Aircraft in Civ

My consternation comes from the fact that a lot of the ideas presented for the next game would make it even more tactical, and even more of a military game, which are two things that are moving away from where the game should be.
erm... yes and no. Change isn't necessarily bad. I think none of use wants it to turn into a Civilization: Total War, since there's already the TW franchise in place. However, some in-battle micromanagemente would be welcome. no battle consists of a lot of grunts running at eachy other and taking it in turns to bash each other over the head.
Merr Crhistmas to you all!
 
I can see your concerns Camikaze. I think most of us just feel that combat is one of the biggest aspects of the game, and one of the most disappointing.

While I certainly wouldn't want to micromanage a battle, I think a greater sense of 'unpeeling the onion' would be welcome. In this example for air units, I don't think they need any more improvements other than the ones I highlighted here. I'd just like to see such a versatile tool as aircraft given a little more use in-game.

Like I said, I understand your concerns. But part of building an empire is war, and a big part of that is outsmarting your opponent. There is more intelligence behind diplomacy, city building and city planning than there is behind combat right now. Challenge-wise it's the weakest part of the game, it's pretty much just a matter of having a bigger stack than the enemy, and sacrificing more artillery units than them.
 
To tell you the truth, Civ3 has a lot of those 'options' that you mentioned, though you don't have a choice in the matter. In cities, planes are targeted first, ships next, then land units, and there is a constant chance of destroying an improvement or killing some citizens...
 
I want more player control over those actions. Sometimes you know you're not going to try and take certain cities, and you might attempt to damage their buildings while you're fighting elsewhere. Other times you want to target the ships in port so they don't steam out and flatten your fleet.

The examples go on forever.
 
True, combat leaves something to be desired in Civ 4, but it isn't for lack of predominance in the game. It is still an overly important aspect, which is partially why it may seem more disappointing; you are spending a lot of your time focusing on clicking unit and telling them to stage an RNG battle.

Now, I think it is clear that war is too much a part of the game. Sure, war is very important in empire building, but in Civ 4 at least, the common denominator of everything is war. Absolutely everything is done with war in mind. This should not be the case. Other aspects, like civ stability, are at least as important, if not more important in the building and maintaining of a strong empire.

So if we assume that the above is true, then military...things should be reduced in the game. Improvement would be nice, and is always welcome, but I don't think it would be an improvement if war was even more dominant of game mechanics, and took up even more of your playing time. Simple battles suffice for what is necessary in its presentation in Civ. And then again, I'm not saying no to all military ideas and improvements, but to this one. I feel aircraft are sufficiently represented in the game, when you consider that they are only a small fraction of warfare, which is not what Civ is about anyway. Aircraft are a feature within a feature, not a feature in itself. For the importance aircraft have had over 6000 of empire building and management, they are already over represented in the game, so, IMHO, they don't need to be complicated. Especially as is being suggested in this thread, given that I think in Civ 4 aircraft are not useless, but very powerful.
 
To each his own, definitively. People want greater depth in different areas of the game. Maybe Civ 5 could offer 2 play modes: a tactical mode that increases the depth of combat and a standard mode that is pretty similar to vanilla civ. I forget what game I used to play that had a very similar feature.
I don't know if these are the games you were thinking of but both Age of Wonders and Lords of Magic gave the player a choice to tactically control battles. I quite liked having that option. Players that don't want it don't have to use it, players that liked it had an extra layer to the game to make it more fun(and in Age of Wonders, if memory serves, it was a game option so it would be reflected if tactical battles were allowed and against whom they were allowed(only against the AI? Against the AI and other humans? etc)).

There was also Stars! and the Deadlock games where you could assign battle plans to your units and affect how they acted in combat(battles were automated). So in Deadlock you could assign your planes to fly in and bomb the daylights out of the units, or you could target forts, or farms, etc. Same with missiles. Though I still wish there was additional flexibility(if memory serves, units were just units, so you could target one type over others).


Getting onto topic I would like to be able to better control planes, though it shouldn't be required to micromanage them to that degree. And it should perhaps even be a game option, this way those who don't want to use it can be sure everyone plays by the rule-set. But then again I am very fond of games with flexible rule-sets(OpenTTD is just :love:)
 
I play exclusively with Merged Mod which adds the aircraft missions I stated above. The time it takes me vs vanilla civ aircraft management is pretty much exactly the same. If you don't like some of the extra bomber missions such as bomb building and bomb production, that's fine. I can see leaving those 2 out of the game as I hardly use them myself. However there are 2 features that are an absolute must have, Fighter Engagement and Port Airbomb.

Port Airbomb negates the exploit of hiding in cities and striking out when your ships are in range. This exploit makes the Blockade option extremely costly, since you're going to lose ships like crazy and you can't even strike back. Port Airbomb allows you to force your opponents to stop hiding inside cities, or to at least seek safe ports where to do their repairs.

