Carriers, Ridiculous?

[Roland Johansen]

And building a fort doesn't cost anything but worker time. But anyway... I know you don't want to continue with realism arguments.

I don't know why you make that remark as it is simply not true. A fort cannot coexist with another terrain improvement so the cost is another tile improvement. Having multiple forts around a city just incase a carrier fleet might attack there is hugely inefficient. If one could build a limitless amount of forts (airstrips) on a single tile without removing other terrain improvements, then yes the argument would work.

Purely on gameplay then, I'd be more concerned if if there was some limit on the number of air units per water tile. Firstly, how would the rule be enforced? An aircraft carrier would be disallowed from moving onto a tile that has exceeded its allowed capacity? As far as I can imagine this would be a PITA in terms of micromanagement, shuffling around fleets.

I'm not even suggesting limiting the airplanes per sea tile. I would like the land based limits removed (post 61) because the human can simply circumvent them with carriers. So the limit isn't working anyway, so why introduce that rule then? Just so that players start building carriers which they leave in ports so that the carriers are immune to ship-based counterattacks? I really don't see the gameplay improvement here. It just forces the player to build an in between step to get what he/she wants: no limit to airplanes in an area. But what does that in between step add to gameplay?

Carriers add to gameplay when they're useful for intercontinental attacks. They are useful in that role independent of the number of land based airplanes can be placed in a city. They are more needed when the opponent can concentrate its land based airplanes.

The fact that the AI cannot circumvent the airplane limit like the human can is just another argument against the change in BTS to limit the land based aircraft.

So the land based aircraft limit forces the human to take a meaningless inbetween step (the carrier) to circumvent it and weakens the AI. It adds , can't think of anything.

Well, most of the planes the Japanese lost during the raids were either destroyed on the ground or were "kamikaze" planes. The loss rate for the latter would be near 100%. So I don't think the losses necessarily suggest that they had vastly more planes available in the area under attack.

I'm just saying that they had a large number of planes in the area, which is incompatible with civ4 rules which limit land based airplanes.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that 3rd Fleet carriers embarked 30 planes each - the light carriers may have carried about that many, but not the larger fleet carriers. The Essex-class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_class) which made up the bulk of the 3rd Fleet's carrier force, embarked around 90-100 planes each. So a force of 10 Essex-class and 6 light carriers would have somewhere over 1000 planes embarked, at a minimum.

I had found the information about light carriers, not the essex model.

Note that today, there exist wordwide 22 carriers, 11 in the US navy, other countries have a maximum of 2. A force of 16 carriers is nothing standard. During WWII, the US did have more carriers than today (although smaller ones in size). I don't know how many carriers were involved in that battle.

My point being, that there is real world precedent for a large offshore carrier force overwhelming local defenses. And that it is therefore not 'ridiculous' for the same thing to be possible in Civ4 BTS, as the OP postulated.

The fact that a large carrier fleet can defeat the almost beaten Japanese airforce in july 1945 is not very convincing. This might just have been almost everything the Japanese could field at that point in the war. And the Japanese pilots and airplanes were seriously inferior to what the US airforce could muster at that time.

A large US carrier fleet could destroy most countries nowadays. But that doesn't show that carriers can carry more airplanes than land based airfields. It's more an exponent of the fact that the US military expenditure is comparable to that of the rest of the world combined and has been for a long time.

If the US carrier fleet would attack an opponent that was comparable in strength, say a hypothetical copy of the US, then they'd be annihilated by land based aircraft.

 

[6K Man]

I was merely providing precedent. You're hedging now based on suppositions you're making. Which you are welcome to do... but my point still stands that a carrier based force can and has overwhelmed landbased aircraft in real world situations.

 

[UWHabs]

Problem if you get rid of the land-based limits, then you can mass those 50 fighters in a city right next to who you're attacking. Turn 1, declare, bomb them to pieces, take the city. Turn 2, rebase them all to the captured city. Turn 3, repeat. So, artificial limits in this case make gameplay not too easy - it means you need to build those carriers, and thus all the support ships.

 

[Ghpstage]

I was merely providing precedent. You're hedging now based on suppositions you're making. Which you are welcome to do... but my point still stands that a carrier based force can and has overwhelmed landbased aircraft in real world situations.

This was the original post mentioning it

I fail to see the problem, it accurately reflects real life.

since when do carriers in real life allow a naval fleet to utterly outnumber the number of aircraft the enemy can have on land!?

I can see how it can be misinterpreted as I probably should have used the word 'any' instead of the bolded the, but it becomes pretty obvious if you look at the comment I'm actually answering there what I mean imo, especially with the underlined keyword.

