I'm a fan of big, late game wars in Civ. If I'm ahead and on my way to a win, I'll usually start a tank war just for fun.

One thing I found, especially in hard games where I have to fight (a custom game with all but domination and time VC's turned off), is that stealth bombers are THE unit to have. The are so versatile, mobile, powerful and survivable, I think they become unbalancing.

In a recent game, I had about 25% less military than my two biggest rivals individually, who had an alliance (Together, they had roughly 2.5 times as many units as I did). I knew a war was coming, and to prepare I built a ton of stealth bombers (20-30), a good stack of tanks, and a big enough Navy that I had almost as many ships as one of my opponents. Basically I had no serious troubles defeating these two opponents simultaneously who were more powerful than I, and the key unit for me was the bombers.

I kept my Navy safe in my ports and waited for his ships to come to me. I used fighters/bombers to scout for their approach and would bomb them when they got close to land. Then my ships would pop out of port, kill the enemy stack easily, and pop back into port to repair. Even with the AI's carriers and fighter support, I rarely had a stealth bomber shot down. With a carrier full of fighters, maybe 30% of my bombers would get intercepted - damaged, but not destroyed. The next turn I would set these to heal unless I really needed them. I basically held off a sustained naval attack 2.5 times bigger than my Navy using battleships, a few destroyers, and about 20 stealth bombers. I think I only lost two or three bombers to his carrier fighters and about 30% of my fleet. In contrast, I destroyed all but 20% of both my enemies fleets.

Once his Navy was pretty much gone, his big stacks of land units finally made it to my border citys. The stealth bombers combined with small stacks of tanks make quick work of his superior numbers. The bombers would, again, simply punch down his stacks to 50%, and my tanks would mop them up with little to no casualties.

After you have some stealth bombers in this game, artillery becomes worthless. Artillery can't keep up with tanks, and the bomber's range means a smaller number of units can cover a much larger area for defense or offense. Attacking with artillery to reduce a whole stack will sacrifice the arty 99% of the time - not so with bombers. Bombers can give your defenders a much better chance of success simply by reducing the combat power of a whole stack. Also, with bombers, I don't need to spend promotions on collateral damage improvements and can concentrate on combat, city attack or flanking. I also find little need for gunships, since tanks+mech inf + bomber support can easily take out any enemy stack with up to 2x the number of units your stack has.

So, does anyone else feel this is overpowered? It seems that sam infantry or maybe fighters should get a promotion to improve their chances against stealth bombers. As it is, the rate at which bombers actually get destroyed is very low. The worst that happens is the bomber gets damaged, but 1-2 turns later, it is back at 100%.

The AI isn't always very smart, but Stealth Bombers would be almost as effective against a human opponent, simply because there isn't mechanism in the game that reliably counters them. Since it's so easy to rebase them, capturing the city they're in is not an option.

/discuss

they are a bit unbalanced I must admit. and are not too expensive. I can conquer EVERYTHING with only about 15 stealth bombers and 15 tanks. the only disadvantage they have is offensive intercontinental warfare as they cannot be based in carriers. but the fact you can base them in allied cities makes carriers next to useless aftyer the discovery of stealthbombers. too bad, I like carriers.

You can base them in allied cities?!?

Wowzers! I have yet to build one, but I am anxious to check out that feature. :)

Dave

Use carriers to place strategic places with 3 fighters on them.
You can intercept quite a lot with 3 carrier teams surrounding an opponent! :)

Stealth bombers are WAY overpowered..

My new record is 81 stealthbombers, at the same time, in one game.
I've been in love with them for months..

edit: Oh yeah, while we're discovering new things - Subs under ice? Nice.

I think when intercepted they should be destroyed, not damaged. After all, a damaged bomber just returns to base and heals, and there is thus essentially no way to kill the damn things. Fortunately, the AI doesn't know how to use them properly :P

They are quite high tech though. Most games are won far before they become available.

