Lets talk about Air Combat!

[Conspirator]

Civ 3 had it, I don't recall Civ 4 having it.

It did have it. You could weaken units without killing of catapults. Not kill them entirely but you could weaken them down to very small levels, similar to air-bombing. They took it out in Warlords I think.

 

[Olleus]

Conspirator you are wrong. That was true in Civ3 but not 4.

There never was ranged bombardment in Civ4, apart from air units (and reducing city defences).

 

[Hustapha Thool]

Is there an automatic patrol? One thing I would really like to see in late game is some sort of early warning system. And I do not want to go to each city, pick an aircraft, patrol in one direction, rinse, repeat.

 

[Pratputajao]

I think rebasing shouldnt be as much of a problem as they have now made it. Right now NATO (or any modern military) can rebase any squadron of fighters/bombers to any friendly county within 6 months through tankers (flying gas stations in effect). They shouldnt have changed it.

 

[Jonkenden]

There's unlimited stacking of air units in cities... Can you say unbalanced?! I can, and in big letters!

How is this unbalanced? they do not help with defence the slightest if a city is attacked, they simply are ignored and destroyed(or relocated?) if the town is attacked and taken over. Yes they could be an aid in defending assuming a city survives a turn, but keep in mind air units are limited by resources still. And there is interception units for ground armies to use, so atleast a couple of air units will need to perform sweeps.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I agree what unlimited stacking in cities have anything about balance. They don't act on the tile, forming stack of doom.

 

[generalwar]

It's stupid that you can't base air units in forts. It's too unreal. Americans were building airbases in Pacific front, weren't they?

 

[MrBanana]

onestly, I don't really care about air combat. I rarely play my games that far, if I know I've won.

 

[Greizer85]

The problem lies in attack, not in defense (although defense is easy with planes too).
As I understand it, air units are lethal once again. I admit that I didn't think about the resource requirement (old habits die hard ), but you could still stack maybe 20-30 planes in a single city if you have a large enough empire. Interception is hardly a problem against AIs I would think (ofc this remains to be seen; traditionally the AI has never understood the importance of air power).

So assuming you have similar numbers on the ground, you could double the size of your army and give it extra reach beyond the enemy front lines... If my ground army is all cavalry, I could kill one third of the enemy units with my planes and weaken the rest, then mop up with the cav. Hammer cost to me (from intercepted planes) maybe a few hundred, thousand+ for the enemy. Come back when I take your city without losses (a few planes at most) and tell me that's not unbalanced!

If the AI understands the concept of concentrated force and can react against stacking planes (by stacks of its own... Remind you of something? ), then my concerns may be unwarranted. However, this is a difficult thing to balance: if the 'waryness' algorithm is too wary, you could lure the AI's troops away with a concentration of obsolete units and then attack from another direction with your effective main force. The other extreme is that the AI turtles in its cities, as in previous civs. Or well, near its cities, since it can no longer stack its troops in them.

 

[B-29 Bomber]

I think rebasing shouldnt be as much of a problem as they have now made it. Right now NATO (or any modern military) can rebase any squadron of fighters/bombers to any friendly county within 6 months through tankers (flying gas stations in effect). They shouldnt have changed it.

Yes but I think this is one of those times where realism while nice should not trump gameplay balance. How would you like it if a civ your at war with sends his entire offensive air force in one turn then next turn he bombs you into the middle of next week. Therefore I like the change. It would make Aircraft carriers much more important. It make you think more about using your navy in conjunction with your air force.

 

[stealth_nsk]

As I understand it, air units are lethal once again.

No. From the manual:

Unless the attacker is killed by the interceptor, the
air strike proceeds.

 

[qyll]

The only reason I tech to flight in Civ4 in most of my games is because I'm too lazy to build lots of transports. But now with embarking, I guess the change in rebasing is okay.

 

[Numi]

I will agree re-basing needed a limit, but 8 is waaaaay to low. I do have to ask though, are we positive that re-basing uses up all of the movement points? Either way it means needing a city or a coast with a carrier waiting in those spaces.

 

[Lancor]

Can't wait to give a turtled down civ a pounding from the ocean by one or two fully stocked up aircraft carriers and a few battleships nearby before rushing in with tanks and infantry! ;D

 

[Madprofe55or]

For me, it's math. If the mission range of a fighter is 8 tiles, then that's a maximum of 16 tiles of movement. So why does it make sense to only let them re-base within those 8 tiles when re-basing is a one-way trip? Making it 16 seems to be completely intuitive and obvious to me.

 

[Drago Askani]

Think about this though. Seriously how many Airplanes and Modern Armor combined are you gonna be having in the Modern era? BOTH consume aluminum. Now add in needing aluminum for other things like the Mobile Sam, Missile Cruiser, Nuclear Submarine, Rocket Artillery, Hydro Plant and the space ship factory. So given limited resources, what are you gonna build?

 

[Jonkenden]

The problem lies in attack, not in defense (although defense is easy with planes too).
As I understand it, air units are lethal once again. I admit that I didn't think about the resource requirement (old habits die hard ), but you could still stack maybe 20-30 planes in a single city if you have a large enough empire. Interception is hardly a problem against AIs I would think (ofc this remains to be seen; traditionally the AI has never understood the importance of air power).

So assuming you have similar numbers on the ground, you could double the size of your army and give it extra reach beyond the enemy front lines... If my ground army is all cavalry, I could kill one third of the enemy units with my planes and weaken the rest, then mop up with the cav. Hammer cost to me (from intercepted planes) maybe a few hundred, thousand+ for the enemy. Come back when I take your city without losses (a few planes at most) and tell me that's not unbalanced!

