Needlejet vs Cruiser

[Moon Pine]

Needlejets with +15% against land/sea units can sink a cruiser in just 2 sorties, which makes the vessels useless.
Currently, after the opponent gets level 2 tacjet, it's nearly impossible to attack with navy if he/she uses them properly (and is a human player), because the gunboats are the only viable bombard vessels on the sea.
And with more upgrades on against land/sea units for tacjets and none upgrade on air defense for gunboats, the situation can only go worse with game progress.
Also, sea won't provide any defense bonus, there's no way for them hide. The air interceptions from carriers are way to little cost-efficient.

Any ideas? Maybe there'll be some anti-air vessels in Rising Tides, but the vanilla gunboats can only stand by them own.
So some air defense bonus on them can be necessary, I think. How do you think?

 

[Ryika]

The main reason boats are so fragile against Air Units is that Air Attacks count as Melee Attack and Boats have low Melee Strength, the Upgrade itself is just a minor thing. Gunboats are Affinity 5 though, Needlejets are Affinity 6, so there should be a great Window for a Timing attack if you beeline for Affinity. If you miss that... well, 3 possible solution:

- Use another attack angle so other cities cannot attack your boats with their Air Units.
- You already mentioned Carriers. Yes, they're an investment, but at the same time they allow you to easily take coastal cities without any losses at all.
- Build more Cruisers. Production should not really be an issue if you are playing offensively anyway, so just suiciding a ton of them is sometimes totally worth it if you get a good city to start conquering other cities.

And of course you can always just decide not to attack at all or just delay it until the next upgrade, instead attack elsewhere, etc.

And yes, if the AI doesn't get an upgrade that makes them use Air attacks more cautiously, then Rising Tide will probably make Sea Attacks even more viable than before, because it introduces Melee Boats which will probably be great at sponging up (and in the process kill) a ton of Air Units, allowing you to move in with your Ranged boats.

 

[Moon Pine]

Just tried the carriers, they didn't do as expected, because the air sweep bonus is delivered to upgraded tacjet for free while the air interception one requires specific affinity and trade off of other bonuses. but surely, they're better in withstanding air raids than gunboats.

The purpose for me to make more gunboats is mainly to bombard coastal cities, which they fit really good if there's no tacjet around.

Currently, the usage of gunboats are largely limited by tacjets and roaming sea monsters. Before Tier 3 gunboat hits the sea, even sea dragons can wrech havoc against a fleet without carrier as meatshield and 3 - 4 Krakens in group are commonly seen in the deep sea

Anyway, just waiting for the expansive pack.

 

[Moon Pine]

Wait...I just remembered the bomber has a penalty against vessels in Civ5. Funny, isn't it?