Generic questions regarding air units...

[CoconutTank]

1) Does anyone know the limits to how far air units can fly out from land? Was playing around with air units (wheee!) in my previous session, and I could never tell what was preventing my planes from going any further. I would've really liked to cross the oceans with them.

2) Can air units only be hurt by other air units or dedicated anti-air? It doesn't seem like "air attack" invites a counter-attack from the defender like strafing attacks do in Civ5, and for whatever reason it doesn't seem like enemy cities and units ever fire on my air units, even when the air units are clearly in range. I like using air units, but it seems rather dumb if they're basically invincible.

3) Has anyone actually seen the AI use Carriers and/or air units? Even in my previous session, Pericles had managed to tech ahead of me and had a few Mechanized Infantry running around, so he very likely could've had an air force, but didn't.

*My sessions have been on Prince thus far, but I'm definitely bumping up to King for the next session.

 

[Larsenex]

I only have played with Jet types. Fighter jets have a short range like 5 hexes away from the base be it a carrier or air strip. Bombers are longer with a 15 hex range and yoiu can park them on carriers. Carriers are very nice with bombers on them. Both the attacks of the fighter jets and bombers feel rather weak compared to Civ V. The nukes carried by bombers are so devastating that you can eliminate a major just by nuking his capital or prime production city.

 

[CoconutTank]

I believe bombers work very much like air units do in Civ5; they have to sit in a base of some sort, be that a city, an Aerodrome, an airstrip or a Carrier. From there, they can take on air operations from a super long distance.

What I'm more curious about are the Jet types that you mentioned, namely their new ability to redeploy. When I was playing with them last night, they had an attack range of 3 or 4 like you mentioned, but could redeploy and move with the rest of my army when I was taking the continent (which I will say was like.... 25ish tiles in length?). I had Biplanes start from the southern end of my continent and they could work their way up all the way to the northern end, and could also pass over a nearby channel to reach my other cities on other shores. They never had to rebase and were certainly far from any Aerodromes I built at that time. But when I tried to invade an island that was separated from the continent by a bit more deep water, I found that my Fighters at the time had stopped being able to go any further

And yes, maybe this is the trade-off of air units not suffering from counter-attacks when attacking, but they don't seem very strong this time around.

 

[Larsenex]

Jets have an area of tiles that you can PICK and on that tile the jet will circle around it. While it is doing this it will intercept any other air unit that crosses into or near it also nuke missiles. It will 'deploy' until you click on it and tell it to rebase.

 

[Larsenex]

If the fighters are based on the carrier and the carrier is in 5 tiles of your target the fighter jets can attack just like bombers do but are weaker in my opinion.

 

[agonistes]

Just to be clear, Larsenex, you are saying that Jets can defend against nuclear strikes?

 

[JellyRev]

Jets have an area of tiles that you can PICK and on that tile the jet will circle around it. While it is doing this it will intercept any other air unit that crosses into or near it also nuke missiles. It will 'deploy' until you click on it and tell it to rebase.

Is this true? anyone confirm?

 

[CoconutTank]

Okay, so I've done a bit more investigation on my end, and uh I guess the way Fighters' Deploy works is consistent, but it's still a little strange. First off, I find it kind of annoying that I can't de-select Deploy by clicking its icon while it is active.

The places that a Fighter can deploy to are based on its move value at the start of a turn. If a Fighter has X move, then it can Deploy to any uncovered tile within X range of itself, as long as that destination is within X range of air storage that you control. Air storage could be an Air Strip, a city, an Aerodrome or a Carrier. Uncovered means that you have complete visibility of the tile, no fog of war whatsoever.

One super weird thing I've found is that apparently Fighters can embark. What's that? Well apparently a Fighter normally only has 4 move points, but if you move the Fighter out to sea that mysteriously jumps up to 7.
Here is a Fighter with 4 move points: http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...818/9722AEBA2F58472FFFF7B1380AE9F554E2AE3DD8/
Here is another Fighter with 5 move points (thanks Logistics!): http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...046/8BD190D237BE8D6AD88509C38C4762005833CCC4/
Here is another Fighter but it is super fast while at sea: http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...222/3AE55F19553B805FD8172779CFBAA555A97C9E7E/

Also, due to requiring the destination to be within X range of air storage, a Fighter can end up having broken up sections of destination tiles it can reach. It can't fly to the other spaces inbetween, for maybe fuel or supply reasons I guess.

Example 1: http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...600/468A7FEE9F410174AA0366917E2CBB178EF5E329/
It's probably not too clear, but the bottom section of green tiles is disconnected from the top section of green tiles. The Fighter can reach the city that's way off to the right within 7 tiles, whereas the bottom section of tiles is covered by the Carrier seen at the bottom of the screen.

Example 2: http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...832/80A232FE9B4DF15A64C66655FE57741E1996208D/
I guess it's potentially possible for a Fighter to become completely stranded?

So then... going back to my first question in my first post, I guess Fighter-type units can only fly out as far as their own movement would allow, as long as they come within move range of any air storage. They can't cross oceans on their own, but I can sort of create a bridge by having a bunch of Carriers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Takfloyd]

There are some more major weirdnesses regarding air units.

You can rebase all air units to any base on the map(as in previous Civ games), but ONLY if there's a base within a certain distance, which seems to be something like double the unit's movement points.

This implies that they had intended to limit rebasing to that range, but didn't fully go through with implementing it. It has some perplexing effects. For example, you can rebase a plane to a carrier at sea, but you then cannot rebase AWAY from it again unless you have another carrier or base nearby. However, you can get around this with fighters by deploying them next to the carrier, which means the carrier is now a nearby base and the fighters can rebase anywhere again.

I also once deployed a fighter from a carrier, moved my carrier somewhere else, and found that the fighter was now stuck on its tile. It can still attack units within range though. Good thing planes apparently have limitless fuel supplies!