My problem isn't that they can be outnumbered, that would be really stupid. Not sure how the fact it can happen in reality justifies rules allowing to happen constantly ingame .
If you want to carry on this argument line I'd suggest you find a carierfleet example where more aircraft were used than in the land based bombing of Berlin....
I highly doubt any carrier force has exceeded 800 strategic bombers and all required escorts which is what the post I was answering was effectively claiming
To be honest I've never seen planes teleport either

Problem if you get rid of the land-based limits, then you can mass those 50 fighters in a city right next to who you're attacking. Turn 1, declare, bomb them to pieces, take the city. Turn 2, rebase them all to the captured city. Turn 3, repeat. So, artificial limits in this case make gameplay not too easy - it means you need to build those carriers, and thus all the support ships.

If you were going to use them for an intercontinental attack then yes, you would need support but I should think you'd support transports too right? If your using carriers in cities you can basically get the 50 fighters situation you mentioned without needing any ships to support and at minimal extra cost.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I don't know why you make that remark as it is simply not true. A fort cannot coexist with another terrain improvement so the cost is another tile improvement. Having multiple forts around a city just incase a carrier fleet might attack there is hugely inefficient. If one could build a limitless amount of forts (airstrips) on a single tile without removing other terrain improvements, then yes the argument would work.

It's not out of the question for one to pre-build forts if one is anticipating a situation like this. As soon as the fighters are no longer needed in the area you can build over them (the forts) again. Obviously this does not work with towns, but any other improvement where losing a few turns working is not all that important can be replaced with a temp-fort. I often find that forests one has kept around are good candidates for forting. The lumbermill bonus on the tile is not huge, and most of the yield is coming from the terrain and the forest. Plus the +75% defense from forest+fort make them very cheap to defend while air units are in them.

The main cost associated with this tactic is having the worker-power to do it quickly. With the way I play, I get by with the bare minimum of workers but I get the impression that other players usually have larger worker-forces than I use.

Spending 175 on a carrier where a cheap fort would do the same trick seems a bit of overkill. The difference is that with the carrier you still have the mobility, which is very useful, as you know.

Also, carriers are obviously only going to remove the air unit limit in coastal cities. By removing the limit for air units in inland cities you are definitely allowing something that cannot presently be circumvented.

I'm not even suggesting limiting the airplanes per sea tile. I would like the land based limits removed (post 61) because the human can simply circumvent them with carriers. So the limit isn't working anyway, so why introduce that rule then? Just so that players start building carriers which they leave in ports so that the carriers are immune to ship-based counterattacks? I really don't see the gameplay improvement here. It just forces the player to build an in between step to get what he/she wants: no limit to airplanes in an area. But what does that in between step add to gameplay?

Carriers add to gameplay when they're useful for intercontinental attacks. They are useful in that role independent of the number of land based airplanes can be placed in a city. They are more needed when the opponent can concentrate its land based airplanes.

The fact that the AI cannot circumvent the airplane limit like the human can is just another argument against the change in BTS to limit the land based aircraft.

So the land based aircraft limit forces the human to take a meaningless inbetween step (the carrier) to circumvent it and weakens the AI. It adds , can't think of anything.

How does it weaken the AI? I don't remember the AI ever being smart enough to mass huge numbers of planes in a single area anyway. Removing the limit for cities will only make it easier for most human players to concentrate their air forces, and will make it more frequently unnecessary to build carriers.

As it is now, carriers are more a benefit to the human player - that's true - but at least they come at a cost and need to be protected.

4 carriers + 12 fighters = 1900 = 19 fighters.

At least having to build carriers slows the production of air units.

 

[Roland Johansen]

It's not out of the question for one to pre-build forts if one is anticipating a situation like this. As soon as the fighters are no longer needed in the area you can build over them (the forts) again. Obviously this does not work with towns, but any other improvement where losing a few turns working is not all that important can be replaced with a temp-fort. I often find that forests one has kept around are good candidates for forting. The lumbermill bonus on the tile is not huge, and most of the yield is coming from the terrain and the forest. Plus the +75% defense from forest+fort make them very cheap to defend while air units are in them.

The main cost associated with this tactic is having the worker-power to do it quickly. With the way I play, I get by with the bare minimum of workers but I get the impression that other players usually have larger worker-forces than I use.

Spending 175 on a carrier where a cheap fort would do the same trick seems a bit of overkill. The difference is that with the carrier you still have the mobility, which is very useful, as you know.

Also, carriers are obviously only going to remove the air unit limit in coastal cities. By removing the limit for air units in inland cities you are definitely allowing something that cannot presently be circumvented.

If the forts were the cheaper alternative, then why were you not using forts and were you using aircraft carriers? I don't believe that you even think that forts are a viable alternative.