In general, collateral units are OP in this game. The fact that stealth bombers are practically invulnerable to retaliation makes them all the more powerful. The counter is jet fighters on intercept. Those are the only units able to bring down stealth bombers reliably.

I'd agree (with cymru man) - in the lucky chance you actually do intercept a bomber, all that happens is it has to sit in the time-out corner for two turns while it heals. Boo hoo. I think we need some flak or something in an expansion; there's just too little AA in Civ IV IMHO. I don't often personally make it that far in the tech tree anyway though.

More importantly, Welcome to CFC, Entropy! You must really love entropy ...

(Btw, I don't know if you'd played older Civs or not, but in Civ3C, we still had artillery capable of bombarding at range two (and infinite move rails), which helped keep arty in the 'not rendered useless by flight' column (since it had infinite movement and two-range attack, whereas bombers would eventually need to rebase, and could actually be killed (shocking!)). Just an FYI; an expansion may come along to finally not deprive us of two-range arty anymore, in which case we wouldn't hit the glaring superiority of aerial bombardment that I'd currently agree does exist late game.)

You can base them in allied cities?!?

Wowzers! I have yet to build one, but I am anxious to check out that feature. :)

Dave

just make sure your 'ally' doesn't have open borders :(

Yeah, I miss the civ 3 arty and the infinite rails. The rails were pretty cheesy though. I'd just keep two defensive units in each city and have a huge stack I'd move around at will to wipe out the AI as they tried to attack.

Artillery does need to be improved in this game imo. It almost always gets sacrificed to cause collateral damage and it's too slow. After tanks and/or flight, it all get's relegated to defense in my games.

just make sure your 'ally' doesn't have open borders :(

Oh yes. (BTW: any air unit can be rebased to any city with which you are at peace.) I once made the mistake of basing about 90% of my airforce overseas in preparation for a massive invasion. I had tons of marines to do one quick land and attack before the enemy could strike. I planned on taking out their entire coast in one turn. But I landed, and since I had non-amphibous units grouped with my marines, I got the "press enter to end turn" message. I wasn't thinking, so before I bombarded with my stealths and fighter and attacked with my marines ... I pressed enter.

AI had its turn and I cried as I watched as every one of my precious planes went down in flames.

I would've reloaded, but I have a little self-imposed rule that says reloading is cheating.

I agree with the OP, but the problem isn't just with stealth bombers. Every air unit that bombards and gets intercepted is seldom shot down. If you choose to attack with fighters/jet fighters, then the chances of shooting down the intercepting fighter/jet fighter is even smaller.

The survivability of air units is too high in general.

Not to hijack, but can carriers intercept planes being sent out on missions that have nothing to do with the tiles near the carrier? So long as they would have to "fly over" the carriers to attack, say, a city that's 15 squares away?

Usually by the time you can build stealth bombers, the game should be pretty much over ;)

Does the chance of interception increase with the amount of intercepting units? For instance, would 5 sam infantry stacked together have more of a chance to take down an enemy bomber than 1 would? And how would this work... would it simply be that each of the S.I has a 40% chance to intercept a bomber (or a 60% chance to fail), hence making the chance of a plane being intercepted when it attacks the stack of 5 S.I 1-(0.6^5) = ~92%?

Not to hijack, but can carriers intercept planes being sent out on missions that have nothing to do with the tiles near the carrier? So long as they would have to "fly over" the carriers to attack, say, a city that's 15 squares away?

Fighters and jet fighters can intercept everything within their range. It doesn't matter if the other air unit flies over the tile of the carrier.


Does the chance of interception increase with the amount of intercepting units? For instance, would 5 sam infantry stacked together have more of a chance to take down an enemy bomber than 1 would? And how would this work... would it simply be that each of the S.I has a 40% chance to intercept a bomber (or a 60% chance to fail), hence making the chance of a plane being intercepted when it attacks the stack of 5 S.I 1-(0.6^5) = ~92%?

