Stalker0's State of the Mod - 1/25/2021

[Stalker0]

Anything you add to flooding plains is going to hurt farm triangles, unless it is wheat, not a production resource.

This may be a bias of production over food, but with the massive flood plains on Communitas_79, I honestly don't care if I lose a couple of farm triangles to get more hammers. Flood plains generate so much food, I am never needing more...what I need is hammers, hammers, hammers.

Airs units main advantage is they can hit anywhere, so lower damage makes sense, being able to pick off anything is very flexible. They are also very hard to kill if you are careful. AA units probably should be better than fighters because they take up space you could use for other units and supply. The counter is just picking off the AA units with your ground units first. It doesn't always work but you can generally attack somewhere with your bombers.

So this is what I see in my experience:

1) In the early warfare days your right, bombers are very flexible, generally always have something to hit.

2) Once AA guns come out, getting intercepted hurts. The AI has gotten very intelligent in their use, and will normally keep them 3 hexes away from their front lines (aka 4 hexes from your front line). This means only range 4 artillery can hit them, and you would have to put them in front which is suicide.

Further, AA guns are tanky if put in a proper fortified position. In theory paratroopers could be an answer but they aren't offensive enough to really hurt an AA gun (and paratroopers often will take some damage dropping in on an AA unit like that). Further the paratrooper has to survive a round, which if you are paradropping into the enemy's main army....it won't.

Now AA guns won't stand up to a major infantry push but they don't have to, if the opposing army every gets to your AA guns you just pull them back, again that 3 range allows them to be omnipresent but rarely in danger.

Air Sweeps don't work because fighters will often die at 100% health even with Dog Fighter 3 promotions against an AA gun. Further, the UI will not warn you about an interception if the AA gun is in the fog of war....which again at 3 hexes back can happen much more often than you might think. All of this is further compounded by the Mobile Sam, at 4 hex range you will never get to those units unless you have already broken the army.

So I find that with early bombers right now I can attack with nigh impunity. Once AA guns come out my bombers become much much more selective units, often having to wait a turn or two before attacking anything. Than once Stealth bombers come out I can push again as Stealth bombers can take some interception and can often (though not always) ignore it.

3) Continuously I have found that the slot and oil requirement for fighters is far more costly than the supply requirement for an AA gun. I can usually muscle up a supply or two, but air slots that can actually hit the armies I want to hit are precious....and every oil spent is one less bomber or tank on the field.

That is my main concern about this map. It is a lovely map maker, but you never seem more than a few tiles away from the sea, & end up building a large navy to counter AI, whoever you play.

I use "blocky" shapes on my games and I never have problem staying off the water if I don't want to be on the coast. There's usually plenty of land on the standard settings, just change land shapes to blocky.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Communitas_79

Spoiler :

Currently my favorite map, so it goes hand in hand with VP feedback for me. In general I really like the map, especially how it generates close subcontinents that are accessible by fishing, make that tech path more attractive.

My main concerns:

1) I would like to see slightly larger islands with bigger resources and ability to defend. Some islands are nice but they are simply too vulnerable, and it takes way too much naval commitment compared to the resource payout.

2) The map commonly creates these gorgeous flood plain scapes.....and then puts so few hammers near them that they go to waste. I would like to see a bit more stone or hills or horses or something there to round them out, not a major increase but a bit more than now.

I kind of have a love/hate relationship with this script to be honest; some times it creates just the perfect map with various terrain and good choke points, lakes that could create canals between oceans, trap city spots with good resouces but awful defensive position, mountains and hills and i absolutely love how it creates forests in clusters But other times it's just frustrating .... Late game resource distribution makes me really want to play something else; Coal is consistently condensed in a very small part of the map that even if yoy control a major continent it's more than likely that you would have 0 coal tiles and sometimes oil as well spawns mostly in water tiles that beelining combustion to find the few oil tiles you have access to are locked behind refrigeration (the other side of the tech tree) and i just hate how reliant i am on policies and wonders to get access to late game strategics rather than actual tiles.

 

[Stalker0]

Coal is consistently condensed in a very small part of the map that even if yoy control a major continent it's more than likely that you would have 0 coal tiles and sometimes oil as well spawns mostly in water tiles that beelining combustion to find the few oil tiles you have access to are locked behind refrigeration (the other side of the tech tree) and i just hate how reliant i am on policies and wonders to get access to late game strategics rather than actual tiles.

