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And if you use minisoldiers, you get a massive bonus, and no planetary damage, and hardly any structural damage

For highly populated enemy planets, I sometimes send in a 1000 or 2000 with mass drivers to soften them up. Sometimes they win by accident and most of the improvements are destroyed. The optimal is to get the enemy below 1000 troops so the next wave can go in with traditional warfare.

Capturing planets intact can give a huge boost. Often times the enemy has a lot of ship production in the queue that can be converted to a large ship or better almost immediately. Capturing a planet using Tidal Disruption helps with money flow if a player is cash strapped, but means that planet will take 50 turns to again be productive. Late game, Mini Soldiers usually is best, because improvements are captured, the downside is the 500 cost per throw.

the downside is the 500 cost per throw.

Which is dirt cheap, in my opinion.

Information warfare is great for capturing a planet undamaged. 800 bc well spent to capture a fully intact planet. U can use it straight from the start as well.

When my technological situation allows it, I only choose between information warfare or mini-soldiers. Information warfare stays useful on planets with a low morale while mini-soldiers are useful in just about every situation. Of course, I usually attack with a huge amount of soldiers (3000-9000) which means that any boost will weight that much harder. There have been situations where no transports were emptied; the defectors had survived the onslaught and occupied the planet.

As a rule, I only invade a planet when I'm reasonably sure I'll win. I also have the impression that outnumbering your enemy is a rather important aspect of battle but that could just be me.

I never use any options that lower PQ in sandbox mode. As mentioned above, Mini-Soldiers and Info warfare are what I do when I don't go traditional. I mostly do traditional invasions though, because I make building Tir-Quan a priority and research several soldiering technologies before I attack the first time. I'd rather wait until another transport is built than use massdrivers or somesuch. I do not invade before midgame.

IMHO outnumbering the enemy is not that important. I routinely invade 10+ mio pop planets with 4mio troops no prob. Of course, I generally have the soldiering bonus to back it up.

my 2cts.

Big assault ships is the way I go ,3k or 4 k preferably per ship in fleets. chances are you will take the planet and end up with a heathy (2k +) population that will grow quick. If you do happen to end up with just a million or so survivors it it often useful to land one of the transports for a few turns while they get on their feet.

I like to use a maxed out fleet full of 2000 troop transports to invade.

With a massive enemy population I may send in a 500 or 1000 troop single transport using mass driver support to soften them up before my main invasion force.

I may use mini-soldiers if I have a bunch of money and am unsure of my odds, like on the first assault on a new empire. If their morale sucks, I use info warfare to grab more troops. Often I don't use up a transport with info warfare.

I try to get soldiering bonus before I start my conquest stage.

One thing about my transports. I have found that I like to have undefended packs of very very very fast transports swooping in to pounce on the worlds I have killed of the orbital fleet coverage. I do the orbital battle and then have my transports fly in and invade and then park themselves at the end of their movement to a defended parsec where a large fleet has ended its movement.

I build 4 types of transports and upgrade their engines as the game goes on.
A large tran with 2000 troops and as many of my best engine as possible.
A medium tran with 1000 troops and as many of my best engines as possible.
An assualt tran with 500 troops with speed to match the other transports
A cheap 500 troop transport with 2 of my best engines for quick build and cleanup of remaining troops.

Often I park my transport packs one or two sectors away, well out of enemy fleet range and then swoop them in.

The high speedc of transports make it quick to build them and move them from my worlds to the battlefront.

I also aways try to invade the world with a full fleet, although I don't think it makes much difference in the late game

I invade with small fleets of 1000-2000 troops and use information warfare or mini soldiers since they leave the planet intact.

I've often had situations with information warfare where my 1000 troops became 6000.

If I have 20 transports, I'd rather try to invade 20 planets and fail on half of them than be sure to win on 2 or 3. Information warfare or mini soldiers if used when appropriate tend to really wreck the computer on a simultaneous invasion across his empire. You can literally halve his population and terminally wreck their economy in 1 or 2 turns.

