Airpower?

[Tennyson]

Originally posted by sophist


No, it doesn't. I would like to be able to explicitly achieve this by giving the right orders. I don't want to have to pretend an escort mission by sending in a recon flight, and I don't want (as a defender) to always intercept recon flights.

It's a turn-based system. You don't get to choose as the opponent sends each piece whether you are going to defend against that piece or not.

[Lambiorix_be]

Originally posted by TheDarkside
Awesome I'm REALLY happy that air units are mission-based. It's the only way to do it really. Moving the air units tile by tile was tedious and uninspiring. Then there was the fact you can block ground units by sitting a bomber on top of a tile at the end of a turn!

I like that air units can move. And it is more realistic. For bombers anyway, in reality they do need to fly for many hours on ennemy terrain passing several cities before reaching their targets. This implies that they can be shot before they reach their target and so you don't need to have fighters on every city. Just make sure that the fighters are placed strategically so that they cover the frontlines.... And as attacker you first want to destroy those fighter so you can create a 'hole' in the defense line...

[TheDarkside]

Originally posted by Lambiorix_be



I like that air units can move. And it is more realistic. For bombers anyway, in reality they do need to fly for many hours on ennemy terrain passing several cities before reaching their targets. This implies that they can be shot before they reach their target and so you don't need to have fighters on every city. Just make sure that the fighters are placed strategically so that they cover the frontlines.... And as attacker you first want to destroy those fighter so you can create a 'hole' in the defense line...

Handling air units with missions implies they are moving accross those tiles without explicitly shifting the tile by tile yourself. Naturally if the path the plane needs to take to the target city passes within the range of an enemy interceptor, that interceptor should be allowed to intercept- regardless of whether it is actually stationed in the city being targetted. If this is not how it worked in Civ3 then I'm sure they will make it like this for Civ4- or that's how it should work anyway.

Just because you don't have to manually move the planes accross the tiles does not mean you can't have it intercepted

[Tennyson]

Originally posted by TheDarkside


Handling air units with missions implies they are moving accross those tiles without explicitly shifting the tile by tile yourself. Naturally if the path the plane needs to take to the target city passes within the range of an enemy interceptor, that interceptor should be allowed to intercept- regardless of whether it is actually stationed in the city being targetted. If this is not how it worked in Civ3 then I'm sure they will make it like this for Civ4- or that's how it should work anyway.

Just because you don't have to manually move the planes accross the tiles does not mean you can't have it intercepted

Adding that system in means you have to add in the ability to schedule a long, roundabout trip for bombers to avoid concentrations of air defense (which is realistic, but not terribly fun turn after turn after turn).

[TheDarkside]

Originally posted by Tennyson
Adding that system in means you have to add in the ability to schedule a long, roundabout trip for bombers to avoid concentrations of air defense (which is realistic, but not terribly fun turn after turn after turn).

What do you mean, like waypoints? That is no less terribly fun than manually moving a plane tile by tile on the same path to avoid heavy concentrations of air defense turn after turn either...

That's also why a nice feature with air missions like in the game Hearts of Iron 2 is to check off a checkbox to have it repeat it's mission over n over automatically

[Tennyson]

Originally posted by TheDarkside


What do you mean, like waypoints? That is no less terribly fun than manually moving a plane tile by tile on the same path to avoid heavy concentrations of air defense turn after turn either...

But it IS less fun than just picking a spot on the map and saying "bomb here" and NOT letting the AI intercept it unless they're over the target. Because if you draw a straight line to the target and say "anything in between can intercept" it's not realistic and makes it too easy for defenders. A waypoint system would balance it back, but add tedium.

That's also why a nice feature with air missions like in the game Hearts of Iron 2 is to check off a checkbox to have it repeat it's mission over n over automatically

Civ3 has that too. Hopefully Civ4 will.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Tennyson
It's a turn-based system. You don't get to choose as the opponent sends each piece whether you are going to defend against that piece or not.

