Is there a thread on air superiority in Civ4 on this site?
I notice that if a defending nation has 1 fighter in a city on intercept mode then it is almost impossible to bomb the city, I'll lose 3-4 bombers for every successful bombing.
Should we not be able to send fighters into the city to attack their fighters?...like in civ3
Are you sure the AI doesn't also have SAM Infantry or Mechanized Infantry as well? Both of those units have a % chance of intercepting aircraft. I've always found that my bombers never get intercepted more times than the AI has intercept capable units, and usually less than that, since it's never a 100% chance of interception.
At any rate, I think fighters on intercept, SAM Infantry and Mech Infantry all help to counter the bombers - if they weren't there, it would be far too easy to bomb anyone into submission. As long as the AI has some kind of tech parity, you should have to build more to gain air superiority.
If you want to protect your bombers, "escort" them with fighters by having fighters perform bombing runs first. The AI will use up their intercepts on the fighters, clearing the way for your bombers to fly over unopposed. IMO, it's a nice way of having fighters escort your bombers within the game engine's ruleset.
SAM and Mech infantry have 1 intercept per turn, but fighters can intercept again and again. I have been intercepted by a single fighter, in the last city of a nation that had no navy, 4 times in one turn. So I know it wasn't a fighter from another city or a nearby carrier.
Destroyers also have a 30% chance of hitting your bombers. I found that out the hard way while attacking Monty's last city: killed his SAM's, he had no aircraft, but there were three destroyers in the city. My bombers kept getting slapped. After a couple of turns of this I opened Civilopedia and found out why.
Just tested it again on my archipelago game.
A city had *one* fighter in it and I brought 5 bombers. One was hit by a SAM and two by fighters. I am assuming it was the same fighter and not one from another city, as my experience has been that fighters can intercept more than once a turn.
I'm not sure, but that's what I thought it was at first....was other fighters from nearby that I was unaware of doing the intercepting. But there was one time I was sure there were no carriers with fighters nearby....I could have been wrong.
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If you want to protect your bombers, "escort" them with fighters by having fighters perform bombing runs first. The AI will use up their intercepts on the fighters, clearing the way for your bombers to fly over unopposed. IMO, it's a nice way of having fighters escort your bombers within the game engine's ruleset.
I did some testing with a world builder scenario at which I attacked an enemy city with 200 fighters (defending number: 200 as well)
Result:
25% of the attacking fighters were completely shot down, with another 50% being damaged (most of those 50% in the high 70 per cent and more range).
So, the math is easy: in average you may expect to completely lose 1 out of 4 fighters, with 2 others taken out of service for some turns.
It might help for a one-time attack at a given city, though.
The World Builder exists in part for testing purposes. Just start an Ancient Era game, give an enemy one nearby city, one Fighter, and plenty of bombable items (eg high defense and units), then give yourself fifty-odd Bombers and go on a bombing spree once the Fighter starts circling the city. See if more than one gets intercepted.
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