Bombers are too powerful.

[microbe]

Originally posted by Speedo

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

No it's not.

You can win the war, you can bombard the enemy back into the stone ages, but you cannot capture cities just by bombarding. Your ground troops still need to fight brutally to capture a city. All this is gone with the lethal land bombardment. You just need to bombard and walk in.

I hope they find some balance here.

 

[Speedo]

No it's not.

You can win the war, you can bombard the enemy back into the stone ages, but you cannot capture cities just by bombarding. Your ground troops still need to fight brutally to capture a city. All this is gone with the lethal land bombardment. You just need to bombard and walk in.

Where in Civ can you capture cities by bombarding?

Where in the Gulf War was there brutal urban fighting? Urban fighting, yes, but where are the vicious high-casualty battles?

 

[Bluemofia]

plus you have to deal with the resistance. unless if you raze the city. also, what about the improvements? do they get in the way if you bombard the units?

 

[microbe]

Originally posted by Speedo


Where in Civ can you capture cities by bombarding?

I'm sure you read the posts. I even emphasized the "walk in". No, bombers themselves cannot capture cities, but you then send one single cavalry and the city is yours. Right, without a fight.

Where in the Gulf War was there brutal urban fighting? Urban fighting, yes, but where are the vicious high-casualty battles?

So you are saying there was ZERO field loss in the war to the bomber side?

 

[Greyhawk1]

I think people are missing the point. Bombers in Civ are based on 1940's tech of carpet bombing. Hell, they even look like Flying Fortresses. No precision strike capability at all. The Gulf War is another matter entirely, stealth aircraft with precision guided munitions etc...

Carpet bombing is singularly ineffective against well dug-in troops. As demonstrated in the Monte-Cassino attack as well as Vietnam.

To have a unit that can move across the ENTIRE MAP in a single turn, then can destroy any enemy units within an immense strike range that doesnt leave themselves open to attack against a less advanced nation - is so unbalanced its criminal. Obviously if the nation you are attacking is well defended with SAMs and so on, its a different matter but all you need to do is get Flight first, be lucky enough to have Oil and build loads of Bombers with a skeleton land army. Make a beach-head then ship in the Bombers from anywhere on the map en-masse. Adios enemy army without a shot being fired!

In the end I got so bored with my war I grounded all my Bombers and let the Tanks in to do the job. The Mayan Army was obliterated - only a few Riflemen and a Musketman left for my Tanks to attack. None of my units were in any danger at all.

Can you imagine having your stack of doom you spent twenty plus turns building up and organising moving into position then the AI with a fleet of Bombers simply files its nails as it casually destroys each unit with no chance of retaliation at all?

Thats what happened to me in that previous game. I spent ages gathering that invasion fleet together, building units - balancing out - umming and arring over ratios of offensive to defensive units and artillery etc. Then, when the AI had zero chance of knowing my fleet was on its way the entire fleet was destroyed in moments by a handful of Bombers without ever seeing land.

Five Galleons plus three Frigates gone in one turn without my troops being able to do anything about it.

After this game Conquests is being shelved until I can figure out how to disable lethal bombard and redress the balance

 

[Admiral_Tarton]

you can turn lethal bombardment off in the editor

 

[ummmm........]

Originally posted by Admiral_Tarton
you can turn lethal bombardment off in the editor

My point exactly. There you go. Problem solved.

 

[derekroth]

I still think lethal bombardment is a good improvement. For one, I think that the bomber would represent not only bombers but any aircraft equiped to destroy ground targets. The war in the pacific clearly demonstrated that without adequate air defence, naval vessels are extreamly vulnerable to air attack. So clearly Gallions and Frigates would not stand a chance. Also, immagine WWI with one side having WWII aircraft technology. B-17s carpet bombing the clearly defined frond lines would be catastrophic to the troops below.

The only time that bombers are TOO powerful is when you have flight and the enemy does not. And then, you have to be able to go for about three turns to build addequate bomber fleets and send them to the right locations. Also you have to outnumber the defenders in a city by at least two bombers to one defender in order to kill them all (If you are lucky), not to mention this is just the first city taken. If you can go turn after turn decimating the defenseless AI with bombers, it isn't the bomers that are throwing your game balance off. Maybe it's that you are playing on too easy of a level or that you got off to an terrific start and probably could have considered the game won a long time ago.

 

[Longasc]

do not let bombers deploy to cities without airports!

This would delay invasions a lot, too.

 

[Longasc]

and give carriers added usefulness, too.

 

[Greyhawk1]

Okay, looks like Conquests is going to force me to use the editor for the first time

Anyone give me a simple pointer on how I simply switch off lethal bombard for Bombers only? Not too bothered about UU's since they are unique.

I still maintain that it is a very imbalanced unit but obviously I dont expect everyone to agree

Its about the only huge peeve I have with Conquests. The rest of it is fine.

 

[Longasc]

you must select the bomber unit - simply.

it is quite self-explanatory, so no worry, wou will find it. It is a mere checkerbox, just unmark it.

 

[Dogmeat]

Its in the unit abilities Box, hold ctrl and click the lethal bombard ability.

