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Land battles and invasions always were rather simple and overlooked in MoO series. Autobattles with different multipliers. IMO MoO should learn from other games in case of planetary invasions.

 

Galactic Civilizations had a nice idea of different kinds of invasion. Information warfare, gas attacks, tidal disruption etc. Bad implementation negated most of the potential, sadly.

Anyway, adding several option for different kind of invasions would be very simple to indroduce and will add another possabilities to the game. Traditional stratey options like "stronger attack but more casualties" anole would be great to see. This will not overburden the game with tedious mechanics but add a bit of variety to the gameplay.

 

Land batles always were secondary(in not tetriary) in MoO. Usually it was - win a space battle, bomb every last enemy, recolozine if the planet was valuable. Land battles rarely were lost because 6-8 troop transports were already a great force to deal with. After all, you get them back anyway according to casualties.

 

Best way to ruin any interest to cripple the game is to make the land phase overcomplex(hello MoO3). Land troop bonus always was among most useless ones.

As a possible solution, battles for planets should no longer be instant.

I.e. the more troops planet has the longer it takes to capture them. This will add at least some value to land warfare techs, usually useless. Small trash-planets with 5-6 pop and small garrison may be still taked instantly or in one turn. Larger and more valuable platets, well defended centers of research and production like terra\ocean 12 should be taken in several turns, representing gradual capture of surface. This will allow defenders to organize a counterattack and send in reinforcements at the same time will increse the importance of unpopular racial bonuses like +2 parcec per turn.

 

How I see it:

1. We have 3 planets, trash-planets without farming, poor and 4 pop, so-so 6-8 pop planet and valuable terra\ocean 12.

2. Won space battle, moving on to land battle.

3. Trash-planet - either invasion with instant victory or one turn capture, or glassing with bombardment, because of planet uselessness.

4. 6-8 "middle" planet - have some garrison and defence - invasion will take 2-3 turns depending of techs, bonuses or leaders.

5. Terra\ocean - well developed planet with large garrison. It takes 4-5+ turns to completely capture the planet. During this time enemy can beat your fleed from their orbit but still have to reinforce their garrison becasue you already unloaded invasion force on the planet and capture is in progress.

 

In the end: small and unimportant planets would not create a boring repetitive routine of neverending waiting for captures. Could be glassed as well. Important world should be approached carefully, with some planning beforehead. This will increase their importance without unnecessary micro and macro burden. We keep traditional MoO2 system with some additions, land battle(and maybe espionage) bonuses increase their importance.

 

This mechanics could be implemented with simple if-then-else approach. Like total invading force value is equal to defender - capture as usual, invader overwhelms defender-  instant or 1 turn capture, if defenders is stronger - no capture, can only damage defenders. Plus common multipliers for defenders, techs, leaders etc. fit here perfectly. Blockade importance could be added as well - when you beat the ships but have not enough forces to capture the planet.

End result: MoO2 system upgraded but not completely overhauled.

Hmm, and woudlnt you think that maybe another turn-based battle with land units may work too, in addition to space battles?

They should add the possibility to having your spy's starting a revolution that cripple the planetary defence. 

Land battles should be worth the effort to begin with: In too many other games it is easier to just nuke the planet and re-colonize it. There has to be some benefit in capture as opposed to cleanse&colonize

 

I think in Moo3 they had some success in this aspect. In Moo3 developing the planet took long time as you could only complete a single upgrade (or was it single upgrade/region) each turn even if you had more production available. So if you nuked everything from orbit you lost maybe tens or hundreds of turns worth of upgrades, but if you captured it you got atleast some of it intact, It could be done via some form of infrastructure boosts that pop up without player building them as time goes by to the planet. That way older planets would have more extra stuff, and would be worth more when captured. These upgrades could be tied to tech advances in the way that they only come available after tech has been invented and would maybe automatically( or at faster rate) upgrade when a more advanced version comes up.

 

I would also like the option to play ground combats as separate battle like space combat. I know it is unrealistic that planet is captured with just few tanks and infantry men but I think some liberties are allowed to make the game fun  and playable. And this would allow some races (bulrathi) to excell in their own territory. There is also the possibility that ground combat could be done as a separate type minigame (card game, some form of chess type fixed movement game, etc) or abstracted large army style like in MOO3. I'd prefer a space battle like game, but would settle for any sort of ground game.

 

On the question about time of invasions: I'd actually like all battles to last longer in game turns. Big naval battles should not automatically last until one side retreats or is destroyed: If space battles would last for multiple game turns, that would make for some interesting aspects to game  like reinforcements arriving half way to battle (maybe allowing some nice ambushes), supply issues (possibly making cheap raider ships that can only operate for few turns without resupply or just sieges draining supplies from ships) and possible espionage benefits(assasinate captain, fake orders, distorted signals to move few ships a bit in between turns). All this could change the battle from the normal and add something extra to the game.

