It's too easy to invade planets... We need Planetary Defenses !

Planetary defense could be nice yes, but there's so much more you can do against them transports. First you can intercept them and shoot them out of the air, before they even reach you.

I'd say your space ships are mainly your planetary defenses. So just make sure you defend your mainsystems well (defenders, battleaxes and hammers and starbases with upgrades give you the right odds).

Second if your tech is good there's no way the enemy will take over your planet so easily with one transport. I've had numerous of failed attempts on an Altarian planet, even when I had the advantage.

You could always surround your planets with starbases?

~SDC~

I tend to agree that planetary assault is too easy. Transport range is too good and the battles are over too fast, with no real negative effects should you lose a billion people in failed assaults.

Planet quality should provide a modifier, making it hard to assault planets with hostile environments makes good sense and would provide a raison d'etre for such outposts.

Also some early-tech defensive improvements would be nice...

- Planetary Militia
- Planetary Defence Force
- Planetary Missile Bases
- Aerospace Defence Force
- Geostationary Defence Satellites
- Underground Shelters
- Underground Bunker Systems
- Underground Cities

Defend your planets with ships !

Well, look at it on the bright side - it's just as easy to take the planets back

There is a penalty to losing an offense on a planet - if you used a Combat Transport, you just lost 5 Billion People (assuming you maxed out). I just waged a war with the Arcaens and took 5 systems from them, I was having a hard time finding planets that I could afford to transport people off.

I would like to see building and / or tech's that enhance the defenders capability (or maybe give them defensive options like the attacker gets to increase their odds. I don't want to see "missle bases" and such as I think they don't really add much more depth, just more clutter IMHO.

Starbases can enhance ships defense values?

~SDC~

I'm at a loss to understand the main thrust here. The initial Troop transports are so weak I hardly ever build them and wait for a little later in the game to get Combat transports that at least have some defensive rating. The ordinary Troop transport can be shot out of the sky w a Starfighter. 2ndly, even a simple defensive ship will prevent a Planetary invasion. Hence if your battle strength is sufficient, the planetary invasion will not happen. Many preceding my response have alluded to the use of battlestars etc. in your defensive strategy.

The factors for Soldiering, as well as the Planetary Defense improvement all contribute to making it harder to invade the planet.

What annoys me is the callous way the AI will invade a planet using a destructive method that leaves a once proud planet in ruins and something I'd not want to recapture! What possible good can a class 11 planet be for the AI?

~SDC~

The "main thrust" is in the first line of the first post, that once the space battle is over - ie defending ships have been destroyed - then the battle for a planet is a non-issue. Responses saying "use ships" are hardly useful in those circumstances as the pre-condition is that the defending fleet was destroyed.

Personally I think that the battle for a planet should not be a foregone conclusion yet it seems impossible to fail. Planet type, opposing force and any improvements make trivial differences at best.

There is a planetary defense tech.

M

~SDC~

Planetary defence tech doesn't help against ground invasions. It just adds defence to ships in orbit. Once those ships are gone, it's a moot issue. JavaScout's site has the tech description:

http://webpages.charter.net/trevorpowdrell/31.htm

- Ash

Well imo, once your defending ships have gone, you deserve to lose the planet Next time think more about defense Besides, it wouldnt be much fun if the AI could hardly ever successfully invade a planet

~SDC~

I like ground combat the way it is. I've seen enemy invasions repelled nonstop due to my superior ground tech/abilities. I've seen my overwhelmingly superior troops repelled by sheer numbers. Also, if you read the documentation, invading troops aren't just infantry.

I think the ground combat only exists as a mechanism for exchanging systems. If you want to retain your systems, keep ships around. I think the point is to defend your empire with your navy.

(If you toggle your mini map so it shows ships it's not that hard to see when enemies are coming and to respond - if you have ships scouting or patrolling and/or good sensor tech)

A great thing about this game is there are so many interwoven concepts to balance and manage. Keeping your systems safe with an adequate defense fleet (with adequate tech/fleet levels) is just one of em!

*scratching head* I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, but in my copy of GalCiv (and Malleus's, apparently), there ARE planetary defenses (they're called "Planetary Defenses", strangely enough) that can be built once you have the prerequisite research.

~SDC~

Whoops...I see Asharak's reply now. I get it.

~SDC~

I agree Vogar, i play on "Bright" level, and have have played 8 lost 6 i *LOVE* how intelligently the AI invade my system, half the time i think they lure me to their homeworld, only for me to realise i have no defense and im going to lose half my empire.