So one thing I've been trying lately is abundant strategics but reduced strategic per tile (sorry I can't remember what the map script calls these, but its the two strategic settings). What this does is produce more strategic resource tiles, but each pile has less resources. I have found this helps the spread a bit, and generally it was worked for me. I agree with you that on standard settings sometimes you are really just completely out of luck with your late game resources, and sometimes you have a million of them, so the condensement does seem too strong.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

Specialists have gotten plenty of nerfs since their days of domination. Engineers and Merchants are just getting the worst of it. They have an initial cost of 1 Unhappiness and 3 Food instead of 2 Food (remember that Specialist Food costs rising by 1 per Era later). They have lost their yields from techs. They used to get 2, now they are getting 1. And from buildings, GP improvements were given those yields. Their specialist count was reduced as well.

Merchants have the unfortunate situation where they need more of their yield to worthwhile to compete, while still getting about the same increases. Engineers have more value when there are less Mines available and other sources of Production 2ndly. I want to say that Engineers should be stronger than Mines, although, it should be the Great Engineers that should be making the difference. Or should Great People be seen as an extra to what the Specialist provides? Scientists and Cultural Specialists have more leeway in this as their yields aren't as competitive with most standard tile improvements.

 

[Stalker0]

Engineers have more value when there are less Mines available and other sources of Production 2ndly.

That is a good point, because of the ability to convert food into hammers, engineers will always have some competitive use.

 

[DeAnno]

Merchants have the problem on higher difficulties that money is still kind of weird from version to version, and whenever AIs are willing to pay big bucks for Strategics early gold from other sources is weak. Also unlike the Library which pays for its own Urbanization, the Market often causes unhappiness if you try to build and staff one.

On a different note, I feel like the scaling of Great People instant yields in general has a lot of issues. Great Merchants can be devalued by Gold Inflation, and often feel pretty weak to use in similar circumstances to Merchant specialists. I know GEs scale based on origin city size (100+20N?) and this becomes seriously outrun by production cost in the midgame, even with a couple manufactories it ends up a bit uninspiring. In the early days a GE can instabuild or almost instabuild a wonder, then before too long they're only good for less than half of one, maybe a lot less than half.

Great Artists and Golden Ages are in an odd place where GAP requirements are very inflated and GAs give very inflated amounts of GAP, I'd like both those numbers to come down a lot to make other GAP sources more meaningful. I think GA GAP scale based on number of themed great work sets? Maybe the scaling should take into account your natural GAP income as well.

 

[stii]

So this is what I see in my experience:

1) In the early warfare days your right, bombers are very flexible, generally always have something to hit.

2) Once AA guns come out, getting intercepted hurts. The AI has gotten very intelligent in their use, and will normally keep them 3 hexes away from their front lines (aka 4 hexes from your front line). This means only range 4 artillery can hit them, and you would have to put them in front which is suicide.

Further, AA guns are tanky if put in a proper fortified position. In theory paratroopers could be an answer but they aren't offensive enough to really hurt an AA gun (and paratroopers often will take some damage dropping in on an AA unit like that). Further the paratrooper has to survive a round, which if you are paradropping into the enemy's main army....it won't.

Now AA guns won't stand up to a major infantry push but they don't have to, if the opposing army every gets to your AA guns you just pull them back, again that 3 range allows them to be omnipresent but rarely in danger.

Air Sweeps don't work because fighters will often die at 100% health even with Dog Fighter 3 promotions against an AA gun. Further, the UI will not warn you about an interception if the AA gun is in the fog of war....which again at 3 hexes back can happen much more often than you might think. All of this is further compounded by the Mobile Sam, at 4 hex range you will never get to those units unless you have already broken the army.

So I find that with early bombers right now I can attack with nigh impunity. Once AA guns come out my bombers become much much more selective units, often having to wait a turn or two before attacking anything. Than once Stealth bombers come out I can push again as Stealth bombers can take some interception and can often (though not always) ignore it.

3) Continuously I have found that the slot and oil requirement for fighters is far more costly than the supply requirement for an AA gun. I can usually muscle up a supply or two, but air slots that can actually hit the armies I want to hit are precious....and every oil spent is one less bomber or tank on the field.

