Airborns were nerfed, they were a way overpowered before, cause they had not deploying time. Now airborns are good only for island without naval bases, or grabing empty provinces or quickly reinforcement for running battle or deflection destraction strikes. Also something usefull if you have already strong strikeforce without airborns.

Airborne are quite useful for rush attacks. Paired with strike fighters or helicopters, they can be devastating. My personal strategy of choice for airborne is to fly a patrol over the area I'm attacking (I usually use them to quickly seize cities), or just attack if I see the radar dots or units already. The airborne fly in to find reduced or nonexistent enemy force, and voila! You've quickly capped a city! Esp useful since once the opponent counterattacks, your troops will have the entrenchment bonus. If you want to defend against enemy strike attacks on your airborne, or against counterattacks, air assault in some SAMs or artillery! Those can be air assaulted even at the same time as your airborne troops, and are incredibly useful because of your ability to deploy them quickly via that system.

use paratroopers combined with attack aircraft that clean the area
I also use infantry combined with artillery
Combined tanks with mobile artillery, mechanized infantry and AA
Airplanes are essential to eliminate the enemy.

but some forumuser can not read and repeat it two times:
and your last question:
Airforces definitly must have, motoinfantry at least lvl2, better lvl3 or 4 is good for grabing provinces and interrupt revolts. mech ionf. is stronger in battle, but weaker for interrupting revolts and expensive.

tanks are powerfull, but very expensive and useless vs airforces. Since insurgent are invisible it is good idea for special forces or lvl3 CRV's.

I'm so hyped about how special forces are becoming more useful!

Special forces are already a must in every of my (public) games.

What do you use them for? They do definitely have scouting uses, I'm just not quite sure how to effectively use them to their maximum potential. What uses do you apply them for?

Besides the scouting, their wooping 50% in all hard terrains as well as their "move silently in the ennemy lands without conquering anything" make them an excellent "trick card" for many situations.

So far, here are the cases where i used them successfully. Of course, it's not "ultimate tactics", or "damn against me it wouldn't have worked !". It's just situations created by context.

- "Spotters" for artilleries in setting where the anti-air didn't allow air to ground recon. The Artillery was then able to shoot without be seen. The special forces here didn't attack. They just stood there, and gave vision over the ennemy artillery. The artillery exhange was much more easy. In this case, my special forces were killed when he did a full reco of my country through sabotage. Obviously, 3 special forces under fire of 6 artilleries... :D. They did their job, however, as nearly 10 artilleries were traded with my own guns.

- "Ambushers" : In many cases, an army will dodge mountains, city, and suburbs, that slow it down. They will prefer forest or plains. Plains are usually the Kingdom of Armored units, but forest are DEFINITELY NOT. I like to make a false attack on a point where i know the opponent will remobilise through grounds, in terrain where i can set up special forces in forest to intercept the quicker support units, or infantry units. Even in early game (and the special forces tend to get better in mid), a special force in forest will deal 10.5 soft damage soft. A wolfpack of 2-3 special forces can easily manhunt isolated reinforcements. And in late game... well... i used last week a group of 8 against a stack of 10 infantries that were moving through mountains... The stack was instant-exterminated, leaving a very vague clue of the presence of my stealth units. Those units were able to retreat after exterminating more groups, but sadly, i lacked air support. The hélicopters were attacked once. 2 losses. Funny thing is... in late game and with the 50% bonus, the special forces are really well equipped to deal with light armored, if they attack them in good terrain. Even the combat recon vehicle isn't that efficient against them (35 HP / 11 soft damage, vs 25 HP / 10.5 hard damage ---> tactically close, right ?)

- "Colonial Stormers" : From the early, the special forces have this ability to ignore defenses (especially bunkers) and to deal maximum damages. When you make a bunker, you usually do so in order to reduce the garrison and use it elsewhere. The reasoning is "less men, more protected". The special forces disrupt that. In less important areas or occupied cities far from the core, this tends to be very usual. Coupled with an airborn, it may become a real threat in the borders of the player's empire (and a big bother) for a minimal investment. The goal is usually not to conquer but to force him to come with troops, and handle insurgents.

- "Ghosts" : There is a place where i usually see people NOT CHECKING there are stealth units... and it's in the armies. I like to put special forces in "not so threatening moving groups" that keep the ennemy confident in his defense (bunker, or superior army). If i did well my job of putting pressure elsewhere, he will be satisfied with the "easy win" and not try to bring back up for the "overwhelming kill". When the special forces assist in the assault, ignoring the bunker and very good to kill def infantry... i usually have some hours to hope to make the city fall. This works pretty well in very "messy" theaters of war where the ennemy is really active on trying to shot down any helicopters trying to approach, but hasn't bet on artillery enough to hope to kill you from afar. He then of course need to set a line to forbid passage from the regular armies, and your "ghostly buffed" group is the only real one to attack, the other merely "dancing" to look like a decisive assault.

- "Saboteurs" : Putting a group near a city from where comes a air group. Usually the planes are let in patrol mode. If the airport is destroyed, they will be automatically rebased. They may also just be in an attack, or in patrol over other territory ---> I sacrifice some trash unit (national guard <3) to make the squadron uses it round and get back to base for refuel. When they get there, 15 min refuels, i make the special forces jump on the city. Even if the city has a consistant garrison ( = my special forces will die), the aircraft tend to be targetted in priority... and so, they will probably suffer horrible casualties, paying in a very good trade the sacrifice of special forces.

- "Expendables" : Sometimes it's just an opportunity, a question of "those 4 tanks must not exit the forest and join the plain combat where i'm close to exterminating his supports units and open the way for my aircrafts". It's then just about "hold as long as you can", and to this use, the special forces are a very good "surprise bumper" for tactical situations. They will die horribly in a awful trade (6 special forces lost to kill one tank), but on the other side, the TDS, not reinforced, died. And the next sound the ground troops heared was the jet engines of the strike fighters exploiting the hole. (well, lost 2 anyway cause of the Mobile DCA stacked here and there... BUT, the missile payload was delivered)


Of course, those usages are rendered totally useless by gold. On a general matter, i just suggest to forget any kind of stealth playstyle when against someone who golds, because obviously, the main parameter of "being stealthy" isn't relevant in any way.


It's also very vulnerable to :
- Recon + Artillery combo
- other special forces, lol
- people with the good habit of using task forces instead of doomstacks. You kill one taskforce, but then the other track you down, and the player will ultimately get you, especially if you panick and try to evac through helicopter (you may have a chance if the helicopter is stealth, but in my games, it wasn't)

It is a pity you can not like same post twice...

Lol. The thing is, the special forces are really an unconventional unit to use, and i can understand that if one tries to use them as a regular unit, they get disappointed. It's a bit like helicopters, or some artilleries. But they are definitely my "preferred" unit, not because it's the most efficient, but no other unit gives me so much satisfaction when tricks and tactics work.

airborn can conquer, not the special forces. But the special forces are stealth.

Nowadays, i use airborn if i managed to get some kind of air superiority, to conquer mountains and make quicker the advance of ground troups. Also for some direct attacks on cities. Coupled with special forces, however

Also special forces is important, because they can see other stealth units. In the moment mostly insurgents, but Germanico wrote about an update where more units in areas like jungle or monains are stealthy.
I use the airmobile infantry also to conquer cities with airbases and then I can transport the main army with airlift. The last night I attacked cairo (egypt) so. With the suez canal I need much more time to conquer from Israel to egypt. But with airmobile infantry I conquer during the night from Israel to Cairo.