Welcome to CoW.

Yes, air power is a VERY powerfull weapon in the game, even after several nerfs in the past few years, and all advanced and succesfull players make heavy use of it; and indeed, usually obliterating players who don't. When these players meet between eachother, it usually starts with an AIR battle for dominance, where the outcome very often is a prelude to the final victory on the ground as well. AA can be an effective weapon to defend large stacks, but your analysis is correct that it doesn't work when the front is long and/or balanced. The only real way to defend against air power is building an air force of your own.

I agree. In this game planes are air POWER rather than air SUPPORT which is how WW2 really worked (except maybe for battle at Falais Gap?). Planes in CoW are more like the 1990s Gulf War 'Highway of Death' powerful with planes in the game completely able obliterate entire armies on the ground in just a few hours entirely on their own, often before the other player has even logged back in to respond. With this great power though does come great responsibility! To build a strong airforce means paying for the research and airfields and if you cannot come on many times a day to move planes between targets, refuel and shuffle back to efficient stack limits etc and also watch them in case getting ambushed by AA or fighter planes or even worst (horror) your planes getting over-run on the ground because you where away for 8 hours plus which is about how long it takes for mechanised units to close the gap onto an airfield, then planes can end up been very expensive, under-utilised assets.

As KR says, most advanced and successful players use lots of planes to win and this means the tempo of CoW in your life becomes very demanding (like a hungry baby) needing you to come on every few hours, rather than say checking in once in the morning before going to work and perhaps again after having had dinner in the evening? After playing as a big plane player for 18 months i found the intensity of needing to come on many times a day led to 'burn-out' and i have taken a couple of months break! Perhaps a more relaxing/enjoyable time frame could be engineered by some sort of game mechanics whereby planes deployed to an airbase automatically become 'on call' to support armies within their range to give some sort of % bonus of support, rather than them relying on the person needing to actually come on and physically move them around every couple of hours in intensely supervised support? Gee this would need some messy game balancing to make this work and be a major change in the whole way and feel of the game play so I doubt that would ever happen. Pretty much need to accept if you want to consistently win you need lots of planes and also the time to come on 4-5-6 times a day for about 30 minutes each session (return to base, refuel, retarget, check no AA or enemy fighter response once at target).

I find a lot of players like to spam bombers. I usually counter by producing interceptors, which can defeat 5 bombers. most people completely ignore interceptors, which are actually really effective to dominate air. Its also quite cheap and easy to spam.

SP anti air also works quite well. its is about the same speed as medium tank, which is not bad. you can. put it in stacks and it will counter air. SPanti air is also extremely cheap compared to aircraft so you will have a stronger economy

Don't let them touch our aircrafts! Seriously though, they've always been OP. I would be sad if they got nerfed again cause enough spam can win games. Now who doesn't like spam?

I feel like aircraft in CoW1.5 are much better balanced than in CoW1.0.

Lets compare aircrafts with anti air in 1.5 on highest level, without considering any terrain bonuses (which could only benefit AA). 1 SP Anti Air is able to defeat 1 tactical bomber or 1 attak bomber, while still having 50% health remaining. And the tactical bomber or attack bomber costs 50% more than the SP Anti air.
If you use normal Anti Air, it even wins vs. the attack bomber with over 70% health remaining, while costing only half of the attack bomber. The tactical bomber fares a bit better against normal anti air, but the anti air still beats it with 25% health remaining, also while only costing half of it. And if you now factor in terrain or fortification bonuses its even more in favor of the anti air.

So in a direct 1on1 comparison in 1.5 anti air always counters airplanes with high cost effectiveness. Of course this is countered by the ability of aircrafts to pick and choose their targets, and the defender needing more anti airs to cover all potential targets. This makes this whole ordeal pretty balanced imo.

In CoW1.0 tactical bombers beat anti air or SP anti air in 1on1 fights, additionally to their ability to pick and choose targets. So yeah, probably OP in 1.0.

It's good to hear you say that after all those years!

In 1.0, any level tac can probably defeat even high-level tanks (due to their low aa capabilities), but in 1.5, I noticed, a tac lvl 2 cannot defeat an AC lvl 4. The rise in stats on all aspects, including aa, makes land units less vulnerable to aircraft in 1.5, which is a thing that I like. Now, granted, high level aircraft in 1.5 are still devastating, but the ground units are not as helpless as they are in 1.0 and requires more air units to take down due to their increasing hp over level.

