Planetery Invasions for Galciv 2

from Stardock Forums
How exactly do you take over a planet within a month?
Perhaps if you outmatch the other side sufficiantly you should win that quickly but an evenly matched invasion should last anything up to a year. It occurs to me that Planetery invasions are stupidly basic and rushed looking. At the moment the soldiers just line up and fight until one side is utterly dead, boring.
Whats needed is a turn-based combat system with thirty rounds of fighting for each month of the game and a courage bar representing how much fight is left in each side.

If the defenders courage is reduced to zero the planet falls and the remaining population become citizens of the attacking empire (but retaining seperate racial status and thus bieng able to recreate their old empire if morale is low or ruling civ is doing badly). If the attackers break then they pull out of the system taking a percentage of troops defined by the relitive soliering values of both sides (the others are destroyed).

Courage bar is defined by the innate courage ability of the side by the morale (attackers morale decided by total approval rating, defenders by planetery morale) and of course reduced by casualties.

One change would be the possibility of invasions lasting more than one month. Basicly if neither side is broken by the end of the thirty rounds the player retuns to the main gaming screen and a small icon above the attacked system is desplayed. It is essential to mantain space supremancy as if there are no transports in orbit the attackers take penalties. If a transport on the defenders side or another side also at war with the attackers, then reinforcements can be landed to aid the defenders.

It also allows for planets with populations from other species to fall into your hands with special bonuses and penalties. The conquered planet plays by different rules, using the innate racial abilities of its own race rather than the ruling race. However they suffer a morale penalty which is determined by their loyalty rating and if you fail to keep them happy then nasty things will start to happen. Seperatist terrorists will carry out random attacks on your civ. Ships will be blown up in dock, key leaders will be assasinated and planetery improvements will go KABOOM!!!!. Finally if things get dire enough then the population will rebel and either defect to their own civ (if it still exists) or restart it if it is already gone.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
How exactly do you take over a planet within a month? Perhaps if you outmatch the other side sufficiantly you should win that quickly but an evenly matched invasion should last anything up to a year. It occurs to me that Planetery invasions are stupidly basic and rushed looking. At the moment the soldiers just line up and fight until one side is utterly dead, boring. Whats needed is a turn-based combat system with thirty rounds of fighting for each month of the game and a courage bar representing how much fight is left in each side.
End of quote


If you mean automatic turn based fighting, that would be an interesting way to wage a ground war. This way of waging war at a planetary level was brought forward from the original GalCiv for OS/2. Maybe the paint needs a little "freshening up." :)

Bill

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
planetary bombardments would be nice too... im guessing thats why it only takes 1 turn to capture a planet (your ships blowing stuff up).
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I see one grip: how are you handling case in the same month where player invade a planet with unfleet transports?

One thing that was nice in MOO1 (and MOO2 I think) was that moves were planned at a player turn and take place between turns. This means that you couldn't use guerilla tactic for invading a planet or fighting ships at strategic level. The fact that you could control your fleet only at the stars has some influence too.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Goblin Cookie, are you sure that you shouldn't be playing MoO3 instead?

GC is an abstract game. Wanting more detail in it is fine, and something I can understand. But, have you really thought about how boring what you ask for would be? In a tiny game, where you are only invading a little under half of your enemies, that means only having 4 or so invasions. Not to shaby for one or two nights play... but what about on a large or huge map, where you will need to invade those nasty Drengin/Altarians on 15 or 20 worlds? Not to mention the other races you get into an extermination war with? Just playing shepard to the 5,000 or so constructors in a huge game wears me out... but 30 turns of fighting to take over each world? Just gas all those alien civilians and let me drop my own civies down on the world. I'll have plenty frozen and ready to go, no worries.

If you are really going to go that far, then don't you need to worry about jump suits, super mecha robots (high end), infantry in armored space suits and how long they can live in them, combat vehicles and supply chains? And one citizen is not a soldier. Soldiers need training, supplies. One citizen, even lightly armed, is nothing to high tech soldiers loaded down with the latest in anti-ballistic, anti-laser, anti-kinetic armor with built in helmet limited-AI helping him do his soldering. If anything, ONLY trained and armed soldiers garrisoned on a world should count for fighting strength. Thousands of billions of people are nothing to an armed and armored occupying force. Their exoskeleton outfitted long range recon scouts alone should be capable of defeating 10 billion "primitive" militia/citizens.

