Airports =/= City Connection?

[TPangolin]

I apologize in advance if this has already been answered, but I thought I'd try my luck here. Feel free to move this to the Ideas and Suggestions forum if need be.

I'm just curious as to why Airports don't currently act as a city connection like road/harbor, regardless of contiguous tile ownership. It'd be an easier and sensical way to connect far-away territories to your empire if they happen to be inland or separated by other civs.

Is it due to a balance issue to determine when and how the connection would be broken in times of war?

But like I said, I'm just genuinely curious and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

[Quineloe]

It makes sense to have airports work that well

There is afaik one historic case of a large city being disconnected from the rest of the country without access to the sea, and it was supplied exclusively by air transport and that worked out.

 

[Byzantine Bomb]

This, I have pondered before. In past Civ games airports connected cities.
How would one 'blockade' a city that's connect to a capital city via an aiport? If there's no way such way, than a city could have an unbreakable connection to a capital city. Hmm...

 

[katfish]

It was the case in civ 3. Guess developers thought it was too op.
I want air trade routes as well

 

[Aaron90495]

Yeah, airports are already quite powerful. They effectively double Tourism in that city and increase the aircraft stacking limit from 6 to 10. Allowing them to connect cities would make them too important, IMO.

 

[FeiLing]

Imagine if the only connection between two cities was the exact path Frodo and Sam were going. It's a connection, but would it count as a path that people frequently take and allows to trade huge amounts of wares between the two end points?
Not really I guess. And an airport is just "the same". It's not efficient to airlift thousands of tons of material. Stuff is rarely sent by air in the real world because of this. Only in emergency situations or when money doesn't matter (military uses).

So for me Airports not connecting cities is perfectly fine.
The only thing I see here could be that if a city connection is broken then the city connection could be extended (" air bridge") to last for another like 3 turns if the city has an airport. But I guess since all an city connection gives is gold (so it is representing commercial trades, not the sending of food or medicine) it isn't realistic if this would be done.

 

[headcase]

This, I have pondered before. In past Civ games airports connected cities.
How would one 'blockade' a city that's connect to a capital city via an aiport? If there's no way such way, than a city could have an unbreakable connection to a capital city. Hmm...

Perhaps an enemy having a Fighter in Intercept mode in range of the city. Maybe it would take more than one. Either way it would make Fighters slightly more useful - both for blocking routes and for distracting enemy Fighters that are blocking your route.

 

[NinjaGnat]

Realistically an air connection alone isn't enough to sustain trade. 90% of things sent over seas are done by freighter, if it's local then by highway or railroad. Planes are only used if the package needs to get there yesterday because flying is relatively expensive.

 

[CaptainPatch]

Unlike harbor-to-harbor traffic, airports have to take into account the plane's range limitation. Assuming that every city has airplane support, I can envision instances where an empire has the bulk of its cities here, but then there is some land-locked city way the heck over there, across an ocean, way outside of any (current) plane's range. And if there's one plausible premise, then the theory doesn't work.

It might be feasible that upon hitting a specific Era -- Information perhaps -- _then_ it is assumed that every city on the map is automatically connected because of airplanes.

 

[EK834]

Airports connecting cities would be unrealistic (transportation by plane is too expensive in the sense of what the game understands as a "city connection" - wide scale internal trade with your capital - which is already weird enough now that they introduced internal trade routes which represents the same thing...).

What would be a cool feature for airports, though, is that they could provide "emergency city connection" to their city during wars - the gold from connection would be gone (it pays for the emergency air bridge), but you'd get food and hammers per turn in the vein of the trade routes (but not as much). To blockade a city with an airport then, you'd need a fighter located in range of the city. Or 1 fighter stationed in range could reduce the odds of success of the air bridge on this turn by 33%, 2 by 66% and 3 by 99%. It would make sense since you can already airlift units to a city under attack.

In the same vein it would be fun if there was a healing bonus for wounded units near a city with a hospital.

 

[Pythakoreas]

Airports connecting cities would be unrealistic (transportation by plane is too expensive in the sense of what the game understands as a "city connection" - wide scale internal trade with your capital - which is already weird enough now that they introduced internal trade routes which represents the same thing...).

What would be a cool feature for airports, though, is that they could provide "emergency city connection" to their city during wars - the gold from connection would be gone (it pays for the emergency air bridge), but you'd get food and hammers per turn in the vein of the trade routes (but not as much). To blockade a city with an airport then, you'd need a fighter located in range of the city. Or 1 fighter stationed in range could reduce the odds of success of the air bridge on this turn by 33%, 2 by 66% and 3 by 99%. It would make sense since you can already airlift units to a city under attack.

In the same vein it would be fun if there was a healing bonus for wounded units near a city with a hospital.

Go work for Firaxis.

 

[CaptainPatch]

What would be a cool feature for airports, though, is that they could provide "emergency city connection" to their city during wars - the gold from connection would be gone (it pays for the emergency air bridge), but you'd get food and hammers per turn in the vein of the trade routes (but not as much).