You could by breaking "Air Superiority" into "Intercept Everything" and "Intercept Bombers Only" or something similar.

[Tennyson]

Originally posted by sophist


You could by breaking "Air Superiority" into "Intercept Everything" and "Intercept Bombers Only" or something similar.

You could, but it would make "Intercept Bombers Only" fighters nearly untouchable (a bomber might win the fight, but only then). You'd have to add a mission to fighters to target interceptors to balance that, or it would be broken. And that addition would put you back to the same balance you had before making either change.

And again, you're proposing a choice-of-defense mechanic where NO unit in Civ3 has that choice.

[Jaybe]

"Intercept Bombers Only" would have to go through any escorting fighters, getting chopped up while trying to get past them. This is the tactic used by Goering's Luftwaffe in WWII, and is largely credited as being a bad idea.

[Tennyson]

Originally posted by Jaybe
"Intercept Bombers Only" would have to go through any escorting fighters, getting chopped up while trying to get past them. This is the tactic used by Goering's Luftwaffe in WWII, and is largely credited as being a bad idea.

Except in Civ3 units do not attack simultaneously! They attack sequentially. You are ignoring the structure of the game and suggesting "improvements" that won't work. And that result in exactly the same gameplay balance they have now, if you target fighters against the same square before sending in bombers.

[Zhahz]

I like the air mission approach in Civ3. I think it most realistically represents air power for a turn based system without making it all overcomplicated. Civ is more than a pure war game and most things are abstracted so you may miss some tiny element of detail that you'd otherwise find in a flight combat sim or something.

And yeah, in Civ3 you can move air units to other cities, carriers, or airports (uses up that unit for the turn) and run missions off of carriers (same as from cities) so you could extend your range.

[Jaybe]

Tennyson, I was referring to the speculations on Civ4, not on the well-known mechanics of Civ3.

In Civ3 fighter escorts must be simulated by fighters doing bombing missions near the bombers target area, which I have done for years (whenever the AI had interceptors about).

[Atahualpa]

I think abstraction of air power that way is a good thing generally. However I too would like to see air missions on a broader scale.
Meaning you have an air mission screen where you put your stack together, select a formation and targets - multiple choice between: civilian, military, economic or infrastructure targets and launch them against a target tile (ofc economic and civilian would not be availble for a tile outside a city).
After this the air mission is resolved on the main map.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Jaybe
"Intercept Bombers Only" would have to go through any escorting fighters, getting chopped up while trying to get past them. This is the tactic used by Goering's Luftwaffe in WWII, and is largely credited as being a bad idea.

I don't mean that they would somehow try to ignore escorting fighters in an attempt to get directly to the bombers. Rather, I mean that they would not attack fighters that are not escorting bombers. If bombers did attack with a fighter escort, there would be a die roll to see if the defending fighters could slip past the escorts, with like a 20% chance of success. If they failed to get past, combat between defending fighter and escorting fighter would ensue. If the defender won, it would then have to attack the bombers directly. Bombers by themselves would be very vulnerable to fighters, so without escorts, they'd have a low chance of survival.

[Lambiorix_be]

Originally posted by Zhahz
And yeah, in Civ3 you can move air units to other cities, carriers, or airports (uses up that unit for the turn) and run missions off of carriers (same as from cities) so you could extend your range.

This is true if you are thinking in an 'offensive' mode. The current model is good for attacking any other civ but it discrimates against against 'defensive' civs. If you put some bombers at the front line you can attack most of the time 3 to 4 cities. As a defender you need to have 3 to 4 fighters to defend against this one bomber.

I want to even the odds a bit for those that have a more defensive strategy. Like you said civ is more then a war game. Most of the time I only go to war if I lack vital resources or if another civ is threatening to take away my space race victory. I prefer having a rich and peaceful civ with prosperous cities and once I have what I consider as my optimal size (i.e. due to corruption constraints) I only tend to expand via cultural conversion.