Soldering worthless?

Space superiority gives the planet invader a advantage, its assumed they have complete control of space around yr world.

After all if they did'nt u would have blown the invaders to space dust long before they reached yr world would'nt u?

A couple of things. First, though it's been pooh-poohed on this message board before, it's very important to keep your population as high as possible. That means keeping taxes quite low for a long time and researching farming techs up to the max. A planet might have 50% approval, but if it's also got 30 billion people, it's practically invincible. There are ways to keep planets from ever rebelling, no matter what the approval rate. I've had planets at 50 billion people at 10% approval for a couple of months, and it's been fine.

Second, the soldiering bonus is wonderful. I play a custom race, which gets 20% soldiering at the start, and then I research all techs that increase the soldiering bonus. When you invade another planet with that advantage, you can have 3 billion take out 11 billion easily. You'll notice that your enemies can't do that, even though you're disappointed that the bonus doesn't always work as you'd expected. In my current game, I've had the Torians, with a far superior military, invading my planets for months now. They haven't taken one yet. My population is always high, and the huge soldiering bonuses, though not giving me the ultimate advantage when invaded, have given me enough that they just can't get over the hump to take a planet. So, I'm surviving in an environment in which the Torians totally control the space around all my planets (huge galaxy). That's just from pop and soldiering. In other words, don't take it lightly. Sure, I'd love to control space, but since I've just fought a terrible war to wipe out the Yor, I have to fall back entirely on defenses at this point. If I didn't have the pop and soldiering bonuses, this game would have been over long ago.

I'd love to hear comments from those who have different strategies on this. However, those who say, "Don't let a planet get over 20 billion pop," or whatever their number is, probably haven't had to deal with this kind of total domination from an opponent's military. Sometimes it's only population that will save you, and that you will eventually parlay into outstanding invasion forces.

I usually keep mine at 15B, and I also get all the soldering bonusus and techs and planetary defenses that I can. Tri-Quan is important, and I buy it as soon as I am able to. And I too very seldom have a planet taken. Sometimes a planet I have just captured is attacked and retaken because of the low population. But if soldering is high enough even that will be rare.

It's great when you're the one doing the invading. 1000 troops can take out several times their own force if the AI hasn't been johnny on the spot at researching its own soldiering bonuses.

Right. With high soldiering means less troops to take a planet, meaning smaller and cheaper ships. I use strictly tiny-hulled invasion craft. Advanced Troop Mod and some engines. One per planet. If I need more troops, information warfare.

Soldiering is awesome.

I agree, getting all the techs as well as Tir-Quan is important. I usually keep my pop to the 15B limit with 100% approval. The high soldiering doesn't make me invincable by any means, but it certainly increases my odds.

My opponent spends 2, 3 or even 4 transports taking one of my planets while I've taken pretty much one of his planets for every transport I have. Also when he does finally take one of my planets he doesn't usually put a combat ship in orbit immediately so I can send a transport right back and re-take the planet.

I use a single advanced troop module per transport and fill it with 2000M troops. This allows quite a bit of space for engines so I usually have quite a bit of range on my opponent. You can pick off a number of undefended planets deep in his territory this way. I also generally use only one 2000M transport against all planets up to 10B with pretty good expectation of winning. I almost always use the mini-soldier invasion tactic. It cost 500bc but it minimizes the number of troops I need. It may destroy a building or two but it won't damage the planets PQ. Just be careful if the planet contains a wonder or trade good that you want.

Right. With high soldiering means less troops to take a planet, meaning smaller and cheaper ships. I use strictly tiny-hulled invasion craft. Advanced Troop Mod and some engines. One per planet. If I need more troops, information warfare.

Interesting idea, Kanil. I don't know if I'd go that route, based much upon the strategy that I use which is much like Mumblefratz's below your last comment. It's a huge bonus to have troup transports that can go 40-50+ tiles/turn. But I would like to try the tiny hull for a transport at some point. One point I would make is that you don't need hit points for transports if you're using them right, and you're paying for them with a tiny hull. But I'll look into it. That could be a great alternative strategy.

Mumblefratz, agreed on almost all counts. If you're playing on huge or gigantic galaxy, it's nice to have one or two "people factories." Sure, if you're playing "good" and really want to be good, this might not be great. But I love building a couple of mega-pop planets, with almost no morale, but with 50+ billion pop, re-education centers and/or secret police. These things make awesome "ammunition" with which you can load your transports! If you could imagine yourself living on one of these planets, you would despise the leadership but wouldn't have any way of supporting your family than to join the army. It's almost fun for me to watch the morale go from 15% to 20% when I've sent off a couple of transports. Maybe I should switch from neutral to evil soon, as my strategies seem to be going in that direction.

