Air Units: IF only we could make them realistic

[Faeelin]

Everyone knows that airpower is at the apex of victory. Look at history. Aside from Vietnam (which was the most poorly fought war in modern history) airpower has been useful in diestroying the enemy. It happened in WW2. It happend in the korean war, the gulf war, the limited action of the falklands, did damage in the balkans (not great, but it was hurting) and most recently, in Afghanistan. If airpower can let the US win a battle in a frozen mountainous wasteland, I think it can sink a bronze age galley.

[Grrr]

I totally and utterly agree, and whats more, the galley should NOT be able to retaliatte. The original fighter may have run out of hit points, but a modern stealth fighter would sink it GUARANTEED
I have yet to reach the modern age, all my games have been won during the renaisance, but the airpower sound like crap.

[Tolkien]

It's all true. And I'm pretty upset about nearly all of the combat models in the game...just last week the AI killed my infantry unit with a spearman--pretty dumb if you ask me.

oh well, I don't play single player campaign anymore, now that I finally got the civ3 editor working, I use it to play all my games. that's what I would suggest to you. This is what I tweaked:

1. units - I tweaked most of their stats, so the combat is more realistic.

2. Governments - I tweaked nearly all of them, and added Socialism.

3. Corruption - I greatly reduced it so that under all of my governments, the corruption level is lower. I also added "reduces corruption" to 2 or 3 more city improvements.

4. In single player campaign, I would almost never get above +20 gold per turn. So I changed the citizens, now, each laborer (default citizen) gives +1 gold. I tested it, and right now I am getting +850 per turn, because of my sprawling empire, I don't have to worry about damn corruption.

5. I also changed the huge world size from 180 x 180, to 256x256. I like playing on big maps.

I am playing with these changed right now, and I am having alot more fun than I used to.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I changed the techs too, so now I get them alot faster, I minimized them to 2 turns, and maximum to 20 turns. This has helped alot, I am only at 1600 AD, and I'm half way through the industrial age, I expect to be blasting my enemies apart with tanks and bombs by the time the constitution is born.

[The Kaiser]

If anything airpower is a little too powerful, particulary in its ability to flatten all your terrain improvements if you have poor air defenses. Airplanes bombing bridges YES, irrigation NO.

Also the fact that a sea unit cannot be totally destroyed is a good thing because in past Civ games it made sea invasions virtually impossible once flight had been discovered.

Think about it, the Transport or Destroyer unit actually represents a fleet of ships of which no Air Power in history has been able to totally destroy without a few ships escaping, although perhaps heavily damaged.

[Grrr]

Originally posted by Tolkien
I also changed the huge world size from 180 x 180, to 256x256. I like playing on big maps.

How???
Also the minimum science How???

[Faeelin]

Originally posted by The Kaiser
If anything airpower is a little too powerful, particulary in its ability to flatten all your terrain improvements if you have poor air defenses. Airplanes bombing bridges YES, irrigation NO.

Also the fact that a sea unit cannot be totally destroyed is a good thing because in past Civ games it made sea invasions virtually impossible once flight had been discovered.

Think about it, the Transport or Destroyer unit actually represents a fleet of ships of which no Air Power in history has been able to totally destroy without a few ships escaping, although perhaps heavily damaged.

Umm.... damn. How about the US attacks on Japanese convoys?
In any case, your arguement is flawed. If I send 40 planes after 1 galley, the damn galley should die. You know it, you're trying to rationalize Firaxis' lassitude.

[codemast01]

Think about it, the Transport or Destroyer unit actually represents a fleet of ships of which no Air Power in history has been able to totally destroy without a few ships escaping, although perhaps heavily damaged.

Air power was unable to stop the invasion at Normandy. However you must remember that the German air force was severely limited by their loses vs. the RAF (Royal Air Force) and the lack in fuel for their planes. No one has been able to have a naval invasion vs. an air force at full strength.

However this is besides the point. CivIII only has basically one unit that can defend against air attack (Jet Fighter). Other units are defenseless. Why not give the AEGIS Crusier and some other units ablities similar to the AS mission a fighter has. The result would be similar to not allowing the sinking of ships. Some ships will be destroyed but most likely not all. As it currently is, not only do all transports survive, all the troops also survive uninjured.

Also something to think about:
If a transport represents a fleet of ships, then why doesn't a F-15 represent a fleet of jets?

[Grrr]

Originally posted by codemast01
Also something to think about:
If a transport represents a fleet of ships, then why doesn't a F-15 represent a fleet of jets?

Yes, I agree a fleet of F-15s will have trouble blasting away a puny galley, I mean, it's like killing an ant with a .308 from the top of the empire state building.

