Rule the World through Air Power

Introduction

This is a general guide in how to get the best out of some of the greatest units that are available to you in the beautiful game of RoN. Namely, the airbase units, FIGHTERS and BOMBERS.

There is no reference here to the use of helicopters. I find that choppers are more like fast moving ground units in their behaviour - good (but vulnerable) anti-tank units, scouts or raiders. So I will not reference them again in this article except to tell you how badly they get ripped up by fighters and just about anything else that can take a pop at them! Also I will make no reference to the use of carrier aircraft which seems to be a science in itself. I'm also not a fan of carriers because of their weakness to fighters... ;-)

Control of the air in RoN is just as important as a real war situation. If you control the air, you control the battle. You will soon find yourself winning more and more games against opponents that do not understand this fundamental concept. You need to understand your air forces as well as you do your ground forces when the game reaches its latter stages in Industrial and beyond. Many quite experienced players do not know how to get the best out of their planes - and there are frequent posts on RoN forums with questions about controlling and using your air-force. This guide is an attempt to steer you towards air superiority and onwards to victory!

About Airbases

When

They become available to build in the Industrial age. It is almost always advisable to get one up and producing fighters as soon as you can. It might be that you don't need the fighters straight away, you might even be planning to use them in the next age or two. But they are slow to build and you need to be prepared against an opponent who might be planning to exploit a weakness in your defences, i.e. you don't have any fighters! Bombers are not available until Modern – so start your air campaign with fighters now!

Where

Airbases are tough to take down because of their huge hit-points. So you can be bold about where you build them. I would not put them right on the front line where enemy siege can safely take them out. But close to your front cities is best, within the city limits if possible. The amount of time a plane can stay in the air is limited. So the less time a plane has to fly before hitting the enemy means it can be attacking the enemy for longer before it has to return and refuel. You have to balance vulnerability against attack potential – every situation, is of course, different.

Build them far enough apart so that as the game progresses, an nuke cannot wipe out you entire airforce! Build them inland on water maps if possible.

What hurts?

The fastest way to take out an enemy airbase is to use, commandos, missiles & nukes (expensive) or bombers, siege or battleships/cruisers. Forget anything else, it will just take too long. So these are the very threats you need to watch out for yourself. Fighters are great at taking out bombers, siege and battleships - so you may be able to protect your own buildings in this way. Commandos are the hardest to stop – it might be useful to build a helicopter in this case that can scout and attack incoming commandos. It is unlikely you will face a serious or prolonged attack with missile base units because they usually have more cost effective targets.

Even nukes cannot take out an airbase in one shot if you keep up with the building hit-point upgrades at the wood-camp. Built in large and major cities they get the extra building hit-points that this bonus confers. 5304 hit points without Wonder hit-point bonuses is what you could expect in a major city.

If you lose an airbase - you will lose all planes that fly from it unless there are free slots at other bases that you have. This is very costly - both in terms of cash and because you will lose the air advantage, possibly for long enough that you are unable to take it back. So it is important to keep an eye on potential threats and build a surplus base if it looks as though one of your bases has become threatened (costs280g and 270oil for the 6th base, the cost of about 2 planes at that stage). It is for this reason that you should seek to destroy the bases of an opponent that is strong in the air. Remember that commandos are best at this. You just need a tank or something to finish off the last hit points. It is very rare to find an enemy that has commando defence for their airbases, even if they have it for their cities.

How many?

Well start with at least one! This is good for those developing games that see fighting through most of the ages. You don't always have the resources for planes from more than one base, perhaps better to build more ground troops in these cases until late Modern - so more than one base would be a waste of resources.

On booming maps like the big sea maps, E meets W & Atlantic, there is often at most, only light fighting until the later ages. I often find myself dropping three bases at the same time in this situation - and having the resources to queue planes at all of them.

I would recommend never building more than six bases in total – often less. There is a huge hike in ramping costs after six. 6th base - 280g, 270oil, 7th - 380g, 370oil. Even with Bantu/peacocks/Colossus 300+ pop, I can’t see the need for more than 5 full bases. You will be very dominant in the air with 5 bases if you enemy allows you this luxury. That is what we want, right?! :-)

An airbase can have a maximum of ten planes flying from it at any one time but can still produce as many helicopters as you might want to build.

By selecting an airbase you can see it’s ‘range’ in the mini-map. That is the distance a plane can fly before it has to return and refuel. Typically you will see two red arcs. The outer ring is the max. range of your bombers and the inner ring is the max. range of your fighters. It is pointless to try and target anything beyond these rings as you will give your plans/strength away to your enemy and look stoopid! You get more range from your airbases as you advance in ages. The Global prosperity upgrade from the library gives you maximum range for your planes and everything can usually be targeted even on very large maps unless your airbase placement is particularly poor.