Some of the issues with forts when serving as an alternative for carriers:
-very limited in capacity. Only 4 planes can be stationed in each fort.
-each fort needs to be defended against the large strike force that is coming meaning lots of defensive units are needed. You cannot concentrate defence efforts.
-they take a lot of worker turns to build so that they cannot be quickly build as a reaction to an impending attack.
-when a huge number of workers are used to build several forts, then the fort + workers + fighters offer a very juicy target to capture. It would be a huge loss for the defender to lose such a just build fort.
-you need a permanent large worker force to react to impending attacks. The worker force needs to be available everywhere in your empire. Sounds expensive.
-they remove other tile improvements meaning a certain significant cost per turn in the lost tile improvement. The cottage-line of improvements will hurt a lot when replaced and when farms are replaced the city will start to starve. Not all cities will have (enough) suitable tile improvements to be replaced.
-the forts cannot be moved meaning they cannot react to the moveable aircraft carrier fleet. The forts that are build as a defensive measure against an aircraft carrier attack also cannot be used for offensive actions like aircraft carriers because they're likely in the wrong area.
-The aircraft in forts can still be overwhelmed by the a large enough aircraft carrier fleet.

In my personal opinion, the forts are way to inflexible, costly and slow to be a viable counter to the aircraft carriers and in the end cannot even counter a large enough carrier fleet.

How does it weaken the AI? I don't remember the AI ever being smart enough to mass huge numbers of planes in a single area anyway. Removing the limit for cities will only make it easier for most human players to concentrate their air forces, and will make it more frequently unnecessary to build carriers.

It's true that the AI is usually not good at war and specifically at winning the crucial battles. The AI is aware of the power of its opponents and when going to war, it will only do so when it thinks it can win. However, if the AI would have 30 caravels and some land units vs a human player with only land units, then those caravels would be counted in the power rating of the AI which is of course stupid. The AI would (in my opinion) function better when it would take into account three power ratings: land, water and air.

The reason that the change weakens the AI is because the human player understands the limitations of the stacking limit and understands how to circumvent the stacking limit of airplanes, the AI doesn't. You could fix that by learning the AI how to circumvent the stacking limit of airplanes, but it would seem to me that a game rule that can be easily circumvented isn't serving any goal.

As it is now, carriers are more a benefit to the human player - that's true - but at least they come at a cost and need to be protected.

4 carriers + 12 fighters = 1900 = 19 fighters.

At least having to build carriers slows the production of air units.

Yes, the stacking limit rules in cities make it a bit more expensive to exceed the stacking limits (the weirdness of the sentence actually shows the reason that I find it a problem). It's relatively less expensive when you use jet fighters. I personally don't really see the value in that. If you would want to slightly weaken the power of massed airplanes, by making it more expensive to do so, then I would have preferred slightly more expensive airplanes or a reduction in the maximum amount of damage they inflict so that bombed targets aren't a walkover target.

Also note that the carriers are not just there to provide extra stacking limits. So adding their cost to the airplane cost isn't entire fair.

A little outside the main topic: there was another major change (besides the stacking limit rules) in BTS that weakened massed air power namely the lethality of interception. Before BTS, interception was extremely rarely lethal, meaning that you could use fighters and bombers without an actual significant cost in losses. In BTS, interceptions (by airplanes) are almost always lethal (interception by ground based forces rarely). This has been a major balancing move against massed airforces. It meant that an airbased campaign against an opponent wouldn't be without losses if that opponent could also build airplanes.

 

[PieceOfMind]

If the forts were the cheaper alternative, then why were you not using forts and were you using aircraft carriers? I don't believe that you even think that forts are a viable alternative.

I was using carriers because I was not on my home continent. Having already captured a few cities on the same landmass as my new enemy, I found that stationing fighters in those cities and in my nearby carriers was enough to overwhelm the enemy. I overwhelmed the enemy mainly because I had more figthers - not because they were more concentrated. As far as I can tell, enemy fighters were defending the city from different cities (or am I wrong about that?).

Even if he had no stacking limits and could concentrate more defending fighters in one city, how does that help necessarily? I could just attack another city where his fighters were not concentrated.

The ability to focus air strikes in one area is just an inherent advantage of being the attacker.

-each fort needs to be defended against the large strike force that is coming meaning lots of defensive units are needed. You cannot concentrate defence efforts.

Of course, but you can always place the forts so they are not easily reached by the enemy in one turn, so you can withdraw the planes in the fort if under threat.

And correct me if I'm wrong but forts don't even need to be that close to the attacked city do they? They just have to be within fighter range for fighters on Intercept mission to react to attacks on the city.

