[C3C] Air Transport

[patinthedesert]

One of the reasons to add an airport to a city or to build an airport is to allow moving units by air. But it seems not all units will move by air. Example is settlers. They won't get that action at airport or airbase. I can't seem to send Artillery that way either. I can't see anything about it in the Civilipedia except a vague reference to land units.
Also there seems to be a limit of one unit per airfield per turn. Is that one per sending airfield?

 

[CKS]

The limit is one unit per turn per sending airfield or airport. You can land as many units as you like each turn.

I think that the default rules don't allow land units without an attack value to be sent by air, so I'm thinking settlers, workers, artillery units, and leaders can't go by air. Also I'm pretty sure you can't airlift armies or boats. The Civilopedia is, as it often is, less than helpful.

 

[md4]

In the Editor, under Special Actions, there is an Airlift flag, which is most likely the setting responsible. Out of curiosity, having Airlift unchecked does overlap completely with units also having 0 attack & defense.

 

[patinthedesert]

OK that explains it. Not sure about Why that was the rule but we all get to play by that.

 

[Aabraxan]

You can airlift workers. You cannot airlift settlers or artillery.

 

[patinthedesert]

Yes. I have that now in the knowledge base. I just had to adjust strategy a bit. It is so nice to get the instant transport from one continent to the other. Since most of the units are built in the core cities on my first continent and most of the fighting is on the other continent. Transports work well enough, but it was 2 turns in each direction, and it needs a sufficient number of transports

 

[CKS]

If you are using boats, you can ship-chain. This means you load the units into a boat in a town, move the boat to a location with a boat that still has movement left, unload the units from the first boat and put them on the second boat, and then move the second boat. Continue for as many boats as you like. If you then unload in a town, your units still have movement left and they can continue across the land.

If you send by air, the units will arrive with no movement, but ship chaining doesn't use up movement (as long as you start and end in towns), so sometimes it is still better than flying. It does require a lot of boats.

It is also a good way to transport units across the sea or ocean before you can safely travel there. You set up a ship chain, so that your boats spend the in-between turns time in the ocean, but your units don't. You may lose boats, but you won't lose other units, since you only load on the number of units that you have boats-in-the-ocean for.

 

[patinthedesert]

@CKS Great idea. Never seen that. I'll keep that in mind for the right circumstance. In my case the volume of settlers and arty was not high. One shipload per turn usually only a partial load. It really only lost one turn for the units. Units created on continent A. Rail transport to port with a ship present. Load and then move maximum, a bit more than half way. Next turn move to port and unload. The empty transport moving back does not really count as long as a different ship is in the port. Since any opponent navy is totally suppressed, risk is nil.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I love airlifting. When I'm invading the other continent after I've discovered Flight, I make sure to include a worker in one of the Galleons or Transports. After I have conquered a beachhead city and survived the counter-attack, the worker (or slave) is used to make an airfield for instant resupply of units from home.

 

[tjs282]

I love airlifting. When I'm invading the other continent after I've discovered Flight, I make sure to include a worker in one of the Galleons or Transports. After I have conquered a beachhead city and survived the counter-attack, the worker (or slave) is used to make an airfield for instant resupply of units from home.

I love doing that too!

@patinthedesert

I'm not a big fan of ship-chaining in the epic-game. I prefer to drop an Airfield next to any core-town producing Airlift-able units (by that point in a game, I usually have more than enough foreign Workers to rebuild the underlying mine/irrigation in 1 turn as well), and set the Airfield as the Rally Point for that city. Newly-built units then auto-move to their nearest Airfield during the interturn, ready to be Airlifted to their intended destination.

An even neater trick:

If you have an Airport in a core city, and set an (overseas) Airfield as the Airport-city's Rally Point, newly built (and veteran) Air-units from the Airport-city will auto-move to that Airfield during the interturn, and will be immediately available for mission-assignment on the following turn — which is very much preferable to re-basing the unit manually yourself, especially since the "Air superiority" mission is bugged/ takes 2 turns to activate.

Spoiler Relevant to the above, not so much to the OP :

In general, the AI will tend to avoid sending its Bombers against tiles which have heavy AA-defence, if it has any 'softer' target available, so if my enemy also knows Flight (and can build Bombers), then I'll try to put 4 Flaks/Mobile SAMs on each at-risk overseas Airfield as well, to discourage/defend against AI bombing-runs during the 2 turns it takes for newly-arrived Fighters' Air-superiority activity to kick in.

(A Flak-/SAM-stack can also be used to protect an Army from Bombers)

If I have enough production available, I'll build Fighters to send on 'decoy' bombing runs to use up enemy Fighters' attacks, before sending in my Bombers. If I do that, I'll also use the "Rename unit" button to label my Fighters as 'Patrol' or 'Support', depending on which mission they're assigned to. That way, I can avoid accidentally switching off the air-superiority missions.

 

[justanick]

If I have enough production available, I'll build Fighters to send on 'decoy' bombing runs to use up enemy Fighters' attacks, before sending in my Bombers. If I do that, I'll also use the "Rename unit" button to label my Fighters as 'Patrol' or 'Support', depending on which mission they're assigned to. That way, I can avoid accidentally switching off the air-superiority missions.

Stealth fighters are best suited for the 'decoy' bombing, as they have the highest defence value of 6. But you do need to have their tech first, so that limits their usefulness.

 

[tjs282]

Stealth fighters are best suited for the 'decoy' bombing, as they have the highest defence value of 6. But you do need to have their tech first, so that limits their usefulness.

I can't even remember the last time I researched Stealth!

That's the problem with the Modern Age tech-tree, at least up to Emperor. I mean, assuming that you've got all VCs enabled (which I usually do), then as soon as you've learned the last of the Ship-techs (usually Robotics, for me), the game is won: all you need to do is finish building that last Ship-part (Stasis Chamber, in my case) and then blast off.

Those last 5 terminal techs (Recycling, Stealth, Smart weapons, Integrated defence, Genetics) are then completely irrelevant.

 

[Nathiri]

I can't even remember the last time I researched Stealth!

That's the problem with the Modern Age tech-tree, at least up to Emperor. I mean, assuming that you've got all VCs enabled (which I usually do), then as soon as you've learned the last of the Ship-techs (usually Robotics, for me), the game is won: all you need to do is finish building that last Ship-part (Stasis Chamber, in my case) and then blast off.

Those last 5 terminal techs (Recycling, Stealth, Smart weapons, Integrated defence, Genetics) are then completely irrelevant.

Yeah, that is my main problem with civ3. The era progression isnt quite interesting enough. If I'm going with a domination/conquests/cultural victory then there is no point in going past early industrial and I'd prefer to be done before. But I often run Space Race to complete a full economic victory and I just rush as soon as possible to each part. There is no reason to tech or build or use most of the stuff in the Modern Era. With the Ancient and Medieval eras being so involved, it feels very lackluster from the 3rd era on.