My vision of 3D Planteary-Invasion & Planetary Bombardment, Enjoy!

Lowa's encouragement

Bombardment suggestions
I believe Galactic Civilization two, unlike one has to midly make invasion and bombarding of planets more indepth, take a look at Master-Of-Orion-3, that should be the direct direction GC-II should go, we need to step aside simple random numerical to decide the fate of our ground forces, their was absolutely no tacticalism in the first GC because "luck" was involved.
My approach begins with bombardment. The Forum member Lowa presented reasonable ideas but I question their realism and balance. First foremost Bombardment shouldn't be a Hull requirement instead a large weapon platform underneith captiol-ships taking considerable resources, time and effort to construct. Possibly Ballistic, Beam and Missile Bombardment weaponry; Ballistic directly ravages the terrain, infrastructure and does most Standing-Army casualites. Missile is deliberatly inaccurcate hardware and decimates the cohensive of the planets Standing-Army.
Beam weapons focus immense energy onto precised targets, in essence limited shots, consuming heavily but "knocking" out planetary Orbital-Guns and Enemy Armour unopposed. Instead Industrial tech introduces Colony/Freighter Hulls enhanced and integrated into efficent Bombardment roles allowing far more firepower to bring about unless you wish to use a Battleship inefficently. Lastmore, when a invader invades a planet he is allowed to fire his guns anytime he desires as long as space superiority is in place thus giving him a unique advantage when discovering oppositions fortifed positions, armies, etc.
Planetary Invasion suggestions
The first GC introduced a very simple, tactially meaningless module of war into the gameplay, no depth whatsoever, you just loaded up a transport full of millions and "hoped" for the best if you chose a high number, possessed lot of men and tech....
Instead StarDock in my vision introduce much more larger depth to invasion with many options to command your troops.
A"virtual battlefield" to launch your armies across, Generals and array of Naval (Spaceship wise) and Ground units such as Corvettes bombers and interceptors, APCs, Tanks, Adv.Tanks, Infantry than Marine, Elite, etc all coming from the Industrial, medical, Warfare, biology and astrology techs and maybe something else liable to.

Lets being with Generals & Armie, every race should have adozen Generals which are assigned to all the armies on a particular enemy planet or yours. Every individual General is unique with their protrait, male, female, provide bonus's long many lines of supply, strategic enhancement, Defensive, Offensive, Passive points to strengthen your armies on all one planet or galaxy. Generals can only maintain so many Armies full of either hundreds (Armour, Naval), thousands, (Ground Forces) of units before their bonus's value decreases and eventually are in minus and many are cut-off from the Generals HQ due to quantity.

Now my idea for a Virtual Battlefield begins here. Every PLANET, will affect the layout and course of a battle completely like if "endless landmass", many oceans, tropical islands, lava, immense population=Urban. To start off in StarDocks screenshots of building structures on the map of your planet battles would be held by every square on a planets map.
The ATTACKER depending upon survillence technology, visual of Armies, recent "failed" invasions and change of planet in any way will dictate how much information the invader possess's on his enemies cities and projects. (A Homeworld or Colony that builds its Captiol, I dont know or building on a tile will be declared the "most" Urban area of the planet)
When a ATTACKER invades a planet it depends upon Orbital-Guns, planets reserve of space-craft and hostile areas which will limit to tiles that are rural with population, coastal tiles presuming beachheads and if he/she so desires, deploy the mainforce inside the centre of the planets urbanry decimated by bombardment and encircled by the invaders minority outside.
When a ATTACKER launches the invasion and Armies travel through the atmosphere to their destinations they will go under fire from I repeat oftenly, Orbital-Guns, Defending-Armies, drafted population, (conscripts), Armour, AA, etc if desired or remain hidden from the invaders survelling and striking fleets. If the Transports and possible escorts undergo damage, Escorts will fly to the source and engage in bombing runs across the area and both Trans and Escorts sustain many casualites and perhaps ultimatly, total destruction, a tremendous halt to the campagin.
The DEFENDERA Defender generally should have knowledge of the invaders armadas sitting in orbit especially strength if deployed the planets orbital-guns to aid defense or eliminate (especially if the OG's are static rubble and surrounding). The DEFENDER is highly vulnerable to be assaulted ANYWHERE, bombarded anywhere, population pressured into defecting to the enemy culturally or under fear of death by invaders propaganda launched through the cities, communications which is available in a small Warfare and Communication branch involving propaganda options.
A DEFENDER before then and under this event now always has a unique option of fortifying its planet with simple early Warfare tech, Trenches Bunkers, Foxholes, hidden Gun emplacements and weak&vulnerable base barracks complexes From advanced Warfare tech leading to Adv.Bunker Camouflage, Automated AA, Anti-Infantry weapon-systems, Underground Base Complexes support immense supplies and Troops, Armour, Aircraft including Missile-Silos to launch at unsuspected fleets inspace and enemies on the surface already.
The Government and happiness of a planet determines heavily whethever the populace will fanaticlly resist and eagerly volunteer into the Army, wont mind large immendiate draft into service of defense, support operations of the Army in many ways including if the planet is occuppied completely or partially conduct uncontrollible partisan acts, sabotage, infiltrate and relay information to you.
Or the people can betray you and either refuse or bitch over being forced into service, openly or occasionally, "point out" your positions through events as the ownership of territory shifts, be eager to perform heresy if conscripted and kill your Armys most royality and loyality to exist under the "Terrific!" Government of the invading morons.



