I'm totally against this idea. That's exactly how poor handled invasions should end up. U pretty much asking to conquer everything without much trouble and not bothering yourself with sieging/investing manpower - that shouldn't be a thing.

If attackers didn't completely wipe out the defenders that means you should press retreat button(unless you want deplete enemy system's population) and bring some additional manpower deployment modules or siege some more but not pushing again. And again. And again. So as i see it it's the problem of how u handle it not of the mechanic itself.

BadBecauseMad wrote:

I'm totally against this idea. That's exactly how poor handled invasions should end up. 

It's also how well handled invasions wtih huge amounts of manpower end up.

If attackers didn't completely wipe out the defenders that mean you should press retreat button(unless you want deplete enemy system's population) and bring some additional manpower ..

It's nothing to do with how much manpower you bring. It's to do with how much manpower you deploy. You can bring 10x the system's manpower and grind the system population to dust without ever being in danger of losing.

Winning in a single turn requires an empire's worth of manpower deployed at once. Yes, you can do that. But then, if battles are over in a single turn, why  even have manpower as a mechanic?

Dragar wrote:
It's also how well handled invasions wtih huge amounts of manpower end up. It's nothing to do with how much manpower you bring.

Nope.

Dragar wrote:
It's nothing to do with how much manpower you bring. It's to do with how much manpower you deploy. You can bring 10x the system's manpower and grind the system population to dust without ever being in danger of losing. 

I was actually refering to manpower deployment modules not sheer manpower you bring. Forgive me my poor wording. I corrected myself there.

Dragar wrote:

Well, I agree you can apply overwhelming force.  That's currently the only strategy that works, and it utterly trivializes all the manpower mechanics.

I don't see how it trivializes manpower mechanics. On the contrary imo it's what enables usefulness of sieging, manpower deployment modules, pops with manpower/ground battle bonuses, manpower stock/generation mechanics/buildings/faction specifics, different tactics, etc.

Besides, not bringing overwhelming force is a definition of poor handled invasion.

But all those things are at the margins. Plus 1% here, plus 100 health there, +100 growth per turn, etc. is not going to make a blind bit of difference when you (I assume, like I) deploy 5000 manpower onto a single system. 

They might, if battles were encouraged to be about deploying (and losing) the minimum amount of force in the most optimal locations, or having battles involving casualities on both sides, etc.

Slashman wrote:

You either commit to a siege or you wait. That's the point of it. 

What does Draft have to do with that? Your statement is true with or without that strategy available. Draft just means that any non-overwhelming force options grind up the system population to zero.

Dragar, sir, i can understand where your feelings come from since i'm a gene hunter and getting Vodyani in my Empire might be really tricky exactly for those reasons you describe and because it might be really hard to bring an overwhelming force to take down an Ark with pops still alive and keep at least one Vod after succesful invasion. But 100% of the time it's not the draft my problem but how i actually handle it with siege, manpower deployment modules, troops distribution, troops' health/damage bonuses and invasion tactic.

I can't remember when i had any troubles with draft since mapower deployment modules were introduced. After sieging that is.

BadBecauseMad wrote:

Dragar, sir, i can understand where your feeling come frome since i'm a gene hunter and getting Vodyani in my Empire might be really tricky exactly for those reasons you describe and because it might be really hard to bring an overwhelming force to take down an Ark with pops still alive and keep at least one Vod after succesful invasion. But 100% of the time it's not the draft my problem but how i actually handle it with siege, manpower deployment modules, troops distribution, troops' health/damage bonuses and invasion tactic.

I think you're misunderstanding my complaint. It's not that I can't deal with Draft. I can. It's easy - bring an overwhelming force, and even with Vodyani that's easy enough at the point it matters. 

The problem is that what's the point of all these combat mechanics, the repeat battles, the differences in manpower replenishment, and so on, if all anyone should do is drop overwhelming force on a system or not invade atall? It makes the entire combat system completely unncessary.

It functions as a threshold: got enough deployment? Take system. Otherwise, don't bother (unless you want to grind the population up). What a waste of a whole game mechanic!

BadBecauseMad wrote:

Dragar, sir, i can understand where your feeling come frome since i'm a gene hunter and getting Vodyani in my Empire might be really tricky exactly for those reasons you describe and because it might be really hard to bring an overwhelming force to take down an Ark with pops still alive and keep at least one Vod after succesful invasion. But 100% of the time it's not the draft my problem but how i actually handle it with siege, manpower deployment modules, troops distribution, troops' health/damage bonuses and invasion tactic.

I've had the advantage in all of the above areas. The results are great, the opponent loses most of their Manpower, turn after turn!

But it doesn't matter as long as they can scrape by with 1 Troop left alive, as the difference between 0 and 1 is the difference between taking the system and fighting against another Draft. So you can keep beating down your opponent all day and it won't win the battle until the attrition leaves them unable to draft anyone, or you resort to absurd overkill.

IceGremlin wrote:

But it doesn't matter as long as they can scrape by with 1 Troop left alive, as the difference between 0 and 1 is the difference between taking the system and fighting against another Draft. So you can keep beating down your opponent all day and it won't win the battle until the attrition leaves them unable to draft anyone, or you resort to absurd overkill.

We're going in circles. If attackers didn't completely wipe out