Interesting

I think that a good and some what simple way of making anti air a more effective way of dealing with planes is to make anti air have an attack range sort of like artillery but for planes only basically an anti air will have a radius around it which every 5 minutes or 10 minutes it will attack any aircrafts with in that radius instead of the anti air having to wait until the plane attacks it

I highly, firmly disagree with this statement. Both for 1.0 and 1.5. Though in all fairness, in 1.0 I do think planes were stronger than in 1.5 mostly due to their attack/defence being equal.

I always preferred not having a lot of planes in 1.0 and also in 1.5 but I did not play a lot of maps on 1.5 yet (in my 2nd right now) so that might change. In 1.0 I usually had 10 bombers to deal with run around units and naval bombers as needed for my demands.

My number of fighters depended on my enemy, if I met a heavy plane using player this is what I did. I built enough fighters and made sure all my divisions had anti air. Bombers were more expensive than fighters so I could build a fighter for every plane my enemy had and then still have resources left to produce ground units. Just don't make the mistake of trying to fight the enemy with bombers in return.
When I had larger armies that meant that I had to have a LOT of anti air. Anywhere starting from 20% of my number of units all the way up to 40% could be anti-air or SP anti-air depending on how plane heavy the enemy was.
The secret would be in doing ranged damage with artillery or SP artillery and thus not suffering many losses among your land units throughout the game. That way even if the enemy had a lot of planes, the defeating of all my land units, with anti-air among them would always get them. Combined with planes being more expensive and knowing how to make sure I had a bigger economy this won me many games because of players believing in the absolute superiority of planes. Even in some cases that my economy was smaller, building nothing but fighters while the enemy also built bombers gave me a huge advantage, especially over time. Enemy planes would pose few problems that way. If anything, they told me when my enemy was online.
''Owh look usually troops of the country my enemy fights only die between 3 in the afternoon and 3 at night my time by its planes, well, guess who is going to be attacked at 5 in the morning on my free day?''

To explain further I will make the list of drawbacks of using planes a little longer for you:
- Losing fewer troops along the game gives a huge advantage, more than what planes give you. Using planes you will always lose some since they do direct damage.
- Planes suffer damage when dealing damage, so you do not only have to always build more to grow your army but also to keep at the same strength.
- Because they suffer damage while dealing damage, they are a hinderance to your economy. More so than successfully using ranged weapons are over a longer period of time.
- Because they also need airfields to move around they can be predictable and stress your economy even further.
- Your economy is sensitive to strategic damage due to all the expenses surrounding plane usage. Using spies to keep lowering morale and buildings in your enemies biggest goods producing provinces really hurt the use of planes. Same with disabling airfields around midnight and using your own planes at the same time to force catching them on the ground.
- Planes give away your activity if you are not careful.
- Planes can be sensitive to distractions, if they have a lot of ground to cover flying around can still take 8 hours. Attack a country in their west while you know their planes are east, when the planes are west disable as many airfields as you can and have troops ready to invade their east. Not only is that taxing on the activity of a player, it can also force mistakes like splitting an airforce into parts you can take out with your own airforce or rushing and succeeding to airfields. Multiple stacks of 3 medium tanks with 3 SP artillery (5 stacks) are not hard to make mid to late game and when sent through your country you will have choices forced upon you, maybe the lack of land units will limit what you can and can not defend.
- As you mentioned but I still wanted to say it again, planes do not capture OR DEFEND provinces.

I always found that tactically and mechanic wise planes are a very good choice in Call of War, however, strategically they are not. Their effect on the economy is what can kill them. Sure you can make it work when you have the biggest economy on the map or your enemy does not have a counter, but does that not go for pretty much any strategy?
Spamming nothing but medium tanks could also work if you can keep building enough of them, it's just that this usually does not work because players are used to building their counters. Anti tank and tank destroyers are everywhere and most troops do at least some damage to tanks. So it is easy to see that this is not a great strategy. But then, could you defeat 100 tanks? Okay, how about 500? Yes? How about 1000 then? See the point?
Most troops do not do well defending against planes, especially in 1.0. So the solution? Always have anti-air among your troops. Most players just don't though.

The bigger economy wins (or should) and if you are using planes successfully that probably means you also have a bigger economy than the other players on that map. In that case you are not looking at the result the right way. You have the bigger economy, with your bigger economy you build planes and with that you win. That's not the same as, I use planes, therefore I win. In case you do manage to win with a smaller economy your enemy's did not train up enough anti-air.

Thats my experience of it in 5 years of playing Call of War. The biggest economy wins, planes stress the economy a LOT and most players do not build enough anti-air which they have to because most units do not do great against planes.
So are planes really that OP? No! There are a lot of bad players around.