Planet Invasions - Bug or Not

It is actually intended apparently. I read someone from Stardock say that, so I am guessing it's not a bug. From what I understand, it would be too exploitable otherwise - you could just send in 1 troop and totally wreck their planet. This way, while the AI loses a large advantage, if you dont take the planet he at least keeps it's quality rating.

Be aware that it can go awry if you get (un?) lucky in your advantage roll - it happened to me yesterday taking an Arcean planet using Core Detonation. It dropped from 11 to 9 and was quite a key planet due to its position on the map.

That was a design decision. Thing is, it's exploitable whichever way they worked it.

Imagine if the bad effects of invasion tactics took effect even if you failed...

...wait for a planet to go undefended for a turn. Put 1 single guy in a 50 engine troop transport, zip across the map, use the most devestating effect, destroy everything on their entire planet and halve it's quality. Uh oh.

hmmmm this is indeed a possibly, but it also rises some interesting possibilities, could it be that by creating a custom module for a ship called planetary engineer you could infact psuedo-orbital bombard a population off a planet using just the tactics.

I can imagine using Core detonation to wipe out half the population off a planet, followed shortly with a tidal wave to clear all the building to really fubar the enemy without affecting the environment. Then send in about 250 shock troops to simple clear out the remainer and occupy the world. I see no reason why bombardment wasn't put into GC2 it makes sense that ships can attack planets with considerable accurancy, there is no need for environmental damage on a planet if you just target the industrial sector or research centres on a planet. I really think this should be an option. It would really slow colonisation since even early ships could destroy colonises with ease, making it more important to build up defences and stopping over stretching.

This indeed could be used in future mods.

J

I think a way to solve this would be for your troops to have to last a certain amount of time before the effect actually works. After that time -- and if anyone on your side is still alive -- the effects start up and are permanent.

Spearthrower,

I understand the exploiting issues with this. My question is why is it coded this way in the first place (it was identical in GalCiv 1 and I was hoping it would be addressed in part II). There's a lot that could be done here.

For example your basically wreaking planetary havoc equivalent to dropping hundreds of nuclear warheads on Earth as a comparison. So:

1) Why is this not considered an evil act that moves your Civ toward evil? It's every bit as bad as any of the moral situations you answer during the game. This could be another one. This would give evil civ's a slight advantage to using this since they are already evil.

2) Why under voting gov'ts isn't this put to a senate vote like going to war since true democracies would likely NOT want to vote to wreak planetwide havoc on a future colony given that no matter what you think about 'insert alien race here' your also in effect killing plants, animals etc.

3) As a penalty for using this, why not impose a slight overall morale penalty (cumulative with multiple use) on your whole civ (more for good, less for evil) for this kind of warfare. The morale penalty would gradually fade over several turns. Doesn't have to be a HUGE penalty but anything fixes this hosey issue of using it as it stands now.

4) Also in the diplomatic realm other races should take notice of who's using this and who's not and possibly act accordingly (send a warning not to use it again, a short term trade embargo etc) if they are good/neutral/evil.

 

All these things could easily go into a patch and not require major gameplay changes (ie no new menu's and things like that) and would get rid of what's there now which is more or less a joke and by far the weakest thing in the game (invasions in general including lack of ability to bombard as noted by another poster) IMHO .

To stop the sending 1 man thing, change it so that the damage done (or cleanup cost - see next paragraph) is based on the number of troops in addition to the attack type. Set the base value at say 1000 troops. So that if 1 man is sent it does 1/1000 of a normal damage to the planet. If 2000 men are sent it does 2000/1000 = 2x the damage to the planet.

In any case, I think reducing planet quality isn't the greatest thing anyway. I rarely care when I am pounding my enemy to dust, I just want to pound him as fast as possible regardless. If I want the planet, I can always reload those mistakes when I 'roll' too high and actually damage it. So there is no disincentive to use it. Instead why not just add a 'clean up' cost using the weapon. So the winner of the battle is forced to spend some cash over several turns to clean up the spill and leave the PQ as it is (ie they have to terraform the squares again). Maybe add another green tech to reduce this cost or even allow the terraforming.