-they take a lot of worker turns to build so that they cannot be quickly build as a reaction to an impending attack.
-when a huge number of workers are used to build several forts, then the fort + workers + fighters offer a very juicy target to capture. It would be a huge loss for the defender to lose such a just build fort.
-you need a permanent large worker force to react to impending attacks. The worker force needs to be available everywhere in your empire. Sounds expensive.

This is why I said one can usually pre-build them in anticipation of an attack. Since us human players tend to have brains, we can go and pre-build forts in key locations, near our most important cities with a good idea of where an attack might come from as well. By pre-building them, it means you don't need larger worker stacks like you described - just one worker will do.

-they remove other tile improvements meaning a certain significant cost per turn in the lost tile improvement. The cottage-line of improvements will hurt a lot when replaced and when farms are replaced the city will start to starve. Not all cities will have (enough) suitable tile improvements to be replaced.

Obviously one is not going to replace towns - I mentioned that before.

Just how many planes are you planning to concentrate in a city? Two forts would at least double the capacity of the city to hold planes.

Also, as I said before lumbermills are good for airfields because the lumbermill itself does not provide a big bonus and losing one or two for several turns (if necessary) won't hurt much.

-the forts cannot be moved meaning they cannot react to the moveable aircraft carrier fleet. The forts that are build as a defensive measure against an aircraft carrier attack also cannot be used for offensive actions like aircraft carriers because they're likely in the wrong area.

Obviously. And this is probably why aircraft carrriers cost hammers but forts don't.

So we've established that forts are inferior to carriers, but we have not addressed the point:

Also, carriers are obviously only going to remove the air unit limit in coastal cities. By removing the limit for air units in inland cities you are definitely allowing something that cannot presently be circumvented.

The reason that the change weakens the AI is because the human player understands the limitations of the stacking limit and understands how to circumvent the stacking limit of airplanes, the AI doesn't. You could fix that by learning the AI how to circumvent the stacking limit of airplanes, but it would seem to me that a game rule that can be easily circumvented isn't serving any goal.

I have to say, this is a strange argument you put forward, IMO.

Firstly, the AI is only weakened because we have a better understanding of the game rules? I suppose adding espionage and corporations, and indeed any other feature also weakened the AI because we are better at using them. This is probably technically true, as an argument but I don't consider it a very strong one. When there was no stacking limit, the AI still did not concentrate their air forces so it is no weaker than it was before. If human players could concentrate their air forces back then, they can now as well, using carriers. That is more an argument that nothing has changed - not that the AI has been weakened.

This is a point that maybe hasn't been given enough consideration yet... --> It's possible that the air unit limit was meant to encourage the use of forts. It's easy to see forts received a massive buff in BtS and this shouldn't be ignored. As much as you seem to dislike using them, removing the air unit limit would be one more reason not to bother with forts - something I'm not wishing for.

 

[Kaosprophet]

I'm not even suggesting limiting the airplanes per sea tile. I would like the land based limits removed (post 61) because the human can simply circumvent them with carriers. So the limit isn't working anyway, so why introduce that rule then?

Unless someone on the team is lurking about and wants to come out and explain the reasoning, we can only speculate. Part of my speculation, at least, is that the reasoning behind it didn't account for how carriers could be used as a loophole around the rule.

Just so that players start building carriers which they leave in ports so that the carriers are immune to ship-based counterattacks? I really don't see the gameplay improvement here. It just forces the player to build an in between step to get what he/she wants: no limit to airplanes in an area. But what does that in between step add to gameplay?

I'm fairly sure it's just a case where a human player's ability to find loopholes caused the actual point of the rule to be lost. How it was intended to affect gameplay, then, could only be found if one chose not to (ab)use that 'in between step' in the first place.

And I object to the notion that one is 'forced' to build carriers to circumvent the stacking limit. One always has the choice to skip that step and play within the limit. Against the AI, it's not even a handicap - because as you admit yourself, the AI doesn't circumvent the limit the way humans do.

The fact that the AI cannot circumvent the airplane limit like the human can is just another argument against the change in BTS to limit the land based aircraft.

So the land based aircraft limit forces the human to take a meaningless inbetween step (the carrier) to circumvent it and weakens the AI. It adds , can't think of anything.

In single-player games, the fact that the AI doesn't circumvent the limit in the way human players can is a big hole in your claim that the human is 'forced' to take steps to get around it. In single player, you choose to do so in order to have an(other) advantage over the AI. You don't have to do it, if you're willing to forfeit having that advantage.

Multiplayer is a different situation, of course.

A large US carrier fleet could destroy most countries nowadays. But that doesn't show that carriers can carry more airplanes than land based airfields.

