AU mod: Balancing Airpower

[alexman]

The Problem

C3C has introduced lethal bombardment to air units. While this change has added a new dimension to military strategy between humans, the AI does not cope well. The AI does not build enough air units and builds almost no AA units, so it's easy to use a fleet of bombers and a minimum ground force to defeat larger and technologically superior AI foes, taking almost no damage in the process. It's the opposite extreme of one-dimensional strategy from PTW.

Another problem reated to air units is that Advanced Flight is usually not worth researching. As Risa put it:

By the time you can reserch it, lots of good stuff are around the corner: modern armor, 3 techs away; TOW infantry, jet fighter and modern SAM, 1 tech away; the UN, 1 tech away; mech infantry, research lab and SETI, 1 tech away; Internet, 2 tech away. Sure, Advanced Flight also offers some nice toys, but they're just toys compared to those good stuff. Who want to drop defense 9 units (paratroopers) that can't take action until next turn deep into enemy's territory at the age of tank? That's suiciding. As for helicopters, if using it at front line, enemy's fighters will be really annoysome. When using it in your own land, why not use railroad and sea transport instead?

Possible Solution

• Give Helicopters lethal bombarding capability, but half the bombard strength and defensive strength of Bombers.
• Remove lethal land bombard from bombers.
• Helicopters are still able to transport units, but they can't be loaded onto carriers.
• Give all AI civilizations the build-often preference for air units.
• As a more radical change, we could give AA capability to Infantry, Guerilla, Mech infantry, and TOW Infantry. These units would then get a slight chance of shooting down helicopters (10%). The attack and defense of air units, along with the AA strength of all AA units should also be doubled, so Infantry has an even smaller chance of shooting down bombers (3%). This change would greatly help the AI, who usually escorts its units with defenders. It would not affect combat between air units.

Helicopters then become a close-support bomber that is lethal to ground troops, but is in harms way against enemy airpower and flak. You use them to finish off ground troops that have been damaged by bombers, only you have a lower chance of success, and a lower operational range within which to do it.

The AI will build some helicopters for transporting units and some for bombing, so it will handle the new capabilities well.

Advanced Flight will be well worth researching for the human, who benefits the most from lethal bombardment.

So do you agree that airpower is too strong for the AI to handle in C3C? Do you think that Advanced Flight and Helicopters are too weak? Does this proposed change make sense? Any other ideas to balance airpower for the AU mod? What should we do about Stealth Fighters and Stealth Bombers?

Note: see the Conquests forum for information on how AA combat works.

[Myrddin]

I'm surprised at the statement that the AI builds few AA units; my governers keep prompting me to build them once I have the technology - is the issue that the AI does not build enough units to get a significant number of AA units?

[pauli]

As a more radical change, we could give AA capability to Infantry, Guerilla, Mech infantry, and TOW Infantry. These units would then get a slight chance of shooting down helicopters (10%). The attack and defense of air units, along with the AA strength of all AA units should also be doubled, so Infantry has an even smaller chance of shooting down bombers (3%). This change would greatly help the AI, who usually escorts its units with defenders. It would not affect combat between air units.

i like it, but i'd restrict it to guerillas and tow infantry.

I'm surprised at the statement that the AI builds few AA units; my governers keep prompting me to build them once I have the technology - is the issue that the AI does not build enough units to get a significant number of AA units?

i don't know , but i'd GLADLY trade the ai my governors who fervently believe that flak cannon truly are the best unit to use when attacking cavalry.

[Kuciwalker]

Give Helicopters lethal bombarding capability, but half the bombard strength and defensive strength of Bombers.

That completely changes helicopters - they're supposed to be for transport, not bombing.

Helicopters are still able to transport units, but they can't be loaded onto carriers.

AFAIK they already can't - I believe no unit that has a transport capacity > 0 (except armies) can be loaded into another unit.

wrt Advanced flight, you could just remove the optional flag.

[alexman]

Originally posted by skywalker
That completely changes helicopters - they're supposed to be for transport, not bombing.

Think of them as representing both attack and transport helicopters. Just like Bombers represent both strategic and tactical bombers in stock C3C.

[nbarclay]

The biggest problem I see with having AIs build more air units is that air units die without getting a chance to defend themselves when their bases get overrun. So would the extra aircraft do enough good before they die to offset that liability?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by alexman
Think of them as representing both attack and transport helicopters. Just like Bombers represent both strategic and tactical bombers in stock C3C.

Yeah, but this is a large deviation from stock rules wrt helicopters, and it is a bit random-sounding. You are essentially adding a new unit - you aren't making helo-dropping more useful at all. It would be like giving CM's normal A/D values to make them more "useful".

[alexman]

Airpower is too weak without lethal bombardment, as it was in PTW, especially with the addition of AA.

Also, as explained above, Bombers with lethal bombardment are too powerful against the AI.

So, yes, it's like adding a new unit, because a new unit is needed: something with lethal bombardment, but with lesser strength than a Bomber.

