Invade a Heavily fortified Planet....

You can't get the spore tech unless you had picked Super Annihilator, it's not tradable. 2nd question about them, they only turn a planet into a toxic planet, no PQ loss.

I'd save the game prior to invasion with about 2 or 3 troop ships by the planet. Lead with a Mass Driver attack to largely widdle down the compitition. You may need to reload if the mass driver attack nets you a win though. The loss in PQ and suc only happens if the invasion that causes it nets a win. If you can drastically reduce their population in the first wave, then send in a second with a non-destructive attack for the win.

You know, using Tidal Disruptors (40-70% loss in enemy advantage factor and a couple of buildings destroyed) and Mini Soldiers (40-70% gain in your advantage factor and maybe just maybe one building destroyed) are my favorite attack strategies. Information Warfare is nice as well (sometimes).

Hope this gives you something to think about.
ROCK ON!!! :HOT: 

Tidal is my fav to use in TA when tech trading is off. Most likely my opponent won't have many buildings I could use anyway...so mine as well send them into the sea before I demolish them.

I gather you've never had to sustain an X-Worlds set of invasion tactics - cuz, you'd pay the hell out of gimmicks so hard, a full load of highly coordinated attacks is always a tricky decision to take.

Should see an AI use that much BCs -- and fail!

I personally hate Mass Drivers due to the PQ drop as well as Gas Warfare. I just cannot see myself wasting so much potentially useful space. And Tidal Disruptors are great, because most of the AI's devolop their world really idiotically. Tidal Disruptors are great for destroying a fair deal of generally useless structures, allowing me to build whatever and however on the newly conquered planet.

If the AI's would use "All-X" strategies (and on top of that intelligently), I would be a little more careful with my invasion tactics, using Information Warfare, and Mini Soldiers a lot more than Tidal Disruptors. But that's not a problem for me because I already like using Mini Soldiers a lot.

The only times that I have ever used Mass Drivers and Gas Warfare was during the campaign, where capturing planets is not a priority and for that matter, a big deal.

It would be really awsome if an update was made, or if someone created a mod that incorporated NEW invasion tactics, while at the same time, improving on the ones that already exist. I don't know if anyone made such a mod, but if they did, please tell me about it or post me a link. There's just too many damned mods to look through, terrible waste of time if you ask me. Even with the incorporated category system.

Either way, this game rocks and I absolutely love it.
To everyone listening......
ROCK ON!!! :HOT: 

I've generally gone Tidal Disruptors in my early days, followed by Mini Soldiers in later games.

I tried Mass Drivers before, but found that I had to plan it out and if my strategy changed mid-flight, I no longer had the flexibility to go another route. (Having to make a low-pop transport for the initial attack, plus a fully loaded one for the subsequent one). When it works, it's great. When flexibility is needed, it might or might not put a wrench in the works.


Another way of softening the target is to put a spy on the farm. Wait one turn for the population to die off and remove your spy before attacking. I think Firebender came up with that one in the very early DA days.

Thanks MottiKhan, forgot about the "Spy" invasion tactic (if you will). Of course I have been playing DL for the past few days. I'll eventually revert back to DA. And I wish I had TA (sounds like heck of a lot of fun). I also like playing the Battle of the Gods scenario style. Some people don't like to do this, and I can see why. Although I like to play it because it's so much more epic.

In my current game, there is a series of on-going skirmishes taking place between me, the Drath, the Arceans, and the Iconians. It's also really difficult to make peace treaties, so the fighting has been going on for about two years now, with absolutely no lull in the fighting.

Till later.....
ROCK ON!!!!! :HOT: 

The alternative to the 'spy invasion technique' is to place the spy on a morale resource and then do a information warfare invasion taking advantage to the lowered morale. I'd only use this if there were no farms (homeworld) or if after doing the farm starvation, a morale hit would further give an advantage.

I disagree - the best way to use the morale spy tactic is while the population is high. You get more people fighting on your side, which translates to a higher chance of success, and a higher post-invasion population. It's not uncommon to invade with this tactic and win the invasion with more people than you started with.

Not to mention it's an immediate effect, so you don't have to wait a turn.

