Nuclear War

Overview

Nuclear War is based on the card game of the same name and is a satirical turn-based strategy game simulation of an end-of-the-world scenario fought mostly with nuclear weapons.The game is played between five players, four of which are computer controlled and chosen from a selection of 10 satirised "World Leaders" of the past decades (like Ronnie Raygun aka Ronald Reagan or Gorbachef aka Mikhail Gorbachev). Each leader is given a country with five different populated cities and once a leader's five cities are destroyed, he is out of the game. The object of the game for the player is to build up a decent arsenal, protect his own cities and destroy the enemy ones by hurling propaganda or flaming nuclear death at them to be the last surviving player at the end.

Gameplay

After the selection (whether manually or randomly by the computer) of the four opponent leaders the player gets to the "Diplomacy Terminal"-screen. Here is where all aspects of the game are decided. In the middle of the screen you see your own country with its cities and the population of the cities. Your four opponents are displayed in each corner togehter with a red rating number showing their feelings toward you. The rating numbers go from 0 to 99, a "0" would mean the leader hates everything about you, a "50" would mean the leader retains neutral feelings toward you. The smiley face lets you set your level of diplomacy. There are five different smilies(benevolent, friendly, neutral, unfriendly, hostile) you can set, each representing a different attitude which you can adopt toward any global leader.

To see the countries of the opponent world leaders and their cities together with their population just click on the appropriate leader's face. By clicking on a leader's face also the rating numbers of the other three leaders change while the leader you selected has none and you can see now how the other three leaders feel toward the one you have selected. Moreover you can see what action the selected leader did take in the last round. So if the leader is hostile to you and did launch a missile or start a bomber in the last round you can assume that your cities will be the target of a nuclear strike in the next round and you can deploy, if available, a nuclear defense system to protect your cities.

A factory icon orders your obedient citizens to build missiles, warheads, bombers and defense systems. Production is at a maximum when you have five well populated cities and at a minimum when you have only one city left. So try to hold the population on a high level and protect your cities from destruction. It takes one turn to build war components or defense systems. Items built will be listet on the Teletype machine of the Diplomacy Terminal at the begining of the next round and a green light will appear besides the built war components or defense systems. Do not build weapons twice in a row, this will be cosidered as stockpiling and all global leaders will automatically distrust you, even the friendly-minded ones.

The radio mast icon will start a propaganda campaign against a selected enemy city in the next round which can lead to that from 1 to 10 million people leave their homeland for your country. But using the propaganda tool can have some side effects since the chance is large that a propaganda campaign misfires. So it can happen that instead of gaining population defectors will leave your country for your enemy or even worser things can occur like a nuclear meltdown of a reactor.

You can also launch nuclear ICBM attacks on your opponents or alternatively deliver warheads by airmail. It will take two rounds to execute a nuclear strike on one of your opponents. Because you have first to ready a carrier like a missile or a bomber and then arm the carrier in the second round with the nuclear payload. Starting bombers has an advantage: they are harder to stop by defense systems and they may carry any combination of warheads that do not exceed the maximum payload capacity, so they can be used for more than a single round and can bomb more than one city. Missiles are only good for a single attack, as they explode with the warhead.

You can choose one action per turn and after you have decided which one of the four possible (whether to build your nuclear arsenal, launch a propagand campaign, ready a defence system or prepare/do a nuclear strike) you will apply you can end your turn. Now the game switches to the "Global Monitor Screen" where an animation sequence for each nation represents what action each leader decided to do for their own country. A printing message on the bottom of the screen explains what each leader is doing and the effects of the action.

There are also some wild cards in the game, some with positive other with negative consequences, that can upset the best laid plans of the cleverest statesmen. Inexplicable occurences that can alter a nation's position are: earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, population explosions, mass defections, forcible ejections, cattletech, flying saucers, 16-ton weight and space cadets.

Characters

Character Name	Satirised public figure	Personality
	Muammar al-Gadaffi	- chaotic - essentially insane - wholly unpredictable - truly random and diverse reactions
	Mahatma Ghandi	- pacifist - successful propagandist - angered easily by nuclear strikes - highly susceptible to lies
	Mikhail Gorbachev	- liar - one of the most difficult global leaders to conquer - hard to gauge: what is going inside him is often not what he is showing outside
	Fidel Castro	- standard personality - likes you if you cultivate friendship with him - hates you if you antagonize him - easy to manipulate
	Jimmy Carter	- pacifist - successful propagandist - angered easy by nuclear strikes - highly susceptible to lies
	Ruhollah Khomeini	- chaotic - essentially insane - wholly unpredictable - truly random and diverse reactions
	Mao Zedong	- standard personality - likes you if you cultivate frienship with him - hates you if you antagonize him - easy to manipulate
	Margaret Thatcher	- warmonger - straight-forward personality - likes you if you nuke her enemies - easy to control
	Ronald Reagan	- warmonger - straight-forward personality - likes you if you nuke his enemies - easy to control
	Richard Nixon	- liar - one of the most difficult global leaders to conquer - hard to gauge: what is going inside him is often not what he is showing outside

Weaponry

Cities

Icon	Population size
	none
	1-4 million people
	5-9 million people
	10-19 million people
	20-29 million people
	over 30 million people
	population becomes so enormous that a "Metropolis" is forced to become a "Domed City"