Invididually they can't. A single carrrier can carry three fighters; a land-based airfield can support 4-8.

What remains is the question of whether it's logistically possible to mass enough carriers into a strike zone that their *combined* capacity exceeds that of the number of airstrips they'd realistically have to deal with.

Honestly, I couldn't say. But on pure gut instinct, I'd find it no less ridiculous to posit that the entire USAF could rebase to Seattle, Washington without requiring serious upgrades to the facilities there. Which is the equivalent to the situation of removing the limits on air units/city.

 

[Roland Johansen]

....

I'm not going to quote you line by line as it leads to extremely lengthy posts and the central argument is getting diluted into tiny subarguments which aren't even that interesting. I believe that an argument should in the end lead to an agreement or a fundamental basic disagreement that can be identified. Without this goal, I don't see the use of the argument. (Many internet discussions are useless. ) So I'm bringing the argument back to its basics.

Planes from aircraft carriers can reach virtually any position on the map by moving the carrier in the right position because of their large range. On most maps (except large pangea maps), all the land tiles can be reached by carrier based airplanes. With jet fighters it's exceedingly rare when a tile cannot be reached by carrier based airplanes.

In BTS, a cap was placed on land based airplanes but not on sea based airplanes as carriers can still concentrate airpower without limit. Sea based airplanes can reach virtually any tile on the land, so by using carriers (possibly placed in cities), you can actually largely ignore this game rule. It does add a cost to circumventing this game rule, but the cost is not that high compared to the cost of the fighters. You could also use forts to extend the airplane cap a bit but in my opinion this is not a very useful way to use your land. We seem to disagree on that notion but in the civ community I see very few forts in use to extend the airplane cap so I don't think they're liked that much for this use.

My main point is that a game rule which has a certain goal that can be circumvented easily isn't a really well thought out game rule. The goal of the game rule was to weaken the power of concentrated air power which isn't working. You can still concentrate air power by using carriers placed in the cities.

Since the human player can circumvent the limitation set by the game rule, it is in the end only the AI that suffers. Of course, the AI couldn't counter concentrated military efforts (by air or otherwise) very well before BTS, but those abilities have only been weakened by adding a layer (aircraft carriers) that needs to be constructed before countering the massive air strategy is possible.

However, my main point isn't the AI. It remains the game design philosophy of the rule: it doesn't do what it is trying to do so just scrap the rule. Less (rules) is more (game) in this case.

Oh, by the way, you seemed to be a bit unsure on the interception game mechanic: they can intercept everywhere inside their striking range. So the attacker advantage is there but it's far smaller than against land based interception which has a very small range (0 or 1).

Unless someone on the team is lurking about and wants to come out and explain the reasoning, we can only speculate. Part of my speculation, at least, is that the reasoning behind it didn't account for how carriers could be used as a loophole around the rule.

Solver worked on the new airplane mechanics. This info is from him.

I'm fairly sure it's just a case where a human player's ability to find loopholes caused the actual point of the rule to be lost. How it was intended to affect gameplay, then, could only be found if one chose not to (ab)use that 'in between step' in the first place.

And I object to the notion that one is 'forced' to build carriers to circumvent the stacking limit. One always has the choice to skip that step and play within the limit. Against the AI, it's not even a handicap - because as you admit yourself, the AI doesn't circumvent the limit the way humans do.

In single-player games, the fact that the AI doesn't circumvent the limit in the way human players can is a big hole in your claim that the human is 'forced' to take steps to get around it. In single player, you choose to do so in order to have an(other) advantage over the AI. You don't have to do it, if you're willing to forfeit having that advantage.

I'm all for self imposed limits on play. In some games with bad AI (Total War series for instance) I feel that it is almost necessary to find a challenge and not abuse the AI. In this case, it's a bit hard to limit yourself to the AI limits. How many carriers would you be allowed to have in an area without starting to abuse this AI weakness?

However, I think it is far better when a game is designed in such a way that you don't have to add self imposed limits to improve game balance versus the AI. Self imposed limits are always a way to stop so called exploits, but it's better to not have the exploits at all. (Not that I'm calling carriers to raise the airplane cap an exploit here, just something that is hard to counter for the AI.)

A large US carrier fleet could destroy most countries nowadays. But that doesn't show that carriers can carry more airplanes than land based airfields. It's more an exponent of the fact that the US military expenditure is comparable to that of the rest of the world combined and has been for a long time.

Invididually they can't. A single carrrier can carry three fighters; a land-based airfield can support 4-8.

What remains is the question of whether it's logistically possible to mass enough carriers into a strike zone that their *combined* capacity exceeds that of the number of airstrips they'd realistically have to deal with.

