villagereaver said:
The air group of a Nimitz class supercarrier is larger than 85% of the world's air forces.
That is based entirely on the US carriers ability as opposed to the strength of
carriers themselves, the same would be true on any US military force. Would the US' own carriers have air superiority against the USAF over the US coastline? What happens in Civ can only be compared to the British fleet being able to turn up on the US coast, and enjoy absolute air superiority over a region encompassing a few cities, even when they are expected. Which is obviously ridiculous
. And don't forget, this air superiority is indefinite as the Brits can teleport new planes in to replace ones that are lost
not the same argument as the op- his was, you can have unlimited air power at sea from basically one base of operations, while not so on land. the limit on land was artificial, while there is no similar artificial limit at sea.
For the most part right, but carriers can hide in forts and cities too and also mystical aircraft teleportation. Primarily aimed toward fort and city abuse
I can make a similar argument about Subs and TacNukes. TacNukes can evade interception (unlike ICBMs), and with enough of them, you can overwhelm many enemies (Landers full of marines amphibiously attacking Nuke-Depleted cities). Besides, carrier based aircraft still cost maintenance, and cannot strike everywhere. I personally use city and fort (mainly city, but by the end-game my workers have little to do except build forts) based bombers to attack, then capture, then bring more bombers into the new city (from either troop-factories or cities which cannot reach my next target). I rarely use carriers, except for recon or for beach-head landings.
Nukes carry significant penalties for reliance upon them. Massive war wearriness, huge diplo penalties, the highly likely threat of them being banned and in the case of sub launched tacticals, theres the requirement to return to base to get more. The SDI also has a chance to intercept regardless of numbers used, and bomb shelters reduce damage a lot too.
TMIT said:
Fighters have a large outlay in that you still need things to hold the lines that can attack from out of their range, and enough naval cover (though vs the AI naval warfare is VERY EASY...although only if you initiate the war and destroy it in port turn 1).
They do require a lot of support out at sea true, but they are still a neccesity if you are going for a intercontinental invasion, and more than worth the extra support investment. The other use involving hiding carriers in forts and cities to fight on your own continent requires almost no additional support at all, and can net comparable results.
A ridiculous mass of fighters will be anything, but that's also true of the much-earlier infantry/arty combo to a large extent.
The difference is that whatever is defending against the attacking side of artillery/infantry, isn't limited to a fraction of the attacking force (even though the AI won't have an effective amount). Plus against art/inf stacks, the defender has the initiative to attack the art/inf stack first. Theres no major advantage a defending fleet has against carriers, in fact the carriers hold the advantage over everything but subs and cruise missiles.
They CAN be really good, but it's not like they're far and away the best option. To hold sway over the skies to beat anti-air, intercepts, and STILL have bombers cause collateral after that is a massive initial investment, hardly something you'd be able to attain when backwards or weak in pop. If you're backwards you might lose culture or space before you get to flight (or at least before you get enough fighters/invasion troops).
Specifically for intercontinental attacks, then a carrier oriented naval attack is probably the best bet for a backward player civ to prevent an AI winning.
Theres no need to wait for fighters to be made before leaving, as you can teleport fighters in on the way. You can also teleport more fighters as you war reducing the biggest obstacle to any intercontinantal invasion, the logistics. Don't forget of course the carrier based Fighters will be battling at an advantage, and can carry on supporting if the invasion gets inland.
If you do manage to take and hold a city I will accept that rushbuying an airport can do a similar thing, but you need to capture the city, hold it through revolts and then buy it first. If you have that ability to actually hold the city this long, your probably not very backward at all. Best to just raze cities belonging to AIs threatening a victory condition.
Even on the same continent, i'm certain it more cost efficient to use a few carrier based fighters in cities or forts (doubt you'd ever need more than 5 carriers for this).
They can free up spots for bombers, kill enemy air units that would otherwise attack your stack, attack some units destined to attack your stack and soften city garrisons than to just send the stack in supported by a handful of city/fort based fighters and a tiny number of bombers. The air superiority given by carriers is probably a much bigger issue when you can use your bombers to follow them, especially when you don't even need much naval support due to cities and forts.
Edit: sub tac nukes are probably the single biggest threat. 1-2 of those and it's lights out.
A gigantic threat to any stack of doom, its unfortunate the AI almost always bans them before significant numbers can be made if the player doesn't have a tech lead/ control of the UN at this point.
Edit 2: It's also technically possible to get hosed by a bajillion cruise missiles, since they're not capped. You can actually kill defenders outright with cruise missiles if you have enough of them (and at 60 hammers a pop a large empire can probably have 2 cities 1 per turning the suckers). The AI will never do that though.
True, its deceptively cost efficient too, just logistically a nightmare.
The range is too short to make city to ship attacks a reasonable assumption, and moving missiles into a city will be increidbly obvious if done. So we're stuck with a fleet.
The fleet would need to be carrying 4 missiles for every battleship, 3 for every destroyer, 3 for every aricraft carrier, 3 for every transport in order to be killing them. They'd also need to avoid detection which isn't a trivial issue even for subs, especially as they need to go to port to load up, any port close enough to be reconned will be obvious to a player, even if using subs.
Missile cruisers would need to stop more than 10 tiles away (recon vision range) from the carrier and pray it doesn't move in order to both, avoid detection and allow a missile strike the next turn. If the carriers do use Jet Fighters, then cruisers are just doomed.
Ships in forts/cities are also immune to cruise missiles
that are the limitation in the first place. I'm saying this as someone who's gone NO COLLATERAL marine battering off transports on immortal and capitulated the target in < 10 turns. It's situational. The longer you expect the war to take, the more units/cities you have to kill, etc, the more you want the air support (or nukes).
(I haven't noticed any such limitation in Vanilla Civ IV).
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