I think the big difference is going to be how fast you get the autocracy 3rd tier air thing. With it you have plenty of slots and can afford zeroes and bombers together. I'm also not getting my zeros killed by AA guns even with dog fighting 0 I only take 60 and I don't think zeroes are any different from fighters for fighting AA guns so I'm a bit surprised we are seeing such a big difference.

There is a bit of an issue trying to balance combat with and without autocracy as it gives huge buff but I assume most people trying to attack late game would have it. So with 6 slots and no oil requires zeroes become a lot more reasonable.

I find the AI tends to over build AA units so it can be hard to find targets but that tends to make them weak to all the other ground units. So when my army pushes up to their cities I can either target down their AA units or they are so far back it is hard to protect everything. I build all the ground/air units except for guided missiles and para troopers so I'm fairly happy with the balance of the late game stuff currently.

 

[andersw]

Lots of things that I rarely encounter but ...
naval combat
yes same issue on emperor stay away from coast or if I play communitu map make sure to invest heavy in my navy

slow hp recovery on cities
I notice this somewhat but when my train starts rolling its not that bad since that city will be behind my lines but its got to be a HUGE issue in peaceful play since you're unlikely to heal up in between the AI wardeclarations.

 

[Gazebo]

Thoughts inline.

For those long term vets on the board, you know that I periodically write a post summarizing my thoughts and feelings on where the mod currently is at, and what areas I think are still left to look at. Its been quite a while since I wrote my last one, and I have recently become a deity player, so lets see where things now stand. I am including the 1/15/2021 version in this assessment.

First, and its important to stress this, the VP mod remains one of the truly great civ mods. Any criticisms I have are completely overshadowed by my unabashed praise. To put it simply, I do not play Civ 5, I play VP. Civ 5 is an okay game, VP is a wonderful one.

The Place for Mod Mods - Preference vs Issues

Spoiler :

With the mod having been developed for such a long time, a lot of arguments and debates have been had over the years and have been mostly "settled". Settled does not mean we all agree of course, but the arguments have been laid out, we chose a direction, and that's that. You can't please everyone all the time.

This is important because its easy to mistake an "issue" for a preference, and therefore feedback has to be guided to the notion of what is actually making the mod better, as opposed to simply making it more the way we want to play. For someone like myself who has played the mod for so long, its doubly important that I keep this in mind. Mod Mods are the answer to preferences, not core changes.

Happiness

Spoiler :

Hehe, my favorite topic to complain about! Its no secret that I have never liked the happiness system, I simply go through periods of rage vs tolerance about it.

Balance wise, I'm at tolerance in 1/15. Happiness is doing its job, I find that it really does limit my expansion (I find it tough to push past 4 cities without going into happiness issues until I address my infrastructure). However, once I address infrastructure, staying above 50% is a reasonable task. Sometimes I build a public works to stay a float, but that's a rare occasion. Funny enough my biggest issue with happiness is actually with Tall Tradition, at least with local happiness. My capital is always perfectly happy but I struggle to keep my tradition satellites happy. That's only really a problem with military unit development, my satellites build military units like molasses and my capital is often so busy its hard to squeeze in units. But this could also be a player problem as I am getting used to higher difficulties.

True changes to happiness mechanics I think are at mod mod territory at this point, most of the feedback (mine included) is preference at this point. The one point that seems to have near universal agreement is that the happiness system... is very opaque. For a new person using the mod, its nigh inscrutable. Even for a veteran, its exceedingly difficult to understand what is really going on.

I always would argue that the UI "lies" to the user. The UI implies that if I build a building that gets a -1 distress, or gain 3 gold when the poverty UI says I need 2 more to lower it....that I will lower my unhappiness by 1. But under many circumstances this is not the case, as a new source of unhappiness simply fills the bucket. It has gotten to the point where I really don't use the UI anymore, I just keep on building until happiness is good, with little rhyme or reason.

I'm open to fixing some of the quirks. Especially the UI issues. I'd need to really stop and get some direct feedback on 'moments' where the UI is misleading.

Religious Spread

Spoiler :

First, there still seems to be bugs with Inquisitors. As far as I can tell they block nothing at the moment, they don't seem to block active or passive spread at all, so either its not or the UI is suggesting its not.

Beyond that, I think the common consensus is that Orthodoxy spread is too strong, and is ready for a nerf.

Let's take that to enhancer thread.

