Invasions

Sometimes, extreme realism makes for crappy game design. Who wants to sit through a hundred turns of planetary invasion? Not me.

Perhaps the troops in GC are more through or careless of whom they kill? The "shoot anything that moves" philosophy really tends to make war easy.

There's another thread around here somewhere discussing this.

My $.02... I see myself as the ruler of a large galactic civilization, and I want to focus on the "big picture" of managing colonies and military strategy. When I have a wave of warships and troop ships expanding on my frontiers, capturing planets right and left, I don't want to micro-manage the actual invasions. Or even know too much about what's going on, beyond asking my fleet admirals "did we take it, or didn't we?"

So I like the way the game streamlines this into a one-turn process. You make the big decision on how much strength to put into an invasion, you launch it, and it works or it fails. Then you move on to the next big decisions. It keeps the focus on big picture strategy, and not small tactical details.

Longer invasions would also open up the possibility of bringing in more troop ships if it's not going well, or defending against the enemy reinforcing their planet. That's just more micromanagement per-turn to deal with. It might be fun on the smallest maps, but it'd be a nightmare on the larger ones with many planets.

Consider this: this isn't an invasion with WWII level technology, carried out by landing craft on beaches. We're talking about civilisations with nuclear age or better ground weaponry, invading with millions of soldiers... and they have complete, total space superiority.

Having that space superiority means you can drop your troops anywhere, anytime, and you can drop your nukes, bunker busters, and assorted orbital artillery at will to cruch resistance with impunity.

Yeah, a week is pushing it, but considering the huge advantages in the hands of the attacker, it would be a very, VERY lopsided war.

That's the other side of it, yes. Especially against a totally alien race, where you may be more inclined to exterminate than assimilate.

Me neither but once the invasion has started then over the weeks battles take place behind the scenes. The outcome would be the same as the instant invasions we get now excpet it happens over several weeks. Or each week so many troops on each side die until one side has no more. this means that additional troops can be brought in from both sides as reinforcements. Can wait for GC3 for that, well I guess we'll have to as there will be no more expansion packs.

I didn't make this tread so you could talk about game-play implications, I know it would be a bad feature, I just wanted to know what your 2 cents were



Vietnam (how do you spell it?) is going on 4 years, how do you know future wars will be any different? sure future technologies and "shoot anything that moves" philosophy will signifficently reduce this, I'd say it would still take atleast a year for an enemy that isn't TOO far behind military-wise

Vietnam was bogged down by politics, jungles, and an attempt at a prolonged occupation against an enemy that could pop up practically anywhere.

Hurling rocks from orbit into military installations, on the other hand, has a certain efficiency.

Given the circumstances of the GalCiv2 invasions, the attacker is always landing with an overwhelming force, with comeplete freedom of movement, a massive potential energy advantage, and fantastic intelligence. The defenders are at a severe disadvantage, and the attackers have all the positioning and technology they need to make blitzkrieg look like molasses.

They would just drop some airbourne Alien flu from space and that would be the end of it.Ground invasions ala War of the worlds would not happen unless they wanted to use humans for lunch or some other perversion.

Why not just destroy the entire planet? 

or start mass reprisals against P.O.W.'s?

or glass it, ala the Halo novels?

Right, Vietnam's a really bad example. The U.S. never implemented Curtis LeMay's "bomb them back to the stone age" saturation bombing plan for the North, due to political constraints back home, and the involvement of China and the Soviets supporting the North as a proxy war. Those constraints don't exist for GalCiv2 invasions.



Not just military installations, but civilian targets also. Within our own human species, it's only been 60 years since it was considered a normal, justifiable part of warfare to destroy civilian targets like Dresden, Tokyo, and Hiroshima after achieving air superiority. If we're willing to do that to ourselves, imagine what we'd do to a completely alien race when invading and pacifying a planet.

Start mass reprisals against P.O.W.'s.

Glass it, ala the Halo novels.

Probobly those.  

Quote: it took 4 years to win that, 4 YEARS!

Damn Americans first you arrive late TO BOTH WORLD WARS and then you have the nerve to state that the war was shorter then it was. ;p

WORLD WAR 2 STARTED IN 1939 WHEN GERMANY INVADED POLAND So thats 1939-1945

So using the same idea was the Great War a one Year war?

But anyway I think that the game has it right although its not realistic. It does however
ensure that the game isn't too overly micromanagement heavy.

Eh, they're probably on their own time-system, like miles as opposed to metric...

What you are all missing is that it isn't a traditional invasion. It is an extermination. When the fight is done, the population is what is left of your invasion force. You've killed billions of people. You don't need to worry about target selection aside from leaving a few important buildings. Killing everything non-selectively can be pretty quick.

But it seems unlikely that an invading force would turn its guns on a potential source of cheap labor or happily massacre unarmed civilians with out considering the ramifications. (Public reaction, alienation of allies, reprisals by the enemy, etc.)

The strangest thing is how Information Warfare would work in one turn. Propaganda AND invasion, all in a week?



Damn Europeans, first you arrive late to WW2 and then you have the nerve to state that the war was shorter then it was.

World War 2 started in 1937 when Japan invaded China. So that's 1937-1945.

Better for us Americans to arrive late, as opposed to never...

I like the one week invasion, as It keeps the focus on the Big picture. If you had to micromanage invasions or constantly keep tabs on them, I feel it would take away from the overall grandeur of the game. As Galactic leaders, we'd decide who to invade, it up to teh military to actually do it.

Also, WWII was 1939 to 1945. It started with the invasion of Poland. It should be noted that Japan, Germany and Italy were annexing territory (ususally forceibly) prior to this in Europe, Asia, and Africa, which helped lead up tp WWII.