Rework of AA and Air-land fights

Usually these units are not just men with guns, but also all the support equipment those men would carry, such as anti air battalions.

Then why do they have AA guns in the game? In Iron Order you can actually use planes without them being obliterated. In CoW, I just grounded my planes and left them because even a stack of 6 units will almost destroy the planes. I think Bytro needs to balance this for sure, I would argue this is a top 10 issue in the game.

That’s just bad skill? You don’t leave your planes in front of the enemy lol. It’s called support battalions, those other units are more specialized.

Are you saying I left them grounded against an army? No, I was actually using them but divisions do over 10 damage without any AA guns meaning my squadrons of 100 total hp planes are almost out of commission bu destroying a single army. I know how to play, but there's no use in sacrificing my planes when they don't do anything useful, even when WWII was the most pivotal war in terms of air force as countries developed new planes, bombs, jets, etc.

Still a skill issue. I use planes all the time to wipe out entire armies, it’s pretty effective and they are some of the best units in the game. Don’t split up your stacks, even huge stacks of like 30 planes are very effective.

Planes are already really strong vs weak players. No need to make them stronger.

Where have you read that commandos, militia, prarratrooperas, tanks, vehicles, anti-tank and so on ever used anti-air weapons? Anti air is specialized unit that consisted in weapons that can shoot in the air, the rest were hiding whenever planes were doing anything

Carking the 6th wrote:

Usually these units are not just men with guns, but also all the support equipment those men would carry, such as anti air battalions.

Airplanes are a lot weaker than they should. I'm a big fan of airforce but airplanes are completely useless against people that know how to play. A stack of 10 infantry +2ac+3ht obliterate a stack of 20 airplanes easily. In this game Airplane are good vs noobs and AI, if you fight a semi-decent guy your airplanes won't do squat.

I’ve fought like level 150 people before, crushed them with planes. Good players like @-VIP- fought well against me on land but then faltered due to planes. They don’t need to be made overpowered.

Carking the 6th wrote:

I’ve fought like level 150 people before, crushed them with planes. Good players like @-VIP- fought well against me on land but then faltered due to planes. They don’t need to be made overpowered.

If you defeat someone doesn't mean a troop is strong. Airplanes need to be countered by anti air or air force not by tanks, commandos or artillery.

Having airplanes against enemies without anti air or air force it should be an easy win. At this time anti air is completely and utterly useless I ve never seen someone win and to have 30-40 anti air.

Having anti air be able to attack planes that go above them is the realistic thing to do and would make deep enemy teritory attacks more realistic and hard. Never in the modern history has a plane danced above anti air and to not be attacked.

Well for one, Player level doesn't matter. Most players are terrible, even high level ones.

Second, I care less about historical realism and more about game balance.

I don't hate the idea of changing AA mechanics (though it should be noted that anti air defensive damage gets applied before plane attack damage to simulate the fact that anti air has its own attack range). I don't think removing all anti air damage from regular units is the way to go about it. All units do *some* damage to all armor types which smoothes things out and allows players to make basically any combination they want and still be viable (with risk). Forcing players to produce AA to have any defense vs planes changes that.

As for planes themselves, just because they're easily neutralized by good players doesn't mean they need to be buffed. They're already too strong at times, especially vs weak players (the vast majority of the player base). Making it harder for good players to counter them would just make plane spam the dominant strategy, especially with upcoming RRG nerfs.

It is almost like you are playing a completely different game... stacks without AA are just FOOD for a decent 10-stack of tacs (unless they're megastacks of course), but yes, you will take some damage yourself as well. See an example below; you killed the double amount of manpower (a reliable indicator) than you took.

But what planes really excel at, is keeping enemy stacks together and prevent them from splitting off units for sub-missions. Their almost infinte mobility compared to ground troops makes sure that they can quickly attack any small group of units and kill them, hardly taking losses themselves (though attrition bites if you do this like 20 times). When you dominate the skies you can take all the land AROUND those big stacks with single runners, essentially making them both blind and immobile.

As for history: we're talking regiment-sized units and most of those had some intrinsic AA as well. For infantry, large numbers of machineguns were available, and many tank designs had an AA machinegun for the commander on top of the turret. German 88mm AT guns were originally an AA gun. Divisional AA (usually a batallion of 20/40 mm AA guns) were dispersed close to the units. And so on, and so on.

All those light AA guns (machine guns and 20-40mm caliber) were essentially useless when the plane was above 500-1000 metres; only very specialized heavy AA guns could fire above that. So if the planes kept above that, they were basically immune to AA. That's the "dancing" you're talking about now: they don't engage troops, they're immune to AA.

To attack ground troops though, they would need to make attack runs at much lower altitudes, like 100-500 meters. And that's when all those light AA broke loose to counter them. So basically the current CoW setup is very historically correct: it only works when the ground troops are being attacked.

