Air Superiority Question ?

[Andy46]

Hi

I've set a number of jets in various city's to air superiority, which I thought meant, they attacked enemy aircraft flying close by.

However, I was attacked by air time and time again, in a recent game of Civ 3 and not once did my jets fight back.

Am I doing something wrong ?

 

[andyo]

they only attack bombers attacking the city in which the fighter is based, or the immediately surrounding tiles - and even then they don't always attack the bombers - i forgewt the percentage, but it is something like a 50-50 chance of an intercept

 

[skaternate]

I have found that having jets is of little to no use for defending around cities. I try to have one fighter in all my carriors to defend my bombers, but even then half the time the carrier gets bombed, nothing. Air suppiority sucks!

 

[andyo]

also - make sure you have the latest patch - in the early versions of the game, the air superiority didn't work at all

 

[SCPete]

I have noticed that when the AI Bombs me I position a F15 (I only play as the Americans) in the target city and the AI stops and chooses another city. So I station F15's in all my border cities and I get bombed once every few turns with about 50-50 chance of intercept.
I don't know if the AI acts this way because they are F15's or if it acts this way for normal fighters. Can anyone confirm?

 

[eighty]

i have yet to shoot down an enemy plane, but they sure love to shoot down my bombers. also, i keep building SAMs, but they never seem to bomb those cities.....

 

[roadwarrior]

In my latest game I sent over 4 or 5 carriers with stealth bombers and one carrier with jet fighters on Air Superiority and parked them all in the same square. Withink a few turns I shot down about 3 bombers attacking my carriers. (Obviously there were a lot of bombers going after me) This is the first time I have extensively used Jet Fighters in this role but I think it definitely works. If you haven't shot down any planes it's probably just bad luck so far.

 

[Hurin]

So, does *each* fighter stationed in a city have the 50% chance? If so, putting more than one fighter in each city would raise the chance of intercept higher than 50%.

H

 

[Catt]

For an excellent overview of many facets of air superiority, see cracker's post in this thread.

 

[AndyS]

I haven't tried with 1.21 but with 1.17 I have had fighters intercept bombers when they attack cities. Sometimes the fighter doesn't shoot down the bomber and the fighter gets destroyed but it definately works. Each fighter can only intercept one bomber so if two bombers attack the city, the fighter will only intercept the first one.

The problem I have had is that the fighters NEVER intercept a bomber when they bomb a tile near the city. Even tiles right next to the city don't get defended by the fighter.

AndyS

EDIT: In GOTM8, I had fighters intercept an Indian bomber that was bombing a tile near the city. OK, so I am convinced that it works now.

 

[ShredZ]

Air Suppiority rocks, I once saw 9 enemy bombers get blown away in a row by my fighters, it makes me feel good to see all their bombers fail try to bomb my resources...

 

[eighty]

As with many things, i am starting to notice that numbers do matter in air superiority. it seems a general rule that the more fighters, the more chance of interception. simply by building more jets i have finally started shooting down their bombers. An interesting side effect too.....I started bombing their cities with my jets and began to shoot down their interceptors on rare occasions. of course, the jets go off air superiority when you do this, but if the enemy keeps shooting down your bombers, try attacking with jets first.

 

[Traquenard-fx]

Originally posted by eighty
As with many things, i am starting to notice that numbers do matter in air superiority. it seems a general rule that the more fighters, the more chance of interception.

Exactly.

I never have problems with the air superiority since 116f ( I am not gonna tell you all why ) because I always have in my border cities 4 to 5 jet fighters in air superiority and no attackers have touch these cities. I always try to figure out why poeple complain about air superiority but now I know : They need more jet fighters for better results

Thank you all, I understand now why poeple getting frustrated about air superiority

 

[eighty]

Originally posted by Catt
For an excellent overview of many facets of air superiority, see cracker's post in this thread.

Yes I read this and it is great. It raises an interesting question in line with my last post about sending in fighters first. It would seem that if the enemy has interceptors, it would be better to bomb with fighters first anyway because, as cracker says, if each intercepter gets 1 chance of intercept it is possible that all the enemy interception chances will be used up on the fighters. Also, it seems that fighters are harder to kill completely if intercepted than bombers are. Of course, the decision to send in fighters would depend on if the enemy is actively bombing you or not, because a fighter can't both bomb and be on superiority.

 

[Catt]

Originally posted by eighty


Yes I read this and it is great. It raises an interesting question in line with my last post about sending in fighters first. It would seem that if the enemy has interceptors, it would be better to bomb with fighters first anyway because, as cracker says, if each intercepter gets 1 chance of intercept it is possible that all the enemy interception chances will be used up on the fighters. Also, it seems that fighters are harder to kill completely if intercepted than bombers are.