Honestly, I couldn't say. But on pure gut instinct, I'd find it no less ridiculous to posit that the entire USAF could rebase to Seattle, Washington without requiring serious upgrades to the facilities there. Which is the equivalent to the situation of removing the limits on air units/city.

The part that you quoted here was part of a real life discussion. Some were arguing that the ingame ability of carriers to overwhelm any land based air defence was based on real life. I disagreed. In real life, the airpower from a US carrier fleet could destroy most countries but they'd have no chance against the US air defence.

You reply with something which seems to be based on the ingame situation of 1 carrier vs 1 city which wasn't the point here.

I agree that the planes from a large carrier fleet can likely be relocated to the nearby (military) airports without a need to upgrade the facilities.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

My main point is that a game rule which has a certain goal that can be circumvented easily isn't a really well thought out game rule. The goal of the game rule was to weaken the power of concentrated air power which isn't working. You can still concentrate air power by using carriers placed in the cities.

Since the human player can circumvent the limitation set by the game rule, it is in the end only the AI that suffers. Of course, the AI couldn't counter concentrated military efforts (by air or otherwise) very well before BTS, but those abilities have only been weakened by adding a layer (aircraft carriers) that needs to be constructed before countering the massive air strategy is possible.

I'm going to counter this piece specifically by pointing out that the goal of the limitation being to limit air power is a hefty assumption...the goal may have been to simply make it more costly, and in that case it did so by a significant factor (as building enough air to overcome defending air in cities and forts may require 5 or more carriers, possibly a lot more with other forms of interception to cover for damaged fighters).

The reason you don't see a lot of forts in the civ community is also a questionable argument. We're agreed on the weak AI use of air power, but then that means that there is very little incentive to bother with forts against the AI or in MP games that don't last until air power matters.

Forts are just fine in areas where there is no fat cross cover, or on non-freshwater tundra or desert. Sacrificing something like a desert hill or other crappy tiles that the city wouldn't work either could be fine and not cost anything other than worker turns.

Along with land-based counters to air the system isn't really imbalanced, but if your argument is that they wanted to make air power weaker by imposing this limitation, I'm not sure it holds...do we actually know that for certain? The achieved the goal of making carrier-based massed planes costly and later than most war paths!

 

[3 EMS]

I thought, and I might be wrong as I don't study it too much, that bombers do twice as much damage as fighters. -16% vs -8%. If thats true then the earlier mentioned stack of 10 carriers with its 30 fighters would actually be slighter weaker than two cities with airports (allows 8?) and their bombers. When advancing your new cities wont have airports and will be limited to 4 bombers.
Most cities I want to attack can be reached by two or three that I own. This is more than enough to tear down cultural defenses before my troops get to it and then do max collateral damage to its defenders in one turn. Fighters are limited to how far inland they can reach. After that you're back to bombardment. (Unless you are TMIT, then its more chariots)
You can build as big of a carrier/fighter stack as you want but at some point you are just wasting hammers. You can only do so much damage with aircraft. You can destroy cultural defenses and then reach a max collateral damage point. Any further damage can only be done with land troops.
If you have that big of a military advantage would it not be better to split that stack and go after
two or three of the AI's cities instead? It would weaken him faster as well as better protect your invasion forces.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I'm going to do a bit of line-by-line quoting but I promise I'll keep it short.

Planes from aircraft carriers can reach virtually any position on the map by moving the carrier in the right position because of their large range. On most maps (except large pangea maps), all the land tiles can be reached by carrier based airplanes. With jet fighters it's exceedingly rare when a tile cannot be reached by carrier based airplanes.

How often is it that a carrier group can bring more jet fighters to a specific point than the defender can bring to that point from forts/cities in range? Even if we assume only 3 cities in range, and 2 forts, that's a possible 32 defending interceptors.

In BTS, a cap was placed on land based airplanes but not on sea based airplanes as carriers can still concentrate airpower without limit. Sea based airplanes can reach virtually any tile on the land, so by using carriers (possibly placed in cities), you can actually largely ignore this game rule. It does add a cost to circumventing this game rule, but the cost is not that high compared to the cost of the fighters. You could also use forts to extend the airplane cap a bit but in my opinion this is not a very useful way to use your land. We seem to disagree on that notion but in the civ community I see very few forts in use to extend the airplane cap so I don't think they're liked that much for this use.

Really, forts don't get used much by most in the community because they are not fully understood, plus maybe the fact that it can be tedious to micro worker turns doing things like pre-building forts etc. (something I happily do in my games).

My main point is that a game rule which has a certain goal that can be circumvented easily isn't a really well thought out game rule. The goal of the game rule was to weaken the power of concentrated air power which isn't working. You can still concentrate air power by using carriers placed in the cities.

