Ah, fix up invasions sure but dont make them last more than a turn! Remember its Galactic Civilizaions DA not Invade Planets AD(all day).

Aye I think the Invasion thing is a little gimmicky...but functional. There are several variables you can control. And a little secondary feature of the random # spinner is on a failed invasion you can get an idea how much was bad luck based on of the numbers you see where you landed. Hence you might want to invade with small forces hoping for a lucky draw if your odds are bad.

It's really quite complicated before you hit that button...after that it's just a minishow.

Ok, better graphics is all we need. Maybe a better "Planetary Invasions are an Immense undertaking" video.

Oh, and I stand corrected.

At the risk of being flamed, I actually preferred the way Moo3 did ground invasion.
No graphics are better than chessy graphics.
Overwhelming firepower or completely underwhelming firepower is over with in 1 turn, usually.
Varied troop types, with experience ratings.

I still say I like something brought up in Reply 2.

It isn't making invasions mini-gamey if the extended invasion can benefit by backup troops being sent in. I have no interest in controlling the ground battle, but there's no reason that my logistics capabilities should make a difference in the number of transports that can orbit the planet being invaded.

Each planet has a maximum number of ships for orbit to begin with. Taking multiple turns adds the ability for the AI to move in with reinforcements. Which then adds the requirement that the player keeps some ships in the area to intercept or risk losing due to changing statistics.
The hardest part would be to make it so that once a planet is "under attack," troop transports of the two sides are both allowed to enter orbit, but no other ships. Although I would also support having a troop transport give an advantage modifier, therefore if the enemy comes with an attack ship and destroys a transport, the troops continue to fight but at a reduced ability, therefore allowing people to partially defend planets without troops.

No need of something big to make sense. It just takes more time. If useful later, it could give some income/control over some couple turns (for Drengins, lots of looting ) to balance and get something "gradual". I know it's about space conquest but not just empty space either.


mrakomo:
As for attack factors, at worst new troops could be considered as usual with their own att factor.
I'm not sure why more would be absolutely needed but, if you insist on these extras, well it is like this anywhere: you can test the waters first, but then you're stuck with what this brings (i.e. att factor fading with time, (any?) new att fac attached to previous one if close in time, etc.).



It does not distract from the rest and seems to only make things better in its simplest way, but it could permit fun parts mentioned above e.g. blitzkrieg/normal/complete siege, invasion techniques' effects like propaganda/psyops for popular resistance or buying planetary elites, adding/gambling reinforcement, or whatnot. The most obvious potential I see is to permit to end prematurely an invasion as a "hit and run" for loot, "sabotage production and run", or slaves for Drengins.

I guess that to add all that instead of the simplest "make battles last more than 5 seconds" could form an add-on on its own.

Another thing is that tying up the fleets reduces the Blitzkrieg//Sneak Attack thing that Stardock doesn't like that much--only a player who has a vast advantage in numbers could pull it off so effectively if the fleets have to stay near the planets for a few turns to ensure victory.

Not that I don't think more could be done with invasions... but...

When I'm taking over 100 planets, I don't want to sit there choosing new invasion tactics for 25 worlds every week because it takes a few weeks to invade each planet. If they just make it last longer but require no new user input, that'd be one thing, but I'm totally against changing the basic mechanism as it is currently.

I've got enough planets of my own to deal with on a weekly basis, not including new tactics for invasions every week. That's what I pay my generals for   

Sorry, what do you mean by that?

It would not take 3-5 years to dominate a population such as Earths. Imagine Mass Drivers, (anyone seen Babylon5?), Earth would colelctively surrender all forms of government within a week, and all that would remain is small gorilla fighters. Mass drivers are insane, imagine, smashing an asteroid into earth...Thats death, maybe even an extinction level event. Maybe 1 on 1 fighting would take ages, but noone would do that, everyone would use all advantages to press for a surrender.

I think it would be neat if rather then have the transports disappear after each successful invasion, they were reusable and they would gain experience. This way you can have you "elite" invasion transports that would gain experience from planet to planet.

Of course if you lost you would lose the transport and something would need to be done about picking up all the troops again and moving on, but it would put some value into transports.

On a gameplay level this is probably a bad thing to add. Just because of the micromanagement required and the time sink required. Imagining a huge war on a gigantic map with abundant planets!

But on a realistic level invasions should take years. I mean even if the attackers do have stupidly powerful weapons like mass drivers and nukes/biological weapons. Then the defender will have similar things. So they have mass drivers so, the defender could have stupidly sturdy buildings or defence weapons capable of annihilating them.

