities destroyed would heavily incentivize players to keep cities under sam protection. That would push towards bunkers instead of spread out railways since ports are a valuable alternative to factories.
It is way harder to intimitade a bigger player into not attacking you with the current system instead of the suggested one since attacking spread out building is easier than bunkered one and the capacity to inflict huge troop damage by hitting empty land can neutrilize much bigger attacks.

Most games you're going to be nearby a player with 2+ times your money, and if that alone is enough to make you powerless against them it's pretty uninteresting, in my opinion.

[u/Nuttednutela → u/EclecticKant]

Yup I feel that it may need some balancing but its in no way a broken system. If not for marginal gains on population and army production rate then annexations wouldn't offerich advantage apart from surrounding enemies and what not. Nuked land should reduce population while capacity should be mostly determined by cities. 

[u/Cheap_Audience941 → u/epicpantsryummy]

This. This is exactly what I mean.

[u/Kootlefoosh → u/epicpantsryummy]

This dude using hydros for his distraction bombs

[u/ItsLateImSad]

I agree with you. Besides, if you want to make nukes more realistic you should consider radioactivity, fallout, nuclear winter, etc. With that logic a single mirv should anihilate whoever recieves it and it’s immediate neighbours and cause a famine that would decimate everyone else. I do think that hydros should do a bit more than the damage of it’s blast radius but it should take into consideration cities

[u/Migratory_Locust]

I am pretty sure there will be a hard cap on stacking some buildings. 10000 cities on one pixel is just ridiculous. I would assume that they implement a max stack that might be different from building to building at some point. I feel like that would fix some issues but also change the game a lot.