bombing and other strange things

[Imminence]

Hi!

Searching these forums, I found some entries about bombing.

I was looking for these, because I could not understand the rules, which are obviously behind aircraft attacks.

When I had my first bombers, I noticed, that it is not possible to kill anything with them. They just bring enemies down to 50% of their health; after this, I could not order further bombing.
A user wrote, this might have been implemented because of the abuse of bombing in earlier CIVs. Well, I play CIV since CIV 1 and found many ways to "abuse" certain weaponsystems, if building up huge armies is "abusing".
IMHO it is totally unrealistic to let enemies in the field survive massice bombardements.
Do I see something wrong or did I even fail to order my aircrafts properly?

When I entered an enemy's lands with my army, they started bothering with aircraft-attacks (fighters only). Sometimes I could read about my SAM-infantry, which inflicted some damage. When I have fighters myself and set them up for airsuperiority, I get messages from time to time, that they damaged or even destroyed the enemy's aircraft. But that seems to be all I can do against the enemy's airforce, right? There seems to be no way to command your fighter, SAM or heavy infantry to directly fight enemy air crafts, right?

[quinalla]

Yes you can only bomb units down to 50%, it may not be as realistic, but it makes it a bit more balanced. You can also bomb their city defenses down to 0 if you haven't noticed that yet.

As far as I know, that is the only way to fight enemy aircraft, but I haven't done much with it myself in cIV.

[shennessy]

Some info about boming and aircraft.

Bombers are like super mobile siege equipment. They are not military pieces that can hold land, or as seen with many modern wars take out 100% of the enemies army. Bombers are a perfect weapon for softening up defenses and armies, but I dont know of any army that was totaly wiped out by bombers. Remember the units we have in Civ represent armies not squads. 50% of an entire stack means 1/2 of an army was killed, the other half is hinding in bunkers or spread out enough that bombers cant really scratch them anymore. 50% of an army is like droping its attack value in half, and thats a huge thing! Its like turning a musketman into an archer.

The value you get out of bombers is simply amazing and I have been able to use them to great effect in crushing my rival who had the audacity to try for a space win. I blitzed him hard with tanks and gunships. I didnt have time to wait for my artilery to slowly get into position and then fire. I used bombers to smash down his defenses, and cause stack damage to the point that my panzers and modern armor could easily take out a city that was defended with mech infantry. Without bombers I could not have taken the citys as fast.

Fighters: The AI used these to good effect to weeken my stacks of doom, and to pillage my landscape. Not as strong as bombers, but they also took out some of my bombers!
If you set a fighter to intercept any enemy flight mission in its range (I assume the same range as its attack missions), it has a chance of taking damage, and possibly destroying the enemy. Once again combined arms becomes very important. I eventually made a jet fighter to help combat the pillaging the AIs fighters was doing.

SAM infantry and other anti air units. These guys only intercept enemy air missions within thier square or adjacent sqaures. Its automatic, and its only usefull in city or resourse defense. 2 or 3 Sam units in a city is a solid anti bomber defense. Add in a fighter or 2 and you can be sure no bombers can touch ya. If fighers are pillaging your farms/towns add more air superiority fights in that area.

[Imminence]

Ok, this is another point of view, which sounds logic for me. In fact, I do the very same thing with my bombers and could take out cities very easy.
OTOH I think, it is still not ok, that bombers cannot sink enemy warships. Other than armies in the field they can't hide. IMHO it is totally pointless to bomb them, if I have not one of my ships nearby to finish them off.
Now I am in a strange situation: I conquered a town with a harbour. As I said, I am far away from home and my ships have to go far to reach me there. The enemy has ships nearby. Although I have a dozen of stealth bombers, fine artillery and a bunch of armour, I am totally defenseless, until I can build a ship there, right?

[shennessy]

Sorry, I dont have any experience with bombers vs ships in CivIV.

I would think that fighters and bombers could kill 100% of non sub navy fleets. I guess if they can't its then just a gameplay balance thing, because bombers and fighters should be fine at taking out large targets that have no place to hide. But still if you can weaken the ships to 50%, by the time you do crank out a destroyer or sub, it should have no problem taking down even a battleship. And while you are weakening his navy your navy (or a small part of it) can come back and clean up.

A beachhead city is nice because now you can move all your planes to that city and bomb the heck out of the enemy without too much fear of homeland retribution. This is why carriers are so nice, even if they only hold fighters. They serve as a mobile city in terms of fast force projection. Ohh.. airports are nice too, every turn get one more armor from back home to continue to crush the enemy... drool!

[Solver]

50% is a LOT. Bombers can cause collateral damage, too. Consider this, if you bombard an Infantry unit down by 50%, it becomes barely better than a Musketman, thus a really easy target for any contemporary unit. If you are using Bombers against a backward enemy without an airforce, you can completely slaughter him.

[Hurin]

I'm confused by fighter behavior.

It seems, I can't set my fighters to conduct (I) Intercept Missions until after they have already flown a recon (or other) mission that turn.

Is this just me?

[Arkalius]

If the fighter is "asleep" (you see the open eye button on the action menu), the intercept mission won't show up. Click on the open eye button to wake it up and the intercept button will appear.

The reason why it was showing up after recon missions was because the fighter is awake after the recon mission.

[Hurin]

Ah. Thank you!