Bombers are too powerful.

[Greyhawk1]

Here I am, I almost feel sorry for my opponents who are struggling with no resources and a pitiful army. I have two Carriers full of Bombers plus about 20 based in captured cities.

The lethal bombardment means that any units they send out get destroyed. Any units garrisoning cities also get destroyed without them even firing a shot back in anger.

Consequently all I have to do is walk into undefended cities...

Its just too easy...I kept thinking if I was in their position I would have to abandon the game - simply because of bombers.

Basically if a civ with flight attacks you and you dont have the techs or the resources to mount an effective defence (in other words your civ isnt at least as strong or better than them) you can kiss the game goodbye.

I have never heard once of a second world war bomber being able to wipe out an entire army from the air. This is really unrealistic. Even Bomber Harris acknowledged that bombers alone cant do the job. It seems in Civ, they can...and it sucks.

 

[Esca]

I don't agree.
The old system with "Our bombing or bombardment has failed" over and over again was REALLY irritating.
Boring and a terrible waste of time.
It ruined the game for me.

 

[derekroth]

I am playing a game now on Monarch where I ended up with the hugest advantage in tech than any game I have ever played before. I have about 20 Carriers and literaly hundreds of bombers. The AI civs are basicaly without resources anymore because I bombed all of them in range. some parts of the AI territory is coast to coast craters. Bombers are infact devistatingly powerful. However, if you are in a stituation where you are way too far ahead, maybe you should try a harder level or an easer one if you are on the opposite end.

 

[Longasc]

I am just researching flight, and I will then produce bombers in all my cities... lets see how powerful they are.

I share your worries Greyhawk, because bombers were unable to kill because of good reason, the same why Artillery cannot kill land units completely besides the Hwacha and that is surely not too powerful.

I am making slow progress, some work to do tomorrow and on Monday and my turns now take ages even if I do no longer care for any Micro Management.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Bombers can be countered very effectively if your enemy can build fighters. In case the enemy has build a lot of fighters, you don't want to send your airforce to destroy them, because you will lose a lot of planes that way.

If your enemy is backward and hasn't even developed flight, while you have already build an impressive airfleet, then he has a big problem. This big technological advantage could be lessened by moving bombers to advanced flight, making this a more usefull technology and splitting the technology with which you get fighters from the tech with which you get bombers. In our world there also at first only existed fighters and later some not very effective bombers were developed (both during WW1). In WW2 bombers became really important.

 

[Speedo]

Basically if a civ with flight attacks you and you dont have the techs or the resources to mount an effective defence (in other words your civ isnt at least as strong or better than them) you can kiss the game goodbye.

That's pretty much how the real world is. Reference the Gulf War.

I have never heard once of a second world war bomber being able to wipe out an entire army from the air. This is really unrealistic. Even Bomber Harris acknowledged that bombers alone cant do the job.

Just like the tank isn't really supposed to just be one tank, obviously a bomber isn't just a single bomber.

Bombers alone can't do the job in Civ. Just like in the real world, you can bomb the crap out of them and remove them as an effective fighting force, but you still need soldiers to go in and finish the job.

You don't have to worry to much though. In my expereince the AI almost never uses bombers/artillery to their full effectiveness (concentrated attacks with mass numbers).

 

[Greyhawk1]

Well I've already tasted the sharp end of being down in techs when the AI has flight.

The problem with the AI is that they know where all your units are. This includes any invasion fleets, even if there is no way they could know that they are there.

With lethal air bombardment It was basically completely impossible to approach an enemy coast because the Bombers would destroy every ship with lethal bombard. If you have enough techs you can guard against that with an abusrdly huge fleet with Carriers and so on but pity the poor player who either has no Oil or the techs to prevent air attacks.

That was my situation in the game before this one. I was simply unable to get a fleet within 20 tiles of any enemy, even if there were no enemy units to see where my ships were.

In my current game I am the one on top and I'm seeing what my Bombers are doing to my enemy. Basically completely eradicating his army with absolutely no danger whatsoever to my troops.

Now, this is a bit too easy IMO. I expect a little bit of danger when I'm invading but my army hasnt fired a single shot in anger yet and I've taken over half his cities. Its like playing Chieftain again.

Maybe in the Gulf War that's how it happened but its making Civ 3 into a very boring game for me right now. I wish there was a toggle in the preferences window to remove lethal bombards.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I don't really think that it has much to do with lethal bombard. Without lethal bombard, it would still be very easy for your army to mop up the left over one hitpoint inferior enemy troops. It has to do with power difference. Late in the game often you or the AI have become very strong and are dominating. That's just the nature of any strategic game; if you play it long enough one of the players will dominate. That's why you will seldom see interesting modern age wars in CivIII.

You could mod the game in such a way that you start in the industrial age. Maybe that way, you would more often end up with interesting modern age wars.

On smaller maps, it is also more likely that one of the players dominates early in the game, because it just takes less time to take over the smaller empires of small maps.

 

[Bluemofia]

yes, i only have PTW, so i use TETukerman's map to subsitute it. either way, how else are we supposed to get players to learn from great blunders in history, and take advantage of situations like pearl harbor. besides, now in conquests they added flack and battleships can fight back, planes have a tad bit of difficulty blowing ships out of the water. it just makes it slightly more difficult, but not too dificult enough to abandon the attempt.

 

[bonscott]

Obviously you haven't fought an AI with tons of Flak or SAM batteries in their cities along with air defense. Say bye bye to your glorious bomber fleet really quick.

If you are so far ahead then yea, you dominate. But leathal bombardment isn't making you dominate.

 

[Longasc]

I am looking forward to try it. I will give the AI flight for free to balance things and than test it.