Planes heal while they are in your airbase. Fighters heal at roughly 1 hit point per second in Industrial and double that rate in Information. Planes do not remain in the base until they are completely healed (unless you tell them to), rather there is a ‘refuelling’ timer that will release them after a short period if you have your ‘repeat orders’ command ON.

Economy

Planes are heavy on Gold and Oil. But good value nevertheless. It is usually a good idea in any case to prioritise a strong Oil economy in Industrial but more important now you have decided to dominate the air. There are other articles on this site that talk about economy so I won’t go into it here.

Fighters

I think fighters are the best units in the game. They are very flexible, fast and very destructive in numbers. They are good at killing almost everything except buildings. They can get quickly to trouble spots and turn the tide of any battle.

Although they may be necessary earlier, they really only come into their own in the Information age with the Jet Fighter upgrade – and later Advanced Fighter upgrade with Global Prosperity. My comments in the rest of this piece imply Info fighter tactics. Well, you aren’t going to hang around in Modern for long are you? J)

Fighters are the tool of choice for taking out enemy bombers (in fact the ONLY choice to take out Stealth bombers). But they excel at attacking ground troops and ships too.

They work best in numbers – use them in groups. At least an airbase full at a time in later ages and as many as three full bases or more for taking out large enemy ground advances. They are protected in numbers and can confuse enemy Anti-Air targeting.

Fighters will automatically target troops and turn on nearby troops/villies after they have killed their first target. Though I always recommend initially rallying your planes to ground and letting them choose their own nearby target – slightly more efficient I think.

Fighters will never target buildings unless you direct them to. Good buildings for them to target are the very Anti-Air that is trying to kill you. Five or six fighters easily drop an AA emplacement. Fighters also make short work of any Anti Aircraft Missiles that your enemy is daft enough to produce at the factory. These units are weak and overpriced and easily killed by the very thing they are supposed to counter, even when they are in numbers. The range increase boost that they had in patch 3 has not helped their cause in the slightest. The only reason these will get you is if you fall asleep and they are out of your fighters auto-targeting range. The best it gets for these Anti Aircraft Missile units is in Industrial against Biplanes – here they almost hold their own. Forget them after that. They will of course not target Stealth bombers. It is better to bring along a few citizens and build SAM installations near your battle than to waste time with these units. It has been pointed out that they are reasonably tough when they are accompanied by a general. I’ll let you try this out, I don’t like them ;-)

The only real thing you have to worry about is enemy fighters. And you are already matching them with these, right?

After you have reduced their defence capability the next best targets to micro your attack on their ground troops is, in this order; patriot, general, supply, siege. After that it becomes harder to micro – but you might want to target units that you have few ground unit counters for.

Fighters are great strategic units in themselves. While your army is away hunting, they can hurry back to defend against things like sneak capital attacks etc. They are good at protecting flanks and attacking the enemies second front or attack.

Don’t forget that fighters make great raiders! Although you can’t queue way-points with airbase units, they excel at killing citizens. Although they will prefer to kill troops and you cannot put them on ‘raid’ stance to change this priority.

Did I mention that fighters are great against ships – even subs? You have to outnumber them (which is not usually hard as they have 2 pop slots per ship to cope with) but you can even take down a Cruiser protected fleet with small losses. The enemy hardly ever suspects this kind of attack, they are looking for your ships, but we aren’t building any! I have won many sea maps without building a fleet, using fighters to subdue enemy sea power.

How to defend against Fighters

If you are under attack with fighters then the most sensible defence is more fighters – but throw up some SAM. Your enemy hasn’t read this article and usually forgets to attack them.

Because you will probably need to be building SAM to protect your important structures it is sometimes worth remembering that observation posts in Enlightenment cost only wood – and they upgrade to air-defence guns in Industrial which will cost you Iron AND wood if you build them then. So potentially you can save yourself some Iron by building them earlier. I’m not sure about the merits of this unless your enemy is an age ahead and you know you will need them soon. This SAM building line is quick to build in an emergency and there are an awful lot of demands on your wood as your turn industrial, University upgrades and of course that strong Oil economy you seek. So I prefer to leave them until I know where they are going to be most effective, despite the increased cost.

If you find yourself in the open when your army is attacked by fighters – it is sensible to retreat until you can match their fighters with your own. Keep your army moving – it is much harder to micro a fighter attack against a moving army than one that is standing there waving to you!

If fighters are attacking your bombers – it is often best to recall them until the threat is dealt with. Fighters can protect your bombers of course if the are rallied to the same point, remember fighters move faster if you are trying to co-ordinate this kind of approach. I prefer to use bombers against soft targets and steer clear of fighters where possible.

