Flight

[kgkia33]

Is it me or does this game totally f-ck up the timespan of plane usefulness?

I cannot find any use for them at all. By the time I discover flight, recon missions are useless since I've already discovered the whole world with ships.

The bombing missions are also pretty weak since there are a million other ways to get it done easier.

And finally the most basic function..fighting. I've never even seen an enemy plane in the sky. How am I gonna fight one?

 

[Angmar]

Flight changes the way that I fight wars.

1> Recon missions are not used to explore the map but to scout out enemy troop locations. You remove a huge area of the fog of war for that turn

2> One bomber wont do much for you. 10 WILL. A couple turns with 10 bombers pounding a city will weaken all but the largest garrison. I use bombers like I use artillery but with a range of 6.. reach out and touch someone's oil reserves and tell me that bombers dont change War.

3> Air interceptions are a little weak right now, but it can really change the way war is fought. Default rules say that a fighter on air superiority has a 50% change of intercepting an inbound plane, 5% for stealth. In the current war I am fighting I usually send in 3 or 4 jet fighters before the bombers go to try and clear the sky of enemy jets.

4> In your next sea invasion build 2 carriers and stick 6 bombers and 2 fighters on board for air cover. Smash any enemy units that are caught out in the open.

5> Same idea as above, but protect your own territory with bombers. See an bad modern armour tear assing across some grassland at your city, send a bomber to visit, I bet it'll knock it down to 1 or 2 life. Makes it an easy target for your Modern Armour, worst case it will retreat back to friendly ground to heal.

6> Air Power Rocks .. but only in numbers .. alot like artillery!

 

[Lynx]

use air superiority to shoot down bombers, and the AI doesent often make fighters to intercept yours. you bomb key resources with the bombers, along with carpet bombing. And recon is very usefull for seeing what the enemy has behind their lines. Airfields have also made planes a whole lot more usefull.

 

[Jaybe]

Sometimes an AI will develop substantial air power, but most of the time not. Same with naval power.

If an enemy AI has flight and you subject them to bombings, they will produce some fighters, unless you are crushing their cities too swiftly.

To increase the potential for air warfare, you might play at higher difficulty or (gasp!) GIVE them flight. Personally, I have edited to delay the Spaceship until after Integrated Defense, increasing the use of later techs.

 

[coup d'etat]

I always get flight prior to motorized transportation and I find getting a stack of bombers is vital if you are going to wage war in the time period between replaceable parts and motorized transport-- I find by the time I have flight I have a few cities capable of building bombers in 2-3 turns, so within 3-4 turns of getting flight I am able to use bombers where they are needed... bombers make it possible for cavalry to take down cities defended by infantry without losing more units than it's worth. Angmar is right, 1 bomber is useless but 10 are very helpful. I often use even more than 10; once I get flight I usually have a reasonably sized cavalry army already so I focus my unit production on bombers... by the time I switch to tanks (depending on the game this can be anywhere from 8 to 20 turns after I get bombers) I have a reasonably sized bomber fleet capable of doing a number of important things that artillery is capable of doing, but without the need to protect them with additional infantry that would be needed with an army of artillery.

Once tanks do come along, I find bombers are essential in minimizing my tank losses (lots of people will say to just build a ton of tanks and throw them at your opponent, but in my experience I find the cost of the bombers more than compensates for the tanks I would have lost in a situation aimed at overwhelming an opponent). Anyway, you can argue that anythign a bomber can do (with a bombard rating of 8) a unit of artillery could do better (with a bombard rating of 16, and 20 shields cheaper). However, artillery armies tend to move slowly and always need infantry escorts; bombers speed this process up greatly allowing you to take more cities per turn than you are capable of doing with the limited mobility of the Infantry/Artillery combo.

I imagine if you were to do a cost/benefit analysis of the damage caused by a bomber compared to that of artillery (taking into consideration infantry, even) the artillery would end up cheaper as its bombard rating is significantly better, but the added cost of the bombers is more than accounted for in the speed with which you can transport bombers and easily conquer entire regions of the map, averaging more cities per turn.

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As for recon missions, it can be helpful to probe enemy borders and find out what units they have heading for your borders without actually risking a unit, many times (playing in prince) I'll get flight and have a few planes while the computer is still upgrading its defenses, it can be nice to know which cities on the borders are protected by infanty and which ones are still protected by ... spearmen or whatnot

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Let me know if im way off the mark

 

[candybo]

I think you pretty much nailed it, Coup! One thing I would add is that bombers are great retaliators against those useless, yet annoying ironclad bombardments.




edited for stupidity!!