I have to say that these are all very interesting posts. Quite a good topic to comment on as well.

Another mod idea, is to make a ship that is designed entirely for the purpouse of bombing planets. It would sorta work like a Spore Ship (except that it won't turn the planet Toxic), and a spy put together (allowing you to choose the building/buildings you'd like to bombard. To prevent players from using this ship like cheap-asses and wiping out all of the planet's structures in one turn, a set of "rules" can be implemented:

1.-An expensive Bombardment module can be made, acting like the Troop Transport module, where you have to place down multipule modules each containing one Mass Driver charge. These charges of course will be replenished each week, but you would only be able to carry one per ship at the begining due to a high level of Miniaturization (size 40-50 perhaps). And the ship itself would cost a lot to Rush Buy, and on top of that take a long time to build. It should be located at or close to the end of the Planetary Invasion branch of the Tech Tree.

2.-It can be taxed like a Starbase, where the first one is free, but the rest cost more and more to launch, the same way that you have to pay for each extra Starbase that you build. Only that the extra BC you'd have to pay for the second ship would be 500-1000 BC instead of the 200 BC you pay for your second Starbase.

3.-You'd be unable to put it into a fleet (at all).

Till next time.....
ROCK ON!!!!! :HOT: 

Aye it is, but if you are invading someone, hopefully you thought at least 1 week ahead.

I just can't wrap my head around what you said though. How could 4-6 billion in losses due to a farm kill, THEN next week hitting their morale building net a worse effect in the end? I understand you get more people flipping via the information warfare if you dont kill the farm, but unless you can flip more than you'd kill in the farm destruction...how is that a better choice?

If you have superior soldiering/tech and use information warfare you can sometimes get enough population of theirs on your side, and wipe them out so badly that you take few losses, and end up with more "invaders" than you started with (their population that joined you via information warfare and that survive the attack).

If you don't wipe out their population via the spy farm cheese you have more potential to gain pop (I think it's cheese because it's pure silliness that putting a spy on a farm would wipe out 6b people in a turn - I don't use it or the mass driver multi-wave cheese attack).

I think you always lose at 1 transport when you invade regardless so you can end up with a pop over 1b on a freshly taken planet this way too, which is bonus.

You can also ferry people from high population planets over to the newly conquered planet. I'm surprised that none of you brought it up yet.

Any ways...
ROCK ON!!!!! :HOT: 

You're ignoring the effect of those 4-6 billion people on morale. A morale invasion tactic might drop the morale into the 50-60 range for 8b population, but the same spies on the same buildings would drop a 14b population to the 40s or lower. This gives you a higher percentage of defenders joining your side, and that percentage is on a higher population to boot. You're not gaining a few extra people, you're gaining a few billion extras. If you have a significantly higher tech than they do, you will almost always end with more people than you started with.

The reason I point out the time factor is I often invade with a pile of fast transports. One might be able to take a planet out, but I'm prepared to use two or three if necessary. The "use the same week" feature of the morale-only attack means that I can use my remaining transports on additional targets if my first few invasions go better than expected. Not to mention the part about invading a dozen planets using the same 4 spies all in the same turn   

We didn't because we were talking about the initial invasion of a planet, not the population management of existing (or newly conquered) planets.


I may have to play around some to test both theories out. I'll have to find an enemy planet set up just right (or sell one to them) and then test this out using both invasion techniques. Run both types about...10 or so times to come up with an average. Until I see some hard numbers, I won't debunk either of the theories. It may just fall in that the one is useful for unplanned invasions and the other is for planned...both giving the same result in bc spent and troops remaining/used.

As for not having the farms killed on other planets, my method of play normally allows me to have at least a dozen spies on hand, so I would have probably already killed every farm in that region. Espionage costs insane amounts of bc, but it makes for one heck of a cold war tool. Without firing one shot I've pulled #1 down to #2 by manipulating their economy. The Dregin unfortunately can be forced into a downward spiral if you keep paying them off to go to war and thus they get more dom corvettes...which they won't be able to pay for....