12,837 views 12 replies
Reply #1 Top
Possibly if your regime is bad in terms of your war mongering and form of government and Aproval rating can all Stir up a revolution on your planets and make it much more diffucult to recruit soilders... however... dependin on the aproval ratin and all other government issues more ppl are willin to join so less draftees are required thereby less morale loss
Reply #2 Top
Possibly if your regime is bad in terms of your war mongering and form of government and Aproval rating can all Stir up a revolution on your planets and make it much more diffucult to recruit soilders... however... dependin on the aproval ratin and all other government issues more ppl are willin to join so less draftees are required thereby less morale loss
Reply #3 Top
I DID IT AGAIN
Reply #4 Top
uhh rmb that 3D Planet invansions are tricky... i said that rmb... but if the devs can do it so be it... BUT we need to focus on the other matters Economy,Technology,Negotion and the other stuff not just miltiary might
Reply #5 Top
Focusing on other areas of Research is entirely up to you and the individual player, most of these Ground-Force techs would be accompolished by researching all the regular techs affecting your spaceships, like Beam first teach simply, you a Beam-Rifle or in Mass-Driver you get a Semi-Automatic....
Reply #6 Top
I think that all of these games are obviously moving no matter how slowly towards a player influenced tech tree that can say discover nuclear energy but lack the ability to crete a nuke bomb based on the player never really using war tactics.. or whatever (is still thinking about this myself) but wow you definitely wrote alot ill add stuff as i read thru the rest of it but yes the planetary conquest needs some depth.
Reply #7 Top
My thoughts on invasion.

GC1 had zero considerations in planetary invasion.
It was pure attrition.
In a cultural, political, and moral point of view... any society that sends millions of people from a planet to invade another planet and win through attrition, the government is not gonna last long.
This is a game, but there needs to be some fundamental rules on how the civilization functions and sending millions from one planet to another (its regular population) just does not work when trying to make a game as indepth as GC2.

Need to make a military that is not just starships.
Add army, armored, support units that can be built and kept within a planets population with cost taken from the planets tax.
This will control the amount of non starship military units a civ can keep in readiness.

Now to the invasion...
First, starships generally need to fight to take control of the "airspace" of a planet before an invasion can be launched.
Second, starships should have the option of bombarding the planet to reduce the planets ability to fight the invading army.
Third, army lands and fights the local military and possible insurgents that may arise from the regular population.
Third and half, invader wins or gets pushed back or destroyed.
Fourth, starships bombard the planet's inhabitants out of existance if they lose the ground war
(always an option ).

With the background on how to support a better planetary invasion we can go into each part of an invasion.
First, starships need to take out any enemy in the area to prevent them from attacking landing troops...basic GC2 space tactics.

Second, starships should have the option of bombarding a planet with degrees of dmg inflicted to the land and population.
Here the bombardment should depend on the type of armament the ship has...
Hard - nukes, lots of collaterial dmg... possible light dusting of military targets but also dealing collaterial dmg to the population and always going all out and turning the land into a radioactive glow.
Ballistic - it should be like sending a meteor...this will depend on the size of the armament....not too sure how much this should do.
Beam - it seems beam should be the least effective form of planetary bombardment. It does have to go through the atmosphere and depending on the type of beam weapon it is, may lose its effectiveness against a planetary target..it was designed for space after all..not too sure.
I think hard is the best weapon for planetary bombardment.

Third, troops land and they fight ... havent thought too much of this aspect... but it should depend upon several factors such as troop quality, terrain, ability to use wmd, defenders quality, knowledge of terrain, defensive bunkers (though this will give a nice target to the orbiting starships)....there should be more factors....
Reply #8 Top
Indeed. Duckness whynot on your opinion get indepth with what you think planetary invasion be?

I feel it should be based on the tiles of the planet like in all the tiles we see in the planets screen. Yah. Every tile is virtually a small battlefield with many factors, terrain minorites, majorities, Defensive structures, Infrastructure such as roads, Urban Rural, etc.

I think what would be better if when you created lets for example.
100,000 Soldiers from your Homeworld. You've constructed 5000 Tank army and Battleoid, (Such an MOO Theft! )
You instead combine them making them a Mechanized Army. Easier for micromanaging and you can spilt the units up.
But I feel their should be an limit to the number of Soldiers and such that can be placed on planets as garrison, Civilians put into service upon Government.
Reply #9 Top
The decisions in the Ground Combat part of the game are asset-related: If you have the money, you can buy better attacks. I liked the idea of selecting the least expensive mode of attack that could win me a given battle, but unfortunately it was difficult to judge how much spread the random numbers injected into the scenario. The probability of victory/defeat did not clearly appear in GC1.

If there is to be some rework in the planetary combat pop-up screen, then I want a better sense of how my choices impact the outcome of the battle. This could be as simple as listing "86%+/-12%" chance of victory, or something more decorative, like a slider with a balance-of-power marker:
PLAYER |---------------==V==---| ENEMY (Player is predicted to win)
PLAYER |---------====V====--| ENEMY (Risky attack )
PLAYER |---=======V=====-| ENEMY (Unwise attack that counts on luck)
Reply #10 Top
I don't like the idea of generals suppose you or even an AI gets a really crappy set of em suddenly you're screwed. Also, buying every APC, tank, etc. on the scale of billions of troops is going to be a nightmare. Instead just buy "Mechanized Army" Armoured Army" Urban Combat etc.
Reply #11 Top
Well of course you dont buy a billion soilders, a man at a time. You buy an armay at a time, just like your ships. that corvett isn't just one corvett, it's a Squad of 'em. But i agree with the bad general set. So just don't have bad generals. Make 'em like Political Partys, they're all good, just in different ways.