 

[Unique Unit]

To pick up on Candybo's point:
bombers are admirably suited to coastal defense (particularly when supplemented by fighter reconn) -- and then readily convertible to offensive bombardment support. Particularly in situations where I have a smaller number of cities and/or I'm trying to survive with a relatively small military, I find maintaining a well-developed air force is much more cost effective than maintaining a full-fledged navy.

 

[fret]

Flight cant be beaten for moving troops as well.

When invading a distant continent, first take over loads of troops in transports to raze a few cities and plant one of your own down, rush build an airport and then every turn thereafter you can transport as many units to the new continent as you have airports on your main continent.

A damn sight faster than transports.

 

[Angmar]

Airports are entirely different matter. They are a key to winning a war on a different continent than your own.

My big question, why cant a great leader get into an airplane? how about a worker? My god, I can stick division after division on a plane and send them across the world, but Lenin and his FAT ASS wont fit!?

Grr..

 

[civ_steve]

2 more uses for air-power:

1.) this adds to the coastal defense topic: I'll stash a handful of subs off my coasts. As they detect enemy ships, my bombers and fighters weaken them, and the sub finishes them off. Without the air units, I'd lose a lot of subs, but with them I almost always win (even against battleships!)

2.) If you're playing archipelago, you may end up with a number of scattered, unconnected, massively corrupted cities. If you don't need an airport in this type of city (to move in large quantities of troops) and just want to build a temple, courthouse or other improvement, air units can be rebased and then disbanded to speed the build. Keeping a stack of air units for this type of purpose allows you to quickly upgrade these corrupt cities without breaking the treasury. (And if you need to build a quick airport, they're good for that too!)

 

[Hygro]

I find recon encridibly usefull, and it never even occurred to me to use it to scout the map. Knowing unit locations and city cituations is extremely valuable. Also, bombers are the only untis other than cruise missiles with a rate of fire of 3. Go figure.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

Why you want stacks and stacks of flyers...

1) fighters/jets- air superiority, clip those enemy bombers, and always recon a city before you bomb it. You probably want one fighter for every five bombers for recon plus one fighter in every exposed city for defense.

2)bombers- what they do can't be done with any other unit. My chief use for bombers is usually destroying improvements, either to cut off a resource or to hinder enemy movement towards me/towards reinforcing a city under seige. In the stack of doom days bombers were a must to cut off enemies.

 

[LaRo]

So, to avoid your bombers being hit down by enemy's fighters, you send your fighters before to do recon?

Is the result dogfighting?

 

[WildFire]

The dogfights only occur if they are in air superiority mode. If they are fortified or any thing else, i don't think it works that way.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

Originally posted by LaRo
So, to avoid your bombers being hit down by enemy's fighters, you send your fighters before to do recon?

Is the result dogfighting?

I never thought of it that way- baiting them with fighters and using up their air guard. Probably just as efficient to build that many more bombers though. If they aren't shot down, they are alot more useful, and if they are, it hardly matters whether they were fighters or bombers.

 

[Angmar]

I will usually send a jet fighter or two first. A jet fighter on air superiority will shoot down a bomber 95% of the time, my jet fighter vs his jet fighter is a little more even giving me a chance of destroying the defenders. Hopefully after a couple of fighter patrols over their cities they wont have an airforce to intercept my bombers and they have free reign over their cities.

 

[Tiger_Nation]

has anyone noticed that you get carriers before flight

 

[swooper]

lol yeah thats wierd eh, but i have never had enemy fighters b4 so is there an animaton or nothing

 

[ADLOTS]

fighters are suposed to be air support units or escorts... they are to protect the bombers from enemy fighters.

this is the thing that i really dont like about civ3, that attacing in squadrons of aircraft isnt available.

Also that a bomber cant destroy a fighter when its being attacked... they should have a rear gunman so that they can atleast have a chance of survigving alone against fighters.


and what about re-fuling? If u have a city with an airport that is yours or your allies within the planes operational range, you should be able to extend the operational range...


Their uselessness against sea units is also very daunting, even fighters on an aircraft carier were the ultimate weapon in a naval battle - fighters one the war in the pacific in WW2 i believe...


If planes had some of the above features, i think threir usefulness could be extended.

 

[swooper]

yes yes yes adolts is right fighters did we win the pacific war well bascially anyways