The most important tech: Flight

Whether you are a warmonger seaking to destroy the world, or a pacifist builder (like me) who simply wishes to defend yourself from Boudica, then flight is the most important tech in the game. It is the most unbalancing tech regarding warfare.

Flight permits you to kill enemy units without taking any losses. With flight, you can win every single naval and land battle. It is the single military tech that an opposing side in a war cannot counter against without actually having flight themselves. If a human can achieve air superiority (or be the only one with flight) than the AI can do nothing but die.

Specifically, what makes Flight the single most unbalancing factor in warfare?

1. It removes the need for relying upon suicide siege units (thus freeing hammer production for military units rather than kamikazes), bcz fighters can do everything that siege units can do but without dying. Flight can remove city defenses and weaken city defenders. It can decimate an attacking stack. It stops those pesky airships from weakening your units. It can weaken enemy ships so that your own ships are guarranteed to win every fight. Flight stops tanks in their tracks.

2. Flight enables airports which provide an extra route that can fund your expanding military, and it enables airlifting.

3. The ability to airlift might actually be its most powerful bonus. If you have airports in all of your cities, then you now possess the ability to airlift 10 units into any border city that might suddenly come under attack. It therefore gives you superior mobility, and the ability to immediately respond to any move the AI makes. Or, if after conquering an enemy city halfway across the world, after you build an airport in that city you can airlift 10 units into that city each turn (which beats shipping them, or waiting for railroads) that can either defend the city, or simply press the attack further into enemy territory. This ability, therefore, makes intercontinental warfare moot, and makes navies unimportant and unnecessary (except for resource defense if the sea patrol function actually worked ).


With flight, a stack of riflemen can defeat a stack of tanks. With flight, MG's become canon fodder to Curassiers.

Flight makes the game boring.

With SAMs ( or even worse MG or anti tanks ), planes become rusting wrecks

like i said in your other thread, you can tell someones neighbor to cancel open borders with them - then airlift an an army over a period of 5 turns, launch a small attack via navy and have a spot to retreat injured troops to that they wont get messed with.

Flight is always a gamebreaker, though usually the AI is researching combustion so your time to exploit it is short. Luckily, you can airlift spies all over the globe to help prevent this problem.

You are on the point, flight is the major gamebreaker in my games. i always beeline it once i have my initial goals met, because i know the power of being able to attack an enemy who declares war on me - leaving my navy in the homeland, while being able to launch an efficient campaign.

He did say if the Human only had Flight...I belive Sam is higher up in the tech line....why would an AI skip flight?

SAM is enabled by rocketry. AI often skips flight, especially if is pursuing a SS win.

And with 3.17 MGs ( railroads, 2 techs before flight ) can also intercept.

r_rolo1 said:

With SAMs ( or even worse MG or anti tanks ), planes become rusting wrecks

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MG's merely slow it down (25% interception), they don't stop it. By the time SAM's come, you should have already taken advantage of flight and turned the tide of the war. You must use the window of opportunity appropriately.

That being said, the superior mobility airlifts provide still remain. By the time I discover flight, it becomes impossible for me to lose a city.

I'll go with bronze working myself.

One thing is to defend well, the other is to manage to use it for smashing pumpkins BtS limit on airplanes in a city ( ok, doubled by a airport ) makes good concentration of air power a big issue. And I bet that most AI have more MG in their cities in that time that you have planes avaliable to attact that city.

if i can get flight and not have competition in researching it... your right, the AI will need a lucky rabbit to beat me

thadian said:

Flight is always a gamebreaker, though usually the AI is researching combustion so your time to exploit it is short. Luckily, you can airlift spies all over the globe to help prevent this problem.

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I definitely disagree.

As I disagree with the title. There's no such thing as a most important tech (esp not one that comes so late ). I personally consider writing one of the most important techs.

There are so many jumps in military along the techtree. Flight may be one, but personally I think rifling would be more gamebreaking.

r_rolo1 said:

One thing is to defend well, the other is to manage to use it for smashing pumpkins BtS limit on airplanes in a city ( ok, doubled by a airport ) makes good concentration of air power a big issue. And I bet that most AI have more MG in their cities in that time that you have planes avaliable to attact that city.

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Not if you spammed airships and then upgraded. Also, the AI doesn't seem to focus on MG's.

