Militia per population too low, and the Weenie Rush uber-strategy |
v1.17, with or without Balance Mod 1.0.
(It has to be a) bug:
[_] Full enemy homeworlds with 4,000 M population get only 5 militia ground troops. These are "caveman" troops at the lowest possible tech level. Hence, you can conquer a homeworld using 1 turn's worth of 0-research troops, carried in 1 Cargo Bay level 1.
Recall how it was in SE3:
- 1 "light infantry" (= 1 ground factor) per 100 M.
- 1 Troop Quarters III (TQ3; best) = 10 ground units = 2 Small Battle Mecha (good) = 14 ground factors (gf).
- Your Light Cruiser could dedicate 1 slot for a TQ3 to carry 2 small mecha, and casually conquer Small planets (1000 M = 10 gf) or lower.
- Mediums (2000 M = 20 gf) were a risk, since they slightly outnumber you (20 to 14), but it was unlikely that they could inflict a full 7 damage in a single salvo, and SE3 ground damage didn't accumulate.
- For a Large (5000M = 50 gf), esp. a homeworld, you needed a small troop transport with 8 TQ3 = 16 mecha (or several LCs), and you'd lose at least one mecha.
- Hence, it took substantial research and investment to conquer anything, and capturing homeworlds was a late-game consideration.
In contrast, SE5's militia ratio is hopeless. I present the following curious uber-strategy, "Weenie Rush". Oddly, the winning tech is Sensor level 3, for the Combat Sensors.
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Weenie Rush
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I assume Balance Mod, which has much higher tech costs. Ironically, this only emphasizes how ridiculous the following strategy is, since your winning combo is all from techs in which you've spent 0 research. (It works even better in standard 1.17, since you'll be able to afford several of the lower tech levels.)
Let "caveman" denote a tech or component in which you've spent 0 research. By transitivity, a ship or unit that consist entirely of "caveman" components is also "caveman".
0. Play against "many" "hard" AI, with Team play. I have 19 AIs allied against me. Assume your system has 1 colonizable planet. (Ironically, this actually slows you down by the 2 turns you need to colonize it.)
01. Pump all research into Sensors until level 3. (In Balance Mod, this actually takes you several turns.)
02. Turn 1: Build a Research Center (to fill out your homeworld).
03. Turn 2: Design Colony ship. Build 1.
04. Turn 4: Design caveman Small Troop. Colonize planet. Set it to build troop x 6, Repeat.
05. Turn 4: Design caveman Frigate. Replace 1 gun with a caveman Cargo Bay. Build 1.
06. Turn 6: You should have Sensors 2 by now (maybe 3). Design Frigate II with Combat Sensor, set strategy to Maximum Weapon Range, upgrade it immediately.
07. Turn 7: Move Frigate II to 2nd planet, load troops. 1 Cargo Bay (level 1) can hold 18 small troops in standard 1.17 (200 / 11), or 12 in Balance Mod [100 / 8]. We'll assume 12.
08. Turn 7+: Go exploring. Your nigh-caveman Frigate II, with one caveman Cargo Bay full of 1-2 turns' worth of caveman Small Troops, can now conquer probably 10+ homeworlds before attrition whittles you down.
09. Turn 9: You stumble into an AI's home system near yours (ideally, adjacent).
10. Turn 10: The AI auto-declares war on you (because of Team play).
11. Turn 10-11: You find its homeworld. Attack. If he has a ship (or even 2) in defense, you have Combat Sensors, he doesn't. You win in space.
11. Drop troops. You have 12 troops, he has 5 militia (it's gotta be a bug), and they're equally weak. You win on the ground.
12. Turn 12: You just conquered a homeworld. Repeat.
Getting an explorer out of your home system around turn 10 is pretty average. In SE3 and SE4, if your first scout finds an AI next door, you duck and run, and hope he's friendly (or slow). In SE5, you just conquer him outright.
