Fixing the Air War in Civ 3

[Colonel D.]

The purpose of this thread is to focus on the air war aspects of Civ 3 and brainstorm ways to fix it. Hopefully Sid, et. al. will read and heed what we write here!

Colonel D.

[Colonel D.]

Moving Air Units

The first thing I'd like to see in improving the air war in Civ 3 is to return to us players the ability to actually move our aircraft again! It is so frustrating to fly a recon mission only to find out later your fighter overflew that carrier task force, but apparently did no see it!

Moreover, what is more frustrating than to hit a ship at sea with a heavy bomber and then realize you need yet another fighter to perform recce so you can bomb the ship again in the same square? If we could physically move our air units we could perform armed reconaissance missions as occurs in real life.

[Jon Shafer]

Both the naval and air aspect of Civ III need to be tweaked. They need to have more importance. Air units need longer range. Like you said, reconaissance needs to be 'fixed' to allow it to be more useful. There ought to be some sort of 'esccort' mission, where a fighter will simply follow a bomber to its target, and if they find any enemy planes, the fighter will engage, and if destroyed, then the enemy fighter will get a shot at the bomber afterwards. That's all I can come up with now. More later.

[Colonel D.]

Air Combat

Air combat in the game now is way, way too abstract. It needs to be more like the way naval combat is presented in the game.

A moving bomber or fighter (see my post above) should be liable for interception by enemy fighters once in range. Here's how this would work.

A bomber or fighter is moving into enemy territory and triggers an interception. The intercepting fighter's range would be one half its normal movement rate. For each square the player's air unit enters, the interceptor would move two until they are adjacent. At that point, combat ensues.

Combat would occur as in Civ 2 with both firing and receiving damage simultaneously until one or the other is shot down. If the moving player's bomber survives its attack, it may continue on to its target, or return home. If a fighter was intercepted and survived, it would return home immediately (having used up its fuel and ammo in the dogfight).

If the moving player decides to press on with his bomber(s) to the target that bomber is liable for further interceptions and/or anti-aircraft fire -- both guns (AAA) or missiles (SAMs). I should point out here that AAA and SAMs should be military units in the game -- not city improvements.

If the bomber attempts to move into a square having AAA or SAMs it will be fired upon. This would be a bombardment mission -- and could result in shooting the bomber down, or merely damaging it.

When on the defensive (i.e., when the AI is the mover) the player would be able to react to and defend against incoming enemy aircraft in this manner. As the AI air units enter into friendly airspace, they will continue to move until they trigger a possible interception. When this occurs, the moving AI aircraft will stop and any interceptors in range will blink. A dialog box would appear and the player would have the option to intercept now, intercept later or no intercept this turn.

If the player waits, the AI aircraft moves one more square and again all potential interceptors blink, and so on until either the AI aircraft move out of range or an interception occurs.

SAMs should have an interception range of one square and would be activated in the same way as intercepting fighter would be. AAA would have to be in the square being attacked to be able to fire at attacking aircraft.

[Colonel D.]

Bomber Boxes

Trip,

I agree with you about fighter escorts. Here's my solution to this. Alow the player to build bomber boxes (sort of aerial task forces) into which he can add up to four aircraft of any flavor -- four bombers, four fighters or a mixture.

As with armies, the unit would move only as far as the shortest ranged aircraft. Moreover, damage would be spread among the aircraft attached to the box, with not bomber or fighter shot down until all have suffered at least some damage.

Building a bomber box (assembling aircraft into massed formations) takes time and fuel, so, this should reduce the range of these aircraft by one or two mps.

[Colonel D.]

Strategic Bombardment

This is the most disappointing aspect of Civ 2 and Civ 3 aerial warfare. Strategic bombardment needs to be emulated in a manner that permits the player to devise a strategy to affect the enemy's economy, or culture, or science, etc., by allowing the player to target specific city improvements.

For example, say I want to bomb a city's morale. I should be allowed to send my bombers to hit cathedrals, colleseums, corthouses, etc. This does not necessarily mean I will hit what I am targeting, however.

If a bomber is damaged by interceptors or by AAA/SAMs, there is a higher probability of a miss. A miss may mean "bombardment failed" or it may cause collateral damage.

Some collateral damage may be killing city workers (something that might erode the bombing player's own morale and increase war weariness if the player is a democracy) or cause the city's morale to be affected in some manner. Other collateral damage may mean hitting a city improvement other than the one you wanted to hit.

