Birth of the Empires

I'm not sure that is is a bug - first ask:

I'm attacking Sevar minor race (48.4 mld population) with my stock fleet:

• - 5 x Peraine-class destroyer
  - 6 x Chillmark-class heavy cruiser

My nation is unhappy (angry) after x turns of bombardment. The problem is that the population of attacked system is a little downgrading (over 43mld pop).

1. This is normal situation? This fleet is very strong and I thought that the system will be sterilized in 10-15 turns...

2. How to invade planets? Unfortunately I didn't find info about it. (It can be in German, I'll use google translator to understand it).

3. At the 'fleet view' window are ships with none or one or two white dots/points. What these dots are?

that fleet isn't that strong, destroyers are usually light spacecraft and not very suitable for bombing planet tasks and Chilmark is a very early cruiser which is clumsy and not very powerful. That explains the bad outcome with population losses and the growing anger at your people. Terrans are not used to bombing and population death news so they react badly to that in press. If you want to bombard like that with rather light-weight ships you need to play another race, most ept for that would be the Khaorons, they like such smaller bombardments.

Sterilizing at the beginning with low techs is extremely difficult, gets easier with heavier ships later-on in-game though. I'd say you'd need triple the size of your current fleet to ever make significant population damages.

Build transporters, build troops (in barracks in build menu), then use transport menu for transporters to shift available troops in system towards your ship (you'll notice an icon then on your ship), then head over to the enemy and do a system attack with the transporter(s).

dots are crew experience. They increase over time.

That's the main difficulty regarding Terraneans, you cannot attack systems in the early game since the moral effect is way too strong. If you may win the fight it doesn't make up for it. Get moral empire wide +2 until bombing systems.

Build transporters, build troops (in barracks in build menu), then use transport menu for transporters to shift available troops in system towards your ship (you'll notice an icon then on your ship), then head over to the enemy and do a system attack with the transporter(s).

What I'd like to know here is how many troops you need - it certainly depends on whether there's a defense bonus in the system, how much population it has and strength of the attacking troops, but you get the result only after you've (potentially) lost all your troops, so it's like fleet fights were until Alpha 6. Same goes for bombing only vs ship defense buildings; how many ships will I lose (will I) ?

use forum search function please (I replied to the threads in question).

The number of troops also depends on the race you're attacking. Warlike races are stronger than pacifists. Usually I use one troop per 5 Mrd. against non-warlike races and 2-3 times as much against warlikes (when playing Khaoron, Cartarer or Omegas) and about twice as much as Heyoun (I don't know their english "name" - the Ferengi-replacement - @puste/Malle: why are some spelled different anyway?) and about 1.5 times as Roths. I don't invade as Terra, because the moral loss is too much (even if I could stand it).

But right now it's also always luck when it comes to invasions. When the number of your troops is close to "winning", and you repeat the invasion X times, you may win 50 % and lose the other 50 %. But event if the number is far more then you might need, it is even a lot of luck if you lose any or (rather) how many troops you lose. I had it more than once that I lost double as much troops when invading a system with double as much troops then when invading another system with the same population (and same structures).

The number of ships you lose during bombing depends on the number and level of the defense, as well as the number and quality of your fleet. The damage caused by the buildings "spreads" evenly throughout the entire attacking fleet - so, the more ships and the higher the quality, the less you lose.

master130686 hat geschrieben:@puste/Malle: why are some spelled different anyway?

thought it sounded better that way.

battles are essentially diced-out, i.e. there are different strengths with the different races' troops and if those are fighting each other, they fight 1:1 and dices get rolled. The one having higher number (where strength is added to and comes into effect here) wins and the other troop unit dies. That's probably why invasions can have largely different endings depending on dice luck.

thought it sounded better that way.

I think it's confusing - and hard to talk to someone with the other language (if you don't know the other version). Wouldn't it have been easier (and less confusing) to use race names that are the same in German and English (at least in spelling)?

well they aren't that much different: Terraner - Terrans or Terraneans (okay Coalition of Planets is somewhat different), Hanuhr - Heyoun and Khayrin - Khaoron. I guess the better-sounding effect equals the mild confusion here.

Malle hat geschrieben:well they aren't that much different: Terraner - Terrans or Terraneans (okay Coalition of Planets is somewhat different), Hanuhr - Heyoun and Khayrin - Khaoron. I guess the better-sounding effect equals the mild confusion here.

Aha, that is why the pronounciation of the names while logging in to some of the races never seemed to match the names...remarkably the Hanuhr, but they match the English spellings.

Hmm - it is strange and hard to "calculate".

That is right that I play Terran race now and attack minor race.
I attacked system 50mld population with 5 x Chillmark-heavy-cruiser and 12 x Security-forces.
Effect: 3 mld killed only...


I'm powerful with science so there are no more advanced race than me. So I thought that the invasion depend from technology level too.
It is strange that the most technology advanced race cannot attack 1-system minor race...

In effect I lose too many resources to fast attack (and no effect!) to expand my empire at critical time (no solid borders between races).
Result: no battles, no planet re-capturing, no tactical movement but technology race to better units or military forces only, which allow spend not-too-much resources to build units.
What now?
To capture this system with one attack I should use 3x more forces... 50mld/5 = 10u x 3 = 30 units of security forces, and 15 transporters to keep them.
And it is only minor race with one system...
It is fine if I kill 30-50% population with buildings... but not less than 10% only.

After a successful invasion you won't lose all your troops. So if you have an attack army with a lot of transporters and troops once, you can attack a lot of systems in a short time. And a 50mld pop system is a big system. Try smallers systems first and you'll have success...

Now I see. After successful bombardment & invasion the battle mechanics looks good. It has sense at all.
But looks not good if invasion is lost...

Hmm.. I repeat this game (20 last turns and result of attack is "a little" different:



20 troops with 5 heavy cruisers and 1 bln killed only? In other test: 8 bln...

The random value as result of invasion is of course excellent option but spread of the results is hmmm.... to much?
First game when I played this system was conquested with 6 troop survived.

This situation shows that the weak human player will continue to save and open the game in order to obtain the most favorable result.
And this situation is not good for a strategy game...

Can you add a savegame please? So I can check if it is a bug...

Sir Pustekuchen hat geschrieben:Can you add a savegame please? So I can check if it is a bug...

Next test again... and victory - system conquered with 4 trrops survived.

turn123.sav
race: Coalition of Planets
At this turn I move invasion fleet to Storgor system (bombardment in progress).
Next turn: 'attack system' order to invasion fleet.

Turn available at: http://www.filefront.com/17899946/turn123.sav

Thanks, Sir Pustekuchen.