Are invasions impossibly costly/brutal or am I missing something?

4x strategy games have been doing things like this for a long time. Quite bluntly, it's a cheap, easy way of eliminating the trouble with modeling multiple races/cultures on single planet. If the game differentiated between soldiers and civilians, what would happen if you decided to transport more people to a conquered world? You'd have a population of two races/cultures on the planet, so the game have to keep track of it. What if the population of one civ is particularily xenophobic? The game would certainly have to model colony population and moral much more deeply than it does now.

The game uses the MoO1 model where populations exterminate each other, so there is no 'reduce civilian casualties' option, or even rebellious enslaved races.

Conquest *is* expensive. Another interesting factor is if you drain your planets dry taking over his, you not only take a big economic hit, you leave your own planets more open to invasion.

For more punch per transport, try research the advanced troop module. That holds 1000 troops and takes less space than the 500-troop normal module. I built a transport with 4 of these last night, so one full transport was enough to take over a typical world. Don't let a full transport like that get shot down though...

One single Invader class troop transport from my race can carry 2000 men. I don't know what you are doing, but research advanced troop pods. It might help.

Researching different ways to attack might help as well.

Research the Planetary Invasion tech tree, your troops become more powerful and you should be able to get up to a 4 advantage, meaning races without good Planetary Defense tech will roll over quickly. Using mini-soldiers helps too.

Well the population on the planet is supposed to be the tax paying civilians. So if it helps ease your concience.. you leave billions of children and seniors to starve to death....

Alright seriously..

It would be very hard to model, and if you went to that level of detail Gal Civ 2 would have a release date of 2007. After all look at Moo 3.. they tried to do it that way and it pretty much sucked as nothing was ever completly finished.

So several options.. research various invasion techniques. Heck just Info Warefare or using a Gas attack can way up your odds.

When you get things like mini soldiers (woo!) you are just rocking.

Even then.. you have to kill off 22 billion with 3 billion.. not exactly the easiest odds.

I've built transports that can carry 4 billion troops (very slowly over short distances) although these turned out to be grossly inefficient since I hardly ever needed that many troops. Once you research Space Marines, Shock Troops, etc your forces become much more powerful and if the enemy is behind in tech you can pretty much dominate invasions.

Another way to look at this is if Earth was invaded wouldnt the planetary governments quickly draft every able bodied person they could? Right now there is perhaps a few active troops in comparison to the population but if push came to shove they could crank out lots of cheap weapons and flood them to the front lines.

Unless your technology is FAR greater, it would probably be a meat grinder in RL too.

Yes, research up the Planetary invasion tree and get "Advanced Troop Modules"

Then design new transports.

I personaly design 3 transport type ships:
1) Regular transport but with engines. I'll usually design this after Impulse engine III. Standard 1000 troops. Very useful even later in the game to take over a planet that doesn't have a lot of pop.
2) "Invader" class will have advanced troop modules totaling 3000 troops
3) "Mega-Invader" will have advanced troop modules totaling 5000 troops

Then you just build the size you need for the job at hand.

And as a bonus you have now researched many different planetary invasion techs along the way giving you assess to mass drivers, gas attacks, core detonations, mini-solders and the like which will go a long way to help you with invasions. Also your soldiering skill increases with all those techs. I can have 3 bil troops easily take down a 13 bil planet with mini-soldiers or other help.

The game uses the MoO1 model where populations exterminate each other, so there is no 'reduce civilian casualties' option, or even rebellious enslaved races.

Not quite correct, I think. Four points (and here I assume a Human Empire for the examples).

One, remember that it is the EMPIRE which is said to be "human” and not necessarily the entire population of all of the planets. That would make every race into some of the bitterest xenophobes in science-fiction history.

Two, aliens can pay taxes, too. I have read nothing that says that only humans are allowed in the economic centers or that the aliens doing business on my planets have to stay in their trade ships. Remember that the population numbers shown in the game report tax payers and do not represent total population values. If an alien sells falafels on the street corner on my planet, I'd tax him the same as a human.

