How do i stop Airships?

[Redcoat Captain]

Hi all,

I'm coming to the end of a game. I've got a couple more cities to take to eliminate Shaka, before i turn my attention to erradicating Suileman. 3 of my cities border with Suileman to the north, and all 3 of these cities are bombed every turn without fail by Airships.

I know it is him, because Shaka doesnt have the tech required to build Airships, is too far away and my spy has revealed 4 Airships in the nearby Suileman cities.

I have SAM Infantry garrisoned in my cities that are being aerially attcked by these airships. Also garrisoned are Fighter Jets on "Intercept", bomb shelters as well as other anti-air stuff, yet i seem unable to stop the attacks. Even more annoying is that its not a declaration of war

How do i stop these airship attacks, short of declaring war when im not ready yet.

 

[Ghpstage]

If you arent at war then they can't be bombing you. More than likely its a recon mission, I know for certain that fighter recon missions have a bug making them appear to be bombing runs. If you are actually taking damage I'd like to see a save

 

[Redcoat Captain]

If you arent at war then they can't be bombing you. More than likely its a recon mission, I know for certain that fighter recon missions have a bug making them appear to be bombing runs. If you are actually taking damage I'd like to see a save

Well, when i click "End Turn" i see the animation of an Airship appearing, and bombing my city. I havent yet checked for damage, i will do that tonight and let you know. If i am taking damage from it, i'll post a save file.

 

[jeffreyac]

You're not. It looks like a bombing run (and yor defenders will react with their 'hit' animation below the airship) but there is no damage done. I think it's just that the sane graphic is used for recon and bombing.

Ghpstage is right - if you're not at war, they can't be bombing you. Though constant airship recon missions are also annoying....

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Like everyone said, no war = not attacking. Airships can't bombard defenses no matter what, either.

When actually at war, the AI uses them terribly but if you want to stop them up go with machine guns, anti tanks, or SAMs early, or later on just WRECK them with fighter interceptions.

Usually lvl 3 anti-tanks that get to 50% interception take care of that kind of crap for me, unless I'm doing a renaissance push @ parity which does happen I suppose, then I just ignore them and have more units. They die after you take the city they're in after all.

 

[dennisg]

Not trying to hi-jack this thread but it seemed like a good place to post a related question:

Is there any way I can attack airships with my own airships? If not, then it seems like the only counter-unit to airships (Before planes) is a machine gun? Or am I totally off base?

 

[Ghpstage]

Not trying to hi-jack this thread but it seemed like a good place to post a related question:

Is there any way I can attack airships with my own airships? If not, then it seems like the only counter-unit to airships (Before planes) is a machine gun? Or am I totally off base?

Airships can't attack other airships no.

Machine guns are one way, I don't know how effective they are though, the fixed 20% interception chance isn't encouraging.
Anti Tanks on the other hand, are very effective, they also start with just 20% intercept rate true, but you can give them intercept promos, 5 XP can get you a 50% rate. Plus I know ATs commonly kill airships in a single interception, i'm not sure on machine guns.

For the most part airships don't pose any major threat to your forces anyway, as the damage they cause is capped at 20% and can be healed in one turn with a medic. Plus they are limited to 4 airships per city at this point, they do have a very long range however.
So if you can't kill, them don't worry, as TMIT says, ignore them and bring a few extra units to compensate.

 

[thadian]

when you promote 12 or so riflemen leftovers into machine guns it can work nicely.

once you get sams, just place a mobile sam every 2 sqm from each other, and on forts to cover every tile in your kingdom with their radius.

Lastly, when you ARE in war, check your enemy forts. if you bombard and destroy a fort improvement, all of its air units that can't relocate are dead.

 

[Ghpstage]

once you get sams, just place a mobile sam every 2 sqm from each other, and on forts to cover every tile in your kingdom with their radius

Huh!?

Firstly, the question is about airships. If your Mob SAMs routinely see these, its time to move up a level. If your using Mob SAMs to counter these, your doing something very wrong .
Secondly, the maintenance from doing this will be insane.
Thirdly, ground based AA is very poor at its job. Each AA units can only intercept 1 unit per turn, and rarely kill anything that isn't an airship .

Once you actually reach fighters, they are vastly more effective at AA than ground interceptors.