Naval Ships and Naval Warfare

Spoiler :

In general I am happy with the stats of naval ships and their promotions. The promotion lines have been polished enough that I use both lines for both types of ships. Subs are now in a decent place. I have a few complaints (I still think destroyers are a bit too good), but in general I am happy.

The more lingering question is around Naval Warfare itself. Naval Warfare is a very different beast than ground warfare, the absence of movement control and terrain means that naval fights tend to be less of the "dance" of ground combat, and more of a massacre. Large fleets throw themselves at each other, and 5-6 ships a round can be lost. While the human with smart tactics will lose less than AIs, unlike ground combat its nigh impossible not to lose some ships. So attrition is a much bigger deal in naval conflict.

I don't have a problem with naval fights going differently, but it has led to an "all or nothing" mindset when it comes to navy. I play in two states right now: I either create a large powerful navy and try to project force on the water....or I never build a single naval ship (outside of exploration caravels), keep my cities inland...and just ignore the naval part of the game. Aka there is no middle ground.

That lack of middle ground does bother me, and I would love to spend some effort to address it. Its not the end of the world, but it does feel like a sore spot.

I wonder if all naval units should have more health to start? Give ships a few more turns to 'fight' and potentially retreat.

Air Combat

Spoiler :

We have seen the introduction of limiting aircraft slots, the removal of air supply, interception stopping the aircraft attack, interception promotions working as a "percentage" of interception chance, and the airsweep mechanic that does damage to aircraft if its not intercepted. Aka a lot of air changes in the last year or so.

I have liked most of these changes, and I think they have improved the game overall. I do have some sore spots:

1) Interception %: I have never liked that interception can work as a % chance, I still think its too confusing to the user when you have multiple intercepting units, but I have come to accept it. However, I do not like that a fighter cannot get 100% interception...that to me is a balance issue and should be fixed.

2) Air Sweep Damage: I think the air sweep promotion concept is working but the damage is a bit too low still. I would like to see a +10 dmg bump to the air sweep line, which can be spread across 1 or more of the promotions as people see fit.

3) Guided Missiles: I would like to see them get their evasion back, regardless of what their text says, GMs are not cheap units, and losing them to interception feels horrific.

4) AA Guns / Mobile Sam: Pure balance issue, they are simply over tuned at the moment, and rip air sweeping fighters to pieces. They have too much range on their interception, do too much damage, and do not have enough good counters. I don't build fighters right now, I build AA Guns.

5) The role of Fighters: When we had the long standing debates about naval ships, one of the things that kept coming up.... naval ships that don't effect land are worthless. The same statement could potentially be proposed of the fighter. The fighter was redesigned as a pure anti-air unit, that does so little to ground you could effectively discount that as a use. That redesign, the current strength of AA guns, and the limited air unit slots....has put the fighter line in a very weak place.

Why put a fighter in a city that has 2 air slots? I am giving up half of my bombing power for the chance at blocking someone's elses? That's a huge cost, and often not worth it when I can just plop down some cheap AA guns that don't cost oil (and are tanky enough that they actually can serve defensive purpose in a pinch if needed).

6) Bomber city damage. Stealth bombers are decent city hitters because of their Air defense damage reduction, but regular bombers even with siege III promotions just don't do that great against cities imo. All of my bombers are used to attack units....I let artillery take care of the cities.

Victory Conditions

Spoiler :

So how are VCs faring?

DV: My only note here is around vassals. DV remains a vassal victory at the moment, getting 1 vassal gives you an incredible leg up on DV, and 2 vassals effectively puts it on autopilot. CS are actually not that important to a DV unless playing completely peaceful. I would like to see the strength of vassal votes weakened for Hegemony in some way.

CV: In general I am pretty happy with the "gameplay" of CV. I think the biggest issues of the past have been addressed, and the way to win CV is mostly right. I think the main outstanding question is whether late game techs and buildings generate too much tourism (aka is CV still more of a science victory?), and just raw number tweaks (building X generates too little tourism, policy Y generates too much, etc). As I get used to CV on deity I may have more detailed thoughts here.

SV: A solid condition, I have some notes on science itself that I will detail later.

Maybe vassals should be disallowed from voting in hegemony, and their 'votes' removed from the total needed? So they effectively disappear for DV?