 

If the space combat will be turn based, then it could easily be that each game turn has fixed amount of battle turns (10 battle turns in each game turn?), and the ships are left to the position/condition they are when last battle turn ends. Then they would continue from there on the next game turn. So single space combat could take multiple turns.

There could also be simultaneous space/ground combat turns if you manage to get some troops on the planet (landing ship or some form of infiltration). I think it would be nice if planetary defences could be silenced by a commando raid unit that has been infiltrated on the planet. If they blow up a missile base, that base will not fire as the ships in space combat from that point forward etc.

 

 

 

 

Lore_Demon great post.

If they are going to add a new planetary invasion system should it use the space ships that are in orbit and use them as a low precision support.

Guys, Wargaming is probably going to drop tactical space combat and you are talking about land battles? Thats called not really nailing it.

I actually kinda liked how they did ground combat and planetary invasion with Moo3. >.> It was complex but not tedious and it's something you could either choose to do or not do if you wanted too. Personally I'd invade planets just so I'd bring other species into my empire which makes my armies more efficient later on on foreign worlds.

 

AND! Did you know you can actually sorta do that to space combat. You can select a timer and set it accordingly. If it's short enough, then you can have battles last across multiple turns with the possibility of the AI sending rienforcements. It's a round about way of doing it, but for a time I rather enjoyed experimenting with this.only really works when the AI is set to put up a fight though. If you try it on easy they basically just spread their legs for ya.

 

If they actually drop tactical combat I'll ot be very interested >.> Aramor what are you basing that statement on?

I'd like to see land battles dealt with the same as space battles, an auto-resolve option and a tactical combat option. Obviously it shouldn't be as involved or in-depth as the space battles because it'll slow down gameplay but instead be streamlined and impressive.

 

I completely agree. In fact, ground combat was about the only thing left I enjoyed out of MoO3. Space Battles, while I liked the Armada Task Force element and the starfighter combat, was horrible, due to pathetically awful AI. Having entire fleets just spinning around in circles, when you needed them to actually attack, was annoying.

Ground Combat, though, while simple, was enjoyable. Sure, it was as basic as basic gets, but it was rather fun to play for me and certainly better than most other games, such as Star Wars:Rebellion (which in my opinion, had a MUCH better Space Battle engine.) In fact, I really don't get much fun out of when I play MoO3 now, until I get to a point when I'm doing invasions. I enjoy taking entire planets intact, using Elite Mobiles and Crack Marines. Rarely, do I ever bomb planets and I love it when I can send in 3-4 crack or elite corps/armies to take out an opponent with twice the troop support.

I hope they do keep Ground Combat like they did in MoO3, at the very least upgrading it along the same lines. It was the only thing QSI seemed to get right with MoO3.

Just my 2p.

I liked the simple invasions of MoO2 too, but I think there is room for improvements. To have them take several turns for a heavy defended planet is a good idea. If I recall correct i think there was some good ideas concerning invasions in MoO3  ( which in total was an awful game and incomplete fail). For instance you were able to chose stances. If you had a invasion going on for several turns, you should be able to tell your troops to fight more aggressively in order to take the planet faster but at heavier losses and so on. Also could leaders have some special skills buffing ground troops in certain situations and not just a lone % buff. The invasion should still be automated but there should be some sort of animation going on showing how much of the planets surface was in your hands and in which direction it was going with the current number of invaders and defenders, so you would have to decide if you need to change stance, reinforce the invasion, bomb more or not.

 

Perhaps after your leader successfully invaded 2-3 Sakkra planets he would learn the fight Sakkra skill which could level up and give 10/20/30% increased attack. Or perhaps dessert combat after successfully invading a couple of dessert planets. 

 

Perhaps should the planets have a level of infrastructure depending on population and buildings. More infrastructures and defensive buildings would improve the strength of the resistance.

 

It would also be nice if Moo4 keeps the different ground troops like militias, regulars, (power armored with tech) elite/marines, tanks/artillery, Mechs, bombers and fighters (airpower). The troop types would have different stats depending on your tech level and could be named differently for each race to give more flavor. Here are some suggested stats.

 

• Attack versus Defense that decides if they hit or not. I guess if each individual  troop in a unit with 1000 gets their own attack is randomness not a big issue. 
• Perhaps Anti air attack/defense
• Numbers of Troops in each unit
• Hit points for each troop
• Initiative that decide  who gets to shoot first each turn.
• Bonus versus other troop type
• Environmental bonuses 

 

I would also like if some neutral planets hosted aggressive defending natives. You would have to decide if you would bomb them to bits (losing the natives) or invade before you could colonize the planet.

Edited by Gamling_JB, 14 January 2016 - 02:49 PM.