Greetings Stardockians,
Lets talk about invasion. I know that this feature is being reworked. I wanted to simply touch on some things that we had in the past and some things I would like to see moving forward. All of this is prefaced with a sincere hope that if changes occur that the Ai will both utilize and maximize all the options it has without sacrificing other aspects it also needs to focus on (research, diplomacy and trade.). Invasion and warmongering can easily be considered for some players 20% or 50% of your gameplay in GCIII. I would like to see more done with the Ai on how it conducts invasions and more importantly how it defends. I don't need a fancy screen with pew pew, but I am more interested in the behind the scenes work of how attk and defense work and to see a real need for all players (ai and human) to seek out invasion and more importantly defensive techs and buildings.
Currently I do not progress past getting Bio warfare. Any thing else up this tree is simply not needed. With Bio warfare I can take a transport with the smallest amount of troops (.5) and take ANY planet I desire. There is simply zero need to progress further.
As silly as this sounds, I think some Ai should be hard coded to get one of the invasion attacks and one of the defensive ones. Even if the human knows that the Drengin will always pick Bio warfare and defend against planetary bombardment, he still would not be able to also contend with the Yor who would use Planetary bombardment and defend against Bio. One of those ai are going to pose serious problems for a human as he can only pick one to beat and not both (initially, unless he can trade for them).
There is also no need to seek out and research any defenses or defensive buildings, none. In games past researching the Tarquan training facility was one of my major focuses as it gave me a soldiering you needed against some races. Lets bring it back! Also currently the next tier of Invasion techs are just not needed, (Tidal disruption and Core detonation), both are great but not needed in the slightest.
In Gal Civ II I had games against the Yor or the Korrath where I need 2 or 3 fully loaded transports {and} to bombard the planet to the stone age before I could take it, Oh those glorious games of days past!
Obviously Paul and Brad are having meetings this morning as we speak on how to bring such fun into Gal Civ III's invasions. The api hooks are there. The commands can be done, how each ai will react to invasion and how they will chose to defend is what both of those developers need to figure out.
Some observations I have made so far in dozens of Insane map games are this:
On what difficulty are you playing? Anything below Godlike is TOO easy, but on Godlike, by the time I get to the point where I am finally capable of being on the offensive (around turn 250 on Gigantic+ maps), the AI do have a few planets with a high enough population and decent improvements to where I have to use Core Detonation or Tidal Disruption with an invasion force of 3+ to reach a reliable rate of success. On any other difficulty, however, Information Warfare is just too good..
Improvements that i would really like to see is smarter AIs in general, without needing a ton of cheats to make them competitive. Maybe then they would have better improvements built and a higher population cap on more planets.
Although, I do agree that defensive/military improvements are absolutely useless besides increasing the level of my Hyperion Shrinker. There is rarely a transport anywhere near or headed toward any of my planets.
I have been playing on Gifted. All of these points should apply and start at 'Normal' and get progressively harder as we go up the difficulty level.
In my current and last game (both godlike insane maps), I have an AI with one planet that can't be invaded or culture flipped. I abandoned the last game due to a bug, but the only way to take the AI out was to use the benevolent ideology trait that makes all planets in your zone of control flip. I don't remember the AI's race in that one.
In my current game, it's the Yor. I've taken all but this one last planet and have used individual transports and fleets of transports (6b pop each ship) and they won't fall. They get down to 41.2 b pop and just stop dying. I've used bio and core detonation over and over and I'm not touching their buildings or pop.
Another AI can only be taken with Core Detonation and 6b pop transports. Nothing else will scratch their paint. I'll assume the other remaining AI will be essentially the same.
I'll eventually get the ideology trait and take them all out. Invasion isn't always a given.
Mottikhan,
That is very good news. What difficulty are you playing at? I am happy to hear you are not taking the planet easily. This is great!
I still would like ideology points per invasion.
Uh-oh, I already used my culture flip ideology. Time for kamikaze transports.
MottiKhan played on Godlike, the highest difficulty. It is in the parenthesis of the first sentence.
What we really need is a difficulty rework. Unfortunately, right now, there is a huge disparity between godlike and every other difficulty. In my last game on the difficulty just below godlike and a gigantic map, I purposely waited around for every other race to catch up to me, but they never did. I ultimately got a culture victory with an Ascension victory just ten turns away just as everyone else started touching on Ascension age tech. On godlike mode, I am the one doing the catching up for the first 200 turns.
In addition to improving the whole invasion experience, I would like to see more invasion techs, including ground support ships, as a new ship class that would be required for a successful invasion fleet.
I would also like to see other things like battle mechs, armored jump suits and a variety of other items that would enhance invasions added to the Military tech tree. The whole deal of sending 1 or more transports and using a short laundry list of choices, makes invasion a ho-hum part of the game.
