Air defense

[Jezz]

Just got conquests, had never got PTW, so i'm very excitied to see they finally brought back the airdefense stat from civ2.

Only problem, theres no mention of how it works anywhere in the manual or the editor help file. i see that its a single digit number for most of the units with the air defns stat, so i;m guessing its a multiplier of their regular defense? could someone enlighten me? thanks. i would do a search, but it seems to be disabled.

 

[Zeekater]

You can best look at the AA units as mobile SAM improvements from the cities. They only defend the tile they are on, and have some chance of hitting a plane, all be it a very low chance...

 

[lbhhh]

Also, a stack of AA units is more effective than a single unit.
With the addition of lethal bombardment to bombers, it becomes vital to protect your troops with mobile sam and flak units, although fighters are still very useful.

 

[Juhahu]

I just finished multiplayer game where I got good chance to test this new AA defence. My opponent (russians) didn't have any oil, but he had a lot of mobile SAM batteries and regular sams in most of towns. I was little behind in tech, but I got about 40 bombers and few fighters.

I noticed that it was a suicide to bomb towns with SAM/mobile SAMs in it. I just lost too many bombers when bombing towns, so it really wasn't worth it. One thing SAMs can't prevent, is destroying the tiles. Mobile SAMs could keep 2-3 tiles untouched per town, but I just sent recon plane first and bombed all the undefended tiles to ruins. With the new craters, it takes ages to deferder's workers to rebuild everything and in 10-15 turns, hardly any town still produces anything and all the roads are cut.

Mobile sams/sams are good for town defence, but without fighters or tactical nukes, it's impossible to defend anything but those towns. Well, perhaps on archipelago SAMs might work better, when you don't have common border with the enemy.

 

[Eliminator]

If u got a good Airforce u will win allmost every war

 

[StabbingNirvana]

so, when you do air superiority with a jet in a city, it guards the whole city radius? lets hope so ...

 

[Juhahu]

Originally posted by StabbingNirvana
so, when you do air superiority with a jet in a city, it guards the whole city radius? lets hope so ...

No. It guards larger area. Range is 9, it guards area of 4 tiles in every direction.

 

[TerraHero]

I often build airdefences, but hardly any airforce myself.

Why try and attack those cities with bombing runs and u're bombers/fighters get shot down, when u can just as easy put sum arty's there and bomb the sh!t outa them? wich they can't shoot down. then role in the tanks

sum msay Bombers and fighters got the advantage over arty's with range, but when playing on a large map u constantly have to build new airfield and airports in u're cities for u're airforce to keep up. Costing valuable time, while arty's are mobile.

And when a city or airfield is overrun u lose all present airforce with them doing any to the attack force in defence, atleast Arty's shoot back.

I only use airforce on defence and in the opening of the war.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Bombers are still quite useful for melting down enemy units in the open. I tend to use this more now, for knocking units out that are stationed on radar towers, then moving a unit onto the tile to take the tower and knock out the defense bonus. For cities, it's best to bring along lots of arty and knock the units down that way. If it's later in the game and you have alot of gold, use "Investigate City" on every big, well defended metropolis you attack. If there is no air defense in the city, its bombs away.

 

[cldwarhist]

Has no one else made "Wild Weasel" units? In the US Air Force, these units were specialized F-4 and F-105 aircraft that hit AAA and SAM Units. Later, the Air Force used EF-111A aircraft to jam enemy radars and today, the Navy uses EA-6B aircraft. I have no idea how to make graphics or civilopedia entries, so I have simply used the jet fighter graphic and entry. To make it a "Wild Weasel", I gave them no def., 2 attack, 4 bombard, and set it for stealth attack on the SAM and Mobile Flak units. I have no idea how the AI would use such a unit, but I have had some success. Also, I use stealth aircraft with precision bombing to take out city improvements first. Too bad that precision bombing doesnt allow you to select specific improvements.

 

[Turner]

Originally posted by Juhahu

Originally posted by StabbingNirvana
so, when you do air superiority with a jet in a city, it guards the whole city radius? lets hope so ...

No. It guards larger area. Range is 9, it guards area of 4 tiles in every direction.

Yeah, I tried to bomb some units in my territory, and had my bomber intercepted (In my airspace) by an enemy fighter. :sigh:


Bombers are great at deep strike resource denail missions. I used this to some success in my last game. Bombers have their missions that they're better at, and arty theirs. It just depends what you want them to do.

 

[haggi]

Just did some stats from a game I started yesterday over the last 7 turns. I have no oil (only 1 oil and map and the Arabs have it, big shock that) so there are no fighters in cities and I have 6 mobile sams in each city and the bombers are ordinary bombers, no stealth.

bombers hit by SAM / bombers avoid SAM & hit city
1 / 4
2 / 3
0 / 3
3 / 3
1 / 2
1 / 3
3 / 2

How do these stats compare to others.