[Faeelin]

Your logic is flawed. F-15's can take out tanks. Heck, cruise missiles can target individuals. So I think they could take out a galley.

[korn469]

first a few things about airpower in civ3

*even if aircraft could sink ships, without a stat change then B-17's could sink Aegis Cruisers, while F/A-18's would have a hard time sinking ironclads
*airpower not being able to sink is balanced by the fact that seapower can't damage airpower, plus realistically certainly airpower doesn't always triumph...i would say that small fleet of US Navy Aegis Cruisers could take whatever the entire North Korean airforce could dish out; while the Iranian navy would certainly have problems with an US aircraftcarrier taskforce
*drawing examples between the world's strongest superpower versus one of the world's least advanced militaries can certainly lead to one sided and potentially wrong conclusions

there are better ways to balance airpower than just giving it the ability to sink ships
personally i like blitz, multiple moves, and higher bombardment ratings

[Prince]

In my very first civ game, I captured a small russian city on the east coast of south america, with marines coming from australia. I quickly built bombers and moved them to Grozny, the city I captured. 7 Bombers or so were totally flattening the russian cities in the next couple of turns, destroying improvements, lowering population points, and when my tanks were at the front gates of the next city, they greatly helped damage the defenders. I don't think air units are all that bad, the only thing that hasn't proven it's use to me yet is the (Jet) Fighter, but that's because I have never faced enemy air units yet. And then again, guys, think about it, who said this game is intended to be realistic? Sure, it's BASED on reality, but in the end, nearly half of the civs shouldn't even have the chance to build air units at all. Ever. Just because they are supposed to be *dead* before that time. Tanks vs. Spearmen is not a realistic situation, so when the Spearmen win, I don't see the point, the whole situation isn't realistic so no matter who wins it's not real anyways! And same goes for airplanes, their bombs not destroying galleys is not realistic. Bombers attacking galleys is not realistic.

[Grrr]

Originally posted by Faeelin
Your logic is flawed. F-15's can take out tanks. Heck, cruise missiles can target individuals. So I think they could take out a galley.

YEAH RIGHT!?!
If these GREAT F15s of yours can target indivuals, then why don't they just fire a cruise missle at Osama Bin Laden. No the propoganda may say so, but in all reality, the guiding systems arent't that great. I have heard of at least 5 missiles going totally astray in the Kosovo bombing. No F15s are NOT 100% accurate, far from it!

[Faeelin]

Uhuh... So you're telling me that five thousand f-18's couldn't take out a galley?

Numbers aside, the fact is that they'd laugh at the galley. IT'd be strafed, bombed, torpedoed, before it got within sight of my civ3 shores. And survive.
oh, and about OBL: You know where he is, we'll get the job done. Also, 5 out of how many that were fired? Several dozen? Even if it's only 100, that means 95 percent accuracy.

[Grrr]

Originally posted by Faeelin
Uhuh... So you're telling me that five thousand f-18's couldn't take out a galley?

Numbers aside, the fact is that they'd laugh at the galley. IT'd be strafed, bombed, torpedoed, before it got within sight of my civ3 shores. And survive.
oh, and about OBL: You know where he is, we'll get the job done. Also, 5 out of how many that were fired? Several dozen? Even if it's only 100, that means 95 percent accuracy.

One Galley?!?!, a Galley unit represents a FLEET of galleys say 100 or so.
As for 5% inaccuracy, these are only the ones which FAILED MAJORLY, and not the ones which were a few hundred metres off target.

So when someone does find Osama Bin Laden (I don't know his whereabouts, why don't you organise 5000 F18s to bomb, strafe, and torpedo him. Good Luck!

[korn469]

Faeelin and grrrr

first thing there isn't even 5k f/a-18's in any one nation's arsenal

second thing is THAT NO NATION USES GALLEYS!

even the least advanced nation on earth is going to use a combustion engine on their ships, which would more likely resemble patrol boats than anything else

spearmean, galleys, etc just aren't going to exist along side f/a-18's and abrams tanks

the militas in afganistan and elsewhere aren't representative of spearmen, they are completely different

plus a B-17 COULD NOT! sink an Aegis Cruiser! so just allowing airpower to sink naval units does not balance the game

the thing is weapons from 30-50 years ago are obsolete for the most part against modern day weapons, while an ak-47 is still a viable weapon a MiG-17 has been hoplessly obsolete for some time now

even an entire roman legion at its height could probably be dispersed by some riot police with waterhoses and tear gas, much less by well positioned special forces calling in napalm or cluster bomb strikes on the legion in the middle of the night