For example the USA in fear of nuclear war is constructing a Star wars program to remove the threat of nukes. Well wouldn't you think that in a galaxy where biological weapons and mass drivers are a constant threat would any rational nation have developed ways to negate such threats?

Even when a nation has an aerial superiority its not necessarily going to win in a few weeks. Look at Vietnam, America had air superiority and used all manner of destructive weapons on the people of Vietnam but did they win? and more importantly did they win in a few weeks?

So imagine how hard to equally powerful nations would fight and how bloody and hard that fighting it would be.

Fleet A (Player 1) is taking over Planet Q (Player 2).
Takeover lasts... 3 weeks, let's say as an example.
Week 1: Fleet A's Transports enter orbit, deploy troops. Player 2 has nothing aside from the planet available, at the moment. Let's say Player 1 has 2000 troops, Planet Q has 6000. (Player 1's advantage is 5:1, so he should win by almost double).
Week 2: Player 1 moves Fleet A with Backup Transports B to assault Planet R. Player 2 seizes the opportunity and moves in with (Ships (A), Transports (B)).
A: Player 2 continues to destroy the undefended transports (considered orbiting Planet Q) from Player 1. Player 1's advantage drops from 5:1 to 3:1, making the battle about even.
B: Player 2 deploys 2000 troops, making the ratio 1:4 (troop numbers). The advantage changes because troop transports add advantage (as I said before). Advantage is now (say) 3.5:1, making Player 2 the leader.
Week 3: Player 1 realizes he made a mistake. (Maybe he sends in more troops, now, maybe he doesn't). ((BALANCING DISCUSSION: If Player 2 changes conditions, realistically and to be fair, Player 1 should be able to react. There must be a limit, however, or else players will wind up sending everything they can as backup (epic, but unproductive). Maybe each situational change adds 1 week to the battle, to a maximum of 6 weeks. Something like that.))

Therefore, with this system, Player 1 now has to keep some sort of defense fleet in the area to try and keep Player 2 from sending reinforcements (or attacking the transports), or risk losing the battle even though he had the advantage (5:1 Advantage factor, 1:3 troop factor).

Stardock has done things in the past (engine nerfage) and proposed others (right-of-passage treaty) to try and prevent the player from committing the sneak attack/Blitzkrieg strategy. If the players fleets are tied up for a (slightly) longer time with each planet, only the player that has a fleet for every two of his opponent's planets can safely attempt to overtake the opponent in two weeks (and it won't be two weeks, it'll be two planet battles).

I'm sorry, but this entire concept seems horridly involved, massively complicated, and entirely pointless.

This would be game-breaking for any of the larger maps - conquest victories would take so long there'd be no reason to attempt one. If I can flip a planet more quickly than I can conquer it, why would I bother building transports? OTOH, spore ships would see a lot more use   

Blitz warfare wouldn't even be stopped by this. The entire purpose (at least the way I play a blitz) is to take out the entire target empire at once - there would be nowhere for these reinforcements to come from. And I usually have a few big, scary fleets hanging around in case they build something before my transports get in, so any transports still alive would almost certainly be destroyed before they reached an invaded planet.

(sry, thread revival)


To be clear: it is not changing much to the quantity of management.
I see the limits to all this, but it's the computer which should take more time fighting, not the player. In its simplest form - zero gravy added - it's close to the exact same battle but less generic and being more like battles. Management isn't the point if it is as simple as ABC for players.

Easy solution: logistics brings the same usual limit on troops.



Rasori:
I get it now, great. Blitzers can't just carry on with population from one enemy planet to the next.

WIllythemailboy:
See above. It don't think it changes much to cultural flips that ground battles take a few turns, and flips already take a few turns with "discontentment" on planets. From what I understand, if anything, it could only help regarding blitz.


On my side, I just don't know why turns were chosen to be in weeks instead of years or even months, if anyone knows.

For the ship combat are weeks OK.

This is great idea, I myself had put a post about it in the GalCiv section of this called new way to fight and one of the replys was relly good, so go right ahead and see it if you want to.

I disagree. With the ideas mentioned in this thread there would be very little extra micromanagement. So long as you have space superiority, a battle would be more or less the same as it is now, just spread out over a couple turns. Unless the enemy does something that you have to react to, then there is no reason that you would ever have to see the battle screen any more than you do already.

In terms of speed, there would pretty much be no change to the overall conquest rate so long as your fleets are sufficiently strong to keep the enemy away from your battles in progress. Basically, there is no reason that you couldn't move on to the next planet while the current battle is in progress, so the overall rate need not change.

Personally, I like this idea. I think that it does add another strategic layer to the game in an area that is currently lacking without adding a lot of unnecessary micromanagement.