Aerial warfare and airport dynamics in Civilization VII?

bene_legionary

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Airplanes are a bit of a weird spot in Civilization. In modern history it brought an entirely new dynamic to warfare, trading, culture etc., yet in Civilization these are barely seen. Even if the Flight civic provides tourism, you don't need airports and airplanes to bring those tourists around. In game, the AI rarely uses aerial warfare and in multiplayer games it isn't worth the tile it takes up to build an aerodrome.

What can Civilization VII do to try and make the Airplane and the Airport more impactful in warfare, culture and trade, instead of being an afterthought for warfare-focused civilizations?
 
- just make them a map-based unit like all the others and not basically an extended city ranged attack

- and have them able to remain airborne for X turns before they need to r.t.b. (return to base). Say, start from 10 points, whatever you want to call those points. If "close" to a valid airfield, lose 1 point per turn. If "far away", 2 points per turn. An attack will also cost 2 points. Some sort of defensive maneuver (e.g. avoiding AA guns), only 1 point. When the points reach 0 or go negative, no more moves are valid; the aircraft will auto-return to nearest valid airfield.

- that, or a different map overlay for air combat, but that will be complicating the hex map enough as it is.
 
They could be like how they are in previous games, but instead of being a unit that attack on its own they provide air support to nearby units. Then there could be different types of air support (reinforcements and damage.) The air support is disabled if the enemy has an Anti-air unit even closer.
 
Making the Aerodrome not just one-dimensional military focused would be a plus for me. I was hoping that we would eventually get something like an International Terminal building to help out the cultural victory. Maybe a flight school alternative building as well?
 
They could be like how they are in previous games, but instead of being a unit that attack on its own they provide air support to nearby units. Then there could be different types of air support (reinforcements and damage.) The air support is disabled if the enemy has an Anti-air unit even closer.
I had thought that, for combat aircraft, they would have AoE damage around where they're deployed. More advanced planes would have larger AoE. But in Civ 6 planes are just more restrictive combat units that ground units couldn't hit. I wouldn't want to make it too complicated with reinforcement and damage values.
Making the Aerodrome not just one-dimensional military focused would be a plus for me. I was hoping that we would eventually get something like an International Terminal building to help out the cultural victory. Maybe a flight school alternative building as well?
Something like building a civilian air fleet, like trade routes? It would be interesting to have traders split back up into trade ships and land traders (like in Civilization 5), and then in the modern era, also have aircraft traders too. You would be able to convert them, of course.
 
Right now, as with too many of the Districts, the available Buildings in the Aerodrome District are a mess, that don't really provide any extras to most of what modern Airports are used for: civilian freight and passenger traffic, especially Value-Added fast freight transport as part of the 'just in time' shipping of the modern industrial system.

So, right now the Aerodrome can be 'enhanced' with a Hangar or Airport. In other words, you can build up your Aerodrome District to about the level of the early 1930s, and then all development stops. Big Whoop.

I suggest, assuming Districts continue to work roughly the same way in Civ VII anat they do in Civ VI, that the Aerodrome District should have, at least, the following Buildings:

Air Port - which includes Hangars, hard-surface runways, and some kind of simple Terminal building - all of these were in place around the world before the Atomic Era.
Concourse - the extended Terminal complete with Hotels, shops, restaurants, ground transportation directly into the city or cities served by the Airport. This would dramatically enhance Tourism to the city and be a major Gold/Income producer from 'internal tourism' - people visiting from other cities in your own Civ as well as others. - and it would increase income from any other Tourism mechanic in the city, like Wonders.
Freight Terminal - Increases Production and income from all Trade Routes, because some percentage of the goods moved now comes in Overnight or faster by Air Freight. In addition, if the District is adjacent to a Railroad or Harbor District with a Container Terminal, the interaction between the different types of freight vastly increases income from Trade in the Atomic and later Eras.

Note that civilian airports have very little to do with military airfields: modern Air Forces build their own runways, specialized terminals, repair and aircraft handling - no civilian airport, for instance, usually builds revetments around the aircraft holding areas or emplacements for antiaircraft guns and missiles at the ends of the runways. I suggest what might be needed is a separate District, possibly even the same Aerodrome, but one with the following Buildings:
All Weather Runways - required for Jet Combat Aircraft
Revetments - makes aircraft on ground immune to weather/natural disaster damage and reduces enemy air strike damage
Air Cargo Facility - Allows air delivery of military units to either regular civilian or other military airports/air fields

Just thoughts, but something like this would greatly expand the real utility of the Aerodrome in the game, whether you were playing Domination, Cultural, or some kind of Economic game.
 