Sort of like the Berlin Airlift at the beginning of the Cold War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_airlift#The_start_of_the_Berlin_Airlift

That historical event sort highlights just why air connections can't be considered as full-blown trade connections. The BA was a HUGE undertaking, just to keep ONE city in supply.

 

[householder]

How would one 'blockade' a city that's connect to a capital city via an aiport? If there's no way such way, than a city could have an unbreakable connection to a capital city. Hmm...

Civilian airports are occasionally shut down due to threats from SAMs. For example, the city of Eilat in Israel had to do so last month. So, theoretically a Mobile SAM unit could do so, if in range of a city.

However, in the case Eilat and every other case I have heard of, a land or sea connection also existed. The argument that city can not rely on air as its only economic lifeline seems persuastive. Sure, there are small towns in Alaska and Canada which rely on bush planes, but those are tiny villages with a dirt landing strip. I suppose we could justify a population 1 city being linked by an airport, but who would want to go to expense of building and maintaining an airport for such a tiny burg? From a real world perspective, would there even be enough citizens to staff the facility?

 

[Xenocidius]

Yep, city connections represent commercial routes, so airports shouldn't be able to establish them. However, it makes sense to be able to send food/production to a city via airlift (a la Berlin Airlift), so I proposed having an air trade unit, Cargo Plane, which would be inefficient, but would bypass a land blockade and be easy to reassign.

 

[kaspergm]

C,mon, I think people are taking this way too literally. Obviously an Airport should connect a city to trade network to reflect to modern trade through air, just like Harbors work to connect by sea. From a gameplay perspective, we need it because there's currently no way to connect an inland city on another continent to your trade network if you don't have a coastal city on the same continent which is bad for gameplay and not at all realistic.

About it not being realistic, that's not true at all, most cities in Greenland for instance are only connected to outside world through Air, and if you think air transport is not a major part of transporting trade goods, you're dead wrong. About Airport being too powerful, with a maintenance cost of 5 GPT, it's a building you'll only build in your major cultural hubs unless under very specific conditions where you might need it for militaristic purposes. In the remote situation where it will serve as a cities sole city connection, that will help it pay a bit of that maintenance cost, which is only fair.

 

[FeiLing]

From a gameplay perspective, we need it because there's currently no way to connect an inland city on another continent to your trade network if you don't have a coastal city on the same continent which is bad for gameplay and not at all realistic.

Oh yes it is realistic. Not a single thing produced in China is going to Europe via land connection. And not a single Nation does not have a coastal city/harbor on every on their land masses/islands.

About it not being realistic, that's not true at all, most cities in Greenland for instance are only connected to outside world through Air, and if you think air transport is not a major part of transporting trade goods, you're dead wrong.

Excuse my ignorance, but all cities in Greenland? How many are there? Is there even 1? 57k people in the whole country according to Wiki. That means like 1 very small city (the capital) and a bunch of towns to me.
Of course there is little need to send a fleet of huge cargo ships to a single "size 1" city. Then there also is a lot of ice and possibly a large chance of (smaller) icebergs around their waters which might be a huge danger for smaller cargo ships (would they be needed at all).
So congratulations: You've mentioned the single one exception in the real world where airlifts might be occasionally used over sea cargo trading (if what you say is even true).

 

[CaptainPatch]

The largest city in Greenland is Nuuk, with a population <18,000. The second largest "city" is Sisimiut with population <6,000. In this day and age, #1 would be classified a "town" in most areas and the second little more than a "village". Trying to equate those on the same tier as an actual city of 1 million+ is quite a stretch. Even with cities of @100,000. (Anything less than 100,000 in the 20th century probably wouldn't even show on a Civ map.)

 

[householder]

The largest city in Greenland is Nuuk, with a population <18,000. The second largest "city" is Sisimiut with population <6,000.

Yes, and both cities have a port which is active year round. Both ports act as a shipping base, either to the rest of Greenland or to the outside world.

I am not sure if there are any towns in Greenland which are not on the coast. Even if their harbors are not open year round, you can bet they receive a fair amount of cargo before the ice closes in.

 

[CaptainPatch]

I am not sure if there are any towns in Greenland which are not on the coast. Even if their harbors are not open year round, you can bet they receive a fair amount of cargo before the ice closes in.

You can be sure: http://www.mapsofworld.com/greenland/greenland-political-map.html

 

[vyvianarygos]

It makes sense to have airports work that well

There is afaik one historic case of a large city being disconnected from the rest of the country without access to the sea, and it was supplied exclusively by air transport and that worked out.

This was the Berlin Airlift.... After the second world war Berlin was behind the iron curtain of the soviet union. The soviets wouldn't let any one in or out. As a result the only way we could resupply our troops and feed civilians inside our section of Berlin was to fly food and materials in and out.