Right. With high soldiering means less troops to take a planet, meaning smaller and cheaper ships. I use strictly tiny-hulled invasion craft. Advanced Troop Mod and some engines. One per planet. If I need more troops, information warfare.

It's funny how differant people take drastically differant approaches. I usually build ships that have 4-8 billion troops on them. I ship them from by high population base planets, then once they land the colony that I conquer is virtually fully populated. It limits my ability to crank them out in a pinch, but they work like gang busters, and practically negate any soldiering bonuses (due to the quanity of troops). I guess that's the beauty of the game, everyone has thier own style that works.

I usually use 1000m troop transprts in fleets of four so there will be 4b attacking and if i lose less than 1b then i still got fleet of three on to the next planet. heh seems like a lot of diff strats. I also like to get about seventy moves on them later so i can hit them from the production point same turn a lot of times.

I beat the hell out of the AI with my feets and kill any ship they build before they can use it. then I slowly take each planet one by one, has never failed me. I play on masochistic and crippling and use 1000m troop ships.

I beat the hell out of the AI with my fleets and kill any ship they build before they can use it. then I slowly take each planet one by one, has never failed me. I play on masochistic and crippling and use 1000m troop ships.

I use tiny hulled ships to invade as well. Since you always lose at least one ship, it's the cheapest way. Most of the time you'll find the planet you capture has enough military production stored up to immediately replace the lost ship. Also allows you to invade with absurd numbers of troops so you'll never lose more than a handful and don't have to spend a penny on invasion tactics.

Downside is they're quite a bit slower, but that only really holds you up when you're first assembling the fleet. Once you've done that, you can replace them right on the front line since they're so cheap, so the low speed isn't an issue. I use larger transports as ferries to get people out from the heavily populated core worlds to the newly captured worlds.

I usually build ships that have 4-8 billion troops on them. I ship them from by high population base planets, then once they land the colony that I conquer is virtually fully populated.

Interesting idea, it is a benefit to get the conquered planet population back up ASAP. Population is a big part of MV scoring (if you're into that) but it doesn't matter if you're essentially moving pop from one planet to another by attacking with more troops than actually necessary. The only thing that does matter is how much pop is killed when taking the planet. This is why I often use the mini-troop invasion even if I don't really need it to get good odds.

The size of the game you're playing on will also affect your invasion techniques. I play gigantic, so wars from mid game on are typically against opponents with 50 planets or more. I generally try to have enough troop transports for 1.5 times his number of planets on hand before even going into war. I also end most wars within 5 turns or so usually taking 10-15 planets a turn. With that kind of strategy you need a troop transport producible by the bulk of your planets so it needs to be both inexpensive and doesn't unnecessarily deplete the planets population. I also don't want to bus around 75 transports to fill them up from high pop planets, I just want to ship them off to the set colony rally point and from there send out a fleet to meet up with my combat fleets.

I love threads where the starter asks a question but every poster just writes offtopic and wont answer anything.

He did NOT ask how to defend planets.

He did NOT ask how to invade planets.

He did NOT ask what games you are usually playing.

He did ask WHY the AI can invade his planets despite of the fact he got far superior soldering and technology.
There are a few reasons:

The exact power of your troop is randomed before each battle. this is what you call a "slot machine". so you might end up with a bad result.

The Attacker always gets a bonus in a battle.

The AI probably used some invasion tactic which gives him another bonus but this may damage the planet alot.

Your planet may have low population if the AI keeps attacking it. as the population determines the number of your troop in a battle, you might loose a battle even with superior soldering.

Personally I thought his question was answered in the first post!

I love threads where the starter asks a question but every poster just writes offtopic and wont answer anything.

Good for you, Bodyless. You've added one detail, the roll-aspect of combat, to an answer that was being fleshed out from the very first reply, yet you sure want to appear to be the only one here who can or will answer the question. In the words of Ozzie Guillen, "Psht, please!"

A couple of factors that affect the invasion result which haven't been mentioned yet are the Courage feature and the total tech level number.

Personally I thought his question was answered in the first post!

And i felt like there were still things to mention.

Good for you, Bodyless. You've added one detail, the roll-aspect of combat, to an answer that was being fleshed out from the very first reply, yet you sure want to appear to be the only one here who can or will answer the question. In the words of Ozzie Guillen, "Psht, please!"

It would have been alot easier to give a full answer or to add missing details and for other people to look for the answer if they have the same problem if there would not be that many flaming posts. Instead some are writing about things noone wanted to know. thats what is annoying me. if they want to discuss invasion and defending tactics why dont they make a new thread?!

Also the first post which tried to answer the question looked incomplete to me. and i added more than just one detail.

It would have been alot easier to give a full answer or to add missing details and for other people to look for the answer if they have the same problem if there would not be that many flaming posts.

I didn't see any smoke until you busted out the lighter fluid! What's the deal?

I always find it curious that so many write the words "no one" as noone.