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I had thought that, for combat aircraft, they would have AoE damage around where they're deployed. More advanced planes would have larger AoE. But in Civ 6 planes are just more restrictive combat units that ground units couldn't hit. I wouldn't want to make it too complicated with reinforcement and damage values.

Something like building a civilian air fleet, like trade routes? It would be interesting to have traders split back up into trade ships and land traders (like in Civilization 5), and then in the modern era, also have aircraft traders too. You would be able to convert them, of course.

The "return to base" mechanic is... questionable? But, the mechanics of how to make air units "work" and feel like air units with how the rest of the map/war work is really tricky. I can see why Civ has never managed to settle on anything yet.

But the "air trade routes" are a good idea. It could be similar to sea trade routes in that it expands trade route range. Speaking of tourism, that should be part of trade routes and open borders. Open borders should have two levels, one for civilian and one for military. Open civilian means all civilian units get to cross into each others borders, including trade routes, and expands religion/culture influence. Only open military borders allows military unit movement.

Continuing on, trade routes could significantly increase gold/tourism for the civ the gold/tourists go to, while significantly increasing happiness for the other civ. Assymetric trade, or maybe symmetric if both trade route destinations have equal appeal. See that's the thing, the tourism/gold bonus depends on the trade route destinations appeal/tourism stats. So instead of tourism just being kind of "generic" it depends on specific map geography. If you want your tourism city to really produce a lot you need to build trade routes to different places from it, and if it's inland obviously you need an airfield to really hit out at distant trade route destinations.
 
Right now, as with too many of the Districts, the available Buildings in the Aerodrome District are a mess, that don't really provide any extras to most of what modern Airports are used for: civilian freight and passenger traffic, especially Value-Added fast freight transport as part of the 'just in time' shipping of the modern industrial system.

So, right now the Aerodrome can be 'enhanced' with a Hangar or Airport. In other words, you can build up your Aerodrome District to about the level of the early 1930s, and then all development stops. Big Whoop.

I suggest, assuming Districts continue to work roughly the same way in Civ VII anat they do in Civ VI, that the Aerodrome District should have, at least, the following Buildings:

Air Port - which includes Hangars, hard-surface runways, and some kind of simple Terminal building - all of these were in place around the world before the Atomic Era.
Concourse - the extended Terminal complete with Hotels, shops, restaurants, ground transportation directly into the city or cities served by the Airport. This would dramatically enhance Tourism to the city and be a major Gold/Income producer from 'internal tourism' - people visiting from other cities in your own Civ as well as others. - and it would increase income from any other Tourism mechanic in the city, like Wonders.
Freight Terminal - Increases Production and income from all Trade Routes, because some percentage of the goods moved now comes in Overnight or faster by Air Freight. In addition, if the District is adjacent to a Railroad or Harbor District with a Container Terminal, the interaction between the different types of freight vastly increases income from Trade in the Atomic and later Eras.

Note that civilian airports have very little to do with military airfields: modern Air Forces build their own runways, specialized terminals, repair and aircraft handling - no civilian airport, for instance, usually builds revetments around the aircraft holding areas or emplacements for antiaircraft guns and missiles at the ends of the runways. I suggest what might be needed is a separate District, possibly even the same Aerodrome, but one with the following Buildings:
All Weather Runways - required for Jet Combat Aircraft
Revetments - makes aircraft on ground immune to weather/natural disaster damage and reduces enemy air strike damage
Air Cargo Facility - Allows air delivery of military units to either regular civilian or other military airports/air fields

Just thoughts, but something like this would greatly expand the real utility of the Aerodrome in the game, whether you were playing Domination, Cultural, or some kind of Economic game.
I don't personally think we need two separate districts focused around flight, however I wish there were more variety in buildings that you could tailor your district towards those different playstyles.

So, what I would have is this:
1st tier-Hangar (production and adds aircraft capacity)
2nd tier-Airport (adds aircraft capacity and also increases domestic tourism between cities with an airport)
3rd tier option 1- International terminal (Increases international tourism by 25% with another international terminal, 50% with open borders)
3rd tier option 2- Flight School (adds 50% combat xp to upon completion of air units)

I'm not sure about adding anything trade related but I'd at least split the Seaport into a Cargo Port, for trading, and a Naval Base/Academy building for militaristic purposes, in the Harbor district. :)
 
I don't know what kind of game Civ 7 will be. If it were up to me, I might think about abstracting air power to mission selection.