KGB

 

 

Actual, the best way to implement this would be that the detrimental effects of invasion are multiplied by the percentage of defending troops destroyed.

So, if you attack a 20 billion world with tidal disruptors (destroys 80-100% of planetary improvements), but only manage to kill 1 billion defenders, you'd only do 1/20th the damage (i.e., destroy 4-5% of planetary improvements).

bombardment is in. The attacking civ gets an automatic bonus to his attack rating for having "air supremecy" so this means the ships in orbit are supporting the invasion.

@Brillig

Join our empire and then give me tips

Doesn't look like you need any help!

But here's a tip anyway: Never tickle a Yor.

Personallly i think that a solution could be found increasing the cost of special tactics invasions.200 bc is a neglectable quantity of money for a mass driver invasion and you would use it always if it is your choice.Same discourse can be applied to tidal distruptions and core detonation.Increasing the cost of this invasions would need also to balance the cost of information warfare, minisoldiers because they are the best choice but needs also to be more and more costly than mass drivers for example or you would use always this choice.Considering that game mechancs can't be changed and invasions in my opinion works perfectly raising the cost of invasions could be a solution not to prevent these cheese tacticts but at least to make them more costly.Raising Soldiering effectivity could be another middle solution, but probably no one of us could find a definitive one

Why is this not considered an evil act that moves your Civ toward evil?

Balancement reasons between alignments.Good civs could have too much disadvantages

3) As a penalty for using this, why not impose a slight overall morale penalty (cumulative with multiple use) on your whole civ (more for good, less for evil) for this kind of warfare.

This option could need too much balancements and again Good civs shouldn't be more weakened

So, if you attack a 20 billion world with tidal disruptors (destroys 80-100% of planetary improvements), but only manage to kill 1 billion defenders, you'd only do 1/20th the damage (i.e., destroy 4-5% of planetary improvements).

This could be a really smart solution in my opinion and would remove some cheesy tactic from planetary invasion but probably not yet the definitive one

Why is this not considered an evil act that moves your Civ toward evil

Not under many religions it's not. Killing the heretic and infidel is one of the most holy things you can do.

OK if killing your enemy by any means possible isn't an evil act, then why is it evil when I kill those damn trees or bugs or whatever inhabits planets I colonize or my homeworld?  I see ZERO difference between those 2 things. The game goes to great lengths to create artifical moral choices to define good/evil and yet ignores a nice moral delima built into every invasion. If using those invasion tactic's isn't evil then I don't want to be considered an evil civ for my colonization choices and the only time I want to be considered good/evil/neutral is at the moment I make the choice in the tech tree.

Not under many religions it's not. Killing the heretic and infidel is one of the most holy things you can do.

That may be true. But I don't think any of those religions sanction murdering a planet in terms of plants, animals, oceans etc. Since those tactics from the invasions ALWAYS drop PQ it means you are irrevocably damaging it which would fall outside that holy act.

Anyway, I will continue to use the cheese tactic's mostly because I'm lazy and want to finish off my enemy ASAP but I still see it as something that's not well designed and has lots of easy ways to improve.

KGB

 

Doesn't look like you need any help!

JOIN IT, we will move up from #10 to liek #5 or something

Have to show the Zerg empires real skill

I noticed you play on higher difficulty is why I asked. I seem to have problems when entering past challenging with my play style. Maybe my last game was jsut unlucky, but with the lenghth of these games I'm scared to start anotehr gigantic I might not finish.

When the planet lowers its habitability as a result of a successful invasion, how does that appear on the planet, do blocks become red and orange, requiring terraforming? Or do they vanish completely?

Thanks!

I guess I can find this out myself, as the invasion screen shows the blocks and buildings above the troop window. I'll just count them and invade.

