New and Changed Unit Stats

[KrikkitTwo]

Well each interceptor can intercept as many times as it wants, so I'm guessing 4 Interceptors would provide 4 Opportunites to intercept a Bomber

 

[GIR]

I forsee the HRE unique unit (I can't spell it) being used with great effect in conjunction with their UB (although their traits are absolutely AWFUL).

Landsknecht:

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(Unique Unit for the Holy Roman Empire; Replaces Pikeman)
6 Strengths, 1 Movement
* +100% vs. Mounted Units
* +100% vs. Melee Units
​

I think it's a nice unit for defence. Especially with the Protective Trait (Double production speed of Walls and Castle).
But it's not a kick ass city raider unit (bad against Archery Units).

And the worst: It's ugly like hell! I want Tempelritter!
GIR demands it

 

[bonafide11]

Rumor has it that.........

 

[GIR]

Rumor has it that the Phalanx UU becomes an Axeman that begins with the March promotion! That could become a pretty powerful UU for sure!

Supposedly, the Samurai begins with Drill I too. That'll be interesting...

how can they change phalanx to axeman?

edit:
never mind

at first i thought they will give the phalanx an axe instead of an spear....
but i hope not

 

[Infantry#14]

i kind of wonder with the new air combat system, let say the defending city has one really injured fighter and that you only have bombers. Since they will keep intercepting, that one injure fighter is going to intercept all your bombers. But wait, bombers cannot fight (at least not to my current knowledge), all your bombers cant do any bombing because every mission they will get intercepted. Can bombers have a way to fight intercepting fighters now in BTS? Or are we stuck with no bombing mission possible because bombers can fight fighters.

 

[GIR]

i kind of wonder with the new air combat system, let say the defending city has one really injured fighter and that you only have bombers. Since they will keep intercepting, that one injure fighter is going to intercept all your bombers. But wait, bombers cannot fight (at least not to my current knowledge), all your bombers cant do any bombing because every mission they will get intercepted. Can bombers have a way to fight intercepting fighters now in BTS? Or are we stuck with no bombing mission possible because bombers can fight fighters.

New Fighters have 100% interception chance. I think when it has 50% health it only has 50% interception chance. So that would make it easier.

But that's a good question. What happens when you attack a city with bombers and in the city is a full health Fighter with 100% interception chance?
Maybe now you really have to fight with Fighters first to reduce the health/interception chance (or kill) the defending Fighters.
Else they would intercept or kill every single Bomber with no Evade Chance (Stealth and the new Air Promotion: Ace give Evade Chance).

 

[winddbourne]

I'm not really sure I like all these changes. It seems that all these changes are buffing defenses across the board and I already think that defenses are too strong, thus necessitating siege engines as they were in the first place. They need to tone down archers, longbowmen and machine guns.

No way Andrew. I know some people play civ as a straight war game, and that is fine, but people who play to build their own empire up need to be able to defend themselves, and do it without devoting their entire economy to the effort.

A war player can already build up their army, promote it properly, and send it crushing down on a peaceful civilizations terrain improvements, they can lay seige to the cities, and they will slowly take cities if they know what they are doing. I've seen units produced with five or six promotions to start, and I don't even play for conquest.

What the bonus' to defense mean is that a peaceful player can build his walls, castles, and forts, build on hills, and defend his cities with 5 good defensive units. Rather than having to have a defending army of 15 at every point threatened by a hostile power.

Of course a war player who knows what he's doing will defend well too. It's just that he'll spend more of his "extra" money on a huge offensive army, war civics, etc . . . While a peace player is concentrating those same funds on culture, science, etc . . .

This is one point in the game that does not need changing. At least not in that direction, there are always little tweaks you want in any good version of civ. ROFL

 

[El Koeno]

how dose it works in warlords if you have 3 sam infantry in one city and the first sam infantry didn't intercept the attacking fighter? will the second sam try to intercept or does this mean a successful fighter attack?

That's one of the biggest questions in Civ4 I think. You can post a question about the most obscure game-mechanic you can think of and get a good answer in no-time, but when it comes to air-combat, nobody seems to know....