Imagine a new lense, when you turn it on, or if you click a unit type in the district, you see a shaded circular area around the district that represents the maximum distance that an aircraft can reach from the district (lense) or the distance a specific unit type can reach (when selecting a unit type in the district). At a glance you can visually see your mission reach potential.

Air units don't have to exist as a selectable unit on a tile. Instead, when selecting a district, you choose a unit in a panel. Selecting the unit draws the coverage area and then in a sub panel, you choose a mission type.

When choosing a bombing mission type, you get a targeting cursor on the map. You select the tile. You might also have an option to make the mission continuous. A switch or checkbox. If it is continuous, it bombs until the mission is cancelled or the bombing mission becomes invalid.

I would suggest that fighters always provide defensive air patrolling missions in their air coverage area when they have no other active mission and act as local reconnaissance, removing fog of war in their air space around the airport, and can substitute for, or augment, anti-air units.

Long range reconnaissance missions can be chosen to remove the fog of war along the path of the mission and in an area of the mission target. If a unit has a range of 40 tiles and the distance to the target is 20 tiles then the path of the flight to the reconnaissance target are illuminated. The remaining 20 movement points are used to illuminate an area around the reconnaissance target of the appropriate size. These tiles represent the tiles that the unit has flown over. All tiles that are adjacent to tiles that were flown over are also illuminated. The longer the distance to the target, the smaller the area around the target that can be reconned. These missions may also be configured as continuous.

As for how many turns to complete a flight. I am not opposed to having separate values for range and movement distance per turn. I don't require realism to be correlated with the game year date. Tastes vary about that. In the above example, supposed the range of the unit is still 40 tiles but it can only move 20 per turn. The 20 tiles to the reconnaissance target are illuminated on the first turn of the mission. The second turn will illuminate the area around the target, but the flight path to the target will be shrouded again. The return flight will once again illuminate the flight path back to the airport but the area around the reconnaissance target will become shrouded. In this example it takes 3 turns to complete the mission. If the mission is configured as continuous, the mission immediately repeats beginning on the 4th turn, in this example. Alternatively, aircraft might need a 1 turn cool down for refitting, refueling, repairs, and maintenance. In that case, the next mission would begin to repeat on the 5th turn.

I am not opposed to being able to chose a target that is farther away than the range of an aircraft. However, doing so will cost the aircraft. The maximum distance of a mission that loses the aircraft is range x 2.

If the flight system were programmed in a more advanced way, aircraft could automatically extend their range by routing themselves through any airport that is owned or allied and return to the nearest owned (and possibly allied) airport. There doesn't need to be any cap on how many aircraft can be stationed at an airport, or even an airstrip, but losing control of an airport, or if it becomes pillaged enough, means that aircraft on a mission must return to another airport within range or be lost. Aircraft that are not on a mission are grounded, and some are possibly lost if the airport is pillaged by bombing.

I am not opposed to the idea that if an airport changes hands to a rival civ, any aircraft stationed there, and not aloft, are captured.

I think tourism should flow best along roads, rails, waterways, and between airports. The amount of tourism that can flow is governed by the technological advancement of the transportation infrastructure.
 
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So basically we have two answer to "AI never uses them" and "too complicated for players": make them normal units again or revamp the current system.

My answer to the questions would be that Flight needs to a) come "online" quickly, b) be worth it and c) simple to understand. A) means that the costs of the new district and the (first) units needs to be really low so that you can use them 1-4 turns after researching it. Otherwise they just really arrive to late. B) means they can pack a punch and completely allow you to steamroll a neighbor. Conquest should be difficult due to other systems (loyalty, need for ground troops, etc), but make airplanes fun. And my answer to c) will probably not be liked here.

Basically, I'd love it if naval movement and warfare would function the same way as air combat does. With a base, missions, zone of control and routes. Whereas boats need natural harbors or anchoring spots, planes need airplanes. Details to be hashed out, but basically this way we accustom the players to how it works, reduce micromanagement and increase realism. Land and Sea are different after all. Also, it may make it easier for the AI.
 
Having close borders for civilians should make any mechanic of migration disappear, and tourism alike, not to mention trade... so not sure how such a drastic measure would be attractive... considering you can truly control your borders such a way to begin with. (especially in earlier eras) Sure it would prevent Great Prophets/Apostles/Missionaries to convert you, but it would kinda throw the baby out with the bathwater.
 