Someone did some tests. It seemed like only one unit (the one with the best interception chance) got a chance to intercept.

the are prety strong yes.
But when i attack the enemy with my fleet of SB at least half of my fleet is been given damage. (always :sad: )

Since we're talking about air forces and intercepting, I have a question. If I have a Bomber attack somewhere and it gets intercepted, can my Fighters intercept his interceptor? I would be good if I could bomb some random unit, hoping to lure his Fighters out so my Jet Fighters could take them down.

I just finished a crazy late-game war where my Jet Fighters kept the enemy away from my city, but I couldn't get through to his cities because of all of his fighters. Of course, once my Bombers went stealth, I wrapped it up pretty easily, so yeah, they're pretty overpowered.

It would be better that a bomber is attacked by each fighter on intercept mode until the bomber gets destroyed BUT each fighter can intercept only once per turn.

This way intercepting fighters would have more defensive power, but doesn't prevent from getting swarmed by too bombers (20 bombers vs. 10 fighters would guarantee at least 10 bombers getting through.)

Question: Can a fighter intercepts a bomber be countered by defensive fighter on intercept?

Question: Can a fighter intercepts a bomber be countered by defensive fighter on intercept?

I do not believe so.

To me, the mian thing is that the bombers need to be ridiculously expensive relative to non-stealth bombers such as they are in real life. Currently I think the US doesn't even maintain over a dozen stealth bombers, and they cost about 1 billion each not counting maintanence. I'd say jack up the price and maintenance costs to make it more realistic, but that's just my opinion.

That and the devlopers need to rework the air combat logic.

I do recall a fighter shooting down an intercepting enemy fighter. I guess it was the fighter on the bombing mission aborting its mission to attack the interceptor instead because no damage resulted in the bombed city.

If you want to shoot down intercepting fighters then you have to bomb his cities with fighters. The problem remains that interceptions seldom lead to kills, so your fighters on a bombing run seldom kill the defending fighters and the defending fighters seldom kill your fighter.

There is an advantage for the defending fighter though. It tends to intercept far more often than it gets intercepted by the attacking fighter. It's not bad that the defender has an advantage, but the advantage is a little bit too big.

Still the biggest problem remains the lack of lethality of an interception.

I don't think they're overpowered.

In earlier civ games the nukes were better, we had cruise missiles, 2mp artillery, airbase improvments, paratroopers and carriers could hold more.

I think taking city's in the modern Era of civ4 is much harder than the earlier games; its just a shame theres less ways of doing it now.

Question: Can a fighter intercepts a bomber be countered by defensive fighter on intercept?

I've seen one of my fighters intercept a fighter going after one of my bombers. The enemy fighter took damage, and my bomber completed its bombing run.

Which makes me wonder if a fighter intercepting an intercepting fighter can, in turn, be intercepted? :crazyeye:

Solutions to "overpowering" units:
1. Modify the XML files (e.g., reduce the collateral damage, strength, or number of units affected of the overpowering unit).

2. Develop "house rules" where you don't permit yourself to abuse (or build too many of) a unit.

Soo... if you base a stealth bomber in an AI's city, what happens if they declare war on you while your plane ins in their city? Is it destroyed? Do they get it??

I do not believe so.

To me, the mian thing is that the bombers need to be ridiculously expensive relative to non-stealth bombers such as they are in real life. Currently I think the US doesn't even maintain over a dozen stealth

That depends on what you have in mind when you think of a "stealth bomber".

The B-1B Lancer also qualifies as a "stealth bomber" by some measures. It has 1/100-1/50th the radar cross section of a B-52. It isn't quite as stealthy as a B-2, but can be very stealthy, especially when flying at low altitudes.

The B2 costs $1,157 million, as per aerospaceweb.com. The B-1B costs $283 million. So you can get 4 B1s for the cost of 1 B-2. According to fas.org the B-2 is closer to $2 billion. In contrast the B-52 costs around $50 million. In addition, the B-1 is faster than the B-2 and has a greater bomb capacity.