You're absolutely right. Although I often bomb with just bombers (accepting the risk that a defender on AS may shoot me down), I have seen posts by players who always send in fighters for the first couple of bombing runs -- this way, if the defenders engage, the fighter / bomber has a real chance at taking out the defender / surviving, and if they don't engage, the fighter still completes its bombing run. In any event, the bombers that follow the fighter runs (which are more or less sitting ducks) probably don't have to worry about being intercepted, since the defnders used up all their interception chances on the opening fighter sorties.

 

[IDSmoker]

Originally posted by Catt


You're absolutely right. Although I often bomb with just bombers (accepting the risk that a defender on AS may shoot me down), I have seen posts by players who always send in fighters for the first couple of bombing runs -- this way, if the defenders engage, the fighter / bomber has a real chance at taking out the defender / surviving, and if they don't engage, the fighter still completes its bombing run. In any event, the bombers that follow the fighter runs (which are more or less sitting ducks) probably don't have to worry about being intercepted, since the defnders used up all their interception chances on the opening fighter sorties.

OK, my air superiority is working fine now... but I'm seeing something strange with the AI's air superiority... perhaps I've found yet another 'AI Cheat'???

Anyway, in my current game I have a situation where a Carrier task force (2 carriers, various protectors, and 4 jet fighters & 4 bombers) is trying to keep the enemy (Aztecs) from rebuilding the roads to a couple of strategic resources. The Aztecs recently moved jet fighters into nearby towns.

Now, if I begin bombing the resource with a bomber, it is always intercepted and shot down. If I begin bombing the resource with jet fighters, the AI jets never try to intercept them, instead, they wait for me to send in the bombers (which are always shot down). I have seen this through at least 6 save/reload cycles (the first time, I was annoyed that this happened on 2 different resources, from the 2nd time onward, I was trying to prove/disprove a point... honest! <grin>)

I should also point out that I have never seen a jet fighter perform a successful bombing run. I have seen the AI try to intercept my jet fighter bombing runs on cities, and even seen the intercepting AI jet fighter die!

So, does the AI know when I am going after his last remaining instance of a strategic resource, and has his fighters wait for me to send in the bombers? Or am I just seeing a bad string of numbers from the RNG?

 

[eighty]

There may be several ways to deal with this. First, for your save/reloads did you turn off the 'save random seed' option when you started the game? Once that is settled, I would suggest that you bomb more than one area so the AI has to spread its defenses a little. Also, I have had my fighters destroy improvements, and it is usually about 1 success to 8 or 9 failures. So 10 fighters bombing each turn might do it. This way, if the enemy never intercepts them, you won't lose them and hopefully you will send in enough measly firepower to destroy one lousy road.....

 

[IDSmoker]

I'm going after 2 strategic resources covered by the jet fighters of (at least) 2 different cities (I have other aircraft bombing other enemy territory/cities). I usually keep my fighter/bomber ratio at around 1:4, except for carriers, which are 1:1. This seems to give me a good shot at intercepting incoming bombers, while allowing me to pound the sh#@! out of my targets! <grin>

Has anyone ever seen a bomber shoot down an intercepting jet fighter? I certainly haven't... I haven't even seen a bomber survive an interception!

I may ultimately end up increasing the number of fighters I maintain, if it turns out that the AI is less likely to attempt an intercept with them... even if they seldom manage to land their bombs...

Please do not bring reality into this discussion, since I believe that Civ3's air combat is the most unrealistic area of the game (closely followed by naval combat)!


BTW, turning off the 'save random seed' option was the first thing I did after installing 1.21f! <grin>

 

[eighty]

I've had a bomber (notice i said A bomber; never seen another yet) survive interception. It was down to 1 hp. I suppose they wouldn't have hp if they couldn't be damaged. And I have never seen a bomber shoot down a fighter. I don't think that is possible, but you never know.

Hey I just thought of something: if you bombed the AI cities that have the defending fighters with your fighters, would their intercept chances be used up, allowing your bombers then to safely bomb the resources?

 

[eighty]

And I can't resist adding this, because it has happened to me. I completely cut off a civ's access to a strategic resource, yet I can investigate their cities and discover they still have the resource in their box! How? 2 ways that I know of. They trade it with another AI. Or (very sneaky here) the resource is located on the same tile as a city so you can't see it unless you click terrain info on all the cities. If this is the case, you merely need to cut off all road access to the city, bombard their harbor/airport out of existence or take over the city. No problem, eh?