The 1,000+ meter bombing runs you are talking about were only used for strategic bombing against cities or large industrial complexes. Accuracy suffers greatly at that height and ground troops are VERY small targets compared to factories. Read up on the few occasions when strategic bombers were used in combat situations, St.Lo for example, and why these attempts failed so miserably.

Not sure what you are talking about 8 inf+3mt+3ht obliterate 10 planes. The planes lose and have much higher looses. Although indeed the bombers had to drop to relative low altitude for the bombardments those machinegun you are talking about would still not be able to deal any real damage to the planes.

The machinegun used by infantry and tanks had a very hard time to shoot at airplanes, 1 because of the high distance, 2 because of the speed at which the bombardments engaged and disengaged and 3rd because of the angle, those machinegun couldn't shoot at a very good angle because they were designed to look around and not in the air.

Those AA-gun we have are not light, they are clearly heavy AA guns, and the "heavy" AA guns could attack planes that were above them at high altitude.

Never in history did some infantry and tanks with 0 AA and 0 Aircrafts destroyed an entire division of planes as it's happening in CoW.

This is all on paper, when in use a lot of the times the planes will be destroyed. Even if they complete their mission, it will be wau cheaper for the army to rebuild their light units than it is for you to rebuild a stack of planes. Even if the planes survive, their efficiency is decreased and they are made useless when they get below 1/4 hp.

Did you make sure to turn on the setting that carries over health from one round to another?

Commander Schleicher wrote:

This is all on paper, when in use a lot of the times the planes will be destroyed. Even if they complete their mission, it will be wau cheaper for the army to rebuild their light units than it is for you to rebuild a stack of planes. Even if the planes survive, their efficiency is decreased and they are made useless when they get below 1/4 hp.

Carking the 6th wrote:

Did you make sure to turn on the setting that carries over health from one round to another?

If you come back and say: "yeah, but you can also add some attack bombers to counter the heavy ones" I'll let you know that you'll lose that fight even harder. With max level (except stars) on both planes and inf+mt+ht the infantry doesn't even die.

At this time planes are just what other people said, good versus noobs (and AI) that don't know how to play, but if you just build infantry+mt/ht you will destroy any amount of airplanes with a fraction of the costs of creating and maintaining an airforce.

Any half-decent player that doesn't want to play air at all will win a war without any issues against someone that used airforce. Please also remember that if you want an air-force you also have to build interceptors (that are a lot worse against infantry) so by the time you get 10-20 Tactical bombers +10-20 Attack bombers +10-20 interceptors your enemy will have like 30-40 infantry +20-30 mt/ht.

So just to conclude: lower tier units (that are earlier available and upgraded earlier and faster), that are created faster, cheaper and more easily can destroy troops that are more expensive, later available, harder to build and need additional buildings every day to maintain.

Airplanes are good at one thing and one thing only: defeating scrubs

Anti-air is good at 2 things: getting 3 additional troops to have vision at the start of the map AND capturing non-defended territories.

This being said I stand by what I said earlier, airforce shouldn't be just a scrub hammer and anti-air shouldn't be a militia that's missing stealth.

You're using a stack of 14 units now against the 10 tacs, and almost half of them are heavy armor, which are mainly meat to protect the inf in your scenario, and stay so for a long time because tacs are notably bad against heavy armor. You're also using L3 heavy tanks, which are a VERY rare sight on any CoW battlefield. They're also fighting in a city, which is the ideal terrain for infantry adding 50% AA strength. I posted a more "reasonable" scenario before, but if an air opponent attacks your 14-stack and could also use 14 units, he would use:

Almost triple manpower losses for the ground force...

K.Rokossovski wrote:

You're using a stack of 14 units now against the 10 tacs, and almost half of them are heavy armor, which are mainly meat to protect the inf in your scenario, and stay so for a long time because tacs are notably bad against heavy armor. You're also using L3 heavy tanks, which are a VERY rare sight on any CoW battlefield. They're also fighting in a city, which is the ideal terrain for infantry adding 50% AA strength. I posted a more "reasonable" scenario before, but if an air opponent attacks your 14-stack and could also use 14 units, he would use:

Almost triple manpower losses for the ground force...

Also you put level 3 infantry (day 4) vs lvl 3 airforce (day 6+. An inf+Mt+ht formation I just mentioned earlier would be made in less than 1 day and the resources needed can be easily gathered by day 6 to make them, while the 10 airplanes you suggested would need 2-3 days or even more if you don't build 2+ level 3 airports in cities.

You haven't seen L3 heavy tanks? It means you only play against scrubs that only make militia and infantry, I've destroyed plenty of L3 MT and HT. That's why I'm saying it's a scrub hammer, yes, if they don't know what to do and just make militia ofc airforce is strong.

