What invasion tactics do you use?

I have never used any of the optional stuff in the library, so I can't comment about them. In all my 20+ games on various settings, I have never seen the need to use any of the invasion tactics other than the standard attack. Most of the really powerful tactics cost quite a bit of money, and those that don't significantly damage either the infrastructure or PQ of the planet, both of which are very important. IMHO, it's better to loose a few more soldiers and get a productive colony than to have tons of soldiers colonizing an empty shell of a planet...and often having low to zero morale within a few turns.

So, provided you out populate the AI, you usually can come up with numerical superiority fairly easily. BTW, this is on Bright or above AI settings, medium or smaller maps.

I use tidal disruptors, information warfare and mass drivers.
The best is standard attack, though.
Tidal disruptors are very good for sharp fights as you lose no PQ.
Information warfare is very expensive, but gives you some additional population. It may be the most effective form of warfare. It is very handy when it would take forever to bring back other troops to invade the world with other tactics.
Mass driver is the poor man's terror star, and works well enough. Desperately want to kill the last Drengin planet before their overlord destroys your fleet? Mass drivers.

I usually pick on people I have a technical advantage on or outgun significantly - my pop would beat theirs in a fair fight. I've found that taking soldiering +10, exploring with a scout, and inventing soldiering techs gives me all the edge I need.

I also invade a lot so that I couldn't afford the tactics. I'd recommend skipping them unless you are in a special situation - i.e. endgame.

My favorite invasion tactic is the Terror Star in the end game. I've been told it can hurt your score, but it's fun. Ironically, ever game I've employed this tactic in I have been Chaotic Good. The AIs have to trust you to let get in range (or be desperate). In one game I destroyed 7 star systems with no effect on morality.

Why should using Terror Stars affect your morality? In a standard invasion, you're supposed to wipe out every man, woman and child on the planet anyway, plus billions of your own troops, so it's just as genocidal either way.


~SDC~

Do you really wipe out everybody on the planet?

I thought so, but that message about "setting up a provisional government" confuses me... that's what you'd do if there were survivors left.

I hate loading transports, hate when they don't max load, hate having to rally new transports.... I spend lots of cash on invasions all the time when it saves lives -- that should be lost on the next invasion.

My favorite invasion tactic? I prefer to make sure I have a soldiering edge over the enemy first, but that isn't always possible, especially for an early rush. Then send a test transport to see what kind of odds I am facing. If I win, great. If I lose, they lost some people too. Then send in the troops. If I got a 2 to 1 advantage, then I will make sure I come with at least 50% of the planet's pop. Probably a little more. Then I just go straight up the middle with choice #1: traditional warfare.

This works out well for me since I usually have stacks of transports ready by mid-game to handle any brush fire wars. Win or lose really doesn't matter. If I can knock a system from, say, 20 billion to 3 billion then the reinforcement stack can clean up a few turns later.

population is only taxpayers, right? non taxpayers aren't counted.

Tidal Disruptors! The AI outpopulates me almost all the time (setting to high?). Anyway, TDs always give me that extra advantage I need to take the planet without damaging it. Buildings can be rebuilt. PQ is everything.

I seem to remember someone saying they used TDs to cut the numbers then, traditional after that. Apparently that caused no building loss. Bug? Maybe, I have not tried it myself.

~SDC~

If you're sending in a fleet of transports, you have many options.

You can unfleet and send in one transport at a time. Use one of the "nasty" invasion tactics if you expect to lose. If you lose the invasion, you don't damage the planet. However, you have to pay the tactics fee each time. This tactic helps if you're way outnumbered and don't want to damage the planet.

You can leave the transports in a fleet, and invade as a fleet. You only have to pay for the invasion tactics once! This is a lot cheaper than sending in the transports one at a time. You still only lose as many transport ships as was necessary. For example, you send in 5 fully loaded transports for 5000 troops. You have 1800 casualties. You lost 2 transports, have 200 population on the planet, and have 3 transports still in the adjacent square.

