Do you know when to say when?

Have you ever went to war too soon? The buildup took so so long and you said I got to go now. But you just don 't feel quite right about it. The right elements are just not there at this time but I just HAVE to go right now or.... Or you feel confident of your military strategies and tactics so much. Your military is ranked 2 and the Civ you are attacking is not the #1 so you know you have this down just like all the other conquest even the ones you had such bad odds. Well because you are just that good. Well I am playing Portugal right now. Pedro is on his way to culture victory potentially. I am the tech leader and has better troop mass than him. After he gobbled up China. I knew I had to get him. So Darius is his neighbor to the West. He 's in on the party. Arabia is in on the party. Oda is in on the party. No problemo I m thinking right. They all say give me 10 turns to prepare. Darius coming in from the West and me from the East. I have a City state all be it just liberated so no troops as part of my invasion area. Overwhelming force.
First problem Darius attacks too soon. Attacks 6 turns later and he has a outdated wimpy force. I attack on the tenth turn because I really am not ready but feel I have to go now. Pedro is in Africa. Arabia is below me in Asia and Oda is in North America. They don 't even deploy ships as far as I can see. Darius keeps Pedro busy for a little but not much. All I needed was a little help. Pedro had bombers and a nice fleet of them. I had nothing anti-air. My fighters could not reach my cities and I did not think to buy a carrier to too many turns later. So yes a military blunder because I feel guilty sometimes for playing the game so much I mentally make mistakes. So I say let 's just plunder and destroy his economy and that 's what I do . Were still at war and now I have a carrier and Battleships and Destroyers attacking the lesser cities. With Pedro and 136 HP cities,bombers, and me no anti-air forces. I was being decimated. So what do you do when your in a entanglement usually. Do you pull out or do you do like Hitler and say go in there guys and don 't return unless you bring home victory no matter the odds.

I always build triplanes and AA guns because the AI loves to spam bombers.

In your case I would suggest pulling out to preserve your forces and then quickly build fighters and bombers to have another go.

Some people are dismissive of fighter planes but I think they're crucial to winning the air war and dealing with bomber spam.

Just build 3-4 fighters. They have decent range and will take down 1 bomber per turn. You'll wipe out his whole air arsenal in no time. 4 fighters and 4 bombers will win you all modern era wars.

I just played a standard map size Epic speed Zulu-Pangea-Emporer-Domination game. I farmed up my soldiers experience on my neighbor to the west, Sweden. I then attacked my neighobr to the east, Ethiopia. After Ethiopia fell, his neighbor to the east, Napolean, declared war on me! He thought he was a bada$$, apparently, since he built Terracotta. About 5 turns after he declared war on my, I completed Civil Service and upgraded to Impis.

So, the point is, after Paris had fallen and his other cities razed, there was one lonely French city just off to the north. It had NOTHING. I tried to make peace with Nappy. "We still have unfinished business" he says. I go up and bombard his city to zero HP. I call him up again. "We still have unfinished business" he says. I leave one archer and one Impi to keep an eye on the city, and keep it's health down. The rest go on conquering other civs. I wait maybe 10 more turns. Nappy has no army. Hardly any land. No workers. He has NOTHING. I call him up again. "We still have unfinished business" he says.

Fine. Next move I finished off his last city. He never figured out when enough was enough.

You didn't go to war too soon, you went in unprepared. You had ten turns, more if you consider that you wanted Pedro out. Plenty of time to build or better rush one carrier and shuttle your fighters to the front. I don't know exact setup but fighters can rebase 16-20 tiles away I forget which now so you were fighting far from home. Plan to capture city and hold it in first turns so you can move in your fighters. As it was said you need just 2-4 fighters to completely wipe out AI air force.

Makavcio said:

Just build 3-4 fighters. They have decent range and will take down 1 bomber per turn. You'll wipe out his whole air arsenal in no time. 4 fighters and 4 bombers will win you all modern era wars.

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This. Plus AA guns, or sams if later on. If you go into a major war against a bomber spammer without AA defense of any kind, you're in trouble. I'd have waited a bit longer and gotten the AA built up, then gone in. Haste makes waste, in life, and everything else.