Science - The Role of the GS

Spoiler :

We all know that techs in the late game tend to fly by on Standard speed, and I think the main culprit are GS. The great scientist scales incredibly by the late game, generating a large portion of your overall science production (I may attempt an experiment one day just to see how much it generates).

The GS is so powerful, I would argue that the ability to faith buy GS is 70% of rationalism's power. Each GS is basically a tech, and faith buying generates about 4 GS in the game (1000 faith, 2500, 5500, and 10000...the one past 10000 I generally find untenable unless your faith is crazy). So Rationalism (or the glory of god) effectively gives you 3-4 techs....that is incredibly powerful.

But all of that said, is the GS too powerful? Is this simply the role of GS in the game, and is that perfectly fine to how the game operates? I personally would like to see GS toned down a bit in terms of their frequency (the research labs +33% may be too much), but I am curious what others think here.

Tactical AI

Spoiler :

The AI has seen a brilliant improvement in military strategy for the last year. While there are always improvements to make, the only time I feel the AI is truly "dumb" now is in its reaction to Fallout. The AI does not understand fallout, it won't clean it up for 30 turns, it will just leave units sitting in it, or it will shuffle units around aimlessly. The only area I feel needs a real look is there.

Diplomacy / Deal AI

Spoiler :

Another huge improvement here. Most of my Wishlist is being looked at one way or the other, but the AI is much more engaging than it used to be and I'm getting less impossible deals. My only beef is a usability issue, I really wish the "what would make this deal work?" button was smarter and just match GPT until the deal was sound. I also would like to know if the fact that I can adjust almost any GPT deal by 1-2 GPT is intended "bargaining" behavior or if that is a bug.

It is just bargaining.

Combat Screen

Spoiler :

The poor mods are probably sick of all of my bug reports about the combat viewer. G has even admitted, its a real mess, lots of mistakes in tracking CS strength, bonuses missing, bonuses in the wrong place, etc. So for me its more of a question of, is this on the roadmap for adjustment....or it is what it is? Aka should I keep looking at the viewer and sending bug reports or just accept that's how it is and leave it be?

In my absence I spent some time looking over it, and there's just...not much to do with it. We can keep smacking bugs as they pop up, but a rewrite is impossible due to the UI.

City Governor

Spoiler :

The governor is in a bad place at the moment. It makes some objectively dumb decisions, such as choosing plots that are literally worse in every way than another tile. It also does not seem to understand unhappiness' effect on food. I have seen a work working lots of food tiles because growth is at "-100%", not realizing that it could shift 5 tiles off food and barely move the food amount.

This just needs my love.

City HP Recovery

Spoiler :

I think with the recent passes city strength is in a good spot. Some would still argue that navy does too much damage but if I commit to the later defensive buildings (arsenals, military bases, mine fields)....I generally find my coastal cities can hold with support.....at least for the length of time I think they should.

However, city HP recovery remains abysmal in the late game. Cities heal so slowly that its almost trivial. The best idea I saw for this, is make it where if a hostile unit is not within 3 of the city that its healing rate triples (activated by arsenal or military base, depending on desired preference). This allows for a chance at recovery while not effecting city sieges.

No opinion.

Late Game Buildings

Spoiler :

A lot of buildings have received good polish over the years and are in fine place, but I do think some of the later era buildings could use another pass (which makes sense they would be the last ones to finish balancing). There was a push a while ago to replace a lot of the ongoing bonuses with immediate bonuses (such as the medical labs instant +2 pop). I think that was a great idea and would like to see a bigger shift there....stadiums giving 1 turn of GA, stock exchanges giving a big lump sum of gold, etc.

You had a modern military/buildings thread somewhere. Let's resurrect and discuss.

Culture Rubberbands

Spoiler :

As I've gone up in difficulty, more and more I have found culture the limiting factor in terms of strength, especially in the midgame. With science, there are lots of rubberband mechanics (TRs, WC policies, spies). With culture far less so, which is why its the most important yield until the very late game.

Conceptually it begs the question, should there be more ways to equalize culture in the game? Would that be too painful for CV?

Maybe increase culture from TR with policy leaders?

Communitas_79

Spoiler :

Currently my favorite map, so it goes hand in hand with VP feedback for me. In general I really like the map, especially how it generates close subcontinents that are accessible by fishing, make that tech path more attractive.

