Air and Naval Warfare — Wiki

Air wings and fleets fight a war around and above the ground war. They never stand in a province's brigade stack: each operates from a base and flies or sails missions over a target area, a region for air wings and a sea province for fleets. What they win there, air superiority or sea control, changes the ground war through explicit effects: fire support in battles, slower enemy marches, supply lines cut, crossings by sea and blockades of ports.

Formations

Air and naval units are trained like Brigades, paying manpower and arms up front through the training queue or into the unit stockpile, and they count towards military power. A trained air wing joins its base. A fleet must be built and based in a sea port, a coastal province with a harbour.

Type	Arms cost	Training	Role
Fighter	2,000	78 days	Air superiority; patrols its base's region while idle at war.
Tactical bomber	2,500	96 days	Ground support, interdiction and strikes on fleets.
Strategic bomber	4,000	132 days	Long-range bombing of enemy provinces.
Carrier group	9,000	360 days	The strongest sea control; carries fighters to sea.
Surface group	3,500	240 days	Sea control, escort, blockade, shore bombardment.
Submarine flotilla	2,000	200 days	Raiding and blockade; hard to find without good detection.
Amphibious group	1,500	150 days	Sea lift for crossings and assaults.

Air wings have a full strength of 1,000; fleets range from 1,500 for a submarine flotilla to 5,000 for a carrier group. Range grows with the aircraft: a fighter reaches roughly a thousand kilometres from its base, a tactical bomber about half as far again, and a strategic bomber nearly four thousand.

Only fighters can embark on carriers, and a carrier group holds two wings. Tactical bombers cannot fly strategic bombing raids, and strategic bombers cannot provide ground support, interdiction, naval strikes or air superiority. Research changes detection, range, naval speed and damage, anti-air fire and carrier capacity for forces already in service (see Technology Trees).

Formations with no mission rest at base and regain strength and morale. A formation whose base falls to the enemy falls back to its home base with a heavy morale loss, or is lost if it has none. One worn too far down, or out of morale, breaks off its mission.

The air war

An air wing's mission names a region within range of its base or carrier:

Mission	Effect
Air superiority	Fights for control of the region's sky.
Ground support	Joins every battle in the region on its side.
Interdiction	Slows enemy marches in the region and, when strong enough, stops their reinforcement.
Naval strike	Attacks hostile fleets in the seas along the region's coast; fleet anti-air fire intercepts the sorties.
Strategic bombing	Devastates enemy-held provinces in the region and adds war exhaustion to whoever holds them.

Every day each region with air activity resolves an air battle. Each side's aircraft fire on the other's, and ground anti-air brigades in the region fire on enemy aircraft. Air superiority is a side's share of the air power present. It scales what that side's missions achieve, and gives its ground battles in the region a damage bonus that grows from nothing at even skies to 25% at total superiority.

Strategic bombing causes Devastation and adds to the target's War Exhaustion, so a bombing campaign wears down a country's will even without a ground offensive. Wings can rebase to another friendly province, taking time by distance, or embark on a carrier in the same port.

The naval war

Oceans and seas are provinces: about two hundred and seventy named sea provinces cover open water, from enclosed bays to ocean basins. They have names and neighbours but no owner. A fleet's mission names a sea it can reach from its port through waters the enemy does not control, and the fleet sails there first:

Mission	Effect
Sea control	Fights for control of the sea.
Escort	Adds to sea control to keep the sea open for its side.
Raiding	Strikes enemy shipping; counts towards a blockade, best done by submarines the enemy cannot find.
Blockade	Closes enemy ports opening onto the sea.
Shore bombardment	Joins battles in adjacent coastal provinces on its side.
Amphibious lift	Holds lift on station for crossings and assaults.

Every day each sea with fleets on station resolves a naval battle. Stealthy formations take only the share of fire the enemy's best detection in that sea lets it find. Sea control is a side's share of the sea-control power present, and a sea where the enemy reaches 60% control is denied: supply lines and wartime crossings cannot pass through it.

The sea and the ground war

Supply over the sea. An expeditionary force overseas is supplied by sea, and cut off when the enemy takes that sea. See Supply.
Wartime redeployment across water needs an open sea route.
Crossings. With amphibious lift on station, brigades can march between two coasts of that sea, one brigade per unit of free lift; each amphibious group provides four. A crossing takes twice as long as a land march.
Amphibious assault. Attacking a coast from the sea carries a 40% penalty, which ground support, shore bombardment and air superiority can offset.
Blockade. The share of a country's ports under blockade cuts its taxable output and adds war exhaustion every month (1% a month under a complete blockade). It also gives the blockading side treaty leverage.

The AI

At war, AI countries send fighters over their biggest battles, tactical bombers to support them and strategic bombers against enemy capital regions, rebasing closer when nothing is in range. Submarines raid, carriers take sea control, surface groups bombard or blockade and amphibious groups hold lift for the ground army's crossings. At peace, formations return to base. Each AI country trains towards a force mix that depends on how well-equipped it is: the richest field fighters, bombers and fleets, while the poorest raise mostly militia. Countries without a coast build no navy.

Not yet in the game

No blockade or quarantine action in Flashpoints and Crises.
Nuclear deterrence does not yet depend on submarines at sea or on air defence (see Nuclear Program).
No airborne drops, air transport or reconnaissance.
Fleets in transit are shown at their port until they arrive.