While this is not the place to discuss it in detail, I would like to see the possibility of being able to damage as well as destroy city improvements. This would be particularly effective in terms of production facilities.

My basic idea is that you may build more than one mill, factory or production plant per city with each producing a certain numer of shields. Strategic bombardment would be able to attack and destroy or damage these production facilities.

Repairing damaged facilities would require money and/or time. More on that in another thread.

In short, then, I want to have the opportunity to seek to destroy an enemy's warfighting ability through strategic aerial bombardment as was attempted in WWII.

Colonel D.

[Ben Williams]

First of all, we need more units. There should be several generations of planes, and a whole new catagory of "recon" planes (spy planes). You would be able to see into a city with these, and some could have radar that could see into a country from outside their borders (so you could spy if you're not a war). Lethal bombardment is a must, and one should be able to choose the target of attack (a unit or the underlying terrain, or if a stack which unit). Battleships should be able to carry one helicoptor with a unit on board, and all modern ships should carry cruise missiles. Ships should be able to take shots at attacking aircraft (anti-aircraft guns), and subs should not be bombable (unless the captain is really, really drunk).

Furthermore (you shouldn't have gotten me started ), air battles need to be more complex. When you bomb hills or mountains you should be able to target to create a road block, and there should be a napalm option that would do the same for jungle. Stealth bombers need to be much more powerful, but have an extreamly high production cost and upkeep (something like 5-10 gold per turn, with extreamly high range and low intercept rate). Plus we need patrol missions, more needs to be automated.

That's all for now.

[player1]

Simple.

Give lethal sea to Fighter, and lethal sea&land to Jet, F-15 and Stealth Fighter (NO LETHAL for bombers).

Increse ROF of Fighters & Jets to 2 (from 1).

This way, you made bombard with non-bombers usefull, made from F-15 and Stl. FIghter usefull units and made sinking ships possbile (but not unbalancing).

[BigRed515]

How about a Close Air Support aircraft (A-10) that has a CAS mission button instead of the bomb mission button. The CAS aircraft wouls have lethal ground bombard, but would be intercepted 95% of the time (opposite of the supposed stealth modifier). To go hand in hand with the CAS plane, and to ensure it's not just a wasted novelty units like the Stealth Fighter, fighters defintiely need to have an escort mission where they have something like an 80% chance of combating an interception within 3/4ths of their range. This way, bomb runs to medium-deep targets could be escorted, but bombing a traget at the edge of a bomber's range would leave the aircraft unescorted an vulnerable. I think this would work better than having the fighter "bomb" the target first to clear the way.

[Blake]

The solution is simple.
Stacks. Put bombers and fighters in a stack (or armada, if you please) to:
A) Provide escorts.
B) Reduce tedium.

Air combat is so bad in Civ3 that adding stacks (or armadas, if you please) would only be a step in the right direction. Longer range, specific target categories and so on would also help.

[Odd]

bomber boxes:

stealth bombers taking off from carriers built before planes were invented:

precision strikes that target only the civilian population, to maximize the number of civil deaths or destroy hospitals and libraries: wasn't the other way around?
use $40000 laser-guided missile to kill anyone is a bit strange

[Ben Williams]

Ya, precision strikes should target units, not improvments or population. Maybe to balance it out they could cost one gold or so each time, to represent the use of expensive weapons.

[GeneralTacticus]

stealth bombers taking off from carriers built before planes were invented:

[steve p]

they should take a leaf out of CTP2 for how air and sea units should work.

[NeoStar]

Re: Strategic Bombardment

You've brought up some good points.

Originally posted by Colonel D.
...While this is not the place to discuss it in detail, I would like to see the possibility of being able to damage as well as destroy city improvements. This would be particularly effective in terms of production facilities...
Colonel D.

That would do well for the game-being able to repair improvements. When I want a big city (not often) I'd prefer to stop operation of their buildings for a few turns rather than destroying them.

It just makes you the one who has to rebuild them.

Originally posted by GeneralTacticus

quote:
stealth bombers taking off from carriers built before planes were invented:

I think he's referring to the weirdness of making carriers available before planes and how real stealth bombers can't take off from carriers.

But Civ3 is a game. If the decision to make aircraft simply an extravagant but essentially useless option (for anything besides improvement killing) was historically based they have a point in the fact that no nation has ever been ever conquered by jets.

Too bad they took it too far.