EDIT: I could open up worldbuilder to check some stuff out, but I'm too lazy I'm afraid

 

[Dom Pedro II]

New Fighters have 100% interception chance. I think when it has 50% health it only has 50% interception chance. So that would make it easier.

But that's a good question. What happens when you attack a city with bombers and in the city is a full health Fighter with 100% interception chance?
Maybe now you really have to fight with Fighters first to reduce the health/interception chance (or kill) the defending Fighters.
Else they would intercept or kill every single Bomber with no Evade Chance (Stealth and the new Air Promotion: Ace give Evade Chance).

The result is going to be the same thing as when the Allies tried bombing German cities without wiping out the German air force first: lots of flaming wreckage.

I think this is very interesting... it makes gaining air superiority first much more important. The only thing I might disagree with is that I think Fighters shouldn't get 100% Interception throughout their entire range. If the Bomber is attacking the same tile as the Fighter, like a city, then it should get 100%. But the farther away you get from the Fighter's position, the lower the interception chance. So if you were trying to bomb an improvement 6 or 7 tiles away from the nearest fighter, the chance for a successful bombing should be higher.

But either way, I think this is an improvement.

 

[GIR]

[...]The only thing I might disagree with is that I think Fighters shouldn't get 100% Interception throughout their entire range. If the Bomber is attacking the same tile as the Fighter, like a city, then it should get 100%. But the farther away you get from the Fighter's position, the lower the interception chance. So if you were trying to bomb an improvement 6 or 7 tiles away from the nearest fighter, the chance for a successful bombing should be higher.

interesting

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Unlike most players, I'm not too keen on having a lot of catapults anyway, even online. Most cities aren't defended with more than 6 longbows, and if the enemy has knights, it will take a LOT of catapults to make suicide worth it. Stacks simply aren't infinitely large even online, and more often than not I prefer city raider troops to attack cities after defenses are down anyway.

I'm quite sure the 75% damage cap DOES mean you can't actually kill any units with the catapults, but that's just reducing a 100% catapult spam into a 60% catapult stack anyway, if having tons of catapults is your cup of tea. Works to about the same (the rest could even be longbows, if you don't have resources to build melee troops).

My most excited choice though, is the submarine. If the game does last that long, and the enemy doesn't have ships all over their coasts, they would be shellshocke to find 24 units suddenly appearing next to their coastal capital. That's just EVIL.

 

[Roland Johansen]

how dose it works in warlords if you have 3 sam infantry in one city and the first sam infantry didn't intercept the attacking fighter? will the second sam try to intercept or does this mean a successful fighter attack?

That's one of the biggest questions in Civ4 I think. You can post a question about the most obscure game-mechanic you can think of and get a good answer in no-time, but when it comes to air-combat, nobody seems to know....

EDIT: I could open up worldbuilder to check some stuff out, but I'm too lazy I'm afraid

In Civ4 vanilla and Warlords only one unit, the unit with the best interception chance, will try to intercept. Also, each unit can only intercept once.

Presumably, the first part will remain the same in Beyond the Sword, but second part will change. Units can intercept multiple times per turn.

Because fighters and jet fighters have an interception chance of 100% in BTS, this would mean that they would die before the other interception units (with lower interception rates) would get a chance to intercept the attacking fighters. On the other hand, if the defender has enough defending fighters, then he can stop the attacker from bombing him.

What I wonder about is whether the defender gets a defense bonus. It would be realistic if that were the case. In the Battle of Britain, the Germans were at a disadvantage because the English defenders would have more fuel to stay in the air during dog fights while the Germans had to turn back to land on their own airstrips. I've read that the German fighters could only stay in the air for 10 minutes once they arrived above Britain. The British also enjoyed the advantages of radar to see the enemy coming and the ability to bail out of their aircraft without losing the pilot.

I also wonder if the attacker can force the defending fighter to fight if these defending fighters weren't given an air interception mission. Can the attacking fighters destroy the defending fighters on the ground?

