Air Force, useless?

[PekkaM]

Having won many wars at modern times where my opponenthad jets, bombers and gunships, I still miss their point. I never built any except to see what they look like and how they work, didn't bother with SAM infantry either.

How usefull are they anyway and in what kind of situation you use them? A stack of four artillery with upgrades and inf/mech inf/armor is all I need.

 

[The Fathom]

I was in war with 2 nations. I used the bombers to bomb their units. I also have a jet on defence in all my border cities. For me personal i think they are great... Only thing is i do not have a lot of oil.

 

[Kilt]

Having a stack of bombers removes the need for artillery, basically. Also more efficient for taking out key resources. If you have bombers in range of his oil and mines, you can easily cripple his empire without even moving a unit onto his soil.
Keep in mind, bombers tend to get shot down alot, even the stealth ones.

Kilt.

 

[PekkaM]

Having a stack of bombers removes the need for artillery, basically. Also more efficient for taking out key resources. If you have bombers in range of his oil and mines, you can easily cripple his empire without even moving a unit onto his soil.
Keep in mind, bombers tend to get shot down alot, even the stealth ones.

Kilt.

Can you reduce city defenses with them without risking them like with artillery?

 

[alerum68]

Can you reduce city defenses with them without risking them like with artillery?

You can reduce a cities defense with arty without them taking damage. It's only when they try and do collateral damage. As for how useful planes are it depends on dificulty level. The lower levels they are useless, but higher up every unit is helpful at some point.

 

[Dragonlord]

Can you reduce city defenses with them without risking them like with artillery?

Yes - that's exactly the point.

You can reduce the city defense from far away, while your land units are still trekking across enemy territory AND reduce the strength of the enemy units in the city... by the time your land units arrive, the city is ready to be taken without any further delay.

 

[BlowPhish]

You can also use them in combination with your navy. Useing them to weaken enemy destroyers and battleships will save you alot of ships. You can't do that with arty. In my opinion you should use both because bombers and fighters will only give -50% health where arty will lower the health even further. If your playing someone with a large airforce your screwed if your attack doesn't work cause your land will be fuxxored.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

i think having a few around for naval battles is important. The reason is its hard not to loose alot of shields in coin toss fights in naval battles. However since fighters can soften them up without much risk you have a great asset in the sense that you can take opposing battleships to 50% then engage with a destroyer and almost always win. (i use destroyers cause they are fast and sufficient with fighter support). The result is instead of having a navy that needs to be constantly rebuilt you have a navy/fighter support team that can sometimes survive for the whole game.

On ground they are nice too but not as important as their role in saving your ships.

 

[wise man]

And don't forget the reconaissance option!

 

[Smeee]

<3 Stealth Bombers
<3 50 of them all pounding your enemy

 

[rabies]

I am finding them insanely useful. The Air Strike option is fantastic. By the time my ground force is within striking distance of the city, my fleet of stealth bombers and fighters have already bombed away half the hitpoints of all the cities defenders...allowing modern armor to just walk in with no losses. Likewise, it is an easy way to soften a target (battleships especially) and substantially put the odds in your favor.

Try using a combined arms force (air, navy, ground) in the modern era to decimate your opponents quickly and efficiently.

 

[Smeee]

I am finding them insanely useful. The Air Strike option is fantastic. By the time my ground force is within striking distance of the city, my fleet of stealth bombers and fighters have already bombed away half the hitpoints of all the cities defenders...allowing modern armor to just walk in with no losses. Likewise, it is an easy way to soften a target (battleships especially) and substantially put the odds in your favor.

Try using a combined arms force (air, navy, ground) in the modern era to decimate your opponents quickly and efficiently.

If you follow up your bomber waves with a fleet of helicopters you practically only need an occupying force.

If we still had Paratroopers I doubt you'd ever build an armoured unit.

 

[Holbek]

Stealth Bombers are great.
Just finished a Prince Domination game, where I had build 40 in the end.

I had 2 stacks of 10 Stealth Bombers all the time, moving them along with my mainforce of modern armours.

I used a few of them for defence, mostly striking enemy battleships.

When war starts, remove all resources in the enemy territory in 1 or 2 turns.
Remove defence bonus, and start removing hit points of the defending units in the next turn.
3rd turn, remove all the hitpoints down to 50% and move in with your armours having Barrage II or III.
A 40hp armour vs. a 16hp mech. inf is almost an overkill

 

[Harry Haller]

I have seen people complaining about how "useless" bombers are but I don't get it. You can reduce an entire stack of defenders to 50% strength in a couple of turns, while your occupying troops make their way toward the city. Because the various defense modifiers are are multiplied by the base strength, a 50% loss of strength is a huge effect for troops defending a city. Your attacking units will lose much less of their strength capturing cities, so they will be able to heal to full strength faster (or to win more combats without losing any strength) and keep your assault moving. Even basic fighters are good if you have enough of them, and bombers are awesome because of the collateral damage. Also, you very rarely lose them. Air defenses usually damage them but rarely kill them.

 

[rgbender62]

What I want to know is how you keep enough of the things alive to be so useful. I love the guy who says "you very rarely lose them". Every game I have played at Prince Level (8 so far) the damn things get completely chewed up by enemy fighters. The AI's don't seem to build bombers much but boy do they love fighters! They stack 3 and even 4 per city when they can and fighters seem to be viciously effective against even "Stealth" bombers. I love what they can do but economically they seem like a losing proposition to me. They are just too fragile.

 

[Harry Haller]

I guess I try to choose targets where my bombers are less likely to go against fighters. Obviously, no single unit is overwhelming in all situations and there are countermeasures for almost everything in the game (one of the things I like about Civ 4). But I find that bombers are often very useful for attacking stacks of troops, whether defending cities or making a counter attack, and for knocking out resources, as others have said.

 

[MrCarrot]

If I'm honest, I very rarely bother to check if a city I'm sending my Stealths up against is even defended by fighters. As long as they're fully healthy on the way in, it seems very rare that they'll be destroyed outright. Probably one in four, or so, get damaged but I just let them heal up fully before using them again. IIRC I only had three bombers destroyed in my last game, in at least 50 turns of constant sorties; compared to what it would have cost (never mind the time it would have taken) to do the same amount of collateral damage with arty, I'd say bombers are very cost-effective.

 

[Ungar]

I usually send in fighters on bombing / collateral damage runs first to soak up interceptors. They usually survive even when intercepted.

Then come the bombers..

 

[Smeee]

I usually send in fighters on bombing / collateral damage runs first to soak up interceptors. They usually survive even when intercepted.

Then come the bombers..

Exactly!

Air power FTW!

 

[Demartus]

An airforce is also handy on defense - AI raiders or an invasion march into your territory, bomb them into submission, and send your Mech Inf or even Riflemen/Infantry to go clean up.

Bombers make for a much quicker invasion of the enemy. While you're moving the ground-pounders into position, you can be whittling way their defenders and city defenses, as well as striking their resources from afar.

I've only ever had aircraft damaged, never destroyed, though they seem to take a long time to recover! I think the big thing is it's easy to accidentally send a damaged bomber out, unless you're paying attention to the health bars.

If you have them grouped, you can do a mass bombing run to take out the city defensive rating - it'll only use as many bombers as necessary, which is a nice feature.

I find artillery too slow once you have tanks.