I'll tell what I would like is the cut scenes from GC2 reworked or a short video of the battleground with the relevant races fighting? please?
I have only played a few games, still on normal, but invasions are way over powered when everyone first gets them. The only counter is to kill the transports in space (or invade first). I guess that makes you bone up on sensor tech for a change.
One thing that could solve the issue is to make the populations less interchangeable. Kill off all the Thalians? Good luck using the machinery designed for bugs. Or eating the Drengins' meat plants, lol. Destroy the natives' buildings? Then the remaining natives die. Keep the buildings? Native pop grows, you don't. Guess what happens when you are outnumbered 10 to 1? Etc. Invasion should be hard. All of these things should have techs to mitigate, but on somewhat exclusive tech lines so you can't just tech around it.
I'd like ideology points per invasion too.
On that last game, I was playing as the Krynn on godlike. Metaverse says suicidal. The Yor surrendered to the Drengin and I still couldn't take the planet, so I wiped out everyone else and used the benevolent ideology trait to flip the planet. It was my only option for a conquest victory.
I only got 606 points for that slugfest. It was harder than all of my other games combined. The Krynn are a pretty weak race. Maybe the weakest. I would rate it at closer to 10,000.
I really hope that when they rework the invasion issue, we don't get stuck with 1 turn decisions. They are both unrealistic, and not very fun. You should be able to answer an invasion, and reinforce an ongoing one while on the offensive. (this could also help with the "lost" ships while attacking, let us keep our ships) It really should take multiple turns conquering something as massive as a whole planet. I'm also not sure if you should spend planetary tiles on defense, the buildings should upgrade the colony starter thingie or something instead, and it shouldn't be possible to get planetary defense or resistance over 100%. (the immune case, I mix up these stats a lot, but you get the point)
Boosting the basic defense power should compensate and make the soldiering traits more viable. You should need the first tier soldiering or starting ability to conquer a "normal" planet with just 1 basic transport etc. then defensive buildings can negate that, and you need tier 2 soldiering or more transports, just something that actually makes these traits understandable and working
TBH, the system they have (as with most things in the game) is workable, but the balance is presently off.
As I understand it, currently defense is calculated by taking the planetary population, multiplying it by Resistance, and then dividing it by the number of tiles on the planet. The problem with that is, it's a double-nerf on population - If I have a 20-tile planet with 100 population and 25% resistance, I end up with about 1.25 defenders per tile.
A 6-pop transport landing on this planet will lose defense % of his troops, and then the remaining ones will all be deployed against 1 tile at a time. Even invading a planet 75% defense, a single transport will land 1.5 troopers. Given attacker casualties rates are always lower than defender casualties, that single transport will likely be able to take 5-6 tiles before it is wiped out using conventional warfare. With any of the tactics which decrease resistance further, or anything that increases soldiering (which acts as a multiplier to attacker numbers), this becomes an automatic wipeout for the defender.
So here's what I think:
1) Defense is too powerful. Defense stat should pretty much never go over 50%, and getting it that high should require a lot of effort (like wonders and player-unique buildings). By combining an Elerium Defense Shield with an upgraded defense shield, you can put Defense to 125%, making a planet effectively immune to conventional warfare, planetary bombardment, and info war tactics, since they cannot reduce the defense to under 100%. This should Never Happen.
2) Resistance is too weak. Much too weak. It is basically operating as the counterpart to soldiering, but where soldiering starts at 100% resistance starts at 25%. This can be completely nulified by some of the invasion tactics. Info War, Planetary Bombardment, Tidal Disruption and Core Detonation can all reduce Resistance to <0%, which should also Never Happen.
3) Invasion tactics should not be on specialization techs. This may be controversial, but the fact is, if you make some unlucky choices you can be put in a position where you cannot invade some planets on a non-tech-trade game. If I throw 100 transports at a planet, that planet should fall regardless of if I use a stupid frontal assault or bombard the planet to bits; the real difference should be in my own casualty count. Specialization techs should instead offer choices between resistance-boosting effects and soldiering-boosting ones.
If we can get to a situation where Defense is never higher that 50% and Resistance is never lower than about that (but can go over 100%), then we might start seeing a more interesting invasion game with genuine arms races on the surface as well as in space.
I'd recommend modding the defensive buildings to require resources. That way you could build an invulnerable planet but would have to protect your resource bases or see your planetary defenses collapse - more like a siege.
I do like the idea of requiring multiple turns, with both sides being able to commit additional resources to the fight. The defender could be limited to 'mobilizing' a percentage of the population each turn, the attacker could commit more transports and the map would (over 4-5 turns or more) change color.
As it is, I never research anything past biological warfare. Fill a transport up with 3.0 soldiers and that's enough for most planets.
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