Ground combat is excellent, if your willing to spend the money, you can totally destoy a 10Bn army with one 10 times smaller

Im enjoying being handed my ass..makes such a change from Moo3

~SDC~

In ly last game tech was fairly low when invasion occured, the "big fleet" were at most a couple BCs plus some Corvettes, and we had simple Transports, not Cbt Transport ... Yet big homeworld planets falled easily.

What bothers me is that Transports are fairly cheap, can easily be protected by stacking them (even with Defender/Battle Axe-Hammer ships as long as they are in controlled sectors !), that "troops" come to NO cost - just put you population into them to have killers, lol, and then can prevail at 1 vs 3...

It's unfair, planets should "defend" better OR troops should be much costlier ...

They do defend well, if you letting them get that close to you so early, you need to be a tad more agressive maybe? Or if you know your gonna lose the planet in a few turns, rush build your own transport, fill it, and the second you are invaded, invade it back.

I too had your problems, until i realised i couldnt sit idly by when im at war not expecting to be invaded, that early star fighters slaughter transports, and having one battle ax will normally buy you enough time and incur enough losses on the AI to save you.

I think its well balanced at the moment..lets face it, you should be the one invading the AI Trust me, once you get the balance between attack/defence/researc.culture its much easier..but still VERY hard to win hehe.

I totally adore how im being slaughtered 8 games out of 10 on the "normal" AI level

~SDC~

If you want to win at ground combat, put some ability points into soldiering skills at the beginning of the game. Pursue techs that improve your weapons and soldiering abilities, etc.

If you aren't willing to do that, acknowledge that ground combat is your weakness, and avoid it at all costs.

- Ash

Nirvana_CN
You didn't understand my situation : I AM the one invading LOL !! Some AIs invaded each other as I watched too, but I'm pretty safe myself (lots of Battle Axes/Hammers).
I'm at Beginner level ..

Ahh ok gotcha pdifolco!

well i play on "Normal" and have a really tough time invading planets, i have only won 2 games out of 11 so far, i find if i manage to defeat their ship defenses, i really need a LOT more troops than them to win, and using the tech's like "mini soldiers" was too expensive at 3000.

I havent tried the beginner level, but im sure the AI has a lot of penalties at that level

~SDC~

Much in the same way that you build starships, you should be able to build orbital defense systems, such as orbital mines, phaser arrays, surface to space missle batteries, etc... Once these are built then you should be able to see then in the planetary window where you launch ships from. These of course could never leave orbit, but it would be a great new element instead of an abstract planetary defense bonus. And much like the shield shows up when ships are in orbit it would be the same once you built one of these planetary defenses. I.E. they must be destroyed before you can invade.

~SDC~

Hello everyone. (sorry for the future english spelling mistakes: I'm a brazilian married to a russian and living in France...)

There is something I don't quite understand in planetary invasions: does the whole population of the planet count as defending soldiers? If so, if I understand correctly, then the only way to take a planet is killing everyone in it !? :notsure:

And if that's the way it is, how many trasports does it take to manage to succesfully invade a planet? I have a fundamentalist planet that just appeared. I tried to invade it.
My first 1000M men were slaughtered. I thought, "bad luck, let's call in some more volunteers...".
Another 2000M. Bloodbath (my blood).
Then a last one with 1500M. (i considered that my previous atempts would have weakened the enemy).
Nope.

That's when I noticied that I had the whole population against me and stopped trying, since this planet was now more populous than the one I was extracting those brave volunteers from. So right now invading doesn't seem too easy to me.

One last question: if it takes let's say 5-6 transports full of troops to take this planet, if I stack them as a fleet and send them all, will I get a huge invasion followed by a glorious victory or 5 - 6 not so little defeats?
Thks for your help on this.


I must say, even if a bit off-topic (but praises can never be too much off topic anyway)this is really a great game. I had started this genre (strategy) several years ago, with the Ancient Art of War. And more recently with Shogun, then Medieval Total War, also very good games. But I must admit that the support here, from devs, is much much better (Medieval had only one patch, and it took 3 months (:( ). And the kind of support we have here does make a difference. I'm even thinking about having the Drengin Net just in order to thank them for paying that much attention!

~SDC~

I do NOT think you can stack transports which is something I wondered about also.

Yes, the whole planet defends.

I am confused though. About how many troops to defending population do you need to take a world? You guys seem to do it with 1/10 the troops necessary but I had to use 1-1 and mass drivers to take the drengin world. Does morale affect?

Im 99% sure you CAN stack Combat tranports, i have invaded with 8 oe 9 Bn this way to take out big planets.

~SDC~