Thought Experiment: How has Airpower worked in Real Life?
(Because I've been reading a fair amount about the air war over the Soviet Union lately, preparing a new chapter or two for the new book)
Air Force technique and doctrine have always been based on one of two basic functions: Strategic and Tactical.
Strategic is the attack on enemy Nation: bombing factories and sources of military equipment, railroads and other transportation systems, terror bombing of cities to directly kill or discourage the entire enemy population. It has the advantage (for the air force) of being almost completely independent of what anybody else is doing, so the Air Force can pursue it without reference to the rest of the military. Also, because the effects are rarely apparent right away, they can claim tremendous results without any proof at all. The fact is that Strategic Bombing has only been effective if enormous resources were used for it and it went on for a long time: years, in fact. Strategic Bombing Light, as done by the German Luftwaffe, Japanese, Italian or Soviet air forces in WWII, never had a strategic effect: the best the Luftwaffe did was to terrorize a single city for a short time, as at Rotterdam, Belgrade or Warsaw, and only as part of a larger land campaign. The attempt to use strategic bombing against Moscow in 1941, for instance, was almost completely ineffective and only served to keep German bombers from doing anything really useful while they concentrated on Moscow without results.

Tactical Air Forces are designed to directly effect the ground or sea war. Consequently, and in contrast to Strategic Forces, they are generally used within a short range of the front line or fleet, designed to rebase to keep up with the movement of the rest of the forces, and concentrate on ground support missions like Reconnaissance, Front Line Attack, or attacks on enemy artillery, HQ, and supply lines directly behind the front ("directly behind" depends on the technology: it was no more than 50 - 200 kilometers for the first half of the 20th century, today it is more like 100 - 500 kilometers with modern Strike Aircraft)

So, I suggest that 'Air Force' comes in two distinctive types: a separate mechanic to attack enemy cities, Industrial and other Districts, Improvements, and an adjunct to the army and navy that extends the range at which they can attack enemy Units opposing them.

The latter could even be represented as Points added to combat factors or applied in an Extended range (3 - 5 tiles) as Vision (Reconnaissance or Artillery Spotting) or Tactical Bombing (combat factors). The explicit advantage of Air Power is that those Points could be held to be applied to support any Unit within a radius - tactical air forces can rebase and start attacking in an entirely new area within hours, days, or weeks at the most, and this mobility and flexibility is one of the great strengths of this type of air power.

Strategic Air Power requires a Huge investment in heavy aircraft, bases for them, repair and training facilities, and development of certain techniques that don't apply anywhere else: like the capability of putting 1000 large aircraft in the air in the same area and direction from numerous bases and concentrate them all over a target precisely in time and space 100s of kilometers away. Strategic Air Power that actually works is extremely expensive: so much that in the largest war in history, when every participant was straining every resource to the max, only two Civs built real strategic bomber forces: Britain and the USA. The Heavy Bomber organized, trained and supported as a Strategic Weapon should be pretty rare in the game. To this day, baring the use of nuclear weapons, only the USA really has a strategic bomber force large enough to have much effect, and note that Russia's strategic force with non-nuclear missiles and bombs in a year has utterly failed to break Ukraine or even constrict its military production much. The massive destruction of Ukrainian cities has not been due to any strategic bombing by either aircraft or missiles, but from ground bombardment by army missiles and artillery. In WWII terms, it is Stalingrad writ large, not Dresden or Hamburg.

Just thoughts, but it should be noted that the flexibility and variety of Air Power tactical applications is not necessarily represented well by separate Units on the map, given that IRL those 'units' could be applied to several places and actions within a single turn.
 
Right now, as with too many of the Districts, the available Buildings in the Aerodrome District are a mess, that don't really provide any extras to most of what modern Airports are used for: civilian freight and passenger traffic, especially Value-Added fast freight transport as part of the 'just in time' shipping of the modern industrial system.

So, right now the Aerodrome can be 'enhanced' with a Hangar or Airport. In other words, you can build up your Aerodrome District to about the level of the early 1930s, and then all development stops. Big Whoop.

I suggest, assuming Districts continue to work roughly the same way in Civ VII anat they do in Civ VI, that the Aerodrome District should have, at least, the following Buildings:

Air Port - which includes Hangars, hard-surface runways, and some kind of simple Terminal building - all of these were in place around the world before the Atomic Era.
Concourse - the extended Terminal complete with Hotels, shops, restaurants, ground transportation directly into the city or cities served by the Airport. This would dramatically enhance Tourism to the city and be a major Gold/Income producer from 'internal tourism' - people visiting from other cities in your own Civ as well as others. - and it would increase income from any other Tourism mechanic in the city, like Wonders.
Freight Terminal - Increases Production and income from all Trade Routes, because some percentage of the goods moved now comes in Overnight or faster by Air Freight. In addition, if the District is adjacent to a Railroad or Harbor District with a Container Terminal, the interaction between the different types of freight vastly increases income from Trade in the Atomic and later Eras.

