Air-to-Air Combat

[skdyer]

Though I've been playing CivIV BTS for quite a while now I am VERY inexperienced with Air combat. I've been pouring over the forums and various air combat write-ups to see if I can get to the bottom of what seems to be a very strange mechanic.

My questions is this: Why the heck can't you actively engage in air-to-air combat? More specifically, I want to tell my fighter to go clear out other fighters that are guarding a city so that I can bring in my bombers to pound the city. Now, I realize the only way to do this is to send in a fighter on a bombard or combat mission and hope they get intercepted. This seems like a very strange way to engage in air-to-air combat since as the opponent's fighters becomes more damaged the chance of them intercepting you and thus you being able to engage them in air-to-air combat is reduced?!

This was summarized nicely in an old apolyton post that no one ever responded to:

(quoting "Ari")
"A 70% damaged fighter on defense is in some ways more threatening than one at full health. Full-health fighters will always intercept, and so you can throw your own fighters at them until you have air superiority (all defending defenders are dead). A damaged fighter, on the other hand, can "evade" attempts for you to kill it, since there's no direct way of attacking it, and thus still threaten your super-vulnerable bombers (and a 70% fighter is still quite capable of shooting down a bomber). Slightly unrealistic, and counterintuitively weird, it seems."

For some reason this bugs me more than ANYTHING else in CivIV because it seems like it would be so obvious how to implement this the correct way and so strange for the programmers to intentionally design this in such a completely non-intuitive way.

Does anyone have insight on this? Can anyone think of a reason why they may have designed air-to-air combat like this...perhaps because of a balance reason or trying to model some element of real life air combat? This just doesn't make sense to me at all and is so out of place when virtually all other elements of CivIV seem so thoughtful and well designed.

 

[Tephros]

It's strange to me too. What's really strange is how experienced fighters tend to come out even with inexperienced jet fighters (combat3 versus combat1), but maybe that was just an unlucky game.

I don't see why bombers are so hopelessly defenseless against fighters either, or why recon missions can be done with impunity.

Also what's with stealth bombers only having 50% evasion? It's been pretty near 100% in practice. I think 75% evasion, and cannot be intercepted by fighters, (only jet fighters and sam).

 

[spur390]

Sending your fighters into their territory trying to pick a fight but coming home empty handed makes sense. The best you can do is hope they get bounced by enemy fighters. The enemy fighters could just be sitting in their reinforced hangars and refuse to come out unless the real threat, bombers, show up. Then they can decide to scramble and fly to meet them. It makes sense that the defender doesn't always have its fighters out there. I am sure US F-15s would loooove to dogfight Iraqi fighters but the Iraqis knew it would be smart not to even try.

But what I would like is to have fighters escort the bombers if the target is in range. It would be so that the same % damage is applied to both fighters and bombers but the bombers get a strength bonus when dealing with anti-air.

 

[Tephros]

Sending your fighters into their territory trying to pick a fight but coming home empty handed makes sense. The best you can do is hope they get bounced by enemy fighters. The enemy fighters could just be sitting in their reinforced hangars and refuse to come out unless the real threat, bombers, show up. Then they can decide to scramble and fly to meet them. It makes sense that the defender doesn't always have its fighters out there. I am sure US F-15s would loooove to dogfight Iraqi fighters but the Iraqis knew it would be smart not to even try.

But what I would like is to have fighters escort the bombers if the target is in range. It would be so that the same % damage is applied to both fighters and bombers but the bombers get a strength bonus when dealing with anti-air.

Hmm, well I just remember hearing on the history channel that planes are sometimes taken out while they're still on the ground.

Of course as it is in-game bombers can't even target buildings in cities. It'd make sense to allow bombers to destroy buildings given enough espionage to investigate the city but make buildings as difficult to destroy as forts so it's not overpowered.

 

[PhroX]

What's really strange is how experienced fighters tend to come out even with inexperienced jet fighters (combat3 versus combat1), but maybe that was just an unlucky game.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think that, for air combat, combat promotions count double for some reason, which could well explain this.

 

[skdyer]

Sending your fighters into their territory trying to pick a fight but coming home empty handed makes sense. The best you can do is hope they get bounced by enemy fighters. The enemy fighters could just be sitting in their reinforced hangars and refuse to come out unless the real threat, bombers, show up. Then they can decide to scramble and fly to meet them. It makes sense that the defender doesn't always have its fighters out there. I am sure US F-15s would loooove to dogfight Iraqi fighters but the Iraqis knew it would be smart not to even try.

But what I would like is to have fighters escort the bombers if the target is in range. It would be so that the same % damage is applied to both fighters and bombers but the bombers get a strength bonus when dealing with anti-air.

Right. So I actually was thinking the same thing you've described where really, enemy fighters don't take to the air until actually responding to an aerial assault and hence not being able to proactively engage them does actually make sense. It does seem like the most reasonable solution would be a command to escort bombers. Has anyone developed that functionality via a mod?

As a second question, what is the best strategy for clearing out enemy fighters in preparation for a wave of bomber runs? Does sending in fighters on a mission and them being intercepted ultimately resulting in dogfighting prove effective at clearing enemy fighters?

 

[Cutlass]

If you have jet fighters and the enemy has only fighters, you can clear them out easy by making your jet fighters attack where their fighters patrol. Fighter on fighter, you had better have a bunch of spares.

