i think the answer to this question is no..but maybe someone out there has an idea that i didnt think of.....

but...is air extraction possible? i mean..i can air drop my special ops behind enemy lines..yet i have to walk em out? sounds kinda silly..i want to know if theres a way to get a chopper to them and ferry em out....

i seriously doubt the firaxis geniuses are even pondering this ability.. but maybe one of us have an out of the box idea to make this work..... (and hopefully one that the AI could use too)

If you make a chopper a land unit, you can leave it at the drop-off point and load your guys back on it to leave. Not a great answer, but semi-workable.

Perhaps the most realistic way to solve the problem is to airdrop a worker that can build an airbase. This only requires that you either give the worker the airdrop ability, flag it as a foot unit (for the helicopter), or use an Air Transport (such as the one you made :) ) that can carry all types of units. While it may not be the usual way to extract special forces, civ units tend to represent very large modern formations (brigades, divisions, corps, or even armies depending on the map scale), where engineers are very common. I only wish someone would make a drop animation for the worker...

Originally posted by papajohns

i seriously doubt the firaxis geniuses are even pondering this ability.. but maybe one of us have an out of the box idea to make this work..... (and hopefully one that the AI could use too)

I sure hope Atari is for their new CIV3 Conquests but as for out of the box ideas I have tried everything and the AI still fails to use them. There are several ways to allow you to conduct extractions but not for the AI.

Some I have tried:

1)Same as thestonesfan sugested only give it a bombard option to support the troops and allow the AI some use of it (basicaly an airdrop artillary for the AI). remember to give it the Rebase option as well other wise there is no going home.
In this case I like to have two types of helicopter: one for extraction/artillary and the origonal civ one for the AI which I allow to transport more than it dose now.

2) just give the helicopter a movement and make it a land unit. The AI just flies them around to explore.

3) I have even tried to just giveing the helicopter a movement (not making it a land unit) and giving it the wheeled flag mixed with making the Ocean impassible to wheeled units. This failed due to the fact that the unit ignores the Wheeled flag since that is a land flag and it is still an air unit.

There are more (I cant remember all the ones that people have tried) but 1 and 2 are the best I have used.

giving a helo land unit its kinda unreallistic...i would prefer to have it as a air unit...

hunter...does giving movement pt to the unit as an air unit work?

or can the spec op unit get loaded to the chopper only in the city or an airfield and not on the field..

Well giving the chopper a movement as a air unit "kinda" works.
The AI seems to build them and dose fly them around however I have never seen them unload anything. But the it should work. The greatest draw back IMO of this is that it can fly over any size ocean since it is an air unit.

AS for loading in the field well as long as the chopper and the unit you want to load share the same square you can load them up.

Originally posted by papajohns
giving a helo land unit its kinda unreallistic...i would prefer to have it as a air unit...

hunter...does giving movement pt to the unit as an air unit work?

or can the spec op unit get loaded to the chopper only in the city or an airfield and not on the field..

For me the biggest problem with mobile air units is that any land unit with an attack value of even 1 can slaughter the unit and it doesn't fight back.

I make the helo a land unit, give it airdrop so it can hop enemy lines and small bodies of water, and give it rebase ability so that after it picks up those SF units it can get back home. The AI won't use it correctly, of course, but when does the AI extract units anyway? :scan:

if u guys like i could try to do a airdrop flic for the worker.

just posted a new flic for u guys ok, go look.