Air units suck

[civjunkie]

In fact the whole concept of bombardment is a waste of time. It does about what you could do with spies in civ2, i.e., randomly destroy things including hopefully city walls, except that city walls don't seem to mean much any more. So, if you're lucky, you do a bit of damage to the unit you're trying to clobber, and otherwise you just reduce the value of the city you're about to capture. Air power should be a decisive turning point, and it just isn't. Bring back civ2 Stealth Fighters, the best units in civs 1 2 or 3.

[vmxa1]

I am not going to say anything good about bombardment in general and air in particular, they miss way to often and are almost worthless. I will admit that arties are useful when invaders show up and you have RR's, if they hit anything.

[Wormwood]

Air units and artillery are meant to be used just as they are in reality: en masse. One bomber or artillery unit has little chance of causing much damage, 30 bombers and 60 artillery will obliterate anything in range.

[vmxa1]

Be that as it may, I am not about to click 90 times and find that having so many failures, makes it very tiresome.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Be that as it may, I am not about to click 90 times and find that having so many failures, makes it very tiresome.

we were promised stack bombard... let see if we get it...

[Cyclotron]

Well, I have found bombers to be very powerful and useful. It depends on your tactics, I guess.

[PrinceBimz]

I find air units extremely versatile and useful, depending on your situation. They can be used to attack other air units, land and sea units. No other unit can be used in so many roles. I personally have had alot of success using them.

[Kingof the Apes]

If you dont like air units you could change them in the editor, increase bombardment maybe.

[Civer80]

I find Bombers very useful in depriving a rival civ of its Resources and Luxuries

[Demerzel]

re. artillery

on the attack i don't use them, unless its a seriously gigantic metropolis, whose population requires "thinning out" and i'm prepared to wait forty odd turns for the slow artillery to catch up with my fast moving attack units.

otherwise i can only see two good uses for artillery, one base defence - pound the bejeesus out of enemy units as they trundle up to my city. secondly, with a railroaded continent and enemy ships roaming my coasts, i just shift a couple of arty to where the enemy ship is and pound the b*stard into the ground and then if i have a ship nearby finish him off. repeat by number of enemy ships in range of artillery.

re. planes
i kinda like air units except for the awfully short range which generally means that on a true blitzkrieg style attak, except for the first round of fighting, they are always too far from the enemy lines to be of use. i have to keep re-basing them to find that the attack has moved on by then.

the only way around this is if the cities to be hit are coastal and i use aircraft carriers. however as observed above, you need to use bombers en masse to have any affect which requires you to have about 10 aircraft carriers to have a sizeable bomber force thanks to the damn 4 aircraft limit. this just leads to more micromanagement joy with all the ships that need to be controlled


so in general i dont use them and stick with the tried and tested tank rush. no finesse and a heck of a lot of micromanagement as the number of attack units goes over a few hundred but i generally dont enjoy shifitng a hundred or so artillery/bombers as well for the percentage striking power they give me in return.

[planetfall]

civjunkie--

Civ3 is a land based conquest game. Sea and Air are only used to support land, ala, pre WWII military tactics. There is no way to get good sea/air out of civ3 because of the programming limitations.

Best you can do is increase carriers load to 6, bomber range to 8 and bomber effectiveness by 2. {Slightly higher carrier capacity eliminates some micro management. Any higher and your advantage is too great as AI does not use carriers. Bomber effectiveness is just to eliminate having to build so many bombers. Don't worry the AI is good about building fighters to knock out some of your bombers.}

If you want an air game, try to find the old game of Luftwaffe and subsequent improvements. Again civ3 is not about air power, it is about:
culture
land armies
trading
tech races
scarce resources triggering warfare.

--PF

[vulture]

Originally posted by Demerzel

re. planes
i kinda like air units except for the awfully short range which generally means that on a true blitzkrieg style attak, except for the first round of fighting, they are always too far from the enemy lines to be of use. i have to keep re-basing them to find that the attack has moved on by then.

I've heard that said a lot, but it doesn't make sense to me. Say you start off a war with your air units in position to be useful.

Round 1: bombard with air units, then move tanks/MA in to attack, and take a few cities (hopefully).

Round 2: Attack same or other cities with tanks/MA, and at the end of your turn, rebase your bombers to the new front line (no bomber attack this turn).

Round 3: As per round 1 - use bombers first to weakan this turn's targets, then mop up with the armour.

Rinse and repeat. You can usefully use each bomber every other turn. Given that they are more effective en masse, it is probably better to use 1 large airforce that attacks every other turn than 2 smaller ones attacking in alternation, unless you really do have a lot of bombers.

[Demerzel]

well generally i aim to take at least one "row" of front-line cities per attacking turn but preferably two. The main pre-war aim is to build up enough troops that i can capture the front line cities and then in the same turn, use the territory gain as a springboard for the remaining to take a second row of cities.

thus if i say attacked with bombers in round one, then shifted them to the front line by round two, then i could use them in round three but generally I've pushed on far enough that they can't reach the new frontline.

that all only applies if i'm not facing stiff resistance of course. if that is true then generally the AI is at a similiar level of development and has enough fighters and tanks/mobile armour to make my bombers'/tankers lives hell, so I go with tanks supported by the "stupidlylargemassofartilleryusingsledgehammertacti csratherthanfinessetowin"(TM) manoeuvre to soften them up.

[Cyclotron]

You know, another great way to use bombers is with carriers. Carriers protect them from ground assault and CF, while preventing wasting turns with constant re-basing. Bombers become much more efficient and powerful when at sea.

[Apolex]

Originally posted by UberKruX

we were promised stack bombard... let see if we get it...

That's what I'M TALKIN' BOUT! Bombard is utterly tedious in it's current form for two reasons:

1) Takes FOREVER to click through the number of bombers, etc. to effectively do appreciable damage to a city.

2) I absolutely HATE waiting for 50 enemy Caravels, Ironclads, Destroyers to do their stupid worthless infrastructure bombarding on my shores.

Stack bombard would do wonders to make those game features more playable and enjoyable. WHERE IS IT????? Please give.

Oh yeah...

3) Why does a cruise missile have the same range as an 1800s era artillery unit? Stupid.

-Apolex