Airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars

CoccoBill

Chieftain
Joined
Sep 29, 2009
Messages
25
...that is, after a few dozen games I've yet to see _one_ unit built by the AI. I've only built a couple myself in one game just to test them out, and ended up not using them at all. They used to be my favorite aspect of combat in previous civs, so I'm quite bummed. I used to love dogfights, gaining air superiority and raining down terror with bombers. Now they just seem utterly pointless, since you need a useless aerodrome to build any, which is expensive, needs a tile and is far better used for some other district.

Anyone use them at all and if so, how?
 
As you say the AI doesn't build them. My last game I built around 8 bombers and was able to clear out opposing city defences before sending my ground troops near them.

BTW I'm also finding that the AI doesn't like to build naval units either.
 
I've had the AI build them (in one particular Immortal game a very strong Germany had several deployed Jet Fighters). It seems fairly rare though. It's probably because the AI is bad at building districts in general, and the aerodrome requirement stifles them.
 
Yes, the airport requirement could be a terrible penalty for the AI, but if you remove it in a mod, you'll quickly realize that anyway the code to handle air combat is either missing or deactivated for the AI, it seems to only use its air force by deploying it in defense.
 
I built one of each aircraft available in my latest game. Only the Aerodrome district is needed to build them.

Re-basing an aircraft can be done to any city, but cities with no Aerodrome can hold just one aircraft. It seems best to build Aerodromes near the front line and especially near unsettled areas that generate Barbarian encampments.

The biplane, fighter and probably jet fighter can be deployed (based) in any hex near its home base. The following turn they can perform an air attack, primarily against land units, since the AI doesn't seem to build any air units.

All air units can perform an air attack from its base (if not deployed nearby), either a city center or Aerodrome district. The bomber and jet bomber can cause signifcant damage against a land or naval unit. The biplane, fighter and jet fighter can also do air attacks against land and possibly naval units too, but do less damage.

The only advanced ranged land unit is the Rocket Artillery unit, but it is a bombard unit and thus has a -17 strength versus land units. The Machine Gun could be used instead, but its ranged strength is only 75 and its range is reduced to 1 from the field cannon's range 2, so it has to get in closer to attack land units. As a result, air units can fill in this gap and they can cover far more territory too.

It is sad that the AI doesn't build (or rarely builds) air units, so there can't be (much) air to air combat, but air units can target either land or naval units, so they do fill a role in the later game, usually a Science Victory or possibly a non-religious Cultural Victory
 
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