Note that civilian airports have very little to do with military airfields: modern Air Forces build their own runways, specialized terminals, repair and aircraft handling - no civilian airport, for instance, usually builds revetments around the aircraft holding areas or emplacements for antiaircraft guns and missiles at the ends of the runways. I suggest what might be needed is a separate District, possibly even the same Aerodrome, but one with the following Buildings:
All Weather Runways - required for Jet Combat Aircraft
Revetments - makes aircraft on ground immune to weather/natural disaster damage and reduces enemy air strike damage
Air Cargo Facility - Allows air delivery of military units to either regular civilian or other military airports/air fields

Just thoughts, but something like this would greatly expand the real utility of the Aerodrome in the game, whether you were playing Domination, Cultural, or some kind of Economic game.
1. This means it is HIGHLY recommended to have aerial 'encampments' even as Civ6 mod?
2. What do you think about 'Airstrip' tile improvements? I personally rarely build ones
3. About fighter rules. i'd prefer one to do the following
3.1 Able to attack but has to return to base as it used to be
3.2 Air defense. Note that 'Fighter' class aircrafts not assigned to attack enemy will automatically intercept approaching enemy aircrafts. attacking anything within range of stationed enemy Fighter squadron with air attacks will automatically intercepted by enemy fighters FIRST, if fighter dogfights are concluded then Landbased AA (either as ancillary unit. AA NEVER was an independent land unit just like MG and AT weapons! one thing F'xis got wrong, about 'Ancillary rules I will explain more if you're interested but basically think of what 'Regimental Cannons' do in real life. that's how Ancillary rules work), after that any aerial attacker unit that assigned to attack enemy land units will get combat resolves VS actual targets ... note that certain unit classes do have 'natural' Air defense parameters though it doesn't always work against highflying jets.)
3.3 Certain research is required if a fighter is to intercept enemy ICBM attacks (nuclear or not)
These rules apply also to CV-Based fighters.
And what should be the rules of Aircraft Carriers actually? since not many 'Army Fighter Planes' can actually land on CVs before 1950-1960s, while it is possible to assign CV-based Mitsubishi A6M Zero to 'Army' (as Chinese did after they captured Japanese Airbase that has a squadron, as well as Japanese did in the late period of WW2 after the Empire realized that Imperial Army and Imperial Navy should share the same fighter planes (Not really sure but IJA DID Have their own CV, something that supposed to belong to Navy), originally Army and Navy used different Fighters (Army used Hayabusa Fighter), with Zero proven to be 'The Best' Fighters the Empire could offer, Army eventually got ones). I never heard that WW2 'Airfield-based' Fighters (like Spitfire and Mustang) can do the same.
Sure CVs only offensive capability is numerous air squadrons the very ship carries. with Naval Figthers (capable of either divebombs or torpedoes or both) outranged BB 41cm guns (or 51cm in some models) Carriers did have 'illusions' of 'weapons that ended Dreadnought era'. but these capabilities only hold true when these carriers still have thses warplanes on it otherwise it is very vulnerable to any attackers. note that IJN Yamato did have 'First Blood' sunk USN carrier somewhere in The Phillipines
 
Airbases (and Carriers) with a coverage range that provide passive bonus for army/navy, default reconnaissance and interception mission for any Fighter asigned in such base and the option to assign objetives for Bombers plus Fighter escorting is the easier and more efficient way to apply Airforce role.
Thought Experiment: How has Airpower worked in Real Life?
(Because I've been reading a fair amount about the air war over the Soviet Union lately, preparing a new chapter or two for the new book)
Air Force technique and doctrine have always been based on one of two basic functions: Strategic and Tactical.
Strategic is the attack on enemy Nation: bombing factories and sources of military equipment, railroads and other transportation systems, terror bombing of cities to directly kill or discourage the entire enemy population. It has the advantage (for the air force) of being almost completely independent of what anybody else is doing, so the Air Force can pursue it without reference to the rest of the military. Also, because the effects are rarely apparent right away, they can claim tremendous results without any proof at all. The fact is that Strategic Bombing has only been effective if enormous resources were used for it and it went on for a long time: years, in fact. Strategic Bombing Light, as done by the German Luftwaffe, Japanese, Italian or Soviet air forces in WWII, never had a strategic effect: the best the Luftwaffe did was to terrorize a single city for a short time, as at Rotterdam, Belgrade or Warsaw, and only as part of a larger land campaign. The attempt to use strategic bombing against Moscow in 1941, for instance, was almost completely ineffective and only served to keep German bombers from doing anything really useful while they concentrated on Moscow without results.

