AI air power?

[RDomico]

Playing with all DLC and patches. I am not a great player. I don't play very often and when I do, I play prince. I decided to try King. I was basically in last or next to last in most categories until modern times. So I basically built some bombers and was able to pretty much kill the AI militarily. Even though they were ahead of me in technologies, no one built any fighters or anti-aircraft units to counter my bombers. They also did not build much of a navy either, but at least they had some ships.

Disappointing. Do they ever build aircraft?

 

[Tech Osen]

It's been an ongoing issue since day one. Planes new requiring aluminium isn't helping.

 

[Victoria]

Plane costs are very high too. You tend to get planes sometimes on higher levels.
TBH the challenge in this game is to win before planes

 

[sethryclaus]

Try advanced start in industrial age with abundant resources. AI will have a proper modern war with you
There are a bunch of Civs that work much better on advanced starts and there are achievements for playing like this too.

 

[Haig]

Well in my games they tend to build aircraft, and use bombers and jet bombers to attack units and to destroy districts.

But somehow the fighter use is difficult to them.

Navies are now big in the game, I think you have had a bad luck not seeing much ?

 

[steveg700]

So weird to me because airpower is such a rote fire-and-forget system, prioritizing building them should hardly be an insurmountable challenge. Why can't the AI work with it?

 

[Victoria]

Why can't the AI work with it?

I imagine some of it is cost. The reason being the devs said they would prioritise air units more but it has to be hard with such a high cost.

 

[steveg700]

Thing is, I see many AI civ's able to roll 10,000< gold into an aid request. They can afford a plane or two, no?

There''s even an "airpower" agenda.

 

[Victoria]

Aid requests are breaking. It is aid for your disaster, not for you to spend. Even if it went into a black hole it is a way of sucking all the gold off your enemies, at the moment it is doubly bad.
Unit requests from friends when being attacked would be much more awesome and encourage diplomacy and make life more challenging as well as fit the diplomatic favour.

 

[steveg700]

Aid requests are breaking. It is aid for your disaster, not for you to spend. Even if it went into a black hole it is a way of sucking all the gold off your enemies, at the moment it is doubly bad.
Unit requests from friends when being attacked would be much more awesome and encourage diplomacy and make life more challenging as well as fit the diplomatic favour.

It's off-topic, but once again I'll reiterate that the game needs to simply have an emergency fund that players donate to competitively, then when emergencies crop up, they vote on disbursing the funds. And even then, it shouldn't be a simple handout of gold, but rather an approved expenditure for military or civilian units.

 

[Disgustipated]

Was going to make another thread, but this can go here.

Okay, what gives. 2 AI jet fighters can kill one of my fully promoted nearly full health Giant Death Robots, but 2 of my jet bombers from an aircraft carrier can only take off less than 1/8th health of a GDR with no promotions? That's total B.S. I'm not playing that high of a difficulty level that the AI gets that great of bonuses (I'm on King). Is there something I'm missing?

AI air power is totally out of whack. A regular fighter plane killed a rocket artillery army with the defense promotion. Why is the AI able to do so much damage and I can't? I'm thinking they might have buffed air power a little too much.

As for the thread question, the AI will build air power, but you may have to wait until after turn 500 (on epic speed 750 turn game) on your difficulty level. Obviously higher difficulty levels will make that turn they appear earlier.

But somehow the fighter use is difficult to them.

See my above post. The AI is using fighters to great effect on me. Though I don't think they are using the deploy function at the same time.

 

[Victoria]

That's total B.S.

Nope, thats -17 because bombers use a bombard strength. even fighters do the job. Bombers are only good for cities and nukes. Two jet fighters, nasty business.

Why is the AI able to do so much damage and I can't?

The silly thing is a GDR with air defence becomes a disaster in design

Attacking a non upgraded GDR (no AA) which is what you did, it would be 103 vs 120. Thats -17 which does what 10HP to a GDR... pah. If you had attacked an upgraded GDR you would be at +3
Now their Jet fighter is 110... and stupid design says that now the GDR has AA you are now defending with your AA strength which is 100. So jet fighter 1 is 110 vs 100... +10 which is about 30 but if you are damaged by say 15 HP thats -2 so +12 and the second attack at +15 which with a good roll will kill you. If they were promoted you were definately dead.

If we take this design one step further ....I add 1 AA unit to the GDR and suddenly they are defending with aa first at -15 but then defend at -2...Why on earths name are they defending with their AA strength. If they are not upgraded to have AA they defend better (but do no damage)... and BTW thanks for asking, I think I have just found something else out I was not aware of about AA defence but need to test.

This was done on emperor, on deity it would be an additional +2 in the AI’s favour.
Did you know on deity a fighter (not a jet fighter) is +24 vs a tank, thats nasty
One more thing... the Strafe promotion gives +17 attack

 

[Disgustipated]

still seems strange that 2 jet fighters are that powerful against GDR. I'm fairly certain one of the promotions beefs up their air defense.

I'll see if I can find a save. Wasn't doing much except liberating city states from Persia when England decided to attack me (though I think they attacked my ally Japan), so I figure I'd prevent England from taking over Muscat, which I did. AI really went after city states in this game.

