Air Combat

[Victoria]

In the Tips & tricks there was a question on air combat, specifically about protecting carriers. Ref. Question: how do you counter air units defending cities?

I have never done much on this area as its late in the game and the AI has never really bothered although I naturally have used bombers and fighters.

Is there any areas of air combat people want to know something about specifically? I am slowly writing a Damage guide which will have to include it so was just wondering as often good input brings great questions.

 

[Flaxton]

Good question, though I don't think I've ever been attacked by air! I rarely even build aerodrome etc myself, as the game is normally over by then. I suppose I would like to know if someone has used that district to do something interesting?

 

[Erudain]

Well basically most of what I asked in the other thread....I've seen the AI using air units in higher difficulties but never got one of my own cities attacked nor have I seen the AI use fighter on patrol mode. They mostly use it to defend their cities by attacking your gound units and ships.
So basically I'd like to know is:
- What's the use of the dogfight branch of the promotion tree? useless so far since I've never seen any of my fighters intercept enemies....add to that carriers not having the option to set fighters to intercept.
- What units can intercept? and how many times?....animation wise I've only see AA units attack incoming plane attacks, destroyers and missile cruises can intercept but they still take massive damage doing so.
Still have to confirm if they also intercept attacks coming to nearby units like a carrier or only can intercept if they are the targets of the attack

Edit: ok, forget the last part, in the pics below it seems they can intercept on nearby units, the attack on the carrier takes more dmg since it has several anti-air around it

 

[Victoria]

This stuff is weird, so here is the scenario

If I attack the Aircraft Carrier it shows I am 72 vs 65 but look at the damage I take... something is wrong2

If I attack the missile cruiser no other anti air can help them and my damage is less than attacking the carrier

Likewise attacking any destroyer

It looks like the destroyers and Missile cruisers cxan defend multiple times

 

[Jaybe]

If I attack the Aircraft Carrier it shows I am 72 vs 65 but look at the damage I take... something is wrong!

Carrier getting unlisted support from all the adjacent units?

 

[Uberfrog]

I notice the combat strength icon next to the Aircraft Carrier in that matchup shows 90 instead of 65 for the base strength.

Could it be that the Fighter is taking the -8 penalty from AntiAir, and then effectively fighting the 90 combat strength of the Missile Cruiser? That would be a difference of 90 - 72 = -18 which would explain taking more damage than 95 - 18 against the Missile Cruiser itself.

It's weird as hell, and probably bugged.

 

[Victoria]

So protecting an embarked unit works but why -7 for anti air?

Especially as one missile cruiser -is -4

and why onl;y -3 for the destroyers?

Especially as just one destroyer is -2

 

[Victoria]

I notice the combat strength icon next to the Aircraft Carrier in that matchup shows 90 instead of 65 for the base strength.

well spotted, it shows the carrier strength but then the correct missile cruiser strength.... nice

So the strength of the strongest and the attacker gets - for each additional but how muich minus is odd..... hos no-one seriously looked at this before... I guess you are all as bad as me then

symbol wise... is the star the attck strength and the sword the defence strength then?... that warrior gets seriously wasted but does a lot of damage back
That would mean it is not bugged

 

[Uberfrog]

hos no-one seriously looked at this before... I guess you are all as bad as me then

Well the AI's use of either air forces or navies has been pretty bad, not to mention anti-air units . It really hasn't come up enough to notice, in my experience.

 

[EpicWestern]

The deity AI seems to be more inclined to build air units than before, I've had a few games recently where I've actually felt the need to build air defense. Unfortunately it does seem incredibly buggy and/or poorly designed. In one game I actually built a mobile SAM to support an artillery assault on a city with jet fighters. The unit worked in the sense that it showed the animation of firing missiles at the jet but the attack was ineffectual - the jet only took around 1-3 damage.

I've built jet fighters myself with the intention of putting them on patrol vs enemy bombers that were picking off random units, but this time the jet didn't even respond to several attacks. Could be that I just ran poorly with the intercept chance that previous versions of civ had, but I'm pretty skeptical.

 

[Victoria]

Victoria, can you look at the combat logs from your trials? I strongly suspect that each air strike will be TWO separate entries.

nope ... 1 entry only

CanTargetAir="True"

Weird... will have a think

the jet didn't even respond.

Was the attack in the patrol radius?... thats the only way it will intercept, and according to the wiki, just once.

 

[Erudain]

Have to test it also, but according to the Wiki with the Patrol/Intercept action "Note that this tile cannot be over enemy territory - just over your own, or neutral territory." Maybe that's what prevents using the patrol action from the carriers? Could you test if you can use it in unclaimed sea tiles?...I admit the times I tryed to use the patrol action from fighters based on carriers I was inside enemy waters.

If true this also kinda makes my other idea uselss, I wanted to use an engineer to create an airflied next to an AI border or city and use the patrol action as a protection for your offensive ground force.

 

[Victoria]

I use firetuner for my tests and 99% of the time thing are correct but just making that clear

I can place a patrol in neutral waters.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Okay, so how useful are AA guns anyways? 1 range seems kinda short. As it can get really crowded anyways, they generally are in the back.

Also, ships can counter air units too, but is it also just 1 range too.

EDIT: LOL I didn't know AA guns were support units. Whoops.

 

[Tech Osen]

Airports are still very buggy. I just captured this city and game prompts me that I can attack the empty airport with my encampment.
Note that I haven't yet researched flight myself (so I can't check atm if I can build planes), maybe that will put it back in order.

