Do Gunships really have a role?

[CiverDan]

Of course if I have a large army of cossacks, its almost not worth upgrading. I get 2 extra Strength and some movement in enemy territory, but I cant take cities with gunships. I guess only if the enemy is heavy on tanks.

[ahsingjai]

Gunship is great for pillaging.

But after briefly reviewing their promotions. You can get Blitz after Combat III. Which means the helicopter can attack multiple times PER turn.

If you play your horses right, adding 30% strength will later give u Blitz.

[Glostakarov]

Something else on the subject of promotions. Gunships can't gain the medic (improved healing for all units in stack) or march (can heal while moving) promotions, but if you upgrade a cavalry with those promotions it doesn't lose them. I've found these medic-choppers invaluable in situations where I send a group of gunships at the enemy to harrass an area for a while without the support of my other (slower) units.

[MattPilot]

You could also build gunships from the city that has the red cross.

[Quillan]

I think I tried that, and it didn't get the promotion.

[Hayden]

More and more in my experience I've seen that there is NO unit that is useless, the best attack is a balanced one. Because if you have a stack of units all waiting on the doorstep of your enemy and you are playing on the harder difficulties then you cant afford to have your units susceptible to any one attack. Also you really need to know your enemy well and know what units they are likely to use, if they have lots of armors, then naturally putting a few helicopters in is a great idea.

Also, if ever you are not sure about whether your unit will be successful in an attach, you can use the right mouse button and hold it down over the top of the enemy and the combat odds (with modfiers) appears in the bottom left of your screen, very useful.

[khearn]

[SIZE=1]
Also, if ever you are not sure about whether your unit will be successful in an attach, you can use the right mouse button and hold it down over the top of the enemy and the combat odds (with modfiers) appears in the bottom left of your screen, very useful.

You can also see the modified strengths my holding the ALT key and doing a mouseover without risking accidentally releasing the mouse button and having your unit attack. :-O

Just be careful of those numbers if one of the units is wounded. Wounded units are much more vulnerable than their stength value indicates.

Grenadier attacking Musketman (both at full strength):
12 vs. 9
Grenadier wins 78.21%
Musketman wins 21.79%

Grenadier at 9/12 attacking Musketman (9/9):
9 vs. 9 according to the mouseover
Grenadier wins 36.33%
Musketman wins 63.67%
(it's the same if the Musketman attacks)

That's because they each have equal chances of doing damage each round, and the damage done is equal (20 each hit), but the Grenadier starts with only 75/100 hitpoints, and only takes 4 hits to kill while the Musketman has 100/100 hp and takes 5 hits.

So be very careful with your wounded units, and go after your opponents' whenver possible.

This also means that collateral damage is really powerful, since even doing a few points of damage to a lot of units in a stack weakens them all a lot more than the strength value alone would indicate.

Keith

I'll post my spreadsheet soon. I need to clean it up a bit and hopefully add in the first strikes that aren't certain to happen (if we can get anyone to tell exactly how that is determined).

[Frank Johnson]

Considering how powerful tanks are, they are the logical choice for countering any late game threat.

Now I'll be honest I've been playing on noble and I've yet to war with a civ that has managed to get armor, but if they had helos wound be a great addition to any assault stack or city defense.

As a city defender late game, helos are better than you might think. Since units like Infantry rely on the terrain bonuses and fortification to stop tanks, they can be worked around by removing the defense with artillery or air bombing. Add some helocopters into your defense stack in the city. Now when the armored assault drives into the now bonusless city, they still run smack into a 40 defense unit. Now the enemy has to bomb defenses and launch air strikes if they want to get anywhere without some real losses.

If your on the attack with your own armor stacks, adding some copters just to guard against enemy counter attacks is ideal. Instead of losing your own armor, you take out there's with a unit that probably wasn't a threat to the city you were after in the first place. Plus, helos have no trouble keeping up with tanks or MA in enemy territory while infantry units do.