bombers to carriers?

[Dis]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
I wanna do a Doolittle Raid!

Those were done with B-25's. Significantly smaller than B-17's and B-29's which the bomber unit represents.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by LordShiva
The limit of three fighters per carrier makes them rather useless. To fight an effective air war away from your home continent, you'd need several carriers. This is historically unrealistic - most navies don't have too many.

On the contrary, that is historically accurate. The IJN used 6 carriers to attack Pearl Harbour and a similar number against Midway Island. IIRC the US used 5 carrier battlegroups for the invasion of Iraq.

[LordShiva]

Well, the U.S. currently has 13 or so carriers; not all of them are deployed simultaneously - say, 8. The air power they project is certainly more than the Civ equivalent of 24 fighters. And keep in mind the U.S. Navy is a truly global power. Most regional powers in Civ often end up with that many carriers.

[Dis]

The US Navy has 12 carriers. And only 2 are forwardly deployed at once (except during **** like Iraq war, Afghanistan etc). The others are either in port, in the shipyards doing a refit or overhaul, or doing workups for the next deployment. The 2 deployed carriers undergo what we called west pac and Med cruise. I was in Norfolk, so I only did med cruises which iirc is 6th fleet. Of course because of the No-fly zone situation in Iraq we shared duty with the west coast ships enforcing the no fly zone in Iraq. I believe we transferred to 5th fleet when we went into the arabian sea/ arabian (persian) gulf.

They carry around 90 aircraft, but not all of those are attack aircraft, and this includes helicopters.

[Bjarkehingrumme]

I think 3 fighters is a quite good number. To put it into perspective i will refer to the danish armed forces. Denmark is a small country of roughly 5 M people, which barely corresponds to one CIVIV city. The combat component of the royal danish air force consists of 60+ F16 fighters. In the context of 3 Civ fighters = 90 RL fighters this corresponds to two civ fighters. I think it is quite rare that the air force in civ exceeds more than two fighters per city, so all in all three fighters pr. carrier is a good number. Of course i miss the CIVI days with 8 bombers pr carrier, but the CIVIV situation is much more realistic...

[Urban Ranger]

The fighter unit in Civ is actually a fighter-bomber. The bomber unit is a strategic bomber. The carrier unit is not a full-fledged US CV(N), but one that's closer to the carriers of other countries (UK, France, etc.).

[Dis]

3 is a good number. But sometimes I'm disappointed by the combat results of fighters (though regrettably I never seem to use jet fighters very often- I"m done with warfare at this point). I never use them to bomb.

[johnmcd]

Carriers in Civ 4 Pretty much represent a sensible level of power I'd say. Civ 4 only deals in superpowers anyway, there aren't really regional powers in it. A game with a dozen civs would probably boil down to North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Africa, India, Middle East, Australasia, Indochina, Japan and maybe Mali or something.

None of those powers would be overwhelmed by a single carrier group of any sort parked on it's doorstep and all of them could put large carrier fleets to sea if it was required.

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Oh those things. Maybe I'll make GeoModder an "ally" when I get around to playing MP

Please do, but only when I'm playing an agressive civ.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
The fighter unit in Civ is actually a fighter-bomber. The bomber unit is a strategic bomber. The carrier unit is not a full-fledged US CV(N), but one that's closer to the carriers of other countries (UK, France, etc.).

Originally posted by johnmcd
Carriers in Civ 4 Pretty much represent a sensible level of power I'd say. Civ 4 only deals in superpowers anyway, there aren't really regional powers in it. A game with a dozen civs would probably boil down to North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Africa, India, Middle East, Australasia, Indochina, Japan and maybe Mali or something.

None of those powers would be overwhelmed by a single carrier group of any sort parked on it's doorstep and all of them could put large carrier fleets to sea if it was required.

OK, so the U.S. has 12 carriers, but only 2 are forward deployed. And IRL how many carriers do the othersuperpowers you mentioned have? Britain? Three. France? One. Russia? One. India? One. China? Zero. Japan? Zero (not counting helicopter ships).

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by Dis


Those were done with B-25's. Significantly smaller than B-17's and B-29's which the bomber unit represents.

Lancaster, dammit!

[johnmcd]

Yeah, if Europe decided that it was going to be neccessary to build two dozen carriers to invade South America it could build two dozen carriers. Denmark, to use the example above, probably couldn't really do that. That's the distinction I'm trying to make between regional powers and superpowers. All the superpowers I've mentioned above pretty much could field a big navy if they decided that was important to them. As it happens, Europe doesn't really need the ability to rule the skies of the South Atlantic so it's happy not to bother.

Plus, I think we both recognise, that a carrier fleet sitting in the Bay of Biscay or the Med or whatever would simply be overwhelmed by land based force pretty quickly.

[timbrom]

Carrier airwings

Going back up the thread a bit, one of my favourite tactics in Civ2 was to put a mixed airwing onboard my carriers. I would include helicopters, and use them to hunt for sub's. If I found one, I'd get one of my destroyers over to kill it or block its approach to the main body. Similar to what I do in real life, but there you go.

As for the bomber/fighter thing, Civ4 has the platforms right, especially as fighters can now do the same to cities as bombers, just less effectively. I would like to see the limit increased at least two-fold, however. I haven't been in a carrier v carrier naval battle yet, but if I was, I'd want at least two of my three fighters on Combat Air Patrol (CAP) to protect against the opposition. This would leave me with just one to do the strike thing, which is the reason my $5 billion hunk of steel is where it is in the first place!

Which brings me to my other point, why not more variations of helo'? A troop carrier (as per Civ3), and an an anti-submarine one for maritime warfare.

[LordShiva]

I agree with timbrom. With a capacity of three, there's no way a single carrier can be effective at both air patrol and bombing.

Re: superpowers being able to field as large a carrier fleet as they want, China's been trying to acquire a carrier for a decade now. They've bought two Russian ships and one Australian antique to study, but still haven't managed to even draw up plans to build one of their own. India decided in 1999 to build a replacement for our decomissioned second carrier, but it won't be done until 2010 (or most likely later). We've also been haggling with the Russians to buy one of their old PoS carriers.

So, I think they should be made more expensive to reflect the fact that IRL carriers are gargantuan capital investments.

[Tattila the Hun]

The question would be, whether China or India actually feel that they need carriers?

China's next military direction/goal could theoretically be the annexation of Taiwan. Does she need carriers for that, or can lan-based air-assets reach Taiwan?