Understanding Anti-Air ground units.

If you want to protect your land troops from the bombers made fighter planes. You want to win the game with AA guns and a few light tanks . What are we to say who explores planes and bombers . We need to make airports lvl 2 we spend resources for airports and for research bombers and you want to your AA guns destroy them easy . Tactical bobmers are not a to strong , You need so many resources for build them , who have a big airforce that player dont have a good land force so you can easy with light tanks capture his land fast . Do not keep all of the light tanks in one place , split them and attack from many ways and capture provinces where your enemy have airports . Bombers can not take off without the airport. Sorry for my bad english

<-- Bomberman (as you like to call it) (cfr my stats).

My thoughts:

Regarding SP AA and AA. AA is classified as infantery and I think that is the main reason it dies so easy in fights. Bombers and tanks in general do more damage vs infantery than vs armored units (this game is like rock (armored), rock (planes) and sissors (infantery)). I still bomb armies if there are only a few AA present. The tanks last long, but they don't have much defence vs bombers. It's also slower than the tanks and therefor more likely to absorp damage than faster units. SP AA is classified as armored, just like tanks are. This means they are less vulnerable to medium tanks and bombers, but on the other hand, the heavy tanks deals more damage to armored units than to infantery. This unit, I think, will have a higher chance of staying around longer in battles and is IMO a huge improvement compared too the AA. I still rely on interceptors.

Going full landarmy should IMO not be the (best) way to win the game. I think a game designer would like players to use all military aspects of the game in order to achieve victory (armored units, infantery (boost?) air, naval, spies).

Having an airforce, is having a very mobile army that can strike at any border in a matter of hours instead of walking 2 days before arrival and that will definately cover up for not having 120 tanks, but only 60. IMO no player can have a succesfull army without a big airforce.

Yeah! First good thoughts from Azkazan and car dusan silni So we end up in what I knew from the beginning = interceptors are a must.. I will try to live with it Mayby in future someone from the devs will read this thread and a light in the head will bless him, whatever, thanks.

They are not dual-purpose 88's. Though that would be an interesting addition on the research tree!

yea, 88s are on the tree, they're just the last to be researched, so AA effectiveness against tanks aren't really supposed to be shown here

Markok wrote:

Yeah! First good thoughts from Azkazan and car dusan silni So we end up in what I knew from the beginning = interceptors are a must.. I will try to live with it Mayby in future someone from the devs will read this thread and a light in the head will bless him, whatever, thanks.

I'm not using any air force at all on a global map, and frankly, doing pretty damn well as top 3.

If you're fighting someone who has no bombers, then AA and Fighters are pointless.

Fighting someone with lots of tanks? Bombers will be a good idea.

Lots of infantry? Use lots of tanks.

Stratagy and tactics requires flexibility. It requires you to be able to change how you fight, to best beat the person you are fighting. Is this a difficult concept to understand, or are you simply used to having things how you want them, and in a set, predefined, one way is better to any and all other ways mindset?

Maybe you've just played far too many linear "only one way to win" games.

Bytro actually only develops games with a strong educational element in it.

In CoW the foremost important educational element is:

You can't always get what you want ... but when you try ... sometimes .... you might just get what you need!

(rings a bell with anyone?)

It seems many of the (younger?) players here simply can't understand yet that they have to think things through, find out how to do stuff the right way by putting some effort into finding out how stuff works, find out by trial and error etc.

They just want it the way they think it should be (effortless) and above all NOW.

If they can't get it that way, it is a hack or bug, but ..oh nooo ... it is never their own mistake.

It is a sign of the times.... a very bad sign ....

Sign of the times I was playing 1914 since it started, for me AA is still underpowered.

I am playing this thing since May and s1914 since many years ('10, '11 or '12 I dont remember).

But AA is not an issue in s1914. It only s here and here, I have no issues with AA, or at least not with SP AA. AA I never build, because I hate slow troops.

It's not a sign of the times, since I'm of a younger generation. Most aren't that way. Mostly though, the vocal ones are, which gives the rest of us a bad name thanks to stereotyping. Don't you love how the few manage to ruin things for the majority so often? lol.

I've found a valid use for non-SP AA, and that's to fortify your capital and the surrounding provinces to avoid any rush attacks for resource grabs on that. Hand full of AA behind L5 fortress' make a difficult task for an air force.

~Azazel~ wrote:

It's not a sign of the times, since I'm of a younger generation. Most aren't that way. Mostly though, the vocal ones are, which gives the rest of us a bad name thanks to stereotyping. Don't you love how the few manage to ruin things for the majority so often? lol.

I've found a valid use for non-SP AA, and that's to fortify your capital and the surrounding provinces to avoid any rush attacks for resource grabs on that. Hand full of AA behind L5 fortress' make a difficult task for an air force.

Honestly? At this point, in my admittedly limited experience so far, yeah, I would. It's mostly just a deterrent around my capital, which I'll reinforce with commando's and heavy tanks, so I think the resources, for me personally at least, are better spent developing more advanced technologies for the more widely used tanks, and for province development to increase resource production as much as possible, in order to be able to field an even larger army without upkeep issues.

Afterall, the bigger the army, the more advanced that army, the harder it is to defend against when you're swarmed. With the right positioning, you can storm provinces with air fields. Alternatively, you can use the ocean as a back door if it's an option, and have that first attack into the airfield, neutralizing the opponents airpower, as the opening move in the war. And if patient enough, and the other player only has planes on the province (something I'm experimenting at the moment), you can always just force a moral loss through spies and cause a revolt in the province before you reach their range, which in worst case scenario with no troops on that province, the planes end up destroyed, or just stranded when you take control of them, allowing you to bomb them with essentially their own aircraft, or they have to attack the province directly (since the spies are still working that province on counter espionage they won't be able to force a moral change) destroying the planes that were once theirs. So with those options available, beyond a purely defensive purpose around my capital as a deterrent of use of air power, I wouldnt research SP, and I wouldn't have any other use for AA. I find a very limited unit without an area of effect for my own play style.

Folks in the end of the day

AA is grand, but weak

SP AA is what you need