make an anti aircraft land unit!!!

[sly ruin]

its extremely frustrating to play another human player. i was winning military wise. they got one aircraft unit before me and i couldnt stop them.

because they got the flight upgrade before me. that is so dumb that their is no land unit to stop these aircrafts

[prisma solstice]

Notably Flight tech gives you biplanes which can intercept other air units.
So the counter for Air is Air.

I wonder if they added anti air where it could go on the tech tree..

If flight just gets cancelled by easily building anti air, then that is a bit unfortunate. So it would need to be some kind of opportunity cost.

I have a feeling the game is just not complex enough for anti air. It is too niche. It's a pointless unit unless someone else has air. And if they make it too accessible then it kinda hard counters air combat. Which makes air dominance less of a late game strategy.

Vs a biplane which is both anti-air, and can be used as an offensive tool (but weaker than a bomber)

[floral reef]

Battleships should get anti-aircraft fire atleast. It would be nice to see some modern age ships fire at aircraft like they did in civ 6 and RL.

[prisma solstice]

as long as it doesn't make air combat basically useless. Air shouldn't be trivialised 1 tech node up from Flight. That means you basically get punished for pivoting to flight because the other player just invested even harder into battleships, then what? Air countering air means at least everyone needs to pivot to flight instead of the one player that does just getting shafted by battleships. Unless the anti-air effect is minimal or it cots the ship's turn or some mitigating factor.

[dusk finch]

Static, mobile and naval anti air was incredibly important during the era that the game is trying to depict. Having only fighters as an answer to air units is not the optimal way to do it. I don't know the answer but certainly they need to add more options.

Air is supposed to be the most deadly thing on the battlefield but it isn't supposed to win wars and clear cities by itself. Its supposed to be the difference maker.

[floral reef]

I would like if the battleships can attack air if the planes fly over them or adjacent to them, kind of like they did in civ 6. They don't have to one shot them. Aircrafts are pretty OP right now.

[dusk finch]

Problem I have with that, is that battleships already completely outclass the light naval line. There's basically no reason to go for cruisers and destroyers. From a realism point of view, Battleships were often great at AA but if they do everything why would you build anything else?

[floral reef]

they're also the last ship to unlock, they should keep all classes in game and give them more specific roles. like bombardment vs naval to naval combat, etc. Battleships should be more expensive too. I feel like the production costs of battleships is pretty low. you can easily just do a huge fleet of battleships right now and it doesn't line up well with history.

[dusk finch]

Pretty sure that cruiser + dreadnaught unlock together and Destroyer + battleship unlock together. Are you saying only the T3 battleship should get the anti air?

Perhaps heavy naval should be far more expensive as a decent solution to promote the use of others. Although when you start an age with like 8 ship of the lines from your previous Cogs then that trivialises it somewhat

[floral reef]

to be honest they should all have anti air... but the strengths should be scaled to show some realism. the battleship being the main ship would be the most expensive but also the best for AA as they were designed to defend aircraft carriers and other ships from air attacks.

[dusk finch]

Again, I really don't have a solution to this problem. Battleships had to have a lot of AA because they were the primary targets (alongside carriers). Then there were the Anti Air Cruisers (like the HMS Dido class) that were designed more to protect other things than themselves (convoys, capital ships) and then obviously the best defence against air was bring your own carriers.

How Civ should best represent this I don't know. Taking damage every time you attack a ship with a plane sounds quite annoying and tedious though because then you constantly need to repair planes and if you swap them in and out to repair you lose your attack for that turn.

Perhaps the solution should be more about damage reduction to the ships/land units/cities that receive air attack, and then damage to planes could be more of a secondary thing. Or make planes loads cheaper but let them get shot down all the time.

[floral reef]

or advance planes can just take less damage from anti-aircraft... it could probably be more of a which unit is more evolved vs the other kind of like the rest of civ. in civ 6, AA would reduce damage taken from aircraft while causing damage to it. But you just overwhelm the AA defenses with aircraft, yeah your planes will take damage, but you can still win. It's just a balance issue since right now there's nothing hurting planes but other planes.