 

[catfish99]

It would make a lot of sense to add escort to fighter options. Then defending fighters would have to clear out the escorts first, making for more realistic fights.
I also have a small problem with the combat experience for aircraft. One would think a veteran unit which has run many ground support missions would, well, be better at the job than a rookie unit. But only air-to-air gets you bonuses ,not efforts against AA.

 

[Al Capwn]

I can live with the strange air combat rules but what irks me most is the AI's underutilization of air units. I'll routinely see a single fighter patroling a 3-city radius with no other support and I don't think I've ever seen an AI aircraft carrier with any planes loaded onto it. The concepts of Air Superiority and "Control the skies and you control the land" are completely lost on the AI. They'll build battleship after battleship and send them out to get strafed to ribbons by my carrier-based fighters before sunk by whoever I think should get an xp, and they'll spam Infantry that gets repeatedly pounded by my fleets of bombers (once I take care of that lone fighter thats guarding his entire empire).

I was hoping that the BetterAI patch would solve this but it doesn't. It just makes industrial>modern warfare a walkthrough once I've teched to get fighters and bombers.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I can live with the strange air combat rules but what irks me most is the AI's underutilization of air units. I'll routinely see a single fighter patroling a 3-city radius with no other support and I don't think I've ever seen an AI aircraft carrier with any planes loaded onto it. The concepts of Air Superiority and "Control the skies and you control the land" are completely lost on the AI. They'll build battleship after battleship and send them out to get strafed to ribbons by my carrier-based fighters before sunk by whoever I think should get an xp, and they'll spam Infantry that gets repeatedly pounded by my fleets of bombers (once I take care of that lone fighter thats guarding his entire empire).

I was hoping that the BetterAI patch would solve this but it doesn't. It just makes industrial>modern warfare a walkthrough once I've teched to get fighters and bombers.

If you're game, try the Better BtS AI. It's ability to use air unit is far superior to the original game.

 

[Al Capwn]

If you're game, try the Better BtS AI. It's ability to use air unit is far superior to the original game.

I'm using the Wolfshanze mod and I believe it incorporates the BTS Better AI mod. Perhaps it's just the civs I'm playing against...they might have a lower build rate/priority? I haven't seen a Shaka or Monty make it to the Age of Airpower yet (they usually get wiped out well before then or are so far behind in techs that my bombers are carpet bombing their knights) but I could imagine an Aztec or Zulu airforce to be pretty scary.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I'm using the Wolfshanze mod and I believe it incorporates the BTS Better AI mod. Perhaps it's just the civs I'm playing against...they might have a lower build rate/priority? I haven't seen a Shaka or Monty make it to the Age of Airpower yet (they usually get wiped out well before then or are so far behind in techs that my bombers are carpet bombing their knights) but I could imagine an Aztec or Zulu airforce to be pretty scary.

Oh. I'm guilty of not reading your post properly .

I'm not sure how well better AI works with Wolfshanze - I've never used that mod. But I'm pretty sure with just Better AI you'll see better air warfare. If the civs are too backwards or barely just reached flight I wouldn't expect to see much.

 

[TigerBotHesh]

I've never understood why the AI will beeline for the seige techs, and super spam seige units (especially on Aggressive AI), yet it won't do that for bombers, which are basically artillery units with wings.

 

[Joecoolyo]

If you want more missions for the bomber, I know that Dales Combat Mod includes extra air missions that were seen in the Road to War WWII mod. New missions allow you to bomb buildings, ships in port, factories, and other aircraft (I'm actually not 100% sure about the aircraft).

 

[Tephros]

Yeah it's funny how the AI will beeline rocketry, skipping flight, and "upgrade" its infantry to hordes of SAM units.

 

[Ultraman]

Hi guys! Long time Civ player, returning to the fold after nearly two years. Here's one simple partial solution to the air power issue. Give all air units the Blitz promotion, and give aircraft 2 MPs, and jets 3MPs (or more). A couple of fighters flying multiple missiions will force the defende to engage, and this will deplete his air defense (air and ground), paving the way open for your bombers.

 

[say1988]

IMO air combat is one of the weakest parts of civ IV.
As in some mods you should be able to bomb population, bomb buildings, bomb production. And there should be a air superiority mission. To draw up enemy fighters so you can kill them.

 

[Willem]

Hmm, well I just remember hearing on the history channel that planes are sometimes taken out while they're still on the ground.

If the enemy is stupid enough to leave them lying around in the open sure. Most of the time though they're in bunkers being protected. Only Bombers would be powerful enough to do any damage against those, in which case the aircraft inside would be in the air attacking the Bombers.

 

[Willem]

IMO air combat is one of the weakest parts of civ IV.

It always has been really. I don't recall a single Civ game, including AC, where there weren't some serious flaws in the air combat mechanisms. Especially with the way the AI uses it, or doesn't as is the case.

 

[say1988]

If the enemy is stupid enough to leave them lying around in the open sure. Most of the time though they're in bunkers being protected. Only Bombers would be powerful enough to do any damage against those, in which case the aircraft inside would be in the air attacking the Bombers.

Or, in reality, you would just send fighters with the bombers,.And not all aircraft are always in heavy bunkers.

True, Willem, but if they had just added various missions it would have been a huge improvement. And is the area of the game with the least improvement from Civ II.