My suggestion:

No lethal air bombardement of land units INSIDE cities or fortifications.

 

[Pfeffersack]

@ bonscott

Yes, Flak units can be very dangerous, but in my experience the AI tends to build them only if is short on ressources to build regular infantery units.Both have the "defense" flag in the editor set and AI goes always for the unit with better stats, if it is able to build them.Would be better if there would be a special "air defense" flag.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Longasc
My suggestion:

No lethal air bombardement of land units INSIDE cities or fortifications.

I this is a very good suggestion!

 

[Greyhawk1]

Dont you think its just a tad unbalanced that Bombers are the only unit in the game (which can kill units) for which there is absolutely no defence whatsoever if you are slightly behind in techs or lack resources? That and the H'watcha for which there is absolutely no defence of any kind at all. At least that is a unique unit.

I've read many stories of glorious comebacks by Zerksees amongst others. Taking seemingly unwinnable games and turning them around. Basically you can kiss that goodbye if any enemy has Bombers in numbers cos they can simply rain fire on any unit you have and wipe them out unlike all other units who need to move into position and attack, even a 1hp unit.

Added to that are the fact that Bombers are cheap, can be transported across sea and have an immense strike range. They are unbalanced units in a balanced units game.

To redress the balance they should cost a hell of a lot more to build, have some sort of rationing (like 1 Bomber per Airport you've built) or remove Lethal Bombard altogether. As it stands they give the human player a completely overwhelming advantage since the Human can produce units en-masse and transport them infinitely more effectively than the AI can.

I can see why people are so enamoured with them but, come on guys, cant you see its a major imbalance introduced to Civ?

What do pro's think? Chieftess?

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Originally posted by Longasc
I am looking forward to try it. I will give the AI flight for free to balance things and than test it.

My suggestion:

No lethal air bombardement of land units INSIDE cities or fortifications.

What if they made a city improvement making the units less prone to the attack, like Mod the civil defense building to reduce the chance of them getting hit by a bombardbment.

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by Greyhawk1
Dont you think its just a tad unbalanced that Bombers are the only unit in the game (which can kill units) for which there is absolutely no defence whatsoever if you are slightly behind in techs or lack resources? That and the H'watcha for which there is absolutely no defence of any kind at all. At least that is a unique unit.

I've read many stories of glorious comebacks by Zerksees amongst others. Taking seemingly unwinnable games and turning them around. Basically you can kiss that goodbye if any enemy has Bombers in numbers cos they can simply rain fire on any unit you have and wipe them out unlike all other units who need to move into position and attack, even a 1hp unit.

Added to that are the fact that Bombers are cheap, can be transported across sea and have an immense strike range. They are unbalanced units in a balanced units game.

To redress the balance they should cost a hell of a lot more to build, have some sort of rationing (like 1 Bomber per Airport you've built) or remove Lethal Bombard altogether. As it stands they give the human player a completely overwhelming advantage since the Human can produce units en-masse and transport them infinitely more effectively than the AI can.

I can see why people are so enamoured with them but, come on guys, cant you see its a major imbalance introduced to Civ?

What do pro's think? Chieftess?

I've usually won WELL before bombers came online. But, yes, anything that does knock out a unit inside the city via bombard does seem too powerful.

 

[Longasc]

planetfall said the AI finally got knack how to use air carrier battlegroups with success.

I agree with Greyhawk, Flak is no true hindrance for bombers, and if you have Flight, you can muster Fighters, too.

Lethal Bombardement makes it probably just TOO simple to conquer a city.

You can easily deploy most of your air units in one turn to a city and bombard then concentrated a single enemy city to dust - in extreme cases to the point where no ground unit exists and your ground troops need only to drive in.


It is perhaps illogical, but it would help those backward civs:

1.) As soon as a civ discovers Flight, all other nations can build FLAK.

2.) no more lethal bombardements of any land units in shelters like cities or fortifications.


this just inspired me to think of BUNKERS.

CIVPhilzilla already mentioned something similar.

How about
BUNKERS: Prevent lethal bombardement of land units. Bombers would then act like normal artillery.

This is already ingame - the civil defence is a bunker, at least it looks like. Would it be too hard to implement the feature of preventing lethal bombings?

Fortresses would work like Bunkers. Would give them one more reason to exist. We already have those strange radar towers that the AI loved in PTW but I could not stand hehe...

The discovery of nuclear weapons would upgrade the bunkers automatically to ATOMIC BUNKERS:

25% less losses to nukes perhaps... just a suggestion. Pre-SDI defense and nice add-on to it.

Militaristic civs would get the bunkers half priced. Or perhaps religious civs? Those who pray to the mighty bomb hehe....^^



Well, I am one turn before bombing the Portuguese who have never seen fly before than my artillery shells and birds...

Let's see how much impact bombers have really... I will give all others civs later flight for free and see how they do.

 

[akillias]

i have about 80 bomber and im currently owning the AI

 

[Longasc]

Here is a testsave -> only 8 bombers in range right now, but next turn you will have dozens.

Plus a really huge empire (communism). +17.000 Bank, +1.700 per turn.

Nobody else has flight. Time to test the power of bombers.


Just try and play on some turns and decide how powerful they are.

C3C 1.15b save. Celts /Communism, huge map. Around 100 cities.

 

[ummmm........]

I'm not sure I understand the issue. I'm in a game right now where I have no oil, and my opponent does. But my opponent is the AI, so it's not so tough for me to still win, despite the enemy's use of bombers. Mobile SAMs, in sufficient number, will defeat enemy bombers.

I agree that bombers are too powerful for me to use, so I don't use them. Thus my problem is solved, without impacting any other players. I think that is a better solution than changing things for everyone. Just my opinion.