How many fighters/bombers can be stationed in a fort? Can you use multiple aircraft carriers to station many aircraft on a single water tile? Can you place these aircraft carriers in cities so that these cities effectively still contain many fighters/bombers? What happens when you unload them from the aircraft carriers into a tile that cannot contain them all? (This thing with the aircraft carriers wouldn't be a problem if cities could only contain a limited number of bombers but an unlimited number of fighters as aircraft carriers can't carry bombers.)

The new air combat sounds pretty interesting, but still many questions remain.

 

[witten]

The result is going to be the same thing as when the Allies tried bombing German cities without wiping out the German air force first: lots of flaming wreckage.

I think this is very interesting... it makes gaining air superiority first much more important. The only thing I might disagree with is that I think Fighters shouldn't get 100% Interception throughout their entire range. If the Bomber is attacking the same tile as the Fighter, like a city, then it should get 100%. But the farther away you get from the Fighter's position, the lower the interception chance. So if you were trying to bomb an improvement 6 or 7 tiles away from the nearest fighter, the chance for a successful bombing should be higher.

But either way, I think this is an improvement.

I concur. That's exactly how I interpreted this change in my previous post #32, quoted below. And I like your suggestion about varying interception chances. Anyway 100% is too high, but we will see exact combat mechanic soon. That

I was surprised to see this at first, but now can understand. Although I'm not an expert in air warfare, bombers are mostly effective after their side took air superiority through air-to-air battles. This change means that you need to control the air first with several fighters to shot down enemy interceptors before bombers are on duty. Blind bombing with 10+ bombers alone in pre-BTS were stupid and illogical I think.

So.. this change will take time to get used to, but one good thing is once you grab air superiority bombing missions are going to be piece of cake. Actually that's the way modern warfare is.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

The only other thing I don't like is that the SAM Infantry can take out certain planes... First of all, it's unrealistic because many planes fly well outside the maximum range of a hand-held anti-aircraft weapon. Secondly though, it's unbalanced because it's a no-risk anti-aircraft weapon. Fighters can be damaged or even destroyed when intercepting... SAM Infantry can't.

 

[jdog5000]

DPII:

I agree, an aircraft intercepted by a ground unit should at least strafe them or something ... effectively switch to running an attack run on the unit whatever their prior target was. The first ground targets would usually be air defense installations anyway, so it seems to make sense.

 

[Erpava]

The only other thing I don't like is that the SAM Infantry can take out certain planes... First of all, it's unrealistic because many planes fly well outside the maximum range of a hand-held anti-aircraft weapon.

That's why Stealth Bombers have a 50% chance to evade interception. Not perfect, but it helps.

Secondly though, it's unbalanced because it's a no-risk anti-aircraft weapon. Fighters can be damaged or even destroyed when intercepting... SAM Infantry can't.

I think that reflects the real world situation quite well. Unless you're specifically targeting SAM infantry with an air strike, there's really no reason a ground unit would come under fire from above.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I think that reflects the real world situation quite well. Unless you're specifically targeting SAM infantry with an air strike, there's really no reason a ground unit would come under fire from above.

And, indeed, you're right. But from a gameplay point of view, the only way to balance the no-risk factor is to limit the effectiveness of the SAM Infantry. It'd still be really good against Gunships but it should be less effective against planes.

 

[El Koeno]

In Civ4 vanilla and Warlords only one unit, the unit with the best interception chance, will try to intercept. Also, each unit can only intercept once.

Thanks, that clears some things up.

Presumably, the first part will remain the same in Beyond the Sword, but second part will change. Units can intercept multiple times per turn.

I think that's the most logical way to do it.

What happens when you unload them from the aircraft carriers into a tile that cannot contain them all? (This thing with the aircraft carriers wouldn't be a problem if cities could only contain a limited number of bombers but an unlimited number of fighters as aircraft carriers can't carry bombers.)

The new air combat sounds pretty interesting, but still many questions remain.

Or what would happen if you construct a bomber in a city that already has 4 of them?

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

You will have to make room in order to achieve it IMO.

 

[Pomp]

What would be nice would be the ability to assign Fighters to escort missions, where they'll accompany a Bomber and fight anything that intercepts the Bomber.