Spaatz: The New Goering

Spaatz does look pretty good. However, I'd say he does has a competitor:

Hartmann has level 4 ace pilot, which completely ignores anti-air defense, so a nuke that normally might do 90 damage to an annoying Soviet city will actually just do over 300. He's got explosives 4 and supply 3 as well, but inspiring 3 and desperate 4 instead of Spaatz's econ 3 and oil 4, and as an artillery base he can use these skills pretty well. Spaatz can probably travel from city-to-city better but Hartmann is probably a better defensive general.

Plus, if you buy Hartmann you also get what is easily the best navy in the game, which means you won't have to use Sansonetti or buy Mikawa.

Lol Hartmann is by far the best offensive air general in the game. Spaatz is the best air general in the rear for when you can’t eliminate your opponent in conquest or you let Hartmann die.

Spaatz’s four infantry stars are useless cause he’s pretty weak there. He’s good on a super tank cause he might crack a city and immediately take it. Less good on regular or heavy tanks. Hartmann is good on artillery also which you need, and he’s better at that than Spaatz on tanks.

Both are better than other air generals in the game. But you pay for them too.

I find that on infantry they get hit a bit hard, especially versus aliens.

Hartmann on mobile artillery is pretty fast and has great survivability. Unlike Spaatz he’s not useless against units or cities as infantry. Spaatz on motorized is ok, but can’t actually add to anything beyond air strikes. Most of the time, Hartmann would be sitting at home. But I find him more useful attacking cities if upgraded than Bai.

He is, however, useless on Field Artillery. That’s just a waste, whereas Bai has a clearer purpose.

In any event, I don’t like Spaatz’s survivability on infantry (he’s OK, that’s all he’s supposed to be), but super tank provides a way for him to actually be used while attacking (this is something Hartmann can’t do, and a problem with air power on artillery).

Also I’ve used Yama a bit on artillery against Aliens and 1960…it worked out pretty nice.

They have explosives and I use that to full benefit. Hartmann’s not nearly up to Manstein or Guvorov, but he’s certainly better than Konev and not much worse than Wielding (if upgraded to M. General).

Also, aliens. Do you want an infantry general against them?

I know that my Rocket Arty is a bit weak due to no retaliation, but that’s what other units are for. I’ve found rocket artillery very able to be defended. However the big problem with field artillery is mobility (but it could work if you’ve maxed everything out I guess). But for me, air generals are only as good as their ability to sit on a tile that has air power. You gotta get there first and speed matters, especially on nuke happy and alien scenarioes.

I opted mounting air gens on whatever they excel or whatever the situation called for.
On a side note, I was surprised to see there was no mention of the “nuke-dodge” advantage (or the myth of it) of infantry gens (since the tier of an unit is also a factor AI would consider when nuking someone, an infantry air gen should theoretically have better chance in being overlooked as a nuke target).

No, based on my observation AI’s main direction of attack when playing a country actually more or less also governs where it would throw a nuke, so dodging nuke is possible.
A prime example is the UK home front, which has almost the same direction of attack throughout 1939 to 1960, rarely nuke enemy generals approaching Scotland from NE or Ireland from Atlantic Ocean (at least not in 1950, 1960 and challenge mode 1943). Another example is Italy, which in challenge mode 1943 is very eager to nuke me (as Egypt) every time my generals set foot into central Libya, but always ignores my Goering in Madrid, EC in Ankara or Athens.

It’s worth to note that countries with multiple fronts (US in particular) check ALL directions their fronts focus on for nuke targets, so Los Angeles will nuke someone approaching from east despite being on a west focusing front, and in turn under the watch of Midway (in 1960) and Anchorage (also in 1960).

I can try, but like I said countries with multiple fronts can have very wide and/or multiple areas that AI would nuke, and place with multiple nuke-capable cities like Far East is particularly hard to sort out the ownership of a nuke susceptible zone and its estimated coverage. Another reason you hardly heard of that is because most people skip AI turns, so when their general vanished or dying they mostly put the blame on the enemy nuke-capable city (theoretical) covering that area without actually know if the AI killed him with nuke or consecutive missile strikes.

I have this thought because in multiple occasions I had left generals with well above nuke-proof hp level in cities within the missile range of enemy nuke-capable cities, but not all result in the generals in question receiving significant damage or dead. Since most of them happened during my repeated attempts for conquest speedrun achievement or challenges, the phenomenon was more obvious to me the more runs I attempted to get the best route for the final runs.

So far the cities and the nuke susceptible zones (estimated) they are responsible I know are as followed:
London - Poland to northern Balkans (Hungary in particular)
Berlin - Baltic States to Poland (tbc - northern-central Balkans)
Lyon - Balkans to Ankara (tbc - Alexandra)
Rome - central Libya (tbc - Morocco to Algeria)
European USSR (Riga, Minsk, Moscow) - Berlin, Munich to Ankara,
Khabarovsk - Siberia to Changchun (tbc - Shanghai)
Changchun - Kunming to Hongkong to East China Sea (tbc - west Japan)
Other PRC (Chungking not always capable of deploying its own nuke) - Lhasa to ENE of New Delhi, South Korea to main-island Japan * PRC is the only one I saw actively deploying nuke from strategic bombing in 1950-1960, so some nuke susceptible zones maybe smaller than I think
Tokyo - PRC south of Changchun
Tehran - Unknown, incapable of deploying its own nuke
US - still in investigation, Denver and Los Angeles are the only known nuke magnet cities (high tier units without general still got nuked)