Of course, we could do what we did in the PTW version of the AU mod: add lethal bombardment to fighters. Although this is certainly an option, I don't think it's as good as the Helicopter solution, because:

• An additional change would have to be made to Advanced Flight to make this tech worthwhile, or
  an additional change would have to be made to Helicopters to make this unit worthwhile.
• An additional change would have to be made to Fighters to make this unit useful for killing defenders.
• Under stock rules, Fighters can be used to attack targets before sending in your Bombers, so that enemy fighters on air superiority try to shoot down fighters instead of more expensive bombers. This strategic option would be lost if we modify fighters to have a higher chance of getting shot down, like the proposed change to Helicopters.

[Kuciwalker]

I don't see a point to making Helicopters worthwhile for something other than their original purpose.

Are you suggesting to also remove lethal bombard from Bombers? If so, it makes a bit more sense.

[nbarclay]

Removing lethal land bombardment from bombers was on alexman's list.

After some thought, the idea of making helicopters but not bombers capable of lethal land bombardment can be made to make a certain amount of sense if you look at things a certain way. Helicopters fly lower and slower than bombers, and would therefore have an advantage in terms of locating and eliminating the last few effective combat troops in an enemy unit. So if the "helicopter" unit is viewed as encompassing both transport and attack helicopters, the idea makes a certain amount of sense.

But I still see a very serious potential problem. Would the AI be able to build the right unit mix and use its units in the right order to take good advantage of helicopters' lethal land bombardment capability? Or would we end up with a situation where humans have a lethal land bombardment capability while AIs, for practical purposes, don't? If the latter, I don't like the proposal.

If we do take lethal land bombardment away from bombers, it still probably ought to be kept for F-15s (to preserve the value America gets from its UU in C3C) and stealth aircraft (to make the Stealth tech more interesting). The rationale would be that those units use a little bit more sophisticated targeting systems and munitions, and are therefore more capable of the complete destruction of enemy units.

By the way, Alexman, I don't like your wording that additional changes would "have" to be made to make Advanced Flight or Helicopters worthwhile. If we can find something that makes them worthwhile and that makes sense, great. But if we can't, that's okay too. Nothing in the AU Mod's mandate says we have to make every single element in the game strategically interesting.

Nathan

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Would the AI be able to build the right unit mix and use its units in the right order to take good advantage of helicopters' lethal land bombardment capability? Or would we end up with a situation where humans have a lethal land bombardment capability while AIs, for practical purposes, don't? If the latter, I don't like the proposal.

I have not tested the proposed change, but from what I know of the AI, it will not purposely use Helicopters after Bombers to kill wounded units.

However, I believe that making it more difficult for the human to get lethal bombard kills is more beneficial to the AI than the current situation, where the AI has a more dangerous lethal bombard ability, but which rarely comes into play. The cases where a) the AI has a sizeable bomber force, and b) uses it in a concentrated attack to the point where it kills enemy units from lethal bombardment, are extremely rare.

For an example, see Arathorn's turn in this CFC succession game. This is a Sid-level game fighting the AI with a 15+ tech lead on their land across water, and the result from using bombers is a 10:1 kill ratio in the human's favor.

[Risa]

In my experience, AI knows how to use bombers, they just don't know how to protect their cities with fighters. They place their fighters just like land defensers: one or two per city, which is very inefficient.

However, AI DOES not know how to use bombers if giving them more than one kind.
I've run a small test by giving AI 20 jet fighters and bombers, and modifying jet fighter to the same resources requirement, bombard strength (12/0/3) and lethal bombardment as bomber (so that it becomes a higher defense bomber). AI runs their two kinds of bombers in mix, rather than send jet fighters first. Even I lower the cost of jet fighter to 80 shields, they still come in mix.
That's one reason why I wrote my wishes. Sadly it seems no developer noticed it yet.

[Kuciwalker]

Again, though, whether or not this adds strategy, I think it is an enormous change from stock rules. The entire character of the unit is different (so much that it is really a completely new unit). What you need to do is make helo-lifting more useful - which probably involves modifying some of the units it can drop.

Also, you could just remove the optional flag from Advanced Flight.

[nbarclay]

A situation where an AI was already at war with a couple other civs when attacked by the human is not representative. How many of their bombers had already been lost on other fronts when Arathorn attacked, and how many were still in use on other fronts and thus unavailable to attack Arathorn's units? Feeling the full fury of an AI's entire bomber force is rather different from just having to fight part of what's left over after the AI has been at war for a while.

My own experience facing AI bombing attacks in C3C is very limited, but it's enough for me to view AI bombers as a lot more of a danger in C3C than they were in earlier versions. Take away lethal land bombardment and the threat that if a city within bomber range is left with just a couple units in it, those units might get killed by bombers, disappears.

Would anyone with more experience facing AI bombers in C3C care to comment on how dangerous the lethal land bombardment feature is or is not in AI hands?

Nathan

[Risa]

They are dangerous to my ships, at least.