I don't know who would stay for 6 hours in plains to not get the terrain bonus, but here's the worst-case scenario where the fight happens in plains and not forest/urban/mountains

Quickmark wrote:

You haven't seen L3 heavy tanks? It means you only play against scrubs that only make militia and infantry,

Quickmark wrote:

I like how you put 2x more resources on airforce against ground forces.

10x inf: 1500 res + 1100 MP = 15000 + 11000

3x MT: 4100 res + 1700 MP = 12300 + 5100

3x HT: 6800 res + 2300 MP = 20400 + 6900

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47700 res + 23000 MP

8x tac: 3600 res + 1400 MP = 28800 + 11200

6x AB: 3400 res + 1300 MP = 20400 + 7800

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49200 res + 19000 MP

Given that MP is the most important resource, the ground stack is more expensive than the planes.

Another advantage of air that hasn't been mentioned yet is the fact that air can pick the fights they like and decline the ones they don't. As a ground unit with planes overhead, you just have to take it and you (usually) can't walk away from it; when you're in the planes and you're outnumbered, you just withdraw to fight another day. That is something HUGE.

Look, I really don't want to sound condescending here, but maybe you should play some more games? When you think about air like you do, it is obvious that you have never encountered a skilled player using an air force against you. Almost all players (with a few exceptions, cause a big-stack artillery-AA based strategy CAN be viable in some cases), there are VERY few advanced players who don't use air after day 6 or so, even if it is just interceptors to defend against enemy air. I obviously don't know what your experience is in this game, maybe you have just played 22- and Homefront maps which are infested with noobs, but I assure you, you can't be successful on serious maps without planes or some SERIOUS AA.

First of all, you took into consideration the total number, but not the split of resources, out of the 28800 and 20400 most of it is Rare Materials, you'll need like 25k rare materials and 23k oil and goods.

The time to train those planes will also take 2x longer time than it would take to make the land stack, unless you make like 3 airports in citiest. Also, in your calculation you added 2 extra inf, so the numbers are closer together, until now it was 8 inf and not 10, so you can deduct 3000 more resources and 2200 MP. I never encountered issue with MP, not with airplanes, not with land, MP is an issue only if you make troops 24/7 and no RS.

On top of creating the airplanes you should take into consideration the amount of airports that you would need, if you only make 1 the enemy can rush it and your planes are useless, so the multiple airports that you need to build to keep the airplane be able to fight is again a huge resource investment.

If it's day 8 you won't have 1000 points with 2k each resource/hour and 60 airports so you will not be able to make 10 airplanes/day due to lack of resources, you would need to sell/buy resources like crazy and still wouldn't be able to build them in a day

At any point in the game it's a lot easier to make inf+mt/ht (more balanced resource required) than to spam air only that requires huge amount of only 1 resource and medium amounts of 2 other resources. A land stack will split the resource evenly and make it more viable to build more and more without having a lot of 2-3 resources and being on 0 with the others.

Air can't always take w/e fights they want, because if they retreat too much they'll end up losing their core, and their airports, which take a lot of time to be built. Aircrafts it's like any other troop, if you retreat you end up losing cities

Even with HT level 2 (which is day 8 the result is still the same), even without HT you can add MT instead, similar thing, you just need some heavy armor, doesn't matter what.

I'm using airplanes and encountered multiple good people that used Air, the most important fight was who won the air fight, once you win the Air the enemy will just stop playing or won't be an issue at all (as with any other kind of army, you destroy 50% of the army of someone, get some of his territories and he'll lose the will to fight). Winning/losing against them it's beside the point, the logic nowadays is: airforce is only good against airforce and noobs/AI, I've played mostly WaW and I never EVER saw someone have more than 5 anti-air (and you get 3 from the start). Anti-air is useless and slow, or SP-AA which is useless and expensive so nobody wants them bcs of the price tag. Rather than having Sp-AA you can build rocket fighters which are less expensive, faster and more reliable.

I'm not saying people are playing without planes as you suggested, but people aren't using AAs, they are using rocket fighters, interceptors and stacks with inf+heavy armor or a combination of these 3, can you show me your AA ratio? Considering every country gets 3 at the start and "people are using them" you should have a very huge amount of AAs destroyed compared with everything else except inf.

AA is as I said earlier for vision at the start, nobody will waste time of researching/building AA when you have interceptors and rocket fighters that are a lot better against air than the AAs are.

On top of that, even considering that inf+tanks can counter airplanes and trade efficiently is BS, airplanes should be a counter to them not the other way around. AA> Airplanes > Airplanes > Land army > AA, that should be the logic. Land army without AA should be food for airplanes, not be countered or trade efficiently by/against them.

Quickmark wrote:

You haven't seen L3 heavy tanks? It means you only play against scrubs that only make militia and infantry

Quickmark wrote:

I've played mostly WaW and I never EVER saw someone have more than 5 anti-air (and you get 3 from the start). Anti-air is useless and slow, or SP-AA which is useless and expensive so nobody wants them bcs of the price tag.