 

[Bronx Warlord]

From my experances playing as the Americans, bombers are one of the most effective parts of my military. I tend to go with a large stack of 30 or a split of 15/15 depending on my holdings and the needs of the map. I must say I think they are over powered and a bit booring imho, so I tend to use them sparingly.
Now that have been a few times I was stuck without rubber on huge maps. This caused war late into the game, with a 40+ city babylon comming at me with everything they had, includeing 20+ bombers. With a large border area considering of mostly devloped plains and grassland, there wasen't must space between us.
I had already invested in rocketry, and as a small note to anyone who plays the Americans, the F15 is the ultimate in jet aircraft. I had 2-3 doing air superiority sorties in my border cities, backed up with a sam site in the city, two moble sam's, civil defense and two radar towers.
On the first turn all 12 of the bombers he sent into my cities were destroyed, his remaining bombers ate my 4 tank army... I had to go back to the greeks and work on a deal for there rubber just to replace them and my losses with modern armor.

From what I've seen and experanced it's all about rocketry when dealing with bombers, Americans and there F15 getting a bit of an edge there also, moreso when they obtain elite status.

- BX

 

[smellymummy]

bombers are much like artillery. the player will build tons of them and blow up the AI. with lethal bombardment, i think it helps with the AI's huge production bonus at higher difficulty levels.

still, they kind of get stale. a fleet of 40-60 bombers? lots of clicking, and if you animate battles, lots of animation. its much like huge stacks of artillery, just that the bombers will kill the units.

the idea about having bombers in advanced flight sounds good imo, although i'd also reduce the bomber's operational range. that would give me more reason to go for stealth for the 'modern bombers' ie stealth bombers

 

[bonscott]

Seriously Greyhawk, move up a couple levels of difficulty. I recently moved to Monarch and it's a whole different world. Rarely are the AI's so behind me in tech that I could bomb them to oblivion without a shot fired. Once I get to that point again then it's time to move up to emporer where it's a whole new world again.

 

[Bluemofia]

bombers hardly have enough range in some games. my dad uses bombers as mobile sheilds since we only have PTW, and they don't even have enough range to bomb an enemy mongol city that was very close to his! anyways, do stealth bombers and fighters have defence now?

 

[Greyhawk1]

Originally posted by bonscott
Seriously Greyhawk, move up a couple levels of difficulty. I recently moved to Monarch and it's a whole different world. Rarely are the AI's so behind me in tech that I could bomb them to oblivion without a shot fired. Once I get to that point again then it's time to move up to emporer where it's a whole new world again.

Ah but you see I've already been at the sharp end in a Regent game as I've pointed out previously. I've been the victimiser and victim with Bombers here

In both situations the advent of Flight rendered the rest of the game moot. Whether I have it or the AI has it (even if they are less able to use them effectively) the result is the same in my book.

I have to ask myself "why is artillery - a unit supposed to be there to maim and destroy land units unable to wipe out a unit whereas a carpet bombing plane flying at 50,000ft can?" Especially when its been proven in every world war with Bombers in them that carpet bombing is pretty much ineffective against troops. Especially when they are dug in.

IMO, no unguided weapons should have lethal bombard. Only with the advent of stealth bombers and precision guided munitions has air delivery of ordnance begun to annihilate troops - even when dug in.

A late tech - near Stealth could be added called "Guided Weapons" that adds lethal bombard to Jet Fighters rather than the 1940's bombers. Also Radar Artillery and the Stealth units.

That late in the game at least gives civs trailing in techs a chance to nab Flak and maybe SAM Missile Bases as a defence making lethal bombard at least risky for the unit involved.

Each to their own obviously but I'd rather see this "feature" consigned to the waste bin for my games .

 

[Roland Johansen]

Maybe fighters could have lethal bombard as they killed their enemies at low altitude. And the German divebombers of WWII were also pretty good at hitting their targets, although you needed very good pilots. But a divebomber would have a lower bombard value than the carpet bombing bomber represented in the game.

If you'd only remove lethal bombard from the ordinary bomber and maybe even move the ordinary bomber to advanced flight (as carpet bombing was a WWII technology and offensive fighters already appeared in WWI), then your problems would be gone.

I wonder if the AI is smart enough to use the lethal bombard of fighters in combination with the non-lethal of the suggested bombers.

One last note: units that are redlined by massive bombardment only offer a token resistance. If a civilisation is capable of doing such massive bombardments then this can only happen because of their tech lead because otherwise bombers would get shot down by fighters. So your more modern landunits can easily finish of the remaining redlined landunits without (or pratically without) losses. I've done this in PTW and even got lots of MGL's out of the easy victories over redlined units.

In my present game some of my enemies have over 100 jet fighters and I'm not even considering bombing them. It would be utter suicide. Bombing can only be overpowered because of a significant tech lead, not because of the lethal bombardment. Just move bombers a little back on the tech line so that players who are a little behind in tech can have fighters when the advanced ones get bombers.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Originally posted by Longasc
My suggestion:

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

Won't make much of a difference.

Units in cities already have high defensive ratings, so killing units is already difficult.


The times when lethal bombardment shines is on open, both land and sea.

Then it's a real killer.