Fighter Engagement allows you to seek out and directly engage enemy fighters and bombers. No more passively idling by and doing circles.

Both of these features represent air power much more accurately in civilization. In Vanilla civ airpower is grossly underrepresented, as is it's importance to modern warfare. You can wage endless wars without a thought to controlling the skies, sure you'll suffer some collateral damage but that's what you got SAMs for. Even without SAMs, while your enemy is building bombers, you're building tanks that can take cities away from the enemy. Not to mention there's a limit to how many air units can be held in a city, while there's no limit to how big a stack of tanks you can attack with.

Airpower in civ may seem fine to you Camikaze, but it's an insult to realism. There is no question that airpower is the least developed aspect of civilization, and that's saying a lot.

You are right in saying that aircraft have had a very short history in the scope of human civilization, however for the short amount of time they have been around, their effect on every facet of humanity has been profound. Most importantly in war. America repeatedly teaches it's foes the lesson of the importance of air supremacy.

America's main battle tank has remain largely unchanged for the past 30 years (minor armor upgrades, new electronic suites), same goes for our light infantry weapons (m-16, m249), and artillery units (howitzer). In that same scope of time though our aerospace capabilities have increased exponentially, and secured american military dominance versus any conventional army in the world (they've also given us an incredible edge in operations against irregular forces such as the current insurrection in iraq).

In modern war control of the air space is priority number 1. If you don't control the skies, you lose. It's as simple as that. This may be hard to envision using civilization as an example, but in the real world aircraft currently dominate warfare. It's no coincidence that the bulk of DARPA's budget is aimed at new aerospace technologies, nor is it a coincidence that US ground forces have remained relatively unchanged in 30 years while our air and space assets have gone through exponential changes.

More than words, here's examples of how air assets have completely changed the course of wars (and history):

Enola Gay nuclear bombing of Japan
Israel's Six-Day War (I dare you to emulate this scenario using Civilization and achieve the real-world result, ever)
Gulf War 1
Gulf War 2
Vietnam's Operation Linebacker and Operation Rolling Thunder (proved so effective that Congress began to fear China or Russia's entry into the war)
WW2 Air Supremacy achieved by allies over the english channel (which made D-Day possible)
WW2 Pacific Theatre
WW2 Battle of Midway
WW2 Attack on Pearl Harbor

As these examples highlight, air assets are THE deciding force in modern war. In 1930 Giulio Douhet, an italian air warfare theorist wrote that future wars would be decided in the sky. His theory has been proven true, so true in fact that the United States has the greatest number of aerospace defense contractors and the largest military research budget dedicated to air and space assets.

While I realize that true realism will never be achieveable in Civilization, and shouldn't be, I just cannot and will not agree with Camikaze that air units are well represented. They are an after-thought in civilization, and an absolute non-requirement to waging modern wars.
 
I do agree with Camikaze however that war dominates Civilization. You are absolutely right, the game boils down to who has the best military time and time again. It is a huge design flaw, and please don't take my desire for more realistic combat as ignorance or a desire for no change in the rest of the game. I very much want further depth in the empire management aspects of the game. It's a shame that every turn consists of one of the following:

Build a unit.
Move a unit.
Build an improvement.

Every diplomacy issue is resolved by war. It is defenatively a broken system :( However I merely happen to have more ideas on the improvement of war, rather than the other systems of the game. This doesn't mean that I'm blind to the other areas of the game that need improvement, nor to the fact that there are other aspects which are much more 'broken' than war.
 
By the way, my favorite religion civic is Pacifism :lol:
 
Yes military aspects of the game need fixing, but drastically complicating aircraft seems hardly the right thing to do to move away from a military-centric (?) game. All the examples you gave of aircraft playing an important role in history are correct, but all from the last 70 years. Obviously. Aircraft have played a part (they have not played the only part, mind you) in warfare in that period, which constitutes just over 1% of the scope of Civ; 6000 years. So aircraft are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the history of civilization, and so do not merit complication without all other aspects of the game also becoming similarly complicated. I'm sure archers, for example, are not represented very realistically, as probably most units are not.

My point being that, yes, aircraft are represented unrealistically, but they are represented sufficiently for what is needed in Civ. They are by no means even close to the central focus of the game, so having massive complication of them (adding utilities that is; I wouldn't mind implicit complication) should not take priority in the developers agenda. Sure, if all the more important ideas are acted upon, then go for it. But that places this idea very low on the priority list.

So what do I think would be a good improvement for aircraft, to make them more realistic without making them much more complicated and dominant in the scheme of the game? I'm not exactly sure, but this idea just seems too complicated to me for what is necessary. Meh. :dunno:
 
Aircraft have a minor timeline within civ, however they are the dominant weapon in modern war. Much like....

