What exactly is wrong with Air combat?

[Victoria]

This is the major issue with air combat in Civ VI. It's very hard to defend a navy from air assault without being able to field fighters

Battleships, destroyer and missile cruisers all have AA. Sure a fighter is 80 but keep your ships adjacent and it’s not bad.

 

[Patine]

This is the major issue with air combat in Civ VI. It's very hard to defend a navy from air assault without being able to field fighters from a carrier at sea. Perhaps req. the carrier to be fortified and prevent it from moving if its fighters are deployed.

Bombers will destroy your navy even if they've got the air defence promotion.

Yes, it's completely in violation of what we saw in "Top Gun."

 

[Victoria]

Bombers will destroy your navy even if they've got the air defence promotion.

Yes, it's completely in violation of what we saw in "Top Gun."

The thing is... when was the last time you saw bombers launched from an AC? I mean proper bombers as per the game?
An AC is not long enough for a bomber take-off, but hey, lets make AC only for bombers.

A bomber killing a battleship indicates they are missing -17 vs naval units. I'm going to check fighter intercept but I do not think it will do enough to really help the situation otherwise

 

[Peserwin]

The thing is... when was the last time you saw bombers launched from an AC?

That would be april 18 1942, the Doolittle raid on Tokyo. They launched bombers from carriers, so it is totally realistic (if your bombers don't need to land on your carrier that is).

 

[Victoria]

Bombers will destroy your navy even if they've got the air defence promotion

I thought this was incorrect but needed to get near my PC to be accutrate

So... here is the attack vectors, no promotions

And here are the results... you need one adjacent unit for AA cover so one destroyer makes the huge difference any extra destroyer adds +5

I do not remember the defender getting the +5 after the initial attack, I'm going to have to revisit the old thread
This does show how little we know about air combat

 

[Victoria]

OK so having done some tests I am shocked at the poor interface.
The combat log and the random rolls logs together allow validation of what happens... be ready to be disgusted

Here my bomber is going to attack a battleship, it will attack at 85 not 90 because it estimates it will get 50% damage from AA before attacking which seems correct and does indeed attack at -5.
The battleship defence is shown at 83 but summed up as 70+3 while the real attack showed the battleship defence was indeed at 83 so the two destroyers in support help not just for AA but +5 each in the bombing attack. This is either new for R&F or a bug.
The combat estimates at the bottom have a new AA box on the left which show 78 for AA defence but adding up the figured in the box(es) show 88. The understood way of attacking with AA would be 70 + 3 (difficulty) +5 for each destroyer giving 83... and the stats from damage implied by the -5 combined with the random number rolled show the real AA attack was done at 83
The half circle damage bars on the main estimate do fairly accurately reflect the result.

So in essence the GUI screens have detail inaccuracies but the main damage bars and main figures are correct for the final attack (roughy correct as there is a random element)
What happens has changed in R&F as far as I remember.
The AA attack is still correct as in the strongest defending AA unit is used with +5 for every additional AA/Air unit adjacent vs the defence value of the bomber (65). This takes just over half of the bombers HP so it is -5 on the main attack so attacks at 85 not 90. However the defending battleship now (do not think this was always so) gets an additional +10 from the 2 adjacent destroyers again making the boimber on + 2... the bomb run ends with the battleship being roughly 35% damaged and the bomber roughly 85% damaged.
I have tested this a few times calculating based on random rolls in the logs and this seems consistent.
Not checked any other air combat ... wondering if this needs a new thread.

As an additional... replace a destroyer with a missile cruiser and that shows the highest AA unit is used but the -10 from AA which IS correct but the bomber does get through and does do damage as shown. The combat log does show a -10 modifier indicating the bomber was destroyed due to AA so it muct be assuming (rightly that the AA attack happens at the same time as the boming run and some damage gets through (Divine Wind?)

Of course all tests have been done with Firetuner and real world validation is required because there have been differences in the past.

