Anything beat carriers/planes?

TL;DR

If so, what? If not, what's the solution? Just out-spam your opponent in carriers/planes?

LONGER VERSION

Playing against a guy (2nd time now) who does nothing but spam carriers/planes, and of course levels everything up with affinities. It seems nothing stops the things. I did try the gunboat-cruiser-whatever lineage (a lot of them), but all he does is kite backwards with his carriers while 1-shotting your boats with his planes. He eventually put a small screen of gunboats in front of his carriers himself, which pretty much stopped even the one-off lucky kills I would manage to get from time to time.

My guess would be:
(1) a bigger amount of carriers (if you are attacking)
or
(2) Carriers and city airplanes to fight a battle of attrition (if you are defending)
or
(3) Ignoring the CVs and instead investing your ressources to attack where they can't be/reach

Are you keeping up with techs/affinities?

How about fighters? They are good against planes. With Supremacy (I think) they are really good.
Counter attack with land forces where planes cannot reach as they have limited range?

This sort of thing really makes you wonder how come they forgot to bring in the anti-air units from Civilization V. I mean, besides the obvious "they just kind of rushed this one out without thinking out the details" reason that permeates the whole game.

I find the planes to be rather weak

Tripas said:

This sort of thing really makes you wonder how come they forgot to bring in the anti-air units from Civilization V. I mean, besides the obvious "they just kind of rushed this one out without thinking out the details" reason that permeates the whole game.

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For land Combat there is not really any need for Anti-Air - they made them weak and their range short enough that they're basically a local defender's bonus (well, at least until t3/4) which is fine.

Water Combat is complicated though. I tend to think that moving a carrier should disable the ability to attack with air units on that carrier for that turn (with intercept still available) - the overall combined effect of being able to move the carriers while still being able to use the air units to attack is just hilariously strong because there's basically no way to maneuver against it - and no real defender's advantage.

Isn't the whole thing that we're they've got a really resilient "unit" in the form of the city (high defense, regenerates like crazy, deals enough damage to seriously cripple attacking units, etc.) already the local defender's bonus? I don't think it needed "can attack siege units with near impunity thanks to fighter jets" as an extra bonus.

And you know, it was just fun to have that whole "ruining an annoying air-strike with a surprise AA hidden outside of the enemy's vision" in CiV, it felt like another thing to take into consideration when fighting against someone that did something a bit different than the usual style of combat.

And while we're on the subject, whatever happened to Bombers? Did humanity as whole just forget that we had those, like they did with anti-air weapons?

Tripas said:

Isn'
And while we're on the subject, whatever happened to Bombers? Did humanity as whole just forget that we had those, like they did with anti-air weapons?

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Jet 'fighters' have since late last century rivaled the precision and accuracy of the piston bombers of WWII.

GeoModder said:

Jet 'fighters' have since late last century rivaled the precision and accuracy of the piston bombers of WWII.

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I mean that from a gameplay point of view. You know, imagine that BE didn't have Combat Rovers and someone asked "what happened to the Cavalry type of fighters". Or if there were no "melee" units like the Soldiers because everyone fights with guns now.

Okay.
I just think of it as all units having an inherit ability against air assaults. Air fighters don't give that much damage after all. At least not before they're 'specialized' in later affinities with promotions.

And THERE'S kind of the problem. You have to wait quite a long time until they really become relevant, and even then you have to pick between having them as regular "fighters" or the game's equivalent of "bombers", instead of having two different units for different roles.

Just like it would probably be a lot more interesting to have a unit specialized in fighting air units instead of just going "screw it, everyone has some sort of resistance to air attacks".

It's not something I consider a problem. Just something to take into consideration when using them.

Also, specialize your own fighters in interception, attrition will be your friend (assuming same level units).

GeoModder said:

It's not something I consider a problem. Just something to take into consideration when using them.

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Again, I mean "problem" from a game design point of view, not as how much of pain they are to use or fight against.

Get interceptors to cover your back, then use the late game tanks and boats to smash through. Hell, use the LEV units from Purity or use the SABR.

GeoModder said:

Jet 'fighters' have since late last century rivaled the precision and accuracy of the piston bombers of WWII.

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Wait.

I wanted to clarify what you meant by this, because IMHO the term 'rivaled' isn't really an appropriate word to use here....

The Piston based bombers of WWII were highly inaccurate, dropping what were essentially dumb bombs over an 'alpha' designated area. Basically one guy called the target sight for everyone else in the bomber grouping for the Mitchell's, Flying Fortresses, etc used during WWII.

First/second gen jet fighters of the modern era were armed with say a Raytheon laser-guided Paveway system like the Penny-Pod's on the A-7D Corsair and were so far superior it was night and day difference, with what was available during WWII.

But even that technology is woefully inferior to what the 4th and 5th gen aircraft use today (though the Raptor being the only 5th generation fighter doesn't really have laser arming beyond demonstration use really).

Raptor's in combat use GPS guided JDAM's in most case, whereas a 4th generation fighter like the Falcon will use a LANTIRN system. If GPS gets jammed, then those fighters bomb/missile would revert to an inertial guidance system, which has a CEP value of about 30-34 meters. GPS guided has an CEP value of about 12-14 meters.

So really, I wouldn't say 'rivaled' so much as I would say "annihilated" previous accuracy

I realize this post is rather old, but I'm just playing the game now and in reading that I ended up snorting my coffee out my nose when I read it

Moo Strength said:

I realize this post is rather old, but I'm just playing the game now and in reading that I ended up snorting my coffee out my nose when I read it

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Whatever keeps your nose clean, mate.

GeoModder said:

Whatever keeps your nose clean, mate.

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clean and burned lol

Of course my son looked at me rather funny when that happened. He's 3 and was like "Daddy can I do that too?"

How many fighters/carriers does he use? Carriers can only hold maximum 4 planes with the perk.

As previously stated, get some planes (and carriers) and put them on intercept. Give them interception bonuses and they should be able to shoot down the other planes or at least really weaken them so as to discourage him from using them for a number of turns (otherwise they'll die attacking). Supremacy has the best fighter perks.

Don't forget about orbital units. Plonk them near his ships and take out the carriers. He won't be able to take them out unless he gets hover artillery. For defence, use tactical hubs so your ships will take less damage per airstrike. If you get supremacy and have some firaxite behind your enemy's forces, plonk a phasal transporter down, send some ships to your cities, beam them to that location and attack his rear. The element of surprise should be sufficient to defeat him.

Also, which affinity does your carrier/fighter spamming friend pick? It sounds like his favourite affinity is purity, which has the best bomber perks for planes. If you have picked purity, you may as well replicate his style and see if you can take out his carriers. Measure out your range and his range and focus all fire on any ships he has in your range, but beware of any ruses/diversions.

If you pick supremacy, the SABRs will help a lot especially if they're upgraded.

If you picked harmony, get some xenotitans, get them upgraded to level 2 xenotitan so that you get ranged resistance and that should stop him in his tracks. Keep your titans on the coastline ready to attack ships when they're on coast because they can move into coast without embarking like ships. Harmony fighters also have some combat bonus against air units.

Hope this helps.


Also, wait for CivBERT and (assuming the subs work like in civ 5, in that they have stealth and assuming they can only be detected by the melee ships) use subs to snipe his carriers.