Hi!

It is: reload the game if invasion's damage is excessive. AFAIK nothing else works.

BR, Iztok

Yeah. Dropping an asteroid on a planet is pretty permanent in terms of damage to the ecosystem.

I just don't use any tactics that risk damage to the planet. If I'm attacking a VERY WELL defended planet, I might sometimes use Mini-Soldiers to enhance my attack...but most of the time my soldiers are good enough to win without the use of special tactics.

i personally think that spore ships are the way to go! they're the easiest way to take out planets without losing troops.

Personally, even playing the Korath quite a bit I actually don't use spore ships very often. The reason being is that they don't leave you with any population on the planet and thus makes it highly vulnerable for a counter-attack and are often a drain on your economy as well. Sure you can bring a transport to bring in troops afterwards, but since your bringing in troops anyway you might as well just use them to conquer the planet.

I find researching advanced troop mods and slapping three of them on a transport will easily provide the troops necessary to conquer any planet and usually leave 2 Billion population left over to defend and grow your economy. Getting TQ training center and using mini-soldiers or propaganda helps (and using spies to disable morale and/or farms), but that is just a bonus and isn't even necessary if you bring enough troops.

The one advantage of spore ships is it is easier to make a fast spore ship with which you could use to quickly strke deep in enemy territory to disrupt an opponent. It also makes the Korath a much deadlier AI opponent since the most other races often don't bring enough troops to conquer planets until late in the game.

Nope, just makes them free to use. Due to the PQ penalties, almost no one uses anything but minisoldiers, tidal disruption, and propaganda. And very occasionally, using mass drivers and the failure exploit to crush high populations with CI buildings.

Maybe you play on smaller maps then. On a gigantic map, 15 planets is a joke. More often than not, you can take 15+ planets the first turn of a war. More importantly, if you are playing for score you want to take as many planets as you can, and keep them as intact as possible. That applies to all sizes of maps.

When you bring in transports, you reduce your planets population and that can get very anoying. with the sporeships, all you have to do is break down the planet's defenses and send it in. No blood, no mess, no guts. Then you just build the fertitility accelerators and get ships and it's just like any other planet you own. The best thing about sporeships is that you dont have to worry about losing the battle after waiting so long for them to finally get to the planet for an attack.

-DSep

Not everyone plays on 'ABUNDANT ALL LOLOL'. Personally I think the game turns to shit when after a game-year, everyone and their mother has a horde of battleships with black hole torpedoes on them.

Wait, you mean in reality there is no way to repair detonating the core of the planet?

Shoot. BRB.

In TA, most races don't have minisoldiers anymore. I think the only time I've ever had them in TA was when I stole Ultimate Shock Troops from the Drengin.

Here's an idea -- how about after using extreme invasion tactics, the ruined tiles show up with a big red X on them, and can be repaired by building some kind of improvement on them (like an extension of the terraforming techs). Kind of like the pollution/cleanup in Civ.