 

[SaiH]

Really interesting. Thank you for doing these tests.

 

[Aristos]

Has anyone ever tested a carrier with fighters that are just parked on the carrier (because we know they cannot deploy)? Do these fighters contribute AA defense?

Reason I ask is because I "think" I saw a fighter in my last game defend against a bomber (in land) without being deployed (just parked in a city or airbase, don't remember, but just parked...). Or maybe it was an UI glitch (surprise!!!)...

 

[Victoria]

Has anyone ever tested a carrier with fighters that are just parked on the carrier (

I have not specifically tested that. I will do sometime.
Fighter on airstrips do not defend, you need to be on patrol to intercept but maybe carriers are an exception.
Fighters on patrol over carriers do.... you need firetuner to see that though.

 

[tedhebert]

Back to OP for a sec... I just finished a very intriguing game yesterday... in my ongoing effort to win a game with all civs, I was Playing Peter, Immortal, Fractal, Huge...

As I'm not a player that concentrates a lot on 'optimal' play, the game went well into the 300+ turn... I think I won SV around turn 330/340...

Two thing I want to share about this game

1) Around turn 300/310, I was pretty much sharing score lead with my neighbor Aztec, while really leading where it counts for all VC... I was at LEVEL 3 alliance with them, having been friends almost the whole game... out of the blue, he surprise DOWs on me (I suppose he finally realized I was about 15-20 turns from winning SV), generating a betrayal emergency, and pounds one of my cities in the same turn with over 10 bombers, literally taking down a city with over 110 defense in one round... The next round he generates ANOTHER emergency by nuking another of my cities... by round 3 of the war, he'd taken the first attacked city from me... That's how long it took me to gather my forces for defense, as I was very spread out geographically... but I tell you, if I hadn't had some 10-12 bombers myself, I might have found myself unable to defend...

So, surprisingly, YES, it CAN happen that AI uses air unit effecitvely... my feeling is that it just takes it too long to get there for optimal players... they just don't get to turn 300+ ;-)

2) As a perennial immortal player with almost 3000 hours of CIV5 and CIV6 play, I must admit that R&F has really, really changed the difficulty level of my games... This game in particular had me scrambling all game long... I was behind or tied with 4-5 others civs for most of the game, had to scramble and go on offensive on Germany to stop them from getting SV in the late game, as he had spaceports in 10 differents cities and could not be handled by spies alone, had to make extended use of spies on monty, the bruce and Freddy to stop them from getting SV...

very honestly, I was lucky to win that game... that's very rare for me at immortal, usually around turn 140/150, I pull ahead and am unstoppable... in this case, if the AI had been just a LITTLE better, I would have lost... The fact that it simply wouldn't repair pillaged spaceports allowed me to catch up... the fact that monty waited a little too long to attack me and stopped his push when he could have kept pushing also saved me

All this to say that I immensly enjoy what R&F and the following patch has done to the game

and I do NOT enjoy Peter's starting tundra preferences... I must have restarted that game 10 times after 20-25 turns because the starting situation was just too crappy... I can tell you right now that I'll never play a Russia game again... it's just too ridiculous... you get trapped between tundra s**t location and 2-3-4 civs close to you, I like a challenge, I don't like systematic impossible start setup

 

[Victoria]

I am playing a game longer than usual on deity as @Trav'ling Canuck is doing in his thread and I built a carrier, put a fighter and a bomber on it, and when I move my carrier the planes move with it but if either plane does a mission and returns to the carrier, the next move the carrier continues without that plane which is left floating (presumably on a large pile of plastic)
Its Jolly annoying and worse I cannot fly back to the carrier because it thinks I am still aboard... I can fly elsewhere and if I do another mission it flies back to the pile of plastic.