Since the human player can circumvent the limitation set by the game rule, it is in the end only the AI that suffers. Of course, the AI couldn't counter concentrated military efforts (by air or otherwise) very well before BTS, but those abilities have only been weakened by adding a layer (aircraft carriers) that needs to be constructed before countering the massive air strategy is possible.

However, my main point isn't the AI. It remains the game design philosophy of the rule: it doesn't do what it is trying to do so just scrap the rule. Less (rules) is more (game) in this case.

My position is that the game rule change was at least a step in the right direction. Since we are discussing this rule in the context of the massed air strategy, let's talk about that.

Let's assume we removed the rule and AIs could now defend cities with as many planes as they want. Will this now allow them to better defend their cities? They can concentrate their planes as much as they want but will this help if they have to spread them out in the first place? If both the human player and AI have 30 planes, and the player's planes are within reach of 3 AI cities, where is the AI going to put them?

Anyway, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Whether the rule can be partly circumvented or not, I think it helped to reduce the strategy of literally placing every plane in one city, striking and then moving to the next city.

Whether the game design was good or not does not concern me.

Oh, by the way, you seemed to be a bit unsure on the interception game mechanic: they can intercept everywhere inside their striking range. So the attacker advantage is there but it's far smaller than against land based interception which has a very small range (0 or 1).

I thought that was the case - thanks for the clarification.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Let's be honest here. Is the "massed naval aircraft" method of war being systematically abused to win games under otherwise impossible circumstances?

The short and obvious answer is a resounding "no".

Until that "no" becomes a "yes" then this discussion is about as meaningful as an argument about who would win, Batman vs Spiderman.

The AI is hopeless at war and incapable of defending against invasion stacks, but that is already well established, and is independent of the specific tactics used. There is no special case for air-superiority.

Is a land based human capable of defending against massed naval based aircraft?
Yes, easily.

There's no real discussion point here.

(Batman btw)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Let's be honest here. Is the "massed naval aircraft" method of war being systematically abused to win games under otherwise impossible circumstances?

The short and obvious answer is a resounding "no".

Until that "no" becomes a "yes" then this discussion is about as meaningful as an argument about who would win, Batman vs Spiderman.

The AI is hopeless at war and incapable of defending against invasion stacks, but that is already well established, and is independent of the specific tactics used. There is no special case for air-superiority.

Is a land based human capable of defending against massed naval based aircraft?
Yes, easily.

There's no real discussion point here.

(Batman btw)

I'm in general agreement with this, though not familiar with MP that late in the game.

(definitely Batman).

 

[De Begerac]

Personally I don't think the power projection of a carrier group is represented enough ingame. Even the smallest of them is a scary prospect for any opposing navy irl.

To the original points:

1) I agree. Elsewhere in this thread tile caps for units has been mooted and discussed and I think it would be a worthy improvement and add so much to the strategic level of the game. Generally battles seem to come down to stack A and stack B. Actually having to think much more about stack composition and placement... trying to surround someones army or navy so they can't escape, actually laying siege to a city and encircling it to stop reinforcements. At the moment combat is really not much further evolved than a game of Risk.

2) Civ III had limits on how far aircraft could rebase to. Think it would be great to see that in IV.

As far as carriers go in the current set up perhaps we could approach this in another way. (ofc this is mod territory) Carriers when built are assumed to already have their squadrons onboard. Carriers are given a bombard function, AA function and a recon function to simulate their aircraft. This would solve the issue of rebasing aircraft and also mean that damaging a carrier would have an impact on air power projection as damaging or destroying one would kill it and it's fighters instead of being able to miraculously rebase them to a safe haven?

Cyrano

 

[Roland Johansen]

I'm going to counter this piece specifically by pointing out that the goal of the limitation being to limit air power is a hefty assumption...

The info is from Solver who worked on the changes to air combat.

How often is it that a carrier group can bring more jet fighters to a specific point than the defender can bring to that point from forts/cities in range? Even if we assume only 3 cities in range, and 2 forts, that's a possible 32 defending interceptors.

When you use carriers to overwhelm the air defence, you of course pick an area where land based aircraft cannot be massed easily due to the city stacking limits. On virtually any continent, there exists such a location.

My position is that the game rule change was at least a step in the right direction. Since we are discussing this rule in the context of the massed air strategy, let's talk about that.

Let's assume we removed the rule and AIs could now defend cities with as many planes as they want. Will this now allow them to better defend their cities? They can concentrate their planes as much as they want but will this help if they have to spread them out in the first place? If both the human player and AI have 30 planes, and the player's planes are within reach of 3 AI cities, where is the AI going to put them?