So, use spies against Planetary Defenses OR morale improvement, then, deploy a fleet of 2-3 Transports (sometimes, my custome transports have 4 to 6 advance Troop modules =))) then use Mini Soldier OR Information Warfare?

And...If you use so many Transports, each has 2000 troops, your troops' casuaties were less than 2000 then your other transports will remain? (you only lose 1 transport)?

If possible, you want to spy both the planetary defense centers and the morale structures. What we're considering is whether spying the farms is a worthwhile tactic or not.

If your transports have 4-6 billion troops on them, you should be able to win with one transport per planet - minisoldiers or information warfare will just increase the margin of victory.

As far as I know, if you attack with a fleet of transports, you will lose only those transports whose troops are lost. You will always lose at least one transport, but if you used 4 transports and survived with enough troops to fill 2 of them, those two will survive. It's been quite a while (possibly as far back as DL) since I've tested this though.

Unless you are really strapped for cash, sequential transports are more effective. Attack with one, using whatever tactics are necessary. If it wins, fine; move on to the next planet. If the first transport loses, use a second. This will let you use things like mass drivers and tidal disruptors without negative effects, as the planet doesn't suffer invasion-caused PQ or building losses unless the invasion succeeds. Use mass drivers on the first transport, lose, then mop up with a second using less effective (but less distructive) tactics.

I tried something similar recently in DL. I attacked a planet that had a pop of almost 8k with a transport that carried 5k troops. I used Information Warfare and defeated the planet with just over 5.4k troops left after the battle.

DL doesn't have spies, but my influence was affecting them pretty strongly.

Does influence have any effect on morale? I didn't think it did.

And the 'significantly higher soldiering' I think is the big factor here. This weekend I'll do some staged invasions and try out his a bunch to try and come to a conclusion.

I can't find Minisoldiers tactic in twilight.
BTW, average Soldering of mine is 80. Is it normal (played as the Acean in TA)

That may not be an option depending on which tech tree is being played. Not all trees have a tech for that invasion style.


Now, onto my checking into invasion techniques: my idea of killing the farm then morale vs just killing the morale.

Well, I proved myself wrong. In my tests, I had a staged planet with 1 advanced farm and 3 VRCs. My invading ship held 1000 troops, the planet started with 15bil pop. I reloaded after each attempt. MY skill was 95, opponent's was 67.

type1: If I kill the farm it went down to 8bil and then killed the morale it fell to 77%.
type2: If I kill the morale only, it stayed at 15b but morale fell to 44%.

5 of the 6 invasions of type 1 failed by about 1500 troops remaining. The winner only won by about 700.

1 of the 6 invasions of type 2 failed by 88 troops. The winning invasions won by anywhere from 550-1800.

So I stand corrected. Karma to all those who brought me into the light.

Disabling both would probably work better if the enemy has much higher tech and soldiering ratings than you do. You would not use information warfare then though.

Then why bother with disabling the morale structure if your not going to use information warfare during your invasion?

Probably not. I'm not sure why so many joined me, but I assumed it was because of the skull and crossbones symbol at the planet. Maybe there's another mechanic working there. Besides influence, I also had a lot more soldiering ability and was attacking at something like 30 to 3.

The bottom line was that I came out of the battle with a tad over 8% more troops than I started with. It's a nice boost to the starting pop of the planet.

The ratio of soldiers seemed to be the deciding factor between the two methods I looked at. In killing both structures the fight was still about (troop-wise) 1.5:7.5 (3:15). In just killing the morale, the fight was more like 4:13. That increase of the ratio really made the fight more lopsided in my favor.

The number of people who flip over is random, I had huge changes battle to battle when I tested this out. I had a range of about 1500 to 3800 people who would flip on the 'just kill morale' tests. When your testing with only an attack force of 1000, that makes HUGE changes in the outcome. In bench tests of a normal invasion and no sabotage, I'd range from killing 5k to 7k of their troops...but no win due to the 15k force they had.


The 30:3 soldiering ratio had tons to do with it. I had given the AI a bunch of the techs to keep the fight somewhat close in my tests. Without anything CLOSE (I still have ~50% more soldiering than them after given them the techs) it was just a massacre.