How many people, armed with just their courage and fists, do you think it would take to defeat a real armored platoon? GalCiv must have at least better then SF's Hammer Slammers (heavy hovercraft tanks), and just one of the Slammer Heavy tanks is capable of destroying a city by itself. What must GC have? Bolos? Small moon sized tanks that take a supernova star exploding on them or a stellar black hole dropped on them to stop them?

Citizens are not trained troopers. They can resist all the want, but when you can just have them all run over by your own supply of "Big Os" or "Gundum Omega" or "Shogun King" or whatever big robot you are familar with, a common citizen will not even count. Unless you want to track the development of deadly STDs the invaders get from the poisoned "courtesan bio-robots" that are presented to them as a gift when they land and take over the planet.

Just think about it. How many times are you going to find it fun to worry about the invasion. Then think about having star ships that are capable of blowing up and supposedly, rebuilding worlds. Why not blow the world up, and then just rebuild it? Or use your mind control on the populace from orbit and not bother with troopers at all? Or drop an "Absolute Loyalty to the Blue Logo" super virus on the world and then land a small political transistion team to be recieved by your new citizens in one month?

One citizen does not equal one trooper. While I believe it would be fun for the first game or three to explore "ground combat" 'ships' (vehicles such as tanks, etc) and "ground combat techs" (+10 to soldiering, new GC designs available, new supression/conquest techs, etc), it would get old within 5 games, and just be an absolute bore in 10.

How do you view this as staying fresh and fun?
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Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
The thirty turn fighting system should be automatic and faught at the end of the turn. Each round wouldn't actually be noticed by the player beacause they are over so quickly. All that the player would notice would be a information screen when the month is finished. The invasion tactics would remain with a few tweaks of course, so you would be able to use the robots, the virus and the poison gas to help you're efforts.

Unless you're invading cavemen the enemy are likely to have body suits and tanks of their own and perhaps in the galciv era the entire population has militery training forced into their brains by nuero-machines. Those body suits are probably produced in there millions and rebel factions could easily hide them in basements, cupboards and under the kitchen sink.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Ah. So it won't take any more time then the current system. You just want to have a "unresolved" state possible, rather then it always being a win/lose matter then? I wonder what that would require to teach the AI how to handle that then?
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
It would mean that the AI or the player would have to defend the space around the system bieng invaded to ensure that the defenders can't destroy the orbiting transports that are supporting the invasion. Without them an invasion is very unlikely to succeed.

The possibility of rebellion by a foreign population would add a whole new element to the game. Projects that cut the dis-loyalty of the conquered race should be availible, expecially to evil civilizations including the torture pits and the thought police. As mentioned above the conquered race keeps the abilities of it's old civ but loyalty is transformed into disloyalty.
A high courage value also decreases the effect of evil civ dis-loyalty killers such as torture pits and the like.
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Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
So... the net effect is that you'd have the effect of holding back a few transports? After all, why should the new population be loyal to the old ways? So it's just a matter of the old aliens remembering the old ways. New aliens wouldn't care, cause that is just talk about how things were "back in the old country". So disloyalty goes down every turn as the old aliens die or are marginalized, and the new aliens are indoctrined in the new way of life.

Or is there anything more to your proprosal?
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
If things are bad then the "new" aliens as well as the old are going to look back to the old days and form a romantisized idea of how things were much better in the good old days.
If you look at history you'll find that peoples that are ruled over by others without major complaint suddedly become rebellious when things deteriate in the ruling foreign nation and in their homelands long after the original freedom fighters are long dead.
The dis-loyalty cutters mentioned above do make a population more loyal over time and thus will make a higher morale.
But if the planet approaches unrest then there will be trouble. The dis-loyalty simply affects the morale of the planet. It doesn't matter if you rule a planet for a hundred years and have eliminated every scrap of dis-loyalty, if the planet is in unrest it will rebel.

Rebellion is already supported by Galciv as planets often go over to the fundies and the I Leugue. It would just be more interesting to have formally dead civs rise from the ashes of their own demise.
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Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Just give me the option of mass genocide and we won't have this old morale problem to worry about. As to the Unresolved, all that's going to do is make me bring a few extra transports to make sure the matter is...resolved. ;)
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
The whole unresolved thing was designed just so people on both sides could bring in more transports and destroy eachothers transports and do dozens of other things with transports. LOL LOL
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm not sure that the U.P would let you do mass genocide, maybe it should be an option for evil civs that have left it.

Also I'd like to see peace treaties last for 2 years to stop all those peace treaties that are torn apart a month later. I know that might happen but it allows for things to develop between wars (and for arms races).