In this case, the situation is symmetrical. Both players can probably locally overwhelm the others defences. I dislike the options offered by the asymmetrical situation offered by unlimited airplanes on carriers and limited on land.

Note that a larger interception range than strike range and a slight combat bonus for the defender would have been easy rules to move the air combat advantage to the defender. In the battle of Britain for instance (I know realism argument ), this was the case due to the defender knowing (radar, listening stations) where the attacker was going to strike and the defender advantage of many local airfields where they could land if out of fuel.

Anyway, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Whether the rule can be partly circumvented or not, I think it helped to reduce the strategy of literally placing every plane in one city, striking and then moving to the next city.

Ok, fundamental disagreement then.

Whether the game design was good or not does not concern me.

Hmm, I always like symmetrical rules that balance attack and defence, combat rules that allow a counter in a logical way, combat rules which don't offer advantages to weird rule circumventions. You know that I think this ruleset doesn't follow these basic guidelines, I know you disagree.

There's no real discussion point here.

As this thread has been going on for a while, I guess I'll have to disagree.

The point btw is not whether this is the only way to beat the AI or if there are other ways to beat the AI. It's just about the asymmetrical nature of aircaps on land and water and whether that is a good way to limit overwhelming airpower. I think there could have been far effective, smarter and interesting game designs to limit this strategy.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The info is from Solver who worked on the changes to air combat.

Solver also felt that the AIs refusal to change ANY civic while in its favorite civic (aka "I'm in organized religion, so no I won't switch to free speech!") was also intended in the game and working perfectly fine. Even if he's done a lot for the community, it's not credible to take one person's opinion on this as a source. And arguably, by making the outlay greater the city air cap DID introduce a weakening of BTS air anyway. Just how bad do you want to nerf it? How many players on the various difficulty levels on the forum bother with the huge initial investment in air units in a typical game? Civ is all about ROI - do you REALLY think carriers + fighers frequently offer the best ROI? IMO if that were so we'd see a lot more of it than we do.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Personally I don't think the power projection of a carrier group is represented enough ingame. Even the smallest of them is a scary prospect for any opposing navy irl.

I'd introduce things like:

-Carrier based light bombers
-A general rule change that bombers and fighters on a tile react to the forces on the tile being attacked. 1 defensive counterattack per fighter/bomber per turn which can be intercepted. A battleship attacking a stack with carriers would be subject to a counterattacks by all planes in the stack. This would effectively mean that the planes need to be defeated/weakened before the carrier stack can be effectively attacked or that the battleship enjoys lots of aircover.

The first would make carriers better at softening targets, the second would make them able to defend themselves against ships.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Solver also felt that the AIs refusal to change ANY civic while in its favorite civic (aka "I'm in organized religion, so no I won't switch to free speech!") was also intended in the game and working perfectly fine. Even if he's done a lot for the community, it's not credible to take one person's opinion on this as a source.

Solver worked with Firaxis on these rule changes for BTS. If I understood him correctly, then he suggested some of them.

I agree with you that his position on the favourite civic issue was too conservative (check the thread, I argued for a rule change there). I also think that the game changes for air combat were not that well thought through. So I agree that Solvers position is not necessarily leading to the best civ game. But since you were questioning my statement of the intentions of Firaxis, I thought I'd mention the source of that statement. But I also think that it really doesn't matter that much what the intentions of the game designer are as long as the game works.

Note the I do not think this (IMO) imperfect game design totally destroys the game or something like that. I just think it could have been done so much better. I don't understand how Firaxis could not have seen it coming that the stacking limits could be circumvented so easily. On the other hand, they also did not see it coming that the no foreign religion spread with missionaries to a theocracy could be circumvented easily by gifting the missionaries to the theocratic civilisation. These things seem obvious but maybe they're not so obvious when you're designing the game and have to think about thousands of things.

 

[r_rolo1]

There is a diference between knowing a problem and being able to solve it in time, Roland. You quoted the Theo missionary issue, and in that regard solver told that there was discussion inside Firaxis when BtS was being done, but they couldn't find a agreement on if/how to solve it ( I'm still of the opinion that I already expressed n-times in this forums regarding that issue ). I'm pretty sure they could see the carrier non-limit issue coming, but they couldn't find a elegant ( or not ) way of resolving the issue...

On the topic: I have to agree with Roland on this. BtS introduced a major inbalance between sea-based and land based air power. It might have been to buff both forts and carriers ( pre-BtS you didn't need carriers as soon as you get the first city in reach.... you might not even need to conquer it if you have a ally in the area ), but the fact is that it was probably too much for the side of the carriers.