Anti Air Strategies

[simcoast]

Does anyone know what sort of strategies are available for air defence?

In Civ 5 you had your anti-air land and sea units, etc. on top of the air superiority.
But with BE, there doesn't seem to be any land or sea units who are specialists in anti air, and aircraft don't have a large range so often don't provide much coverage for attacking land movements.

Has anyone come across certain units that are especially effective against air units?

 

[Xenotitan]

Just the airplanes. I haven't seen any perks for non air units that change this. But air power never seems to be much of a threat, in single player at least.

Well, for sea units, there's the carrier which can carry planes which you can set to intercept. But I don't think that's what you meant.

 

[simcoast]

Yeah, I guess air units don't exactly deal too much damage to your heavier land units, but I've had experiences where attacking certain civs requires exposing your units to 1-3 layers of cities full up on air units, etc. who add up to deal major damage and with no real way to counter them..

 

[Lucius_]

Yeah, the only air defense is your own air units set on intercept, which are extremely effective, even without taking the perks towards interception and against air units.

Beyond that, there is nothing you can do about it. If you are invading a neighbor, and they have air units, it's best to be a higher affinity level. For example, the first affinity UU you get will one shot tacjets....along with basically everything else. If you don't have the affinity levels yet, than just simply rush the city to take out the planes.

 

[TLHeart]

air sweep with your own air force first, then attack with ranged land units, and then melee units. have a unit or two on intercept for the counter attack.

 

[Ryika]

If you have aircrafts in range, just set them to intercept, fortify your units just outside of their city range and wait until they suicided their airforce into your aircrafts.

If that's not possible and if you don't have strong melee units to use as bait, then pushing your unit strength with a Tacnet Hub will make it harder for him to destroy your units, leading to fewer losses.

And of course avoiding bad timings (like when he's just upgraded his jets and you're right before getting your next melee upgrade) should always be part of your long-term plan.