What happens to the planets populations when you conquer it?

It is right.

The pop number is supposed to represent the number of able bodied taxpayers, so they all come to the defence of the planet when it comes under attack.

The population figure that you see is the *taxpaying* population. You can look at it this way: When a planet is conquered, the society is thrown into turmoil, industry and jobs are lost, and the citizens are no longer able to pay taxes. As time goes by, these citizens are integrated into the new society, and begin to pay taxes again. This is a gentler way of looking at this mechanic.

Of course, this is just a matter of perception. If you are playing as the Korath, and want to picture them gleefully going about a slaughterfest, then that is up to you.

The number in the troop module is in millions, thus why 1,000 units of troops takes 1 billion people from a planet. When you invade, you commit genocide on that planet and everyone left alive re-integrates into society.

Something tells me the bunny-hugging alternative wouldn't work right for the Torians and Dregin, or perhaps the Yor and Iconians, or even the Drath and Alterians....I doubt those two want to share a planet ever again.

So I am guessing that throws my freedom figthers idea of, but I wont change my idea until frogboy says diffrently. Even so how do you know that it happens like that. in the manual? because I think they take over by just killing the troops, that would fit the Altarrian prof

I believe I said that, yes. It fits, though. Consider: You invade the planet. The number of defenders coincidentally happens to be equal to the listed population of the planet. They fight very poorly, probably because they were not equipped or trained to be soldiers, allowing you to take the planet with maybe a tenth of the invading force that they would have. After the fighting, unless you used info warfare, not a single unit of enemy population remains, and the population of the planet now coincidentally consists of exactly the number of invading soldiers you used who survived the fighting. I dunno about you, but I find this AWFULLY convenient.

Also, to make matters more stark, you are now out a potentially very expensive transport. What did they do with my transport? Obviously, the same thing they did with my colony ships: They took it apart and turned it into luxury condos! Little bastards.


Yeah, but ALL of them? I mean, sure, you might conceivably argue that SOME non-contributing members of society may have survived, but the fact remains that every single member of the LISTED population was accounted for FIGHTING TO THE DEATH. How many non-taxpayers could there possibly be, anyway? Those people just GOT here this last turn!


Pssh. Korath don't invade planets, they just spore them and move in. Everyone knows that! Why waste a perfectly good transport when you could just use a much cheaper sporeship and use the transport to land your perfectly good, unkilled population?

It depends.

If I play Drengin/Korath, I eat them.

If I play Yor, they're ground down into bio-oil.