How do the A&A Bombers work exactly?

I've noticed sometime they attack until they are gone, other times they attack until the other side is gone, sometimes they stop leaving both bombers and opposing troops.

itsnotatumor wrote:

How do the A&A Bombers work exactly?

I've noticed sometime they attack until they are gone, other times they attack until the other side is gone, sometimes they stop leaving both bombers and opposing troops.

The Bombers are an artillery border with offensive advantage (85% vs. 35%).  What you see in gameplay is a result of 3 things: Simulgear, artillery border, and unit count.

With Simulgear, the probability of each attacking unit "killing" a defensive unit is based on a percentage.  In this case, each Bomber has an 85% chance of scoring a kill.  Each defensive unit has a 35% chance of scoring a kill.  These are just probabilities, so your Bombers could score 0% theoretically or 100% and same with defenders.  In the cases where you attack a large stack with 5 Bombers, the defender typically has enough units to kill 5 (even with 35% probability with each unit).  This is why you see all of them disappear.

With artillery borders, you can attack to exhaustion but cannot actually capture the territory.  So in the case where you kill all defending units, the defending territory will go to zero but since you cannot capture it ends the attack with some of the Bombers left.

The case where you see both Bombers and opposing troops left is a combination scenario where the defending stack was not large enough to kill all Bombers and yet large enough to not go to zero from the attacks.

Thanks Atilla. Good to know.

So strategically if options are equal you want to hit smaller stacks in order maximize retention?

Yep...or, in the case of attacking a capital, you are weakening it for later ground assault.