digitCruncher
Emperor
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2007
- Messages
- 1,012
Playing through my first ever win (A 1942 Domination win, with revolutions), as I normally quit about the early modern era, I something about bombers.
Strategic Bombers are a MASSIVE step up from Bombers. And the reason this is, is because of thier range.
Bombers have a range of 8. To put this into perspective, this means there is often only 2 cities (in most pangea scenarios) in range of any given 'target' city. Bombing from another island?? That is rather unlikely! Bombers are balanced, maybe a little too weak, but they are a nice early-modern era bomber.
Then come strategic bombers. With a massive range of 16, they double the range. One strategic bomber, placed in a good location, wiped out all the infrastructure on *3 adjacent islands*. I managed to (to my absolute surprise and disgust) station my bombers on the capital of my vassal, and then bombard the defences of one of Egypts city. Which was on another island. On the other side of this long island (To be fair, only my Ace III bombers could reach due to the +1 range they got, but 16 range is still insane).
The next step up has 24 range, followed by 36 range for the Orbital Bomber. These are insane ranges, and basically mean whoever has the most air-force wins any battle (When you can drop 50-odd bombers and 150-odd planes (theoretically) on any tile in an ENEMIES civilisation, they don't stand a chance of winning. In fact, you don't need any military land units at all, except for the mop-up units! (Paratroopers and Humvees and the like) Not only that, but even jet fighters have less than a 50/50 chance of even detecting a bomber, meaning that by simply having a large number of bombers, you could *sneak* a large bombing force under the radar, and absolutely obliterate all thier improvements on thier nation in 3 or 4 turns, if you devote enough production to air production, with only the super-sonic flight tech. Not even with Orbital bombers or anything!!
Proposal: Reduce the ranges of certain late-game bombers and fighters. To balance this nerf, increase the strengths of the late game bombers and fighters a bit, and increase thier detection chance. For reference, here is the current values:
Airship: 8 -> 8
IL2: 6 -> 6
Bomber: 8 -> 8
A-10 Thunderbolt: 6 -> 8 (The civilopedia says 10, and this is a SUPERSONIC BOMBER, why does it have less range than an airship??)
Strategic Bomber: 16 -> 12
Stealth Bomber: 24 -> 16
Stealth Fighter (I classify this as a bomber, as the F35 is a better 'interceptor' fighter): 14 -> 16 (As it is, this fighter is rather useless... it has stealth, which a fighter doesn't really need, comes after the stealth bomber, which has better stealth AND better offensive capabilities, and the F35 is a better fighter!!)
Orbital Bomber: 32 -> 24
Early Fighter: 4 -> 4 35% -> 25% (They don't even have radar yet)
Fighter : 6 -> 6 20% -> 30%
P59: 8 -> 8 35% -> 45%
Jet Fighter: 10 -> 10 40% -> 50%
F15: 12 -> 12 47% -> 60%
F35: 16 -> 16 55% -> 65%
Aurora Scramjet: 20 -> 20 60% -> 75%
Orbital Fighter: 30 -> 24 60% -> 90%
The main problem is that detection chance doesn't stack... if you have 20 fighters with 20% chances to detect each, the chance of detection is NOT 100% - (80% ^ 20) = 98.8%, but a rather pathetic 20%. By the time Orbital Fighters come around, Orbital bombers have a 50% chance of evading detection EVEN WITH 100% DETECTION CHANCE, so orbital fighters should ideally have 100% detection (and add that with the Air-to-air missiles or Interception chance, then they actually do, even with *only* 90% detection chance)
So that is my summary of the late modern era. I hope it helps. Tanks could also do with some tweaking, but that is a minor issue.
(PS. Does the AI actually build any fighters? I never encountered a failed mission due to fighters, but that could have been because I fought tiny nations at the end, who either didn't have oil products, oil, or flight. But I never saw any on the other tech leaders cities either...)
Strategic Bombers are a MASSIVE step up from Bombers. And the reason this is, is because of thier range.
Bombers have a range of 8. To put this into perspective, this means there is often only 2 cities (in most pangea scenarios) in range of any given 'target' city. Bombing from another island?? That is rather unlikely! Bombers are balanced, maybe a little too weak, but they are a nice early-modern era bomber.
Then come strategic bombers. With a massive range of 16, they double the range. One strategic bomber, placed in a good location, wiped out all the infrastructure on *3 adjacent islands*. I managed to (to my absolute surprise and disgust) station my bombers on the capital of my vassal, and then bombard the defences of one of Egypts city. Which was on another island. On the other side of this long island (To be fair, only my Ace III bombers could reach due to the +1 range they got, but 16 range is still insane).
The next step up has 24 range, followed by 36 range for the Orbital Bomber. These are insane ranges, and basically mean whoever has the most air-force wins any battle (When you can drop 50-odd bombers and 150-odd planes (theoretically) on any tile in an ENEMIES civilisation, they don't stand a chance of winning. In fact, you don't need any military land units at all, except for the mop-up units! (Paratroopers and Humvees and the like) Not only that, but even jet fighters have less than a 50/50 chance of even detecting a bomber, meaning that by simply having a large number of bombers, you could *sneak* a large bombing force under the radar, and absolutely obliterate all thier improvements on thier nation in 3 or 4 turns, if you devote enough production to air production, with only the super-sonic flight tech. Not even with Orbital bombers or anything!!
Proposal: Reduce the ranges of certain late-game bombers and fighters. To balance this nerf, increase the strengths of the late game bombers and fighters a bit, and increase thier detection chance. For reference, here is the current values:
Airship: 8 -> 8
IL2: 6 -> 6
Bomber: 8 -> 8
A-10 Thunderbolt: 6 -> 8 (The civilopedia says 10, and this is a SUPERSONIC BOMBER, why does it have less range than an airship??)
Strategic Bomber: 16 -> 12
Stealth Bomber: 24 -> 16
Stealth Fighter (I classify this as a bomber, as the F35 is a better 'interceptor' fighter): 14 -> 16 (As it is, this fighter is rather useless... it has stealth, which a fighter doesn't really need, comes after the stealth bomber, which has better stealth AND better offensive capabilities, and the F35 is a better fighter!!)
Orbital Bomber: 32 -> 24
Early Fighter: 4 -> 4 35% -> 25% (They don't even have radar yet)
Fighter : 6 -> 6 20% -> 30%
P59: 8 -> 8 35% -> 45%
Jet Fighter: 10 -> 10 40% -> 50%
F15: 12 -> 12 47% -> 60%
F35: 16 -> 16 55% -> 65%
Aurora Scramjet: 20 -> 20 60% -> 75%
Orbital Fighter: 30 -> 24 60% -> 90%
The main problem is that detection chance doesn't stack... if you have 20 fighters with 20% chances to detect each, the chance of detection is NOT 100% - (80% ^ 20) = 98.8%, but a rather pathetic 20%. By the time Orbital Fighters come around, Orbital bombers have a 50% chance of evading detection EVEN WITH 100% DETECTION CHANCE, so orbital fighters should ideally have 100% detection (and add that with the Air-to-air missiles or Interception chance, then they actually do, even with *only* 90% detection chance)
So that is my summary of the late modern era. I hope it helps. Tanks could also do with some tweaking, but that is a minor issue.
(PS. Does the AI actually build any fighters? I never encountered a failed mission due to fighters, but that could have been because I fought tiny nations at the end, who either didn't have oil products, oil, or flight. But I never saw any on the other tech leaders cities either...)