Tactical Air Forces are designed to directly effect the ground or sea war. Consequently, and in contrast to Strategic Forces, they are generally used within a short range of the front line or fleet, designed to rebase to keep up with the movement of the rest of the forces, and concentrate on ground support missions like Reconnaissance, Front Line Attack, or attacks on enemy artillery, HQ, and supply lines directly behind the front ("directly behind" depends on the technology: it was no more than 50 - 200 kilometers for the first half of the 20th century, today it is more like 100 - 500 kilometers with modern Strike Aircraft)

So, I suggest that 'Air Force' comes in two distinctive types: a separate mechanic to attack enemy cities, Industrial and other Districts, Improvements, and an adjunct to the army and navy that extends the range at which they can attack enemy Units opposing them.

The latter could even be represented as Points added to combat factors or applied in an Extended range (3 - 5 tiles) as Vision (Reconnaissance or Artillery Spotting) or Tactical Bombing (combat factors). The explicit advantage of Air Power is that those Points could be held to be applied to support any Unit within a radius - tactical air forces can rebase and start attacking in an entirely new area within hours, days, or weeks at the most, and this mobility and flexibility is one of the great strengths of this type of air power.

Strategic Air Power requires a Huge investment in heavy aircraft, bases for them, repair and training facilities, and development of certain techniques that don't apply anywhere else: like the capability of putting 1000 large aircraft in the air in the same area and direction from numerous bases and concentrate them all over a target precisely in time and space 100s of kilometers away. Strategic Air Power that actually works is extremely expensive: so much that in the largest war in history, when every participant was straining every resource to the max, only two Civs built real strategic bomber forces: Britain and the USA. The Heavy Bomber organized, trained and supported as a Strategic Weapon should be pretty rare in the game. To this day, baring the use of nuclear weapons, only the USA really has a strategic bomber force large enough to have much effect, and note that Russia's strategic force with non-nuclear missiles and bombs in a year has utterly failed to break Ukraine or even constrict its military production much. The massive destruction of Ukrainian cities has not been due to any strategic bombing by either aircraft or missiles, but from ground bombardment by army missiles and artillery. In WWII terms, it is Stalingrad writ large, not Dresden or Hamburg.

Just thoughts, but it should be noted that the flexibility and variety of Air Power tactical applications is not necessarily represented well by separate Units on the map, given that IRL those 'units' could be applied to several places and actions within a single turn.
Since WW2 America and URSS/Russia have developed different capabilities and doctrines about the role of their Airforces, American dominance over Sea and Sky is unique and very expensive, but in terms of gameplay most players would likely like to taste some of that might even without be the dominant global superpower.

In the case of current invasion over Ukraine the Russian have been cautious to use their airforce in real capacity, preferring to waste thousands of their own troops before risk thier best flying "toys", add that despite the deserved hate by most of the world their diplomatic status is still more "friendly" that something like the WW2, also today is easier and faster to record and spread war atrocities so is obvious that the use of high altitude bombing is at a level not yet (hope never) reached in this war.

After all if we look most of the wars since WW2 the contemporary militar projection is more about deterrance and backing local factions for their own interest, but the older militar expansion for long term control is basically gone, both America and Russia have wasted manpower and money in occupations and their mightiest war equipment only allow their troops to suffer years of local insurgency to finally leave. So if the game is realistic the last Era should be also designed to turn direct agression and occupation an actual waste of national resources, time and efforts for politics (never portrayed in game) and brief corporation gains.
 
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Airbases (and Carriers) with a coverage range that provide passive bonus for army/navy, default reconnaissance and interception mission for any Fighter asigned in such base and the option to assign objetives for Bombers plus Fighter escorting is the easier and more efficient way to apply Airforce role.

Since WW2 America and URSS/Russia have developed different capabilities and doctrines about the role of their Airforces, American dominance over Sea and Sky is unique and very expensive, but in terms of gameplay most players would likely like to taste some of that might even without be the dominant global superpower.

