How good are Bombers and Fighters

[Seabastian Civ]

Civ 5 often seemed to be a race to air power. A war between two well matched powers would devolve into pseudo-trench warfare with Gatling guns holding the line and cavalry leading flanking attacks often in vain. Great War Bombers would swoop in and break the stalemate quickly and decisively.

So far in 6, I haven't found air power necessary (or strong, given the massive investment needed to get an Air Force to the front lines). It seems that corps and armies are better at breaking though, especially since you keep the promotions from the highest ranking unit when forming a corps or army.

So... How good is air power in Civ 6?

 

[CoconutTank]

I like Air Fighters a lot more in Civ6 than in Civ5. They can actually leave their bases and fight from various positions, leaving the air capacity for Air Bombers. I haven't had to intercept any enemy air units yet with them, so I'm not sure how effective they are in that area. One thing that really benefits Air Fighters is that they don't count as a military unit or a non-military unit when occupying a tile, so Air Fighters don't block your non-air units and vice versa.

Fighting wise, air units got buffed and nerfed. At this time, Air Attacks can be done at range can't be counter-attacked, so Air Fighters specifically are very mobile bombard units. However, I think air units seem weaker in terms of damage output in Civ6, which is probably the trade-off for not taking counter-attack damage. Air Fighters specifically ping cities for very low damage. I've seen an enemy city actually fire on one of my Biplanes when it flew too close, so air units aren't invincible, the AI just doesn't seem to be able to handle them effectively. Bombers are still fairly good at wrecking cities.

Generally though, I think air units are decent at open field warfare. Air Fighters in particular are speedy and can pick off enemy units quickly. I would probably still rather use a dedicated ground force for most of my city fighting, particularly since air units can't capture cities, but I've had Bombers and Jet Bombers come through for me really well for wearing cities down.

 

[agonistes]

Larsenex suggested that fighters can be used to defend against nuclear strikes. Unfortunately, his post wasn't extremely clear, and I don't think we have seen confirmation yet.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Civ 5 often seemed to be a race to air power. A war between two well matched powers would devolve into pseudo-trench warfare with Gatling guns holding the line and cavalry leading flanking attacks often in vain. Great War Bombers would swoop in and break the stalemate quickly and decisively.

This sounds more like a romanticized fantasy than how it actually was

 

[nokmirt]

Does the AI even use air units properly?

 

[CoconutTank]

No I don't think I've even seen an AI player build an Aerodrome, much less an air unit.

 

[fubi]

In my experience, Bombers do little damage against other units, but have very long range and do more damage against cities.
Fighters are shorter range, but better against units, not so good against cities.
I haven't seen the AI built any Planes/Nukes, so no idea how Fighters work as interception/protection against that.

Anyway attacking with 10+ bombers is giving my hand RSI, the UI for managing a plane fleet is pretty horrible, best way to roll over the AI late game is just nuke and capture with a single tank or smth.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

Aircraft right now are too good. The AI doesn't make use of them early or often enough, aircraft take no damage if the target has no anti-air (seems appropriate, but unbalancing if the target civ is actually ahead of you in tech and never made use of the paradigm), and "3 or 4 carriers of bombers, along with battleship/missile cruiser and submarine escorts" is effectively "end game" and once you're marching around with this, you're only going through motions to a win.

 

[kampori]

Bombers can launch nukes, but outside of that are terrible. They're okay against cities of the same era, but in civ 6 fashion you don't remain the same era for long. By the time you have enough bombers you'll probably all be in the information era, where bombers do tiny damage to cities. Rocket artillery is infinitely better.

 

[Francis Xavier]

In my last deity game, I found jet bombers very useful in quickly destroying the AI's cities. It made lightning warfare a thousand times faster on a map with a lot of painful geography to move troops over. In a lot of cases the jet bombers were able to destroy the city and the army move around the enemy army, capture the city then turn the city's defenses against their army for fairly quick annihilation. I slogged through trench warfare on one civ before bombers and taking out the other 5 remaining civilizations (the first civ I took out by turn 30ish) took less time than it took to take out that one civ via trenches (most falling & losing all their cities within about 2-3 turns). Virtually had no need for the army by the time jet bombers were used. Just a few roaming tanks / mechanized infantry armies to actually capture the cities & get line of sight.

 

[Esperr]

There still good, but bombers are way less mobile now, which is a huge hit against them. Citys can only naturally hold 1 now, and aerodrome start at a capacity of 3 and carriers at 2. You can build airstrips that can house 3, but there a trap, because you lose them all if the strip gets hit. Im talking about MP only.

In single player its completely irrelevant, as a ham sandwich, some toothpics and a 1982 swimsuit edition of sports illustrated is enough to beat the A.I.

Civ 5 often seemed to be a race to air power. A war between two well matched powers would devolve into pseudo-trench warfare with Gatling guns holding the line and cavalry leading flanking attacks often in vain. Great War Bombers would swoop in and break the stalemate quickly and decisively.

What game are you talking about? Either somebody already broke through with artillery, or it was a race to nukes/spaceship. Air power to was to soft to air D in 5.

 

[criZp]

Anyone tried the strategic bombing? I kinda forgot about that.

 

[dwarfling]

I can only speak against AI: it's a pain to micromanage but it's a very effective addition to your ground forces because they don't share tiles. End-game tho cities get very high defenses so you'll be looking at taking several turns hammering a city with lots of jet bombers before you can take it, unless you also use rocket artillery and hit the city with melee armies. Fighters are only good vs units.

 

[bladex]

i can tell you one thing bombers are damn slower than ever than they were in CIV V...

 

[Belzek]

Bombers are definitely lacking in power comparative to rocket artillery, mostly because you cant make an 'army' out of bombers...we need to be able to stack bombers ('air squadron'?) to bring them up to par. Right now its just a PITA to run them as is. Also need some sort of recon air ability, as deployed fighters give just one tile visibility.

 

[nokmirt]

No I don't think I've even seen an AI player build an Aerodrome, much less an air unit.

I saw one Aerodrome, but no planes. I hope they help the AI use planes more in a patch.

 

[Magil]

Larsenex suggested that fighters can be used to defend against nuclear strikes. Unfortunately, his post wasn't extremely clear, and I don't think we have seen confirmation yet.

I can confirm this, but it may only work if you use a bomber as the delivery method. I can confirm at least during an Immortal game my attempt to nuke Germany was intercepted by a German jet fighter that was deployed in a tile adjacent to my target area.

You don't lose the nuke in the attempt, though.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

Air power is strong in this game which I think raises the value of America.

 

[valamas]

Anyway attacking with 10+ bombers is giving my hand RSI, the UI for managing a plane fleet is pretty horrible, best way to roll over the AI late game is just nuke and capture with a single tank or smth.

The way i attack with bombers is to just hover your mouse cursor on the target tile and then hit the A-key.

Works for all units actually.

 

[redwings1340]

No I don't think I've even seen an AI player build an Aerodrome, much less an air unit.

In my deity game I saw the AI build an aerodome. I don't think they ever made an air unit though. It was sitting at 0/4 until I conquered it.