[sly ruin]

they need to add a cheaper upgrade before flight. that is strictly an anti-air land unit to counter the air raids.

strategy games should always have counter vs counter units

also the anti-air lands should be made to only attack air which makes them vulnerable vs land units

[hollow seal]

Usually though the counter comes after you have something to counter, no? You cannot counter something that doesn't exist, unless by lucky chance.

Anyways, I am all in for aa-units

[sinful pike]

Cruisers are faster so I use em for scouting ahead of the admiral and for keeping eyes out for enemy ships and chasing down transports. They do a pretty good job overall

[prisma solstice]

Maybe they could have an improvement tech so you can just have an anti air installed in your city. Instead of a unit. Kind of along the same lines as fortifications, but for Air defence (and yeh I would argue it's only available in cities, so your towns need planes to protect against other planes)

[sly ruin]

i like that

[sinful pike]

Honestly I’d love for cruisers to get an aa intercept, not battleships. Then you’d have a solid reason to build the cruisers beyond their speed

[buoyant cedar]

Yeah - building an aircraft carrier to back it up with air to air is just too late in the game.

[willow hare]

maybe make it a promotion deep in the land & fleet commanders tree?

[rare aspen]

My suggestion is that it should be defensive only, as some form of static infrastructure. Perhaps you can upgrade your Defensive Fortifications with Anti-Air Emplacements (only in cities?)

[prisma solstice]

This is a great idea. They could even have a commendation that only appears in modern, so there's just one less option until then. So you can't pick it when it's pointless.

[rare aspen]

Idk about having it as a deep commander promotion, for a few reasons:
-It would have to not appear in earlier eras where it’s thematically and practically out of place, which means you might end up in an awkward situation where you’re saving a commendation for modern which feels gamey

-It sorta locks a very important capability to people that are playing Militaristic or have invested in Commanders for a long time. Why shouldn’t a Civ that’s playing more turtle/defensive and has a science lead also be able to develop anti-air?

[dusk finch]

A neat solution could be to give the Commanders a 'support unit' slot. Could be battering rams and siege units in previous eras, and field hospitals and AA guns in modern. The AA gun would then give reasonably protection against air attacks for things within its radius. Would work mechanically and thematically I think.

[prisma solstice]

Nice!
Another extension on this idea. What if support units bestowed their support ability on the commander when packed?

Eg:
Commander can Search when a scout is packed
Commander can "Intercept" when an AA Gun is packed
Etc

Then there could be a whole tree around packed support units.

Nodes:

• Support Units can activate their abilities while packed.
• Gain access to a unique support unit while on a district (changes each age).

(Could replace 2 Nodes in an existing tree)

[boreal hinge]

i never understood for a second why aren't there AA units in this game. we had them in civ6 but they seem to have removed them, what the hell?

we should have AA batteries, especially the tile-based ones (e.g. as in improvement like coastal gun) and they should drain the enemy air unit's hps on every flying mission, AND we should also have the mobile AA guns for offensive operations to shield our units against a potential air attack by the defender. later on in the information age the these can be upgraded to iron dome and AA missiles, respectively . we should also have the radar already by the end of modern era since they truly mattered in ww2. i cant believe how they miss all these things. i mean.. most of these were in civ6..

[carmine juniper]

It's really strange that we don't have anti-aircraft units, even stranger is that naval units aren't also anti-aircraft, I also think this should be corrected

[boreal hinge]

oh yeah. if the enemy has aerodome on a coastal place with a few bombers, your navy can be oblitered in a single turn which is ridiculous. these battleships and destroyers had pretty good AA guns installed on them. sigh

[carmine juniper]

@boreal hinge, Exactly, we just need to look at a little history, not to mention that in CIV 6 the naval units have anti-aircraft defenses and there are also anti-aircraft units on the ground dating back to the period when the game (CIV 7) entered the modern era

[fierce pumice]

its kinda strange how much stuff is missing in civ7 compared to older games. that issue is one thing that really bothered me with no anti air

[cunning glen]

+- It would probably be logical that anti-aircraft follow biplanes, like in Civ 6
and there's time to build them while the enemy discovers bombers

And add strong AA defense to ships (for heavy ships) and weaker ones for light ships