Had a bad start with no food, and only 1 resource (cotton), the horses came later, but I went with it. Mapuche were my biggest obstacle. I actually removed my tourist policy cards once I seen I had a path to win via diplomatic victory (which was my goal with Tamar, but I went culture when diplomatic looked difficult- turns out I would have got it with climate accords). It was too late at that point, I won culture victory before I could win diplomatic victory.

Here's the save where their 2 jet fighters took out my GDR. and I do have the air defense promotion. I tried to recreate this save exactly how I did it before, including not resting my GDR when I should have (because one bomber easily had enough strength to bring Oslo's city defense down and conquer the city with the modern armor). I could have used the other bomber to take out an AT crew instead of the GDR. But resting wouldn't have mattered since the health would have regenerated after England took their turn. There was a 3rd fighter jet in Oslo, but I conquered that. And their 4th fighter jet was in the Hungary city which I conquered and gave to them.

edit: I have the auto save from when I attacked their GDR with jet bombers. I'll just show the screen shot. I forgot digital democracy gives me -3 attack

 

[Victoria]

still seems strange that 2 jet fighters are that powerful against GDR. I'm fairly certain one of the promotions beefs up their air defense.

Nope, one of the mods give it an air defence ratherthan beefs it it in fact debuffs the GDR....

here are the stats of your fight (just recreated from save) ...
The first jet fighter on king has a modified attack against you of +12 which does 55 damage. On average it would do 48 so a lucky first attack.
The second jet fighter swoops in at +18 which does 66 damage when it should have done 61 on average.
So in total they did 117 HP damage but on average would have done 109 which is still death even at 100% (although you were at -1 for some initial damage.
IF you were not AA upgraded the irony is they would have done on avergage 45 HP of damage (-8(21) -5(24)) but then you would not have done any damage to the fighters which have taken 20 and 17 HP from your AA.

I still think it is a bad design.

If you want to win just stop fighting and trade. not sure what you are so upset about (apart from wanting to pwn with a GDR)

EDIT
and great screen shot you see the non AA GDR defends 30 strength better against air! You were fighting at -23. The joke is you have no choice but to accept an AA upgrade

Using your AA guns as your defence armour is a stupid design <<<--- firaxis AA designer

 

[steveg700]

We need to get Firaxis to hire Victoria as a consultant.

 

[Victoria]

We need to get Firaxis to hire Victoria as a consultant.

I'm on a V large retainer probably work about 10 hours a week ATM and I am 100% home based.
Not sure they could match it. I have the best boss(es) in the world
Thats why I can play civ a lot. If you want to thank anyone, thank my boss, I am only doing what I enjoy.

 

[Karmah]

I'm on a V large retainer probably work about 10 hours a week ATM and I am 100% home based.
Not sure they could match it. I have the best boss(es) in the world
Thats why I can play civ a lot. If you want to thank anyone, thank my boss, I am only doing what I enjoy.

'V large retainer' ?

 

[Victoria]

'V large retainer' ?

Will PM you.

 

[Disgustipated]

apart from wanting to pwn with a GDR

Hey, who doesn't want to pwn with a GDR, that was supposed to be their purpose. Which is why it's surprising they are so weak. Though the Firaxis devs did say they had a weakness against air power, but they had a later promotion to help it. I didn't expect the upgrade to hurt it.

And I remember a game around 4 months ago I did move around an AA unit with it (in that game I was being attacked by bombers, so not as lethal), not sure if that would have worked in this situation. I didn't bring one here since I didn't bother to build it, and I was initially facing Persia who had no air power. England was more advanced having taken out Norway and several city states. It's just something fun to do at the end game while you are waiting for victory. I certainly didn't need to liberate any city states. And in this case I liberated 2 AI cities, not city states, but I went after them mostly because they had fighters in them. But I couldn't keep up with their fighter production. I was intending on going after Cahokia and Mohendo Daro, but the game ended before that anyways.

I would have liked to end this game with Suzerain on everyone, but didn't get a chance to send another round of apostles to the only military city state I didn't have Suzerain with. I tried earlier, but AI apostles thwarted my efforts to convert the military city state (whose name I can't even begin to spell here without looking it up). It was one of my goals with Georgia's ability to get extra envoys when sending envoys to city states of your religion. A few city states like Hong Kong kept getting conquered by the AI after I got Suzerain of it. AI's were bloodthirsty after city states this game.

The joke is you have no choice but to accept an AA upgrade

Strange "feature" indeed. Do you feel it's worth it to have an AA gun with GDR? The only time I did use one, I wasn't attacked, so I wasn't able to test if this was effective or not.

 

[Victoria]

Do you feel it's worth it to have an AA gun with GDR?

you have no choice. And my view is not another’s view but personally no.
The GDR gets damaged more than the fighters.
However 4 AA units would buff it to 120 and the fighters would then be attacking at -4/-5 and be nearly half damaged, not worth attacking you twice.... but jumping around with 4 AA units is just stupid
AA rules should be fixed. An AA unit should defend with its combat strength if greater.
It is a joke a non upgraded GDR is +30 defence vs fighters compared to an upgraded one. Not what I would call a buff against fighters.
I think the most elegant answer would to make its AA 115 or 120. That would save any code changes.