Nothing to do with invasion tactics, but to invasions, another implication of fleeting transports is that your risk/reward is magnified due to the fact that your entire invasion force would attack based on the single random number roll.

If you roll for each transport (ie attack unfleeted), it is more likely that you would get a more average invasion result.
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I find invading a planet with ground forces a pain in the butt IMHO... and if I need to I usually do it around the middle of their empire to split them up (this worked well against an acrean-subnorm)

It IS fun to blow up stars and to use mass drivers. problem with terror stars is that it takes them 20 years to get there usually with mass drivers I win easily and then i abandon the system.

my favorite way to take over a system is the mobile culture starbase, I load up a terror star with some attack bonuses for the escorting fleet (if need be) crank up the defenses, and max the culture influence. I have found this is effective 100% of the time and the only downfall being that it takes time to contruct and time to get to the destination, if you got the cash build multiple of these and you can dominate them without a single war, aim for a cultural victory, or force them into surrender by making their production abilities sub-standard(due to the lack of planets they have left)

besides, transports take a lot of useful population of mine
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Maybe it's just the tax payers you have to kill... I remember in the early games I played, when I captured worlds, they'd be grossly overpopulated when I got them, from my invasion force combined with the original people, but now the planets seem to end up with only a small population. Was this a code change? Or is it that I'm now playing on harder difficulties and they always have such high morale that everyone fights to the death?
In GalCiv2, I think that you should be able to have captured worlds with rebellious alien populations...

Last time I played, I did pretty well against tough enemy worlds using core detonation, with a group of transport ships that wasn't quite big enough to capture the world. The core detonation meant that the ships killed twice as many people as they normally would, and the fact that they failed meant that the planet wasn't damaged, and it only cost 500. Then I'd attack with normal ships and win with minimal losses.



~SDC~

I agree with Matthew. In the very limited time I've been playing, I've had great success with core detonations, rarely losing a battle. The PQ does drop some, but often it's fixable damage with soil enhancement and habitat watchamacallit. The tidal flooding is pretty cool as well but your advantage isn't as great.

Matthew, planetary invasions are always to the last man. You must have flipped your earlier conquests by culture thus preserving those poor souls.

Still seems that most of the default invasions are too nasty to use.

Tidal disruptors doesn't hurt PQ, but it wipes out basically every building... makes it like colonizing a fresh world. The others hurt PQ so much.

I don't do the "1 transport with mass drivers and lose" thing, my personal opinion is it's too cheesy.

Terror stars are a neat idea, but they are so ridiculously slow... when I was dependent on them, the wars would drag on forever.

I was playing this morning and decided to use only tidal disruption for invasions. Out of three systems I lost 6 improvements total. Not bad, I'm thinking this may be my new tactic of choice. I also like the advantage bonus/PQ aspect of tidal disruption.

I stopped using Tidal Disruptors when I wiped out about 3 capitals on a planet.

Doesn't seem like many people are using the expanded invasion tactics from the library.

yeah,

when attacking capitals it's a good idea to lay off on the tidal disruptors: normal tactics are best

information warfare is ok, but unless moral is around ~45 it doesn't really do much: a bit on the expensive side and usually requires destabilization

mass drivers are great at just destroying planets and if you think about it, it isn't cheesy to use a suicidal force just to attack using mass drivers. Think of it as planetary bombardment.
speaking of which the AI should do this once in a while

core detonation is good too. the key attribute for all of these is that they are cheap.

the expanded options all have specific circumstance where they would be useful

Okay, so you can have more than one type of capital at a time, as long as you capture them from other races? Do the bonuses still apply for both?

#19 Bairman,

Yes. Any Capitals on a planet you capture (or trade for) stay active and contribute their bonuses to that world's production. In this manner, you can have multiple Econ, Poly and Sci Capitals operating in your Empire.

And I, too, only use Standard Warfare. The other options just cost too much, and I usually have extra TR's cruising around, anyway. (Although I have found, with the higher population limits and TR costs of 1.05, I'm now building only about 1/3rd the number of previous games.)

~SDC~