Edit: turns out there was n invisible Norwegian plane left behind. I could shoot at it and the next turn it did a kamikaze on one of my dread-naughts.

 

[zhivik]

It's even worse - I have recently seen a playthrough where a city with air defences was taken, but not all enemy planes were destroyed. They continued to attack the invading player, even though they flew from an airport in already conquered territory! I think I saw this myself once, but I don't remember the circumstances exactly. At any rate, the AI seems to build air forces much more frequently now, even on not the highest difficulties (the playthrough was on King difficulty). Here is a video, the turn where planes attack from conquered territory starts at about 47:00:

It is definitely a bug, though there are several explanations why it happens. You will see that this isn't the last city of the attacked civ, and a neighbouring city even has an airport of its own (though all four slots were occupied). There might not have been enough space for the planes to go to (it was an 8-slot airport, all slots full), which appears to be the most plausible explanation. Yet, if I remember correctly, a similar scenario in Civ 5 simply led to the loss of your planes, which is what should have happened here if that were the case.

 

[Tech Osen]

Same game a bit later I liberate a city state after gaining it in a peace deal. One Norwegian fighter was in the city state and it it's still there a dozen turns later. There is no other Norwegian city near though.

 

[agonistes]

I think the -x from anti air is because the game resolves the interception of the cruisers BEFORE the fighter carries out the air attack, and so the fighter will have less HP when attacking, resulting in that penalty.

It seems the escort anti-air is resolved 'off camera.' If multiple AA applies to one run, that's probably a good idea. Unfortunately, there is no combat log... so we know the air unit is damaged going into the combat... and we can see what the result would be like after hitting the carrier, but we can't see what the health bar looked like between the aa salvo(s) and the actual combat with the carrier.

The aa is essentially an aoo from a zone of control.

But I don't need to crunch the numbers. I just need to have a general idea of how much punishment I'm going to take so I'm not surprised by an outcome.

 

[Victoria]

If multiple AA applies to one run

Can the same plane on the same attack run be intercepted more than once?

As per the fact there is only one combat log resolution and if you look at the attack summary screen a few things are evident as follows

1. The fighter will do a little under half the damage to an aircraft carrier. This matches the 72 vs 65 combat if I compare to the combat table. The fighter is normally 80 vs an aircraft carrier but is at -8 due to multiple AA defence... so they have a small but telling effect on the aircraft's attack. so its 72 vs 65

2. The carrier has no AA but the ships around it do. Your aircraft faces the strongest AA defence (shown as 90 here from a missile cruiser) which if I look at the stats seems to be versus 72 rather than 80 (makes sense as more than 1 ship is shooting)... a 10 difference in the damage tables only gives around 50 damage while 18 difference matches... so its 90 vs 72

So based on the assessment using the combat table as a guide (post Hans Lemurson figures out the Combat Formula) the symbols seem to be

Attack strength

Defense strength

Outcome:
1. If you have carriers and they attack it with a couple of half decent planes your carrier is lost even if you have decent AA cover. Just like in the midway, its about getting their carriers first. Yamamoto tried to first strike but cryptography saved the day.
2. Having just one AA Army/Armada is just as effective as having all.
Outstanding question:
Does one armada carriers or have 3 separate.

... BTW @Olleus I have not discarded your thought on the -8 being aircraft damage, it may well be and well considered.... not all is 100% clear yet

 

[Victoria]

Each interceptor can intercept unlimited times per turn

The wiki uses air patrol as an example and states each plane can only intercept once. I'll test this
I do know that if I attack with 5 planes and they have 3 destroyers all 5 planes get damaged. This indicates that planes can intercept once but ground and sea AA more than once.

What happens if an air unit is the interceptor?

Same as explained above

Exactly how does one do that, the patrol function? I havent used air units in months...

Patrols are weird and probably not helping with the bugs posted above here.
You have a plane with a range of 4... you click patrol and choose a target tile which may be 4 tiles away, the plane then circles there (unsure of circle size) where it will intercept anything passing through the circle.
However there are some other weird things
You can then select that patrol plane and get it to attack something rather than patrol for the turn.... effectively giving it 8 range from the city/strip.
You can have a city which can house a single plane but feed many planes through the city to patrol areas around the city for a long time.... the city can house 1 plane but has 15 on patrol. I imagine this causes issues when the city is captured.

Does the same thing happen with a bomber targeting districts or dropping nukes?

Yes! ... this is exactly how you intercept bombers nukes. I wish destroyers could do the same thing to subs.... maybe they can?

So my very quakey theory I will try to test tonight is as follows

The Wiki states for interception the strongest intercept unit present is used (which seems correct when I mix cruisers and destroyers)
The Wiki also states there is +2 support bonus for each additional intercepting unit - The wiki uses an example of two planes with overlapping patrol areas.

So in the case above we do not see the +2 per support (probably because it may be confusing to try and show it) and the following happens in the formula

Fighter base strength 80 attacks a carrier base strength 65 surrounded by a missile cruise and 3 destroyers. The AA is done first and this is 90 vs 80 with +6 support for a difference of +16. According to the table this does 45-68 HP of damage but we can see the plane takes roughly 80 so there may be an additional modifier in some tables somewhere, I'll take a look. The plane certainly is taking 80 damage and is then -8 versus the carrier.

A missile cruiser armada vs a biplane would stop any attack I imagine