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/bomber/
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/bomber/index.html

So the stealth bomber need not be so expensive if you think of it as a B-1.

perhaps a mod that keeps it just as likely for a stealth to be intercepted, but means that if it is intercepted it will get shot down ~80-90% of the time? Of course, you could tweak the percentages easily.

That depends on what you have in mind when you think of a "stealth bomber".

The B-1B Lancer also qualifies as a "stealth bomber" by some measures. It has 1/100-1/50th the radar cross section of a B-52. It isn't quite as stealthy as a B-2, but can be very stealthy, especially when flying at low altitudes.

The B2 costs $1,157 million, as per aerospaceweb.com. The B-1B costs $283 million. So you can get 4 B1s for the cost of 1 B-2. According to fas.org the B-2 is closer to $2 billion. In contrast the B-52 costs around $50 million. In addition, the B-1 is faster than the B-2 and has a greater bomb capacity.

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/bomber/
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/bomber/index.html

So the stealth bomber need not be so expensive if you think of it as a B-1.

Fair enough and true enough.

By the same token though some of the current multipurpose fighter craft are stealth too. But in this game its the dedicated bomber of the B2 that's used. And those are proportionately more expensive than other bombers both in real life and should be so in the game.

The regular bomber cost 140 hammers, the stealth only 200. And both bombers are really really hard to effectively stop. I'd think the stealth should cost at least 2x as much, say 280, but to be fair in terms of proportion and such in shoulc probably be around 400 or 600 hammers.

"The Bomber Allways Gets Through."

Solutions to overpowered units:

Nuke 'em. If they keep wiggling, nuke again.

Anyone use SAM infantry on defense? Have they helped in taking down aircraft or is it only a one-on-one matchup between interceptor and attacking aircraft, with the SAMs not getting any shots in?

Might be interesting if they add radar or some similar tech to the game as an advancement in Warlords. Something that gives intercepting fighters an edge in actually destroying incoming aircraft. Of course, that wouldn't really work with the stealth bombers...

Usually by the time you can build stealth bombers, the game should be pretty much over ;)
of course, you can just start in modern or future era and set to marathon

i've only rarely built SAM infantry and have never gotten to actually employ them :( but from what I've seen he AI do, they're fairly decent in the infantry role and a marginal irritation at best in the AA role

I wish to amend my previous statement based on last nights game.

I started with about 30 stealth bombers. I managed to get a toehold on Cyrus' continent. In trying to get teh second city I lost nine of my stealths. I'm currently down to only 7 stealth bombers. Thank God for artillery.

Do you let your stealth bombers heal after they have been intercepted or do you use wounded bombers on bombing missions?

usually I try to heal them, thats why I had 30 in my air group, I figured no matter what the interception rate was going to be enough would get through to wipe out the city defenses. Which it did. but about half got intercepted, the other half got pummelled by his air corp on the next turn (i had an equal ammount of well promoted Modern Armors in the city, two Jet Fighters and 8 sam inf, this was my first true toe to toe superpower war and I wanted to put in a good show). To be honest it seemed as if none of my aa would work and his only managed to hit my bombers. The MA's barely took a scratch.

Sometimes I get pressed into having to whittel down the enemy stack and what not, which is what happened to a degree. But the majority of my bombers were at or almost full strength when I made a play for his city, and they still got swatted.

This is something I've never had happen before, usually if I have 10 bombers one with a slight injury (or even severe) the healthy ones usually took the hit and all survived. Not this game. I've retooled the invasion to work with battleships and artillery more, I'm going to conquer him but it's not going to use the Air wing much anymore, I think i'll jut use them in the stack suppresion role and use the artys to do the pummelling/dying.

Btw, in case no one has seen it, the animations for the Jet fighter shooting down the Stealth are quite impressive.