In the case of current invasion over Ukraine the Russian have been cautious to use their airforce in real capacity, preferring to waste thousands of their own troops before risk thier best flying "toys", add that despite the deserved hate by most of the world their diplomatic status is still more "friendly" that something like the WW2, also today is easier and faster to record and spread war atrocities so is obvious that the use of high altitude bombing is at a level not yet (hope never) reached in this war.

After all if we look most of the wars since WW2 the contemporary militar projection is more about deterrance and backing local factions for their own interest, but the older militar expansion for long term control is basically gone, both America and Russia have wasted manpower and money in occupations and their mightiest war equipment only allow their troops to suffer years of local insurgency to finally leave. So if the game is realistic the last Era should be also designed to turn direct agression and occupation an actual waste of national resources, time and efforts for politics (never portrayed in game) and brief corporation gains.
A subject for the Very Late Game, but some years ago Martin Van Crefeld, a very good military analyst, wrote a book called The Age of Airpower, in which he postulated that, in fact, the 'age of Airpower" was Over. Aircraft and their crews are now so expensive to design, develop, maintain and train that they are largely impossible to use effectively against any kind of opposition. The Ukraine War has largely proven this, at least in the circumstances of that war: air defenses on both sides are so well-developed that anything in the sky that can be spotted by human eyeball, electronic or other means can be shot down, and is very, very hard to replace.

That means more and more of the 'air power' takes the form of Drones and other UAVs, much cheaper to produce and not risking the expensive-to-train pilots. Another older example of this has been the increasing use of 'stand-off' air to ground weapons for the past 40 years which allow the aircraft to remain safely away from the battlefield while still targeting it with guided bombs and missiles. Now that drones can also launch the same missiles, the need for any manned aircraft in the 'loop' becomes very difficult to argue for.
 
^ And more difficult to model. note that the only advantage of human pilot is that he/she can learn combat skills.
1. What are implications to Aircraft unit evolution path? note that theoretical combat UAV Fighter will be about a size of Predator, and thus requires shorter runways. similiar combat drones can be launched from carrier truck. to this end... this kind of UAV carrier truck can be considered 'artillery' as well... or not?
2. And what about naval evolutions. will this also end CV era as well? note that there's conflicting trends towards surface combat ship desings regarding to size. at one end these ships tend to be 'small'. on the other end it goes opposite.
especially with Chinese AshM becomes as big as Scud and 'outranges' the most advanced USN naval fighters.
What shall 'Drone Carriers' be and will it be 'Combat Carrier' / 'Battle Carrier' too?
Ingame unit evoluiton paths for both cases... plase (civ7)
 
There will be no war between humans anymore as soon as all those autocracies fall one after the other.

Sorry, couldn't resist. ;-)

But yes, current trends imply that we don't necessarily need to have flight totally revolutionize warfare in the game. But realism isn't of the utmost importance to me. Rather, it needs to affect gameplay, change everything up and be fun. How? I don't really care.
 
There will be no war between humans anymore as soon as all those autocracies fall one after the other.

Sorry, couldn't resist. ;-)

But yes, current trends imply that we don't necessarily need to have flight totally revolutionize warfare in the game. But realism isn't of the utmost importance to me. Rather, it needs to affect gameplay, change everything up and be fun. How? I don't really care.

Actually, just the opposite: flight and its application in large bodies of gun and bomb-toting aircraft, did revolutionize warfare in the mid-20th century. The effects of tactical airpower by the German Luftwaffe against the Soviets in 1941 - 42 and by the Allies against the Germans in 1944 - 45 were devastating.

Ironically, though, the most effective things airpower did to ground troops have rarely been directly reflected in any games. They were the disruption and strangulation of movement and the effecive direction of artillery fire on targets all across the battlefield. To quote a Soviet soldier from late 1941: "Whenever a Frame (a German light reconnaissance aircraft) showed up, we had to Hide: bombers or artillery were sure to follow". By 1944, the massive allied airpower made it simpler: the German equivalent phrase was "We were nailed to the ground during daylight". That meant units could move at only a fraction of the normal rate, and took losses whenever they tried to move. When they weren't moving, they took artillery fire everywhere they were in range unless they spent a great deal of effort to hide and camouflage.

That remains as true today when the air threat is unmanned: if you are spotted, you can be hit, and if you are hit, you are dead, disrupted or 'nailed to the ground'.

