Samtemdo8 said:
I am watching this trailer and I am just thinking to myself, "So where are the nukes? I thought after World War 3, World War 4 will be fought with Sticks and Stones?"
I guess the world decide to mutually agree not to blow up the world with OP nukes and just want to fight each other the good old fashioned way.
Generally sane nuclear powers don't want to use nukes for exactly this reason. During the cold war, Both the US and Russia had a "No First Strike" Policy. The problem is that both sides were paranoid as hell that the other side would try it anyway just to avoid a counterstrike.
A plausible way to get around that is that one side starts losing badly and decides using tactical nukes might be worth staving off certain defeat. The Tom Clancy Novel "Red Storm Rising" was written during the 1980's(about a non-nuclear WW3) and this starts coming up a lot towards the end, where the Soviet offensive is routed and some of the Soviet Generals start talking about the idea of Tactical nukes to prevent a Western invasion of Russia. Cooler heads ends up prevailing in that case with the book more or less ending in an Armistance.
I'm not fond of Clancy's politics but it's a pretty good read on the subject.
Most creative involving an a full on assault on the US or Russia usually end up having to do some crazy hand waving why the invaded country hasn't launched yet. The original Red Dawn outright implies that both the US and China were nuked by the Russians but neither felt like firing back....for reasons, despite the US mainland being half occupied. The Modern Warfare series didn't really address it at all. Red Alert 2 just handwaved that the Soviets were able to disable the US nuclear system with psychic technology(It's RA2, so it actually works).
OTOH, a Nuclear WW3 game would pretty much be DEFCON.