Chariots/Horsemen in ancient era

Riflemen in pre-industrial era

There's no difference between the importance of aircraft in modern war and the importance of the horse in ancient wars. Both dominate warfare in their time period. The only difference is that in civ, aircraft aren't nearly as useful as say Horsemen :)

I guess another point we won't see eye to eye on. I'll always think that at least the inclusion of Fighter Engagement and Port Airbomb are necessary to round out aircraft importance. I'm not really looking for more features other than those two.

Oh and the ability to do kill damage on naval units.
 
Yes military aspects of the game need fixing, but drastically complicating aircraft seems hardly the right thing to do to move away from a military-centric (?) game.
But this is a military thread. I agre that it should have a heavier emphasis on demographics, trade, culture, economics, etc.
However, aircraft should have more interaction with ground and water units, not just bombardment and AA bateries. If a plane can shoot at you and at the same time you can shoot back, how is that different from ground-to-ground fights?
 
Aircraft have a minor timeline within civ, however they are the dominant weapon in modern war. Much like....

Chariots/Horsemen in ancient era

Riflemen in pre-industrial era

There's no difference between the importance of aircraft in modern war and the importance of the horse in ancient wars. Both dominate warfare in their time period. The only difference is that in civ, aircraft aren't nearly as useful as say Horsemen :)

I would argue that horses have been much more important to history; being used over thousands of years rather than 70 (well, 90ish, to be fair). And I disagree that aircraft are not useful in Civ. They are almost gamebreaking if you get them before anyone else.

Oh and the ability to do kill damage on naval units.

This would be good.

However, aircraft should have more interaction with ground and water units, not just bombardment and AA bateries. If a plane can hoot at you and at the same time you can shoot back, how is that different from ground-to-ground fights?

I'm afraid I don't quite follow what you're getting at here... :confused:
 
I'm afraid I don't quite follow what you're getting at here... :confused:
Enemy flying unit attacks you-->you shoot back
That's usually called combat. I want some sort of direct engagement between ground and air units.
 
Enemy flying unit attacks you-->you shoot back
That's usually called combat. I want some sort of direct engagement between ground and air units.
I don't want another 'gunship' thing. It would be very unrealistik and frustrating if my jet fighter got defeated by a spearman. Aircraft should be used to support land units, not supplement them.
 
Camikaze what I was trying to imply is that horses dominated every aspect of war in their time, as aircraft do in our time. I'm not saying aircraft are more important, but rather that they are just as important in their time, yet they're usefulness is vastly underrepresented (as opposed to having say, horses in ancient time :) ). I'd only agree that aircraft upset the power balance greatly if you have a huge tech lead and have enough time to build a massive amount of them. If not, 10 bombers aren't going to have nearly the effect of 10 Tanks.

Honestly I think that the best way to increase air unit effectiveness is to add the concept of supplies and logistics and allow them to disrupt supply lines. Also to give them the missions I mentioned before, but we know how you feel about that already.

Takhisis isn't that what SAMs and SAM infantry is for? I'm a bit confused too, you want EVERY ground unit to be able to hit aircraft?
 
Takhisis isn't that what SAMs and SAM infantry is for? I'm a bit confused too, you want EVERY ground unit to be able to hit aircraft?
Yes and no. I want them to have a flag that enables combat against air units in the normal way, just as if the air unit were a ground/sea unit.
It could say: 'Enable ground-to-air combat' or something like that, this could help in Fantasy scenarios which involve dragons, griffins, and other flying creatures.
And I would like some more direct interaction (i.e. dogfighting) between airplanes in the modern ages.
 
As long as you kept it to fantasy scenarios i guess, I just don't want to see infantry destroying a bomber...

As far as dogfighting, it being a turn-based game I'm not sure you're gonna get your wish. It doesn't even bother to show enemy bombers and fighters attacking most of the time as is :(
 
As long as you kept it to fantasy scenarios i guess, I just don't want to see infantry destroying a bomber...
That's why I want a flag, so it can be enabled or disabled, as an option for modders, and not an obligatory thing.
As far as dogfighting, it being a turn-based game I'm not sure you're gonna get your wish. It doesn't even bother to show enemy bombers and fighters attacking most of the time as is :(
That's 'cos the game developers are cheap and lazy.
 
lol being that as it may I'm just not sure how you could represent dogfighting. I was pondering your thought and came up with perhaps re-working interceptor aircraft (different from fighter aircraft) where you would commit X amount of planes to Air Superiority. The Air Superiority would affect Y amount of tiles and be represented by a percentage. The higher percentage the more you control the skies and the less chance enemy bombers and fighters will have of harassing your troops. Since it wouldn't be an ordered attack you could happily have your interceptors floating around engaging enemy aircraft as they fight for superiority.

I gotta tell you though I'm just spitballing this to try and fit your wish, I don't think it would actually work very well. I'd love to see more plane animations but I'm happy with the current Fighter Engagement mission that Merged Mod adds for establishing air superiority.
 
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