Using an Air Force

I'm clueless about this one. I usually just build ground invasion forces :|. So, how do you go about building and utilizing an airforce?

Oh my, you've been missing out >.<. Bombers are some of the best units in the game, and are amazing at decimating armies and bombarding cities in the mid-to-late stages of the game. Your typical aerial army composition should be ~2 fighters for air sweeps (and interceptions as needed) and then as many bombers as your oil can support. Use spies to gain vision on cities, have your fighters perform air sweeps on the tiles that you want to bomb, and commence operation doom drop. You want to prioritize air repair (auto healing) and logistics (2 attacks) on your bombers, and you also want to get a unit with the Medic promotion to sit on the city that has your air fleet. You'll need the extra health regen. Just make sure that you always have some fighters around to perform air sweeps before you fly your bombers in, or you'll really regret it. But yeah, beyond that use them like you would use a range 6 Artillery. They're absolutely insane if you defend them with air sweeps (which seem overpowered as all Hell) because there's basically no good counter to them other than massing SAMs and other sub-optimal units. There's not much more to it than that really. Again, the air sweeps really are vital, which is why I keep saying it, but beyond that Bombers are pretty mindless and can cause obscene amounts of damage in large numbers.

As we see in MadDjinn's video, Deity LP - Mayan 16, 2 fighters for air sweeps might not be enough. He also demonstrates how important it is to do air sweeps before you send the bombers in, by losing his bomber with the most promotions after forgetting to do the air sweeps first.

If you see the AI with lots of anti-aircraft guns, mobile sams, and/or destroyers, you may want more like 5-6 fighters. Keep in mind, even if you only needed 2 of them for air sweeps that round, the others can be used against units to help soften them up for the bombers and to get them promoted up.

Monthar said:

If you see the AI with lots of anti-aircraft guns, mobile sams, and/or destroyers, you may want more like 5-6 fighters.

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If I ever needed 5-6 Fighters I'd save myself the hassle and build other units lol. If that's what the AI is building then you're not exactly doing yourself any favors by massing an airforce after all.

For every fighter you will want 3 logistics bombers. Something like 2 fighters and 6 logistics bombers is what I'll use. The rest are ground or naval elements - those are the guys who will smash the Triple A threats through firepower application so your skies will be much safer

Syntax Error said:

I'm clueless about this one. I usually just build ground invasion forces :|. So, how do you go about building and utilizing an airforce?

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Get Brandenburg Gate in your best production city = instant logistics bombers! From here you've pretty much won the game. Not to mention you can rush buy multiple air units in the same city.

Imagine you could stack infinite numbers of range 10 artillery on a single hex, but that they require oil to build.

That's bombers.

Gort said:

Imagine you could stack infinite numbers of range 10 artillery on a single hex, but that they require oil to build.

That's bombers.

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Imagine if you were facing Runaway Pachacuti (or Sejong) - that stack is gone in less than a turn.

I mean, yeah you could argue that blah blah AI fell behind me, but that's the weighty price of getting out-teched massively. Facing really humongous empires on equal or greater tech footing, and you'll quickly realize that having a bazillion bombers in a single city stack is extremely of limited use, especially if they begin throwing around atomics (or the ever favorite nuclear) like fourth july firecrackers.

e: you've never experienced the loss of 10 highly promoted logistics stealth bombers in a single turn, have you? The fear from the sudden realization that your Normandy has just turned Dunkirk, a very nuclear one?

smallfish said:

Imagine if you were facing Runaway Pachacuti (or Sejong) - that stack is gone in less than a turn.

I mean, yeah you could argue that blah blah AI fell behind me, but that's the weighty price of getting out-teched massively. Facing really humongous empires on equal or greater tech footing, and you'll quickly realize that having a bazillion bombers in a single city stack is extremely of limited use, especially if they begin throwing around atomics (or the ever favorite nuclear) like fourth july firecrackers.

e: you've never experienced the loss of 10 highly promoted logistics stealth bombers in a single turn, have you? The fear from the sudden realization that your Normandy has just turned Dunkirk, a very nuclear one?

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Nukes are the ultimate counter to massed bombers, but that doesn't mean you can't spread your bombers around and still have all of the benefits of air repair logistics bombers.

MadDjinn said:

Nukes are the ultimate counter to massed bombers, but that doesn't mean you can't spread your bombers around and still have all of the benefits of air repair logistics bombers.

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Or based on carriers, a far more versatile platform for aerial assets. But this fellow was speaking of stacking them only in a single city.

Yes, but at the same time, that stacking also means you can build up your cash while building Brandenburg, barracks, armory and military academy in your highest production city. Then when those buildings are finished you can buy a bunch of bombers/fighters on the same turn in that city. If that's enough cash to buy 10 of them, great. However, if you were going to buy any land or naval units in that city, it'd take you 10 turns to buy them all.

As long as that city is out of range of anyone's nukes, you don't have to worry about them blowing away all those fresh, well promoted aircraft. If we're talking about B17's you're doing this with, that's a stack of bombers with both repair and logistics the instant you buy them.

smallfish said:

Imagine if you were facing Runaway Pachacuti (or Sejong) - that stack is gone in less than a turn.

I mean, yeah you could argue that blah blah AI fell behind me, but that's the weighty price of getting out-teched massively. Facing really humongous empires on equal or greater tech footing, and you'll quickly realize that having a bazillion bombers in a single city stack is extremely of limited use, especially if they begin throwing around atomics (or the ever favorite nuclear) like fourth july firecrackers.

e: you've never experienced the loss of 10 highly promoted logistics stealth bombers in a single turn, have you? The fear from the sudden realization that your Normandy has just turned Dunkirk, a very nuclear one?

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You're extremely stupid if you managed to not notice that:

1. An AI player has built the Manhattan Project
2. An AI player is at war with you
3. Your bomber city is in range of one of theirs

I don't get it. Just because I said you could stack infinite bombers on a single hex wasn't a recommendation that you go full moron.

Generally speaking I find that I usually reach bombers before the AI and other players so I don't even have to worry about fighters, air defenses or nukes. Bombers and a single tank to take the cities afterwards make defeating your backward neighbours irresistibly easy.

Gort said:

I don't get it. Just because I said you could stack infinite bombers on a single hex wasn't a recommendation that you go full moron.

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Sure, but you did ask me to imagine, so I did.

In any case, sometimes... you see them waste their arsenal somewhere else, you want to get more air coverage of your front, then you managed a breakthrough that gets reversed the next turn and you figure it'll take them a while to replace those nukes and suddenly an atomic bomb comes out of nowhere in a close (but not too close - more than 10 tiles hexish, you figure) city. You listen to someone else who said AI may or may not attack your stack, and see that they didn't in their game, so you feel all confident that the AI is just that dumb and that you are going to launch a massive counterattack, stealth-backed, to take that city to open up another wonder-filled one.

Oops.

Monthar said:

Yes, but at the same time, that stacking also means you can build up your cash while building Brandenburg, barracks, armory and military academy in your highest production city. Then when those buildings are finished you can buy a bunch of bombers/fighters on the same turn in that city. If that's enough cash to buy 10 of them, great. However, if you were going to buy any land or naval units in that city, it'd take you 10 turns to buy them all.

As long as that city is out of range of anyone's nukes, you don't have to worry about them blowing away all those fresh, well promoted aircraft. If we're talking about B17's you're doing this with, that's a stack of bombers with both repair and logistics the instant you buy them.

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Certainly, the process for procuring the Bombers makes infinite stacks in a city irresistible for all the reasons stated.

But if you were transferring them for battlefield applications? Not really. Hence why I said of extremely limited use.