Precision bombing was perhaps the most useless addition to civ3. Who wants to target improvements in a city, when you want to take it? Precision bombing means being able to hit exactly what you want. Now, if your modern bombers had the ability to reach across the ocean as IRL, and you go to war with a civ on another continent and have no beachheads there, it would be far more useful, as you could really damage their production and such, without ever having to set foot in their territory. Then when you make peace, they are far weaker than they were before, and you haven't really lost anything except a few bombers to AA defenses.