Three, the population increases do not, can not represent people having children. Each turn is a week, and there isn't a lead time of 18 years (or whatever) on getting new people paying taxes on a planet. As this shows, morale levels don't make people have more kids and must therefore represent something else -- like the abstract number of new citizens and businesses started in a week. And I see no reason why that couldn't mean conquered people applying for citizenship and starting new businesses.

Four, in war killing isn’t all that is important. Most critical is reducing the other side’s ability to wage war in a general sense (killing soldiers included) until their political or military leadership surrenders. So as I see it, invading the planet and killing 5 billion people means that the 5 billion people resisting my rule with weapons can no longer do so. Maybe millions or billions die but then, as I show them the error of their ways (and my low tax structure), billions of people join my empire's planet as full, tax-paying citizens or businesses.

Just my take on the whole “population extermination” thing.

Invasions are supposed to require careful planning and a lot of hard work. No invasion has ever been as easy as pie (with the exception of a few European countries before the onset of WWII...).

It's one thing to fight ship-to-ship. Quite another when it comes down to the man. Even though you may take down an enemy's defense systems, there will always be a guerrila faction that will make it hard for the invaders to do their job. For classic examples, just look at any historical battle. Take the Vietnam War, for example. That is a classic case of what happens when an invasion force gets bogged down and doesn't know who it's fighting.

(with the exception of a few European countries before the onset of WWII...).

That's a good example of the technology gap making a huge difference in fighting ability (Maginot Line on French/German border defending against Panzer II's on French/Belgium border....)

(with the exception of a few European countries before the onset of WWII...).

That's a good example of the technology gap or invasion techniques making a huge difference in fighting ability (Maginot Line on French/German border defending against Panzer II's on French/Belgium border....)

Is there a way to bombard planets like in MoO2 or do you have to invade to take planets? I just began my first game and it seems I can't bombard

Becareful about stuffing as many troops as possible onto a ship.

If you have ships carrying 1000 troops and you fight a battle using 2 ships (2000 troops) and loose 999 troops then you will be left with 1 ship. If you have 1 ship with 2000 troops and fight a battle loosing even 1 troop the ship will be destroyed.

Is there a way to bombard planets like in MoO2 or do you have to invade to take planets? I just began my first game and it seems I can't bombard

There is no way to really bombard planets they have to be invaded, though one of the invasion options "mass drivers" a pre-invasion bombardment with asteriods is implied.....

I don't think invasions are impossibly costly. It's a game. Sure, it's MUCH better to influence flip them, but losing billions in population isn't that big of a deal. So you lost a few billion taxpayers, so what? They'll grow back. What is a big deal, though, are those invasion tactics that clobber the PQ.

P.S. And yes, I do tend to pick the evil ethical choices.

Not expensive at all, I just troup out my maxed out population planets everytime they reach maximum. Always have an abundance of invasion transports. 3000-5000 troups and "gasing" the planet is easy enough to take them, now, the other way is the propaganda attack, but, I get screwed by the BUG in that feature if all my troups die, but, I still win the battle. Leaves the planets with 4,999,999 B inhabitants and pushes my popularity down to 1% and the next turn half my planets revolt. So, I quit using that feature. Gasing works everytime and I guess I'm just good at clicking the attack button cause I always get high odds. And I would never reduce my populations on planets more than 1000, that's a big hit to my economy whereas 1000 is just a minor hit.

This is a good feature though since it prevents the player from just steamrolling a race with invasion after invasion of all it's best planets. You take one, then a few weeks later you have the chance to take another. Works perfectly and only that propaganda invasion choice needs to be fixed.

I don't think I even want bombardment attack other than the Mass Drivers attack. The thing about bombardment is, planets shoot back. Hmmm a ship vs. a planet. Who wins that one?