Mini soldiers was toned down in v2. It would be kewl to see bombardment and specials in the animations.. maybe someone will mod that in, someday... *hint* *hint*

Vanish completely, the planet becomes lower quality (eg its number goes down)

I understand the exploiting issues with this. My question is why is it coded this way in the first place (it was identical in GalCiv 1 and I was hoping it would be addressed in part II). There's a lot that could be done here.

Given that I have none of the answers to this because I dont work for Stardock and only saw them once or twice comment on this topic, I can't really give you a satisfactory reasoning why or why not. I will, of course, try!

1) Why is this not considered an evil act that moves your Civ toward evil? It's every bit as bad as any of the moral situations you answer during the game. This could be another one. This would give evil civ's a slight advantage to using this since they are already evil.

This could get very very complicated. If a Saintly civ nukes a Demonic civ.... is that an evil act? Actually, they are probably doing the Universe a favour from their own terms. Looking at RPG's and seeing the different categories of Good alignment, there are plenty of examples as to why Good races can bring utter destruction onto Evil ones.

2) Why under voting gov'ts isn't this put to a senate vote like going to war since true democracies would likely NOT want to vote to wreak planetwide havoc on a future colony given that no matter what you think about 'insert alien race here' your also in effect killing plants, animals etc.

That would be second guessing your action. Perhaps I dont want to colonise it.... perhaps I just want to nuke it down to remove the potential for Evil to spread. I used this tactic a lot with the Drengin when I was taking a beating from the Altarians - and again against the Dreadlords in the campaign. Use the dirtiest invasion tactics possible, take the colony, strip it then destroy it. A slash and burn type scenario. Being Good does not necessarily mean that your race cares for galactic bio-diversity.... being good could imply that you would do anything to better the position of your people.

3) As a penalty for using this, why not impose a slight overall morale penalty (cumulative with multiple use) on your whole civ (more for good, less for evil) for this kind of warfare. The morale penalty would gradually fade over several turns. Doesn't have to be a HUGE penalty but anything fixes this hosey issue of using it as it stands now.

And this is where we move into the realms of divergence of opinions. We are a fairly empowered customer in this game - Stardock will listen to points and consider them and do something if they agree. However, everyone of us has their own idea about what would make this game better. We all have our "this is the single, most important thing to change".... if all player ideas were implemented, Stardock would have a total nightmare in rebalancing the game around them and the game would be far less themed as the disparity of different ideas would make it a bit of a mess. My argument to this would be.... why would my Good aligned people lose morale due to my utter destruction of an outpost of evil? Surely they'd be partying in the streets, they'd be more satisfied with their security and their morale would be high because it would be a sign that Good was winning.

4) Also in the diplomatic realm other races should take notice of who's using this and who's not and possibly act accordingly (send a warning not to use it again, a short term trade embargo etc) if they are good/neutral/evil.

Basically the same as above. If another Good aligned race saw my Good race bring utter destruction to the ancient evils of a third race..... they should be sending me gifts not penalising me!!

All these things could easily go into a patch and not require major gameplay changes (ie no new menu's and things like that) and would get rid of what's there now which is more or less a joke and by far the weakest thing in the game (invasions in general including lack of ability to bombard as noted by another poster) IMHO .

As I mentioned above - there are so many player ideas that could just get coded, balanced, tested and implemented in the next patch.... but it's really not as easy as you make out there. They have undoubtedly got lists of things to be addressed. These things need to go through balance testing, play testing (make sure its fun) and then released. If everyone expected their good idea to go in, it would be a complete mess and totally untenable for Stardock. Beyond that, that which is a good idea to one person is not necessarily a good idea to the next.

Now, don't get me wrong.... from a gameplay perspective I agree with you that this is a horribly powerful tactic and it could be reworked to some degree. I don't particularly favour any of the ways you suggest to deal with it though..... none of them "make sense" from my perspective. With a lot of these things, where it's clearly not a bug but a design choice, that we just dont like, the best suggestion is probably to say that for now, just don't use anything you think is an exploit. It's not a perfect answer no, but if it so greatly imbalances your game as to make it an exploit, then just choose not to use that exploit.