My main concerns:

1) I would like to see slightly larger islands with bigger resources and ability to defend. Some islands are nice but they are simply too vulnerable, and it takes way too much naval commitment compared to the resource payout.

2) The map commonly creates these gorgeous flood plain scapes.....and then puts so few hammers near them that they go to waste. I would like to see a bit more stone or hills or horses or something there to round them out, not a major increase but a bit more than now.

No thoughts.

Engineers and Merchants
[Spoilers]I think there is general consensus that Merchants are a bit weak still, at least weaker than the other specialists. Also the town I think still doesn't scale well enough, and I find it difficulty to justify more than 2 of them even on railroads with TRs.

Meanwhile Engineers have some late game scaling issues to me. The base production is weaker than late game mines, and their insta build tends to fizzle out unless you have built a LOT of manufactories.

Simply increase scaling based on manufactories/towns?
[/Spoilers]

 

[azum4roll]

So, they are like sheep and cattle, but on a different terrain? I'd rather use a generic cattle resource for all terrains. What would be next, goats?

Sheep and cattle add food. We need something that adds production without other benefits (strategic, wonder production).

 

[SolutionIt]

Add Gravel as a bonus resource if you guys need a bonus resource that exclusively gives production. It'd likely have a river spawning bias so you could fix issues with flood plains having no hammers. I don't think they'd work well for hills though so that'd still need to be figured out.

 

[azum4roll]

Something that spawns on all desert tiles (preferably dry) would be better. So you have a choice between settling near river junctions or a short river with more production.

 

[tu_79]

Add Gravel as a bonus resource if you guys need a bonus resource that exclusively gives production. It'd likely have a river spawning bias so you could fix issues with flood plains having no hammers. I don't think they'd work well for hills though so that'd still need to be figured out.

What if we reduce the wonder boost of stones and simply let stones occur in deserts more often? That's how Petra and the Pyramids were built anyways.

 

[psparky]

My suggestion for GE would be to increase the population multiplier in later eras, something like 20, 20, 20, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28

Also, maybe scale on the size of the capital rather than the city where born.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

What if we reduce the wonder boost of stones and simply let stones occur in deserts more often? That's how Petra and the Pyramids were built anyways.

Or if possible more resourceless desert hills in non fertile deserts?

 

[SolutionIt]

Lead is in Even More Resources as is Sulfur and it spawns somewhat consistently on flat desert tiles so that could work too if it gets imported into Base VP.

 

[doublex55]

If communitu 79 is the only map that has this problem adding more resources is not as good of a fix as simply tweaking the map script.

If we believe it is a constant problem across all maps, I support removing wonder bonus from stone and making stone appear more.

 

[Recursive]

Thoughts inline.

Re: Vassals and DV - take note that I've made some adjustments to voting logic for vassals already. Mistreated vassals in particular should be less likely to indiscriminately vote for their master. That said, I don't think my adjustments are enough to stop vassals from being OP here.

Re: Enemy Unit Panel - could we not do the calculation in the DLL using an LUA hook, cache the text strings for the top modifiers and the strength/health/damage totals, and then have the panel grab all of these cached values? May require a few small memory variables but it would save loads of headaches.

Also, the "memory values break past turn 500" issue has yet to be resolved...

 

[Stalker0]

Re: Vassals and DV - take note that I've made some adjustments to voting logic for vassals already. Mistreated vassals in particular should be less likely to indiscriminately vote for their master. That said, I don't think my adjustments are enough to stop vassals from being OP here.

Yeah, I think the simple solution is to just reduce the amount of votes Vassals get for Hegemony. Maybe its 1 vote, votes equal to their base value (so like 2 or 3 at that point?), something like that. I think having vassals contribute to a DV is fine, just not to the degree they do now.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm also not getting my zeros killed by AA guns even with dog fighting 0 I only take 60 and I don't think zeroes are any different from fighters for fighting AA guns so I'm a bit surprised we are seeing such a big difference.

Apologies when I said fighters earlier I had meant fighter line in my head and not the true "fighter" unit. In my experience AA guns ace Triplanes, and then mobile sams demolish fighters and jet fighters. Now an AA gun will still do significant damage to a fighter (as you noted with your zeros), meaning that the fighter is effectively unable to sweep for several turns. So in effect even against fighters and bombers, the AA gun is disabling air attacks for several turns at a time.