It might be tempting to hit the nuke button when you see 20 circling planes but don’t use nukes to attack planes. It is not because they aren’t effective against them, they are. But planes can escape very quickly if the enemy is alert. Be aware of this when playing and quickly recall planes that are in the closing range of a nuke. These are often the ones fired by your well meaning allies while you jointly try to take down a city.

Bombers

Bombers are your building destroyers and they are very good at it. They are useless at destroying ground units (including ships) and of course cannot target other air units.

Don't use bombers to target troops. If you rally your planes on a particular unit they will destroy it and then fly around doing nothing unless there are buildings in the vicinity. They do not auto-target any units in the game except buildings. The best use you can get out of them to kill ground units is to use the attack-ground command and target ground amongst your enemies, who will suffer splash damage. I recommend you don't use bombers at all to target troops - you are wasting the opportunity cost of their most effective target which is enemy buildings. The one common exception to this, is that it might be a good idea to target an enemy Aircraft Carrier. Though they are slow to take down with bombers (they miss a lot and don’t get splash damage) - you will also take out the enemy planes that may be chasing you from it. Beware of cruisers in the area – we air-supremacists hate the nasty, nasty cruisers.

When sent to a target location bombers will auto target buildings that are closest to the point you sent them to and gradually widen the area picking on the next closest building. They do not prioritise on building type except cities. They will always prefer a city over other buildings even if it only has a couple of hit-points on it.

There is a maximum ‘line of sight’ that a bomber will seek out new buildings to attack. When it has levelled the area around the point you sent it to, it will not seek more buildings until you redirect it.

Bombers become available in Modern age but are quite weak and much more vulnerable to their counters than the later age bombers. However, build a couple and see what sort of defences your enemy has. You might take them by surprise and take out a library of even a wonder if they are particularly unprepared. Be ready to retreat them though if you encounter any kind of anti-air. Modern bombers do not last long under attack. I don’t recommend any larger bomber force until you are in Information – where the Strategic Bomber upgrade begins to make them much more effective.

Bombers can die quite quickly unless you have effectively neutralised the enemy AA capability. If you haven’t bombed their AA (sometimes there is too much of it) then sending in a commando will stop their SAM from firing at you. Cue freaky Star Trek effects! Choose ‘soft’ targets or accept high losses to take out important enemy structures. It is safety in numbers again - the more you send (fighters too) the more damage you will do for hits taken. Remember the enemy has a limited number of hit points he can take off your entire airforce while they are over the target and the more planes you have the more damage you will do while absorbing these hits.

There was a recent post at HG on a ‘carpet bombing’ tactic. This involves sending single bombers all over your enemy territory and targeting single buildings, one bomber each. On the surface this seems to have some merit – I haven’t tried it. It would certainly confuse the enemy defence effort and you will undoubtedly cause some damage – I worry about the losses though when attacking a well organised SAM based defence. Might be worth toying with. I’ll tell you how to micro it later.

Stealth bombers are more or less a game ending tech. They are invulnerable to everything except fighters and cause huge damage for long periods over enemy territory. It is impossible to stop a determined attack by two airbases of Stealth against any target. Even with a couple of dozen fighters. So if your enemy wants to destroy your Supercollider, they might pay, but sure as eggs they are going to get it.

What to target?

So you’re setting off to bomb an enemy city – what do you choose to attack?

I don't know whether it's right or wrong, but I always take SAM bases first. A couple of bombers each and see what is left over for other targets.

If my army is approaching with a mind to capture the city, reduce the city then take out forts and towers.

If my army is nowhere near and I am just on a demolition job then I always hit wonders first, then library/university, then military.

There is nothing like imagining the face of your enemy while he watches his precious Colossus crumble to dust and his building queues stop working ;-)

Perhaps economy is a better target under some circumstances. Take out his economy upgrade buildings, They are slow to rebuild and can have quite a dramatic effect on income at this stage in the game. So much choice, so little time… J

A couple of general points with planes. They can suffer attrition under two specific circumstances. In a diplomatic game where war hasn’t been declared against the target. And in an Assassin game if you attack someone who isn’t your target. These are the most severe forms of attrition and will eat your planes very quickly so watch out!

Also planes fly at two different altitudes, highest halfway between your base and the target – they are harder to take out at the higher altitudes with ground based AA.

How to manage and control your planes and airbases

OK that’s all well and good – but how to make your planes do all of that stuff?

This is the Micro. bit, but don’t let that word put you off. You can massively improve your control over your planes with some simple commands.

Firstly, imagine for the point of the rest of this, that you have 5 airbases in Information. If you never hotkey any other military buildings in the game, that is fine, but you are going to need to custom hot-key your airbases.

