Planet Liberation

I would love the idea of being able to liberate races old planets to reinstate that race as a close or allied civ instead of forcing them to incorporate into your race.

Well the way the invasion model works is that when you invade a planet regardless of your alignment pretty much all of the planets population is wiped out and the planet is resettled as a new colony by your own species.

Which is kind of a kick in the pants for the Drengin plans for galactic domination isnt it?

It also makes the subject of "Liberating" a planet a moot point...

It's been explained before that you don't actually kill all of the population on the planet when you conquer it, you simply smash all resistance.

Of course, spore ships really do kill everyone.

I would also like to see this idea in the game.

In an invasion, you don't kill all the population. You just kill all the taxpayers. There are also people who don't pay taxes to their galactic government and in exchange, don't have to fight and also don't get the entertainment/farming services and job opportunities the galactic governments provide. These people are the ones who the Drengin enslave, and anyone who got moved by Info Warfare also gets enslaved. Korathian Spore, however, kills all. In the beginning of a game, your homeworld actually has 16 billion people on it, but only 8 billion are taxpaying citizens. Strange, but this is what it says in the manual.

Ok perhaps it is just me... but as far as I am concerned then people all die in invasions, and as far as I can see I got the numbers to back me up as well.

A generic example. I have 100% happiness, 0% tax (All income from trade and tourism)

I losse a planet with 20 billion people on it one turn this leaves the 1500 troops that survived the invasion on it.

In the next turn, I retake it with 2000 troops, here only about a 1000 survives... now I press end turn, and next turn there is still only the 1000 troops plus the bit that have been born etc over 1 turn.

Now I watch the planet closely for the next 40 turns.... it experience no out of the ordinary population booms, actually it follows the ordinary planet growth as one would expect normally. This I did just to rule out that "people where poor after the invasion arguments and only come back after a while when they have rebuildt their lives".

This leaves me with no other conclusion that the people are all killed in the invasion. So why do people keep on insisting that this is not the case?

and btw.. I love the liberation idea! It would be lovely to have implemented along with a better tactical combat model!

Because the game mechanics are an abstraction, not intended to be literal.

Yes the game mechanics are an abstraction true... but kinda hard to support that abstraction when nothing in the game mechanics support anything but complete genocide.

But there is no real point in argueing over this, since nothing can solve this issue until a more advanced population model is introduced into the game. Sadly this liberation idea cannot be implemented until the that when that happens.

I could however also see complications doing it to the game as it is, since I imagaine it would require a rather large rewrite of the diplomacy part of the game, and how the AI tackles this.

I guess that is the most annoying thing about this game, on one hand we have a great AI that can actually pull some fancy tricks out of the bucket... and on the other we would all proberly like some more details into the game, which would compromise the same AI that makes the game so fun to play!

What? Frogboy's explained this already. I don't see the game mechanics as supporting genocide, either. I see invasions as eliminating resistance, but that doesn't automatically mean 100% casualties on the losing side. The interpretation that all invasions are genocidal doesn't make sense to me.

They should put together a decision system for planet invasions, to allow for liberation. I don't see why a good or neutral civ, or even most evil civs, would wipe out billions of civilians during an invasion. Off the top of my head (and I apologize in advance for a huge post)...

First there should be a good option to keep everyone. There'd be a cost over time, and a temporary morale drop, but after that passed you'd get an influence bonus on that planet. Plus you keep your taxpayers. After a certain number of turns with morale >= to what it was pre-invasion, the people become yours and can no longer be liberated (turns where morale is lower don't count for this total, so killing morale before invading is a good idea). The length of the morale penalty and the number of turns before you own the people could depend on that civ's loyalty stat.

Second, a neutral kick-em-off option, which would be free because the exiled people are taking their own stuff with them, not yours. Population resets as usual, no bonuses or penalties. The planet may be liberated later. After a certain number of turns these people are permanently resettled and liberation is no longer an option. This duration would also hinge on loyalty.

Third, enslavement. You get a permanent production increase and morale penalty. You keep your taxpayers, and get some evil points. The planet can always be liberated later, and will never like you.

Fourth, genocide. Big evil points, population resets, and there can be no liberation on that planet. There could also be some short term, hefty penalties as civilians fight their extermination, dependent on the courage of the that civ.

Last, of course, is liberation, when applicable. Big kudos from the civ it's being restored to, and it's free (the AI might restore planets to strong friendly civs to make alliances). If any alignment changes result, it should be dependent on who you're handing the planet to (e.g.: handing something back to the Korath != good). And, of course, if the liberated civ was wiped out, it gets revived. You also decide whether to exile or exterminate their conquerors.

If you decide not to liberate a taken world, it works as above, except it reflects your actions on whomever the people are loyal to; if you genocide a slave world, the civ they used to belong to will be mad; if you take the good route, you have to win them over from their original civ, not the conqueror. If you exile conquerors from a world that already has an exiled population, both await a return until they resettle, and either could be restored, depending on who's doing the restoring.

I like the idea of liberations... sometimes a friend gets wiped out and I reload so I can pass them a planet to keep them alive. Anything that takes the place of using reloading as a sort of fake prescience, I support.

Of course, you could always just conquer the world and gift it to the original civ who had it.

In the DL campaign, the Terrans liberate the planet Tiniath from the Drengin in order to convince the Torians into an alliance. But they don't liberate it in the sense that the Torians get the planet back. Instead, they rescue the Torian leader, abandon the planet, and flee from the Dread Lords.

I thought abit more about it Phaedyme and have come up with a line of reasoning that would indicate that not everyone dies.

Like you say then only the resistance is taken out in an invasion, but due to the chaos after the invasion, people get scattered and are lost from the official documents. But since the game is rather slow, we can think of the people comming afterwards as people who have regained their status in society after invasion, growing up etc.

This just means that the core of the issue here, is that the game mechanism for population is bad since it says that it is not possible to even have a fair estimate of the total population of any given planet. So it again comes back to the population model used being oversimplified and in need of future improvements!