How to use aircraft in Warlords

[andre.human@gma]

Hi

I am pretty new at this game and I did searches on this forum for my query but did not find anything useful.

My problem is not strategic, but how to use and target cities with bombers. I can use the gunships ok because they work pretty much like any land unit.

When I select a bomber, I have a few icons to choose from, including "Bomb city" and "Bomb emeny units". Last night I played a game where I was in a late game war for the first time and when I choose "Bomb city", the tiles change shape and a green square appear under my cursor. The problem is that when I put the cursor over the city I want to bom, the green square disappear. Either left clicking or right clicking on the target city has no effect. the bomber stays where it is.

Also, how do you target fighters, and what does the "Intercept" copmmand do and how do you implement it.

If someone can point me to a link where air warfare is explained, I would be very grateful.

Regards

A.

 

[carl corey]

The bombers and fighters have a certain range. Not seeing the green square means the target you're going for is just out of range. The tiles "in range" have white squares around them.

"Bomb City" (or tile improvements) lets you either lower the city defenses or if you target a tile improvement (like a mine) you have a chance of destroying it. You'll want to use bombers for that, I think they have a higher chance. And bombers also do a higher damage to defenses.

"Bomb enemy units" reduces the enemy units health to at most half their total strength. Bombers do less damage but they do collateral damage.

"Intercept" helps defend tiles/cities. Put your healthy fighters on intercept if you think the enemy might attack the stacks you throw at him with fighters or bombers. If your units are close enough to your city then they can be defended by your fighters. You cannot target enemy fighters or bombers directly.

What I usually do is first go on reconnaissance runs with some of the air units to reveal tiles around my attack target, then bomb any important improvements such as strategic or food resources (happiness ones are less important, they usually give commerce and the AI might have more than one in his empire anyway). After that I bomb the city defenses, and only when I'm near the city itself I target the enemy units. Otherwise you'll just let them heal back while you bring your stack in position.

By the way, you can base fighters & bombers in the cities of an AI you have open border with, but you can lose them if the enemy has open borders too and moves only one unit in there, so be careful. (the same thing applies to naval units in another AIs city)

As for aircraft carriers, they can only house fighters, but they can be useful for the start of an overseas campaign when you have no stronghold on the continent from which to launch the attack. You'll want to bomb units with them, as you can use destroyers & battleships to lower cultural defenses.

That's about it I guess. Hope it helps.

 

[mice]

Just to back up what Carl Corey said , hot keys help.

B = bombard (cultural defenses)

S = strike ( a stack of units,and severely damage them so you can then attack with your land troops, or so that they are too weak to attack you.

Just these two are enough to back up a big attack.

You have to check to messages at the left of the screen to see how much damage you caused or sustained. It isnt always clear from the graphics.

Tip ; dont leave all your bombers in a city with a warrior defending it alone. The AI will kill the warrior and all your bombers will just disappear. In other words, keep your bombers in a safe place, yet within range of the enemy targets.

 

[andre.human@gma]

Great, thanks guys. I didnt realise bombers had a range and couldn't figure out why I couldnt bomb the city.

A

 

[Neoclast]

When your enemy has fighters protecting his cities, you can send your fighters in first to bomb or strafe the city as they deal better with the fighters when intercepted. After you send your fighters then send in your bombers who will then see less resistance.

 

[Welnic]

It sounds like in your case the city was out of range. But there are cases when you can't use bombers even when they are in range. If you are trying to use "Bomb city", and that city doesn't have any cultural defense left, then you won't be able to bomb the city. And if you are trying to "Bomb units" and all of the units are at half strength or below then you can't attack that square.

 

[Bushface]

When you select an aircraft, all the tiles within range get a pale-grey border. If you then select "Air Bomb" and mouse over an enemy city that is within range, you will see a green square if the city still has some defence and so can be bombed. If you select "Air Strike" then the green square will appear when you mouse over enemy units, in or out of cities, provided that they have more than 50% strength left.
Some advice. The best time to attack an enemy city from the air is at the beginning of your turn when you have land units ready to attack the city, so that the city and units have no time to recover from the air attack. Also, it is more effective to Air Strike a city than to Air Bomb it: one or two strikes will usually reduce the defenders more than will bombing the defences to zero, which takes seven successful Air Bomb attacks. Of course, if you have plenty of bombers available then by all means blast your target down to zero defence and 50% defender strength, then send in the land forces.

 

[mice]

Great, thanks guys. I didnt realise bombers had a range and couldn't figure out why I couldnt bomb the city.

A

For movement the dont have a range, they can go to any of your cities. For bombing and striking, yes.
Recon? I dont know.

 

[Bushface]

"Rebase" to another of your cities - range is unlimited.
For Bomb, Strike and Recon range is limited to the outlined tiles.

 

[Vizzini]

Either left clicking or right clicking on the target city has no effect. the bomber stays where it is.

Range as others have mentiond probably had nothing to do with why you didn't get a green square actually.

If you bombard city defenses, the Green targeting square will not appear over a city that has no defense left to bombard (city defense is at 0%). The city you were attacking had no defense left to bombard so the green square doesn't appear over that city.

Same with units you bombard. You can attack stacks of units and bombard them all down to 50% health, but no further than that. Once the units are at 50% you can no longer attack those units with bombers or fighters and will not get a green targeting square when trying to conduct that mission against those targets.