Question: how do you counter air units defending cities?

[Erudain]

Hello everyone, need a hand because I couldnt figure it out so far.

I'm on an Emperor playthrough using an Earth map, I'm at war with Australia they have a couple of air units defending their cities, not on patrol mode, they are using them to attack my units.
I have 3 carriers with jet fighters and bombers, a couple missile cruisers and my lands unit near his cities.

I don't see any options to set my jet fighters on intercept mode like in previous Civ games. It's there a way to intercept their planes from my carriers?....so far I move my carriers in range to attack his units and have to move them out of range before the turn ends or they are easy prey for their fighters, missile cruiser can defend against attacks directed at them, but only if they are the target, they don't create an air ZoC if I place them near the carriers.....land units are defenseless unless I bring some AA guns.

 

[Victoria]

missile cruiser can defend against attacks directed at them, but only if they are the target,

So I ran a little test with destroyers,
My biplane attacks an undefended aircraft carrier (on left) and gets away unharmed
My Biplane on the right attacks an aircraft carrier with 2 destroyer escorts and gets damaged

As I understand it from the rules each destroyer can only intercept once and the strongest one does so supported with +5 from the other. A second biplane comes in and the other could attack it but a third biplane could attack without damage. I can confirm the same works for missile cruisers. The rules are misleading in this area hinting only AA and SAM can do this.

You could also place a fighter on patrol (intercept) over your carrier and it would intercept before the destroyers. Whether the destroyers then attack after I am unsure

Only more testing would show exactly what happens.... do people want me to do a full investigation or is this all known?

 

[Erudain]

Ok I will test with the destroyers/missile cruisers so far I've placed them next to carriers and they didn't intercept any plane.....might be a mod tought, will test disabling them.

Putting a fighter on patrol like on the screenshot would only work if I have my carrier parked near a city with an airport or near an airfield.....not if i'm on the offensive on the other side on the world. The only way I've found so far to have interceptions is to a) bring some AA units along my infantry or b) use an engineer to create an airfield and rebase my figthers there so they can intercept.
It's odd or just doesn't make any sense to not be able to set fighters to intercept mode directly from the carrier when that's been always an action in past games

 

[Victoria]

and they didn't intercept any plane

You see no animation at all... but the plane comes back damaged... do not assume they are not hit just because you saw no shooting

Putting a fighter on patrol like on the screenshot would only work if I have my carrier parked near a city with an airport or near an airfield

Well i managed to place a fighter on patrol over my carrier... admittedly it was on firetuner.... can you not do this?

 

[Erudain]

I will test it later but my guess is, if I place a fighter based on an airport/airfield on patrol over the carrier once I move the carrier away from the deployable range of the fighter, it will just stick there just patrolling the water tile

 

[Victoria]

it will just stick there just patrolling the water tile

true, just stays in place... destroyers and missile cruisers do hit as shown, just nore fireworks which is a bit of a fizz

 

[Thibaulthc]

I just had a detroyers fleet one-shooted by an enemy fighter, while this fighter was intercepted by one of mines.. does that look like a bug ?

 

[Victoria]

I just had a detroyers fleet one-shooted by an enemy fighter, while this fighter was intercepted by one of mines.. does that look like a bug ?

Jet fighter or normal? Any promotions? Was your just a fighter?

A destroyer has an AA of 70 and a normal fighter has 100 but at interception would have probably been at -2 or -3 making it unlikely but not impossible while a jet fighter quite likely one shotted you.

They upped plane strengths but forgot to do naval
And to add insult to injury a destroyer fleet has the same AA as a plain destroyer.

At +30 you have just about a 50% chance of one shotting someone but at +35 it is pretty much GG.

 

[Thibaulthc]

it was two Fighters involved;
my Destroyer was a fleet, so Melee Strenght at 80; a fighter is 100, and I don't think it had any promotion
Well,...maybe the enemy fighter had the promotion against naval units (without any fights before?) and maybe my lacking aluminium intercepter was totally useless ?

 

[Victoria]

it was two Fighters involved;
my Destroyer was a fleet, so Melee Strenght at 80; a fighter is 100, and I don't think it had any promotion
Well,...maybe the enemy fighter had the promotion against naval units (without any fights before?) and maybe my lacking aluminium intercepter was totally useless ?

Because your destroyer fleet is being attacked by air it uses AA as a defence (doing damage back to the fighter)
The sad thing is if it had use it melee strength it would have survived.
So the stats are roughly as follows

Interception of fighter 100 v 100 means each fighter gets damaged with 24-36 HP. We will assume the enemy fighter got hit for 29 HP. This means the fighter is now 98 vs 70 so is attacking at +28.
This will do 73-108 HP damage so yes the fighter can one shot your destroyer fleet after being intercepted by another fighter and is not a bug.

As said it is bad design (destroyer fleet AA strength is the same as single destroyer AA strength)
It is also poor patch testing (they increased fighter strength from 80-100 but forgot about the navy)
If I remember correctly fighters were 80 which was about right, so in vanilla your destroyer fleet would have taken 33-49 HP and if a fleets AA correctly scaled (which it should) the damage would have been 22-33 HP which feels better.

 

[Thibaulthc]

okay, thanks for the clarification; I didn't know that the AA strenght was taken in account fot the damages taken; that's really weird, since against any ranged attack it's always the melee strenght that is taken in account :/
I'm not really sure why they increased so much the fighters' strenght, they are a bit too powerfull now; with a few promotions, I was able to one shoot a lot of good contemporain units.

And indeed, if the AA strenght is the base for the damages taken, they at least have to increase that value;

Side note, it was nice to see the AI use some planes !!

 

[Poulanc2]

Interesting thread, thanks guys.
I got stuck when they buffed the fighter, but I found a simple way around it. Don't fight them.
1. Build bombers
2. Build tanks (or cavalry, helicopter, etc.) that have high movement
3. In the late game on modern roads, tank can move up to 10 hexes
4. Sit tank outside fighter range of 6 hex, pound the city defences to dust with multiple bombers and move in ignoring the fighters
5. This can work with infantry hiding in a city within 6 hex of next city, then charging out only when defences are destroyed and can take city in one turn
6. Also works sitting off the coast out of range and running in

Other tactics:
Build carriers to bring more fighters within support range of tank, place fighter on overwatch to protect tank or infantry waiting to attack city
Also put SAM in same hex as tank or infantry

Similar tactic works in the mid game, by rushing bombard and flight to get observation balloon. Sit 3 hex off the city and pound until a horse or knight runs in and takes the city.

 

[seanos08]

I had a missile cruiser armada redlined by 1 attack from a jet fighter so I had to take it out to sea and stop bombarding or I would have lost it next turn.