The balance between air power and ground air defense changes constantly, and both sides have nearly continuously been reacting to new developments: modern Fire and Forget missiles and MANPAC antiaircraft weapons have made 'close air support' obsolete: if the aircraft gets Close, it goes down: air support is from high up and far away, but with precision weapons that can hit pinpoint targets from high up and far away. The Russians are firing air-launched missiles mostly from Russian air space: flying in Ukrainian air space is too often a one-way trip. On the other hand, the average American air strike since the 1990s involves 1 - 2 aircraft striking and a half-dozen aircraft providing surveillance/reconnaissance, top cover, anti-antiaircraft electronic jamming and counterfire (missiles that home in on electronic emissions to silence enemy radars or control mechanisms of all kinds).

Every prediction about the 'air war' in Ukraine turned out to be wrong, so I doubt that the game will do any better job of predicting what Future Tech will hold - we can make it up as we please, and have as much chance of getting it right as the military 'experts' do.
 
A subject for the Very Late Game, but some years ago Martin Van Crefeld, a very good military analyst, wrote a book called The Age of Airpower, in which he postulated that, in fact, the 'age of Airpower" was Over. Aircraft and their crews are now so expensive to design, develop, maintain and train that they are largely impossible to use effectively against any kind of opposition. The Ukraine War has largely proven this, at least in the circumstances of that war: air defenses on both sides are so well-developed that anything in the sky that can be spotted by human eyeball, electronic or other means can be shot down, and is very, very hard to replace.

That means more and more of the 'air power' takes the form of Drones and other UAVs, much cheaper to produce and not risking the expensive-to-train pilots. Another older example of this has been the increasing use of 'stand-off' air to ground weapons for the past 40 years which allow the aircraft to remain safely away from the battlefield while still targeting it with guided bombs and missiles. Now that drones can also launch the same missiles, the need for any manned aircraft in the 'loop' becomes very difficult to argue for.
This fits the model I would like for a CIV game, since I see as good enough to have the "VII Era" from 1900-1960 and the "VIII Era" from 1960-2020, with design focus around the middle point of each era not their starts. So with a possible near future "IX Era" the line of Fighters would be Monoplane>Jet>Drone/AI(non-tripulated) fighters, all of them emphatized as interceptors/escorts not for ground attack, to keep the later role for Helicopters.

Realism would be always compromised by gameplay, after all its obvious that the almost 14 thousands P-40 WarHawks built in 5 years did not turned into less than 5 thousands F-16 FightingFalcon built in near to 50 years. The average player could enjoy their unrelistic but showy proportion of high tech armies despite being a second class militar power in their match.
 
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This fits the model I would like for a CIV game, since I see as good enough to have the "VII Era" from 1900-1960 and the "VIII Era" from 1960-2020, with design focus around the middle point of each era not their starts. So with a possible near future "IX Era" the line of Fighters would be Monoplane>Jet>Drone/AI(non-tripulated) fighters, all of them emphatized as interceptors/escorts not for ground attack, to keep the later role for Helicopters.

Realism would be always compromised by gameplay, after all its obvious that the almost 14 thousands P-40 WarHawks built in 5 years did not turned into less than 5 thousands F-16 FightingFalcon built in near to 50 years. The average player could enjoy their unrelistic but showy proportion of high tech armies despite being a second class militar power in their match.
In the last two 'Eras', roughly 1940 to present day, the line monoplane - jet - drone should actually be monoplane - jet strike aircraft - UAV, because the trend even by 1940 was for the 1 - 3 seat 1 - 2 engine aircraft to have both the traditional pursuit/fighter capabilities of air attack, escort, interception and also an increasing Ground Attack tactical and operational level capability.

After all, as early as 1941 German, Soviet and British single-engine 'fighters' could also carry bombs and rockets for use against ground targets, and of course every one of them also built dedicated ground attack aircraft in that category: the Ju-87 Stuka 2 seat, single engine aircfaft, the IL-2 Sturmovik 1 - 2 seat, single engine armored aircraft and the later Marks of the Hurricane fighter that were increasingly used for ground attack duties. By 1944 the principle danger from the air to the German Wehrmacht was not bombers, it was 'Jabos' - Jagdbombern or 'Fighter-Bombers' like the American P-47 that could carry up to 2 tons of bombs and strafe ground targets with 8 12.7mm machineguns - more bomb load than the average 2-engine bomber of 1939!

Similarly, after the first generation of jet fighters in the 1950s, most of the modern 1 - 2 seat jet 'fighters' are actually multi-purpose Strike aircraft, capable of carrying munitions loads for use against both air and ground (or sea) targets. The F-16 is a good example, originally planned as a fighter aircraft but now more often used to attack ground targets since the USA hasn't had a real air threat to its forces since WWII.
 
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