Generally you want to be aiming for about 60/40 split fighters/bombers. I often use three bases for fighters and two for bombers. This gives you a pure choice of which units you can select. But bombers will travel without support unless you micro a fighter escort. The other common alternative is to mix fighters and bombers in the same airbase – so that you automatically get fighter support when you send your bomber bases into action. Say 5 bombers and 2 fighters in 3 bases, and 2 bases of fighters. I don’t like this approach as much, particularly as I find it hard to maintain the correct balance of planes after any hectic action! Also I like to queue my bases – and I often end up with the wrong mix of planes unless I am VERY observant!

So assume for this that we are going with 3 fighter bases and 2 bomber bases. All the same commands apply – so mix and match if you prefer something else.

The game comes with the ‘I’ hot –key for selecting an airbase. Hitting ‘I,I,I,I…’ will cycle through all your bases. Shift ‘I’ will select all your bases. All good stuff! But we need more. Custom-key all your fighter bases to ‘F1’ say, and all your bomber bases to ‘F2’. Now you have quick control over which type of base you select. Sometimes you might not want to send 3 bases full of fighters to one location though… So individually custom-key each base too. For example fighter bases are 1,2,3 and bombers bases 4,5. This saves you time in the game hitting ‘I’ trying to find a bomber base for instance.

You now have three levels of selection. All bases, Just fighters/bombers or each base.

Build a fighter in your fighter base ‘F’ is the key, but I use the icons. And hit ‘Q’ to queue up the build until your base is full. Ditto with bombers ‘B’. Queue is your friend when fighting in the air.

You can attack in a few ways. To send one plane to a target – the simplest way is to select your base and right-click a target and repeat. I hardly ever use this. There is delay between right clicks while the plane launches – so if you were going to try the carpet bombing for example you would be faster if you cycled through your bomber bases; 4, right-click target, 5, right-click another target, 4, right-click… etc.

The fastest way to get your planes to a target is to ‘rally’ your base(s) to it. Use it often. Select the airbases you need and hit ‘R’, left-click where you want them to go. Rally is the most useful of the targeting commands because it will tell all the units that are currently in the air as well as in the base where you want them to go. For instance if you select a fighter in the air and hit the ‘HOME’ key (select all units of this type) it will only select those units that are in the air and the ones in your base will stay lazy.

If you have decided to have mixed plane bases – then you can separate out the fighters from the bombers in each base using ‘Alt-F’ or ‘Alt-B’. This command unfortunately only selects these from one base at a time and looks a bit micro-heavy to me to make effective use of it unless you only have one base or so.

Recall ‘Y’; is useful for making a hasty exit from a dangerous situation. Select your base(s) that you want to recall and hit ‘Y’. Or as I do just tap the icon in the command screen bottom left. (You DO have advanced commands turned on in ‘options’ don’t you?) Recall will immediately turn all your planes from whatever they were doing and they will return to base and STAY there.

Repeat orders ‘E’. I usually have this permanently ON. No point in hanging around in your base when you could be killing something! If I need to return to base – perhaps trying to time a fighter defence against an anticipated bomber raid and I want them all fuelled and ready – then just use recall.

Scramble ‘G’. Planes leap out the base and rush to defend, close to the base. I have never used this. Not sure what the advantage over a Rally close to your base is. I mean what if all your planes are away from home?

Air Mission ‘A’. This is the air version of attack-move and quite useful. Particularly when attacking armies with fighters. They tend to engage more quickly. Attack-move means they will go in the direction you point them in and attack the first thing they come across. The difference with planes is, of course, bombers will not attack troops and fighters will not attack buildings.

Transfer ‘T’; Useful for moving your planes closer to areas they are trying to attack. You have to build an empty base to take the transferred planes. Transferred planes will refuel from the new base. Don’t forget to reassign your airbase hot-keys! I have found myself using this on island maps most often. After clearing out an enemy off one island it benefits you to get your bases closer to the enemy so that your planes can stay in the air longer over enemy territory. You might want to delete the old bases to get salvage and reduce ramping costs if you are confident about your position.

Select planes in the air for micro’ing attacks on individual units like Patriots. Just drag a selection loop around a bunch of planes. Deselect units that you might have inadvertently selected, like bombers or ground troops by Shift-clicking on the fighter icon in the bottom right of the screen. Simply right-click on the target with the remaining fighter selection. Use this for targeting enemy AA etc. But don’t attempt to right-click attack enemy air units. This is a waste of time and you will often miss. Just let your fighters get on with it in their own time. Rally them ahead of bomber formations etc. if you are looking for more control.

Selecting planes in the air and re-targeting them effectively changes their rally point. They will return to the new target spot after refuelling while the none selected planes will use the original rally point.

I_Roll - 11 July 04