I've got jet fighters, stealth bombers, modern armor, and mechanized infantry against my opponents infantry and fighters. Still, I'm trying to avoid having to use slow moving artillery against his city walls. How do I get rid of those pesky fighters so I can reduce his walls with my bombers?

You just bomb on.
As far as I know, theres no way to get rid of his fighters.
You have to sacrifice a bomber or two, while taking his city.
I never seem to loose more than 0.8 bomber pr. fighter-defended city.. Just fire away, and expect to loose one bomber, have 4-5 intercepted, but surviving, and the rest hitting his defences.

I´d send in the fighters first on an Air Strike mission.

His fighters can intercept your fighters if they´re on interception mode, but your fighters can intercept his fighters as well if you attack his city (don´t know if it also works in air bomb mode, but in air strike mode you can definitely intercept the defending fighters ;)
(done it several times, but of course it all depends on probabilities [I assume the defender first checks if he can intercept your fighters and, if unsuccessful the attacking fighter checks if he can intercept the defending fighters])

As far as I know, fighters only get one intercept chance per turn. So if you have enough stealth bombers, some are bound to make it through! Especially since they have a 50% withdrawal chance.

I personally wouldn't bother with your own fighters, just a huge fleet of stealth bombers.

I dont know if at higher difficulties fighters are more valuable, but at this point (emperor) I rarely use them at all. I might put one or two on intercept in critical cities but for offense I just use as many stealth bombers as possible. As mentioned above even if the enemy has 2-3 fighters in a city I normally don't lose more than 1 bomber per city at most.

I agree that a big stack of bombers rarely loses more than one, and only a few will be unable to complete their mission (or rather, have mission effectiveness reduced) even in a city with 3 fighters and half a dozen SAM Infantry. Don't forget to rest the wounded bombers though!

I send in as many fighter plans as he has air defense units. 2 SAM Infantry + 2 fighters = 4 of my fighters with a stack of bombers, reduce his city defence to nothing then bomb his troops back to the stone age.

By the time I have Stealth Bombers I've usually abandoned Artillery all together.

I send in as many fighter plans as he has air defense units. 2 SAM Infantry + 2 fighters = 4 of my fighters with a stack of bombers, reduce his city defence to nothing then bomb his troops back to the stone age.

By the time I have Stealth Bombers I've usually abandoned Artillery all together.

I seldom use bombers to lower city defense.

I use artillery for land cities and ships for coast cities. Then bombers to weaken garrison units.

Using bombers to lower city defense is costly in healing time and 4-5 artillery do that very well.

:rotfl:

I don't use artillery after flight as it can't keep up with any other modern unit.

By the time I get stealth bombers, I usually relegate my cannons to a city defence role.

I seldom use bombers to lower city defense.

I use artillery for land cities and ships for coast cities. Then bombers to weaken garrison units.

Using bombers to lower city defense is costly in healing time and 4-5 artillery do that very well.

:rotfl:


Artillerys too slow. If I use it at all its on the first enemy city at the declaration of war while I'm still adding to the bomber fleet.

By the time you've delt with the enemys loose troops and hes only left with his defending garrisons I preffer moving at speed. Use the Navy where you can by all means but I'm usually not too strong in Navy terms until I need one.

By the end of most of my recent games I've been averaging 25-35 Stealth Bombers and around 7 Jet Fighters.

Never been caught short of full strength bombers yet (fingers crossed). No messing or spliting the troops. All fighting aircraft are kept in one stack usually with a Medic troop stationed in the same city (not sure if the heal thing works but it feels good ;) ).

Artillerys too slow. If I use it at all its on the first enemy city at the declaration of war while I'm still adding to the bomber fleet.


Yeap.... It's in fact a real problem when Mech inf and armors are in.

But I love have two armies : a ground and naval one. I attack two cities at once!

My air force is splitted and I can't afford to delay air bombing by healing.

Reaching a city can take 1 or 2 more turns with artillery, but allow me to plan a naval attack. Good coordination is the key.

:D

If your delaying air bombing by healing then you don't got enough fighters and bombers :D

Death from above!

:D

If your delaying air bombing by healing then you don't got enough fighters and bombers :D

Death from above!

Yeah... possible.

I usually end the game with 20 bombers, 6-7 jets and about 10 artillery.

Going to get more bombers to how it feels

I aim for 8-15 bombers per attack force. With 8 or so you can reduce their city defenses to 0 and strafe some troops to keep them from counterattacking. Next turn you can pound their troops to half health and take with your tanks. With more than 15 bombers you can reduce both their city defenses and garrison to rubble, and take it all in one turn :)

One good thing to to is always have loose bombers to attack each stack of their ground forces; damaging them reduces the chances they'll be used to counterattack your ground force.

Hmmm, who needs 30 stealth bombers when you can have 30 modern armor with rank 3 collateral damage! Just use 5-10 bombers to reduce city defense, then go nuts with the modern armors.

It's a matter of speed: bombers move instantly and almost never die; tanks only can move 2 squares per turn and are vulnerable to counterattack. I use bombers to soften the defenses, then kill the defenders with tanks. The attack order is usually:

1) With bomber stack selected, bomb defenses to 0
2) Soften up defenders
3) Send in (City Raider I + Barrage II) tanks to reduce health further; you sometimes lose these guys. I usually have about 1 per 5-10 defenders.
4) Take the city with elite tank squadron (usually about 4-6 per army)
5) Airdrop in a Garrison III infantry/mech inf


This way you lose almost none of your elite units, and have 0 wait time between conquering one city and the next. The only guys who take damage are the bombers (who catch up instantly), barrage tanks (replaced from the rear), and 1 turn or so of healing on some of the assault tanks that stay behind. Since they never die, those tanks usually end up with 6-7 promotions by the time I achieve Conquest on a Standard map. Snowball Fun! :)

Another key advantage of bombers is that you can use them to prevent AI counterattacks on your army. Otherwise they have a nasty way of finding exactly which stack of yours is the weakest, and attacking/killing it. The AI won't attack with city-defense units that have been damaged by bombing (at least on Monarch), so you can use bombers to control when and where you'll engage in battle. I usually hit all nearby cities and stacks to prevent these counterattacks against the assault forces. They'll still send scripted counterattacks against your home territory, but those are easily killed with bombers and a few combat tanks.

I am still mastering Monarch difficulty (standard size maps, normal number of AI's), so I don't know how well this works when you move up
the ladder. :)