I never use any options that lower PQ in sandbox mode

i get kinda mad at the torians every once and a while mass driver/Tidal Disrupt them to death. helps on the next planet too, it seems they're not very happy they're neighboring planet just got pounded. Get's even more people on your side for Info War.

Works for me.

build more troop modules on your ships!

there is nothing wrong with proving you are the superior race! or just dead annoying before you're squished... AHEM!

i generally get loads of transports before hand to throw with abandon at a planet. billions of troops dead? oh well. as it says with the precursor workshop: "so what? people are a RENEWABLE resource!" hehehe

I ONLY use mini soldiers.

I find myself using mass drivers a lot... throwing rocks at the Torians is so much fun...

I've found it really doesn't matter how many troops are involved, unless the target planet has an enormous population. Even on "tough", the AI usually extremely crappy soldiering skills for nearly the whole game - even the evil races. Unless someone declares war on me early and comes at me with a bunch of transports, I almost never invade anyone before I've researched Shock Troops and built Tir Quan somewhere. My army is basically a steamroller.

Normally, I'd find this to be cheesy, but the AI does it too, so I guess it's a valid tactic. Invade with a single transport to exterminate most of the defending army. If you win, great. If you don't, you probably killed at least half their army. Send in the fleet to mop up.

If the planet has high population and low morale, go with information warfare, because that generally gives a nice boost to the size of your invasion force. Otherwise, mini-soldiers. Unless.....

Always check to see what's on the planet before invading it, especially when invading Drengin or Torian planets. If they've built half a dozen damn farms, use Tidal Disruptors. That'll wipe out most of the crap they've built without destroying the planet itself. Saves you the trouble of having to manually destroy all those damn farms.

About halfway through the miniaturization techs (expert, I think), you can build a troop ship out of a tiny hull with an advanced troop mod. You can't make it as fast as a cargo hull, but it will be cheaper (and quicker) to build and you can put a huge number of them into a fleet. If it's early on and your logistics are only at ~21, that means you can still invade a planet with 10 transports all at once.

You can also usually fit at least one weapon on these transports and it'll have a chance to survive an ambush. Basically, it's a lightly-armed fighter. Although putting on a weapon cancels out the $$ saving between tiny and cargo hull. If you're going to do that, use a small hull instead so you can fit a little more stuff on it.

I hate the Torians! Keep throwing them rocks!

What!!! I'm playing a normal and the Torians (a good race) had extremely high soldering, rivaling my own, right from the start. 

I usually use Mini-soldiers or just traditional, rarely use anything that'll damage the planet too much. May have to check out info warfare next time.

I don't know about any one else; but I crank out my advanced troop ships (2K troops) while I can and stash them on planets near where i am going to attack; because the troop ships are *zero* matinance and I have found later on in the game that sometimes I am not able to build them, so i build them when I can and if need be I can always upgrade them later;o)

From the Desk of Sugien CSK
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@###{ ]::::::Cyber Striker Knight::::::>
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Oh, and I most always use mass drivers; because when I start invading I make sure I have enough troop ships to do the job and the game is usually over after I attack them all. I do think however I will try the other ways; because it does tear down a planet; but I also use mass drivers sometimes just in case they take it back; because then they are getting back a down graded planet
From the Desk of Sugien CSK
_____/}
@###{ ]::::::Cyber Striker Knight::::::>
`````\}

A couple of times, especially later in the game, if/when I'm taking a lot of planets, and my economy can't take it, I'll actually destroy less evolved colonies.

I usually use Mini-soldiers and Information Warfare as well, but... I may consider using the other techs if I feel that the planet might offset my economy too much.

When it comes to transports, I prefer to make just one transport and then to send it off. So, I usually upgrade them to carry around 4000 troops, or more, if I can fit them on. Those designs usually start out slow, but increase in speed with the tech. It's useful for taking down those 12+ billion population planets.