Personally, I really dislike the combat movie in the land battles. It seems completely generic, and conveys almost no information.

My suggestion:
1. Use the planet buildings as the main "ground" for the battle. That way you can see what sort of buildings the armies are fighting for.
2. Start with an initial attack graphic that shows how much damage the planet (and buildings) sustained. If it's a Mass Driver attack, it should show a big asteroid coming down, and then all the buildings that were wrecked on fire.
3. Then, all the tech levels should come with a corresponding different graphical troop. You might have to rework the tech levels titles and such to fix this.
for example: advanced planet invasion gives you "hover tanks"
mini-soliders gives you "mecha"
So when the battle comes out, you can see tanks blasting away at mecha (or whatever).