If the AI understands the concept of concentrated force and can react against stacking planes (by stacks of its own... Remind you of something? ), then my concerns may be unwarranted. However, this is a difficult thing to balance: if the 'waryness' algorithm is too wary, you could lure the AI's troops away with a concentration of obsolete units and then attack from another direction with your effective main force. The other extreme is that the AI turtles in its cities, as in previous civs. Or well, near its cities, since it can no longer stack its troops in them.

From what I heard you can count on roughly 3 ~ 5 oil per well, each plane costs 1 oil. So getting 20 - 30 planes would require at the minimum 4 wells and 30 planes would be 6 wells. That's assuming each well gives you 5 oil, if it was 3 per well then you'd need like. 10 wells for 30 planes and 7 wells for 20.

Also this means you have no destroyers, battleships, carriers or tanks on the field. So you'd be stuck with a airforce that can't even reach your opponents unless you have a city close enough. Remember they can't actually move outside of rebasing, a carrier is an ideal way to move an airforce but they can only have 3 aircraft at any time.

Cities simply don't work well unless you are bordering opponents everytime and now that rebasing is limited to actual operating range it means you won't be able to abuse aircraft by invading a town far off and rebasing them there.

And airforce IS lethal and capable of destroying other units. Not sure what Stealth_nsk is on about. That manual exerpt just saying that if you intercept an air unit trying to air strike it will still continue the air strike unless it is shot down during the interception.

"Edit"

Oh ye and for modern units it's even worse, aluminum is used for jets, modern tanks, gunships, Rocket artillery, missile cruisers, stealth bombers and so forth. It's not likely you will ever have that huge of an air force unless you sacrifice other things and even then if you manage that big you probably already won anyway to possess that much resources.

Maybe if you play Russian? though it largely depends on how resource intensive a map will be. For all we know you might be looking at one or two resource income tiles per resource. If you are lucky to even have it near you.

 

[Twahn]

Maybe if you play Russian? though it largely depends on how resource intensive a map will be. For all we know you might be looking at one or two resource income tiles per resource. If you are lucky to even have it near you.

Russia doesn't get bonuses to either Oil or Aluminium, so that doesn't help.

I think you meant to say "maybe if you play Autocrat"?

 

[Jonkenden]

Russia doesn't get bonuses to either Oil or Aluminium, so that doesn't help.

I think you meant to say "maybe if you play Autocrat"?

Ah yes you're correct, I mixed them up. Thanks for correcting : D

 

[Greizer85]

Spoiler :

From what I heard you can count on roughly 3 ~ 5 oil per well, each plane costs 1 oil. So getting 20 - 30 planes would require at the minimum 4 wells and 30 planes would be 6 wells. That's assuming each well gives you 5 oil, if it was 3 per well then you'd need like. 10 wells for 30 planes and 7 wells for 20.

Also this means you have no destroyers, battleships, carriers or tanks on the field. So you'd be stuck with a airforce that can't even reach your opponents unless you have a city close enough. Remember they can't actually move outside of rebasing, a carrier is an ideal way to move an airforce but they can only have 3 aircraft at any time.

Cities simply don't work well unless you are bordering opponents everytime and now that rebasing is limited to actual operating range it means you won't be able to abuse aircraft by invading a town far off and rebasing them there.

And airforce IS lethal and capable of destroying other units. Not sure what Stealth_nsk is on about. That manual exerpt just saying that if you intercept an air unit trying to air strike it will still continue the air strike unless it is shot down during the interception.

"Edit"

Oh ye and for modern units it's even worse, aluminum is used for jets, modern tanks, gunships, Rocket artillery, missile cruisers, stealth bombers and so forth. It's not likely you will ever have that huge of an air force unless you sacrifice other things and even then if you manage that big you probably already won anyway to possess that much resources.

Maybe if you play Russian? though it largely depends on how resource intensive a map will be. For all we know you might be looking at one or two resource income tiles per resource. If you are lucky to even have it near you.

You only build resourceless units and cavalry, in addition to planes. Fascism is a given for 100% extra resources.

Obviously this won't work if you have long coastlines and need oil/aluminum for ships, although you could defend with Ironclads maybe (btw are there any ships that don't require resources? If not, it could be a big problem...). And I was talking about continental invasions, not amphibious ones. You take one city, rebase your planes there and go on to the next (after healing and reshuffling your ground troops, ofc. This is the only vulnerable phase, and even then only if the enemy has 'extra stacks', so to speak. ).

Again, if the AI can massbuild ships and planes, or even AA units according to need, this most likely will not work. But don't you think it's a little odd to be able to stack limitless planes in one city, and only 1 single ground unit? If nothing else it breaks the immersion for me a little bit. I'd be ok with a limit of, say, 8 or 10 planes. Not too clumsy but not too doomsday either. Although with two neighbouring cities you could still stack plenty of firepower... Maybe the problem is this: suppose you have one city and 11 Aluminum (either by trades or WB). Then you try to build the 11th plane and there are already 10 in the city (which is the limit). Now where does your final plane bounce off to? Can you not build it at all? Will you have to disband it? Hmm, confusing. "Hey guys - why not just have limitless planes?" - "Great, Bob's got it! I knew he'd have good ideas, even if he is just a cleaning intern! Now let's call it a day, go play some golf and get plastered!" - "Umm, Jon, tomorrow is Gold Day, maybe we should test this?" - "Maybe I should test your **** with my foot, now where's my 5-Iron? Here, Bob, have a cigar - hell, have a whole stack, there are no limits here!"