Then Physics is the important tech, not flight

mystyfly said:

I definitely disagree.

As I disagree with the title. There's no such thing as a most important tech (esp not one that comes so late ). I personally consider writing one of the most important techs.

There are so many jumps in military along the techtree. Flight may be one, but personally I think rifling would be more gamebreaking.

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Rifling is powerful, but it doesn't give mobility, and it still needs siege weapons to assist it.

Writing is also powerful, but it's cheap and everyone gets it early.

r_rolo1 said:

Then Physics is the important tech, not flight

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No. Airships are quite limited. They cannot bring down defenses, they cannot defend against other airships. They do not provide airlifting. They do not add trade routes.

I'm talking about proper preparation (a Sun Tzu concept here) for the true power.

If you spammed Airships and you're waiting for flight to upgrade them, you're really making a bad deal. Idle armies don't win battles and wars

sirsnuggles said:

Rifling is powerful, but it doesn't give mobility, and it still needs siege weapons to assist it.

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Rifles don't need siege. Either you need numbers (which work well) or some spies. Why do you need more mobility? Airlifts are nice but not needed and don't help you much if you want to conquer territory.

Writing is also powerful, but it's cheap and everyone gets it early.

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Are cheap techs less useful?

And that writing is early is no coincidence as you might guess (I could've picked SciMeth too for example). That's exactly the point: The earlier the bigger impact on the game. I would hardly consider such a late tech as flight gamebreaking or most important. Most games are decided before flight anyway. (I say decided not played out!)

r_rolo1 said:

If you spammed Airships and you're waiting for flight to upgrade them, you're really making a bad deal. Idle armies don't win battles and wars

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lol. Spam them while you're researching flight. They're cheap. It's not a big deal. Even fighters are cheap if you were to wait for flight.

It is good strategy to wait for the right moment that favors you most, rather than simply attacking to avoid "idling."

the strategy you describe, sirsnuggles is good and everything. It's just that flight is a bad example imo. Rifling, gunpowder, military tradition, steel, are all better. If you plan to war then and beeline them you get better results than with flight. Also fighters alone don't win you the cities.

mystyfly said:

Rifles don't need siege. Either you need numbers (which work well) or some spies. Why do you need more mobility? Airlifts are nice but not needed and don't help you much if you want to conquer territory.


Are cheap techs less useful?

And that writing is early is no coincidence as you might guess (I could've picked SciMeth too for example). That's exactly the point: The earlier the bigger impact on the game. I would hardly consider such a late tech as flight gamebreaking or most important. Most games are decided before flight anyway. (I say decided not played out!)

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Early game techs do not provide an edge, since everyone has them; they simply provide equality. Flight is a tech that 1) you can achieve before the AI gets it (or use it against someone who doesnt have it; 2) it's benefits can be more effectively utilized by human players than by AI players.

Early techs are not abstract, so yes, they are less powerful.

As to rifling, if you are playing high difficulty levels than you won't have a monopoly on rifles, grenadiers, curassiers, cavalry. And that's another thing, rifles are vulnerable to grenadiers (big time). For your rifling strategy to work, you must possess a significant tech lead so that your rifles are fighting neanderthals (good luck trying that on high levels). Your strategy requires tech superiority. Flight, on the other hand, enables weaker units to defeat superior units; like I said, rifles can fight even with tanks, and infantry can defeat mg's.

With any technology, the real advantage to any human player is the ability of the human player to maximize that tech's advantages better than the AI. Writing and BW do not permit the human player greater advantages than the AI. Sure, you can assign specialists, but so can the AI in equal fashion. Sure you can build axemen, so can the AI. The beefits derived from both techs can be equally matched by the AI. Again, these sorts of techs simply provide lower cognitive functioning, detailed type functions that the AI can match.

Flight, on the other hand, is imbalanced bcz it provides higher cognitive functions that an AI can never match. It simply exacerbates the handicap that the AI already experiences in battle. Flight provides abstract uses that an already limited AI cannot duplicate. It's not simply detailed thinking, but rather conceptual thinking (which is the obvoius weakness of the AI).

Writing is important, but it does not give you a cognitive advantage in usage over the AI. In simple terms, writing doesn't help me out-think and out-manouver the AI, but flight does.

You're tellling me the AI can chop, whip and axe rush as efficiently as me?