EDIT: Here it is in action, and mighty annoying

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Around turn 300/310, I was pretty much sharing score lead with my neighbor Aztec, while really leading where it counts for all VC... I was at LEVEL 3 alliance with them, having been friends almost the whole game... out of the blue, he surprise DOWs on me (I suppose he finally realized I was about 15-20 turns from winning SV), generating a betrayal emergency, and pounds one of my cities in the same turn with over 10 bombers, literally taking down a city with over 110 defense in one round... The next round he generates ANOTHER emergency by nuking another of my cities... by round 3 of the war, he'd taken the first attacked city from me... That's how long it took me to gather my forces for defense, as I was very spread out geographically... but I tell you, if I hadn't had some 10-12 bombers myself, I might have found myself unable to defend...

So, surprisingly, YES, it CAN happen that AI uses air unit effecitvely... my feeling is that it just takes it too long to get there for optimal players... they just don't get to turn 300+ ;-)

In my most recently completed test game I also received reports of an AI pounding another AI with bombers (Jadwiga leveled a bunch of Amanitore's districts with Bombers), starting shortly after T300.

Now, I'd also played a number of other games into the 300s without observing any use of airforce, all post-patch. So it's not like they always start using them when they get to that point.

A key take away, I think, is that the core functionality for the AI to make use of airforce is there. I'm not sure the AI understands that Fighters should be used to attack enemy land units, but it does understand that Bombers can attack cities/districts and it understands that Fighters can intercept Bombers. The AI also doesn't seem to know what an AA unit is, although if anyone has seen the AI build and deploy one, please let us know. I personally have never observed one.

 

[tedhebert]

A key take away, I think, is that the core functionality for the AI to make use of airforce is there. I'm not sure the AI understands that Fighters should be used to attack enemy land units, but it does understand that Bombers can attack cities/districts and it understands that Fighters can intercept Bombers. The AI also doesn't seem to know what an AA unit is, although if anyone has seen the AI build and deploy one, please let us know. I personally have never observed one.

No I haven't seen AA units... and it honestly was the first time that I'd seen the AI use aircrafts intelligently... and I should add that when I crapped the face out of germany, I saw at least 3 planes in his aerodromes, and he never used them to defend against me, so... ;-(

 

[Victoria]

No I haven't seen AA units..

Lets be fair, most humans do not know how AA is used so what chance as the AI got

 

[tedhebert]

Lets be fair, most humans do not know how AA is used so what chance as the AI got

Well.... I'Ve certainly never built one, heh ? ;-)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^ You'd probably use AA if the AI routinely killed your units with air. Mobile SAM are even helpful against nukes supposedly, never had the AI nuke me this way though.

I'm not sure if they benefit from GGs or how that interacts, but a few of these interspersed in artillery line between the balloons/drones should make ground armies at least somewhat resistant to air.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Lets be fair, most humans do not know how AA is used so what chance as the AI got

You learned what they were in Civ 5 pretty darn fast.

 

[eleven11]

You learned what they were in Civ 5 pretty darn fast.

lol truth. Where is the AA unlock on the tree? [23 turns away] $#^$@#!

 

[FearSunn]

From my experience the most important bonus for AI is production. Give them 80% production bonus (Deity) and AI will bomb you to ground. Also outpace in science and tourism (wonders).

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

From my experience the most important bonus for AI is production. Give them 80% production bonus (Deity) and AI will bomb you to ground. Also outpace in science and tourism (wonders).

Agreed. May need to be matched with a gold bonus to cover maintenance costs, not sure how well the AI handles that currently.

Personally, I'd ramp those bonuses up over time. Something like a 20% bonus in Ancient era, then 30% in Classical, 40% in Medieval, etc. for Deity

I say that because I think the game play experience would be more interesting if the AI got tougher and tougher as the game goes on. Yes, there's a snowballing effect to early bonuses, but when that is what the AI is relying on, you still hit that tipping point each game where you know you have them, and now you're just playing out the string. An escalating AI bonus, on the other hand, could give a whole different feel to the end game.