Your rate of expansion throughout the galaxy becomes limited by the fact that your Frigate IIs can conquer only 1 planet per turn each 
Stopping weenie rush
You don´t need to build 50 troops to defend against that rush. A single light weapon platform with 3 CSM and 1 DUC (all lvl 1) can easily destroy 2-3 transport frigates before they reach the planet. It only cost 1500 mineral, and can help to defend against rogue frigates bombing planets in the early game.
I shouldn´t be hard to make the AI build a single cheap WP on early turns to avoid this kind of tactics. And players only need to build them if they find enemy frigates in their home systems...
dddddd
It doesn’t take many defences to see of a lone lightly armed frigate, an orbital base will do that as will a few satellites or a weapons platform and significant numbers of small gun or missile satellites can be stored even on the smallest colony. Then there is the Ai’s tendency to build frigate swarms and park them at warp points The AI might not be that good but a frigate of the type described is not going to be able to chew through odds of 5:1 I would also point out that both the Balance Mod AI and the Tarsus one knows how to build defences to that extent. The Velaxi AI will screw your empire to dust with Intel attacks before you take the first colony
Militia amounts
Unfortunately changing the militia amounts in Settings.txt isn't registering in-game yet. Perhaps in 1.21?
Usually the AI needs 15-20 turns before they start building unit defenses in significant numbers.
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Lame AI Builds
The AI's build too many garbage units to be a worthwhile opponent. The AI's need to build more, better ships, not more garbage units that don't do anything to defend a planet from ship attacks. The AI should stop wasting time and effort researching unit techs and concentrate more on ship techs. I never build units and never have a problem keeping my planets safe because I control the space above. The best planetary defense is a good spacefleet!
Omnius
quoteaholics annoymous how can we help you.....
1. 50 is overkill. 12 is already a win. Hence, it'd be much more efficient to split those 50 into 4 ships carrying 12 each.
Eric / Gilmoy
Sorry Gilmoy, I think you miss-understood me.
What I am proposing is increasing the amount of Milita troops that are created whenever a planet is attacked. Or increasing their tonnage by a factor of 5.
My suggestion is to increase the tonnage just too make the battles playable on most older PCs. I would have milita troops be 5x the size of normal troops (being milita they can only be used in colony defense). As milita troops the game would make them using whatever tech levels are available to the defender at the time of attack so they would never be obselete tech as far as the defender was concerned.
If you had 10 of these super milita they would be aproximatly the equivilant to 50 troops, possibily a bit better as they would take advantage of any tech advances that had been made since your troops where produced.
Launching an attack with 50+ (I would want probably 75) troops (and carriers) against a home world in the early game would be possible but it would require a considerable investment in resources so early in the game.
If you also consider the addition on milita weapons platforms then launching an early game attack on a homeworld would become extremely difficult. As you would have to have ships capable of destroying these platforms, or be able to withstand the punishement these would deal out long enough to put your troops on the ground.
Its a "valid" stratergy, and
Its a "valid" stratergy, and why I have been calling for an improvement to planetry defenses.
I have an issue with creating hundreds of milta troops simply because it will cause huge pc crushing battles with hundreds of troops be squeezed onto tiny maps.
My idea is to make milita troops 10x (number can argued about) bigger. That way the 5 milita troops are = 50 equivilant level invasion troops (well slightly less due to over kill being an issue for milita troops). Whilst putting 50 troops on a home world using your stratergy is possible, its also very resource hungry and is going to cause you problems in other regards, so it becomes a strategic choice rather than a game given starting bonus.
I also think that giving planets milita WPs should also be done, this makes them instantly tougher nuts to crack, and as they are milita they don't have to be scrapped updated constantly as milita units use whatever your current techs are to create the unit. I also think that the idea of giving point defence weapons the ability to target troops and fighters on the ground is a good idea, although if you do this I would only give 240 million+ pop planets milita WPs.