Aircraft Carrier (Civ6)

The Aircraft Carrier is an Atomic Era naval carrier unit in Civilization VI. It requires .
In the Gathering Storm expansion, the Aircraft Carrier does not require any strategic resources.
* Attributes:
** Can melee attack and take cities.
** Can carry up to two air units (more with s).
** Cannot combine to form Fleets or Armadas after being trained.
== Strategy ==
The Aircraft Carrier is absolutely necessary for anyone intending to fight overseas. Early air units in particular do not have enough to re-base across an ocean, so an Aircraft Carrier can dramatically boost their mobility.
Aircraft Carriers can attack, but only in melee. However, their Combat Strength is low compared to other naval units of the same era, so use them as they are designed: to carry aircraft across the oceans, and maybe once in a while, to deal the last hit to capture a city. Do not stick them in the middle of the action; always escort them with other ships, or just park them somewhere in the deep ocean and let your planes make quick work of everything in their massive range (and remember, if the Carrier is destroyed, all aircraft on board will be lost as well). Usually, the planes are much more important than the additional hit a Carrier itself is able to lend to the fight. Unfortunately, this means that the Aircraft Carrier will not have many chances to gain XP. What you can do is try to wear down enemy ships with your main fleet, then finish them off with the Carrier when safe.
Air fighter units can still deploy away from the base Aircraft Carrier like normal. Additionally, fighter units' deploy range will dynamically change to adapt to the position of their mother ship when the Carrier moves, granting these airplanes a drastic increase in mobility.
Luckily, despite having the lowest of all late-game naval units and the fact that air fighter units cannot deploy into the fog of war, the Aircraft Carrier will adopt the highest value among all airplanes on board. However, since the of aircraft is always smaller than their , it is helpful to bring along a "spotter" to help fighter units deploy farther away from their mother ship if needed.
Although individual Aircraft Carriers cannot be combined to form Fleets or Armadas, they can still be upgraded to Fleets or Armadas if used to capture a city by the Zulus.
== Civilopedia entry ==
== Trivia ==
* The Aircraft Carrier's model is based on the Yorktown-class aircraft carrier.
* The Jet Bomber can be landed and launched from Aircraft Carriers in-game. In real life, Aircraft Carriers are not large enough to reliably station most modern strategic bombers, as there is not enough space to consistently land/take-off.
== See also ==
* (Aircraft) Carrier in other games