Airfield-sharing

[Civinator]

In my last Debug-Testgame for SOE ( a WW II scenario) I had the following situation:

I was playing as the Polish civ when suddenly two German Fightergroups shared my airfield that was hold over and over with Polish groundtroops - and the worst: Both fightergroups even denied to speak with me.

As far as I can see, the situation had directly nothing to do with the known "Mobile HN-airunit-bug". The setting for the Me-109 E is like a normal civ 3 airplane with the settings "immobile, civ-setting Germany (no additional barbarian setting), and the deleted go-to and explore-boxes. The only settings that are not so common in normal civ 3 planes are the settings "Tactical missile" and "Transports only tactical missiles" to prevent that plane from carrierlandings.

The airfield is in the "fatcross" of the German occupied city of Lodz. Are there any experiences with that situation?

 

[Moosezilla]

Amazing! I've never seen that before.

 

[Wolfhart]

This is a bug which occurs sometimes on Victory Point Locations.

 

[Civinator]

Thank you very much for the replies.

This is a bug which occurs sometimes on Victory Point Locations.

The airfield near Lodz and even Lodz itself are no VP-Locations.

 

[Wolfhart]

Edit: double post

 

[Wolfhart]

Then I've got nothing
I've only seen this happening on Victory Point Locations before, which can be very annoying when it happens to be one of my cities (I usually discover it when I suddenly can't move one of of my units into the city).

 

[tom2050]

I think I've seen the same thing. The airfield should be destroyed IIRC when your troops enter the tile of an airfield that is in enemy territory.

If it falls into the territory of another civilization, however,
the airfield becomes solely useable by the player whose territory it lies in (unless they have yet to research
Flight, in which case the airfield is destroyed).

Since it's in german territory, it is solely usable by germany. Must be a bug, because I don't believe the game is supposed to allow your troops to be there. Were your troops pre-placed there? And do your troops have HN?

 

[Moosezilla]

I thought the same as Tom, but remember in MEM that certain forts seem permanent to the map. The German units have no defensive ground stat. Somehow AI seems to have thrown it's units away. The game space seems to have special features. Oh whatda!

 

[Civinator]

Since it's in german territory, it is solely usable by germany. Must be a bug, because I don't believe the game is supposed to allow your troops to be there. Were your troops pre-placed there? And do your troops have HN?

Yes, the Polish troops were preplaced on the airfield since the start of the game. The Germans conquered the city Lodz but never the tile of the airfield. None of these troops has the HN-flag.

 

[Lanzelot]

A year ago, d73070d0 and myself investigated this in detail on the German Civforum:
http://www.civforum.de/showthread.php?87787-Luftwaffenstützpunkte-Flugfelder

Basically, an airfield has an "owner", just like a town. The owner can change in two ways:
a) if the airfield gets within your cultural borders, you become the owner
b) if you capture the airfield with a land unit (just like you capture a town), you become the owner (even if the airfield is still within the cultural borders of a different nation)

The owner of an airfield can airlift any number of units (planes and ground units) into that airfield. (From other airfield and from cities with airport.)
Everybody, who currently has units on that airfield, can airlift one ground unit and any number of planes out of that airfield. (Into other airfields and cities with airports that he currently owns.)

It is important that the units are airlifted. Moving a unit onto the airfield in the ordinary way counts as an "attack" and will capture the airfield (or attack units of other nations, if there are any on that tile).

So as long as the airfield changes owners by cultural expansion and units are only airlifted into that tile, not moved, then units of any number of different nations can peacefully co-exist on that tile, even when these nations are at war with each other...
And even worse: if the nation, which currently owns the airfield, is extinguished, all its airfields disappear from the map. Then the units of the remaining nations continue to co-exist on an "ordinary tile"!!

Things begin to get "really interesting", when settlers get involved... Of course, settlers cannot be airlifted, but the first owner of an airfield can move a settler onto that tile via road/railway. Then assume the airfield changes hands peacefully (moving cultural borders back and forth by disbanding/founding towns next to the airfield) and other nations add their units to that tile. If then the nation that has the settler on that tile, decides to found a town, all units of the other nations simply "disappear". That way you can destroy hundreds of units without even declaring war...

The above article has many more details about airfields. Perhaps some day I have time to translate it to English for the strategy forum...

 

[general-jcl]

I've seen this bug also when the radius of a city of an other civ extends over one of your airfiled. The airfield control is then lost and we cannot use it (except for moving air units that are already there). It can't be destroyed without causing a war.

 

[Pounder]

It is to do with immobile units.

Here is my example from my hidden nationality observations:



Example:

Here is a pick showing the units on a tile with the Sea Cannons (the Hidden Nationality Immobile Units), they belong to no one since the Civ has been destroyed. I then moved miltary unit (unit with attack) onto the tile with the Sea Cannon, then I moved my workers onto the tile to clean up the ruins and build irrigation and roads. The Persians then decided to move there military units onto the tile and now we all occupy the tile together.

For a test, I then abandoned the near by city so I could build a city with the settler and the Sea Cannons went away and I assume that the Persian units went back to their capital. The new city happened to get the same name as the city I abadoned.

What gets odd is I can't add any more offensive units to the tile after the AI has moved onto the tile, where the AI seems to have no problem adding more units, so you better get your settler on the tile with your offensive units before the AI does otherwise you will be blocked from building the city.

 

[Lanzelot]

For a test, I then abandoned the near by city so I could build a city with the settler and the Sea Cannons went away and I assume that the Persian units went back to their capital. The new city happened to get the same name as the city I abadoned.

When you build a city onto an airfield, all foreign units are deleted from the game. They don't go back to their capital (this was tested in a hotseat game). So I assume the same happens here: the Persian units probably got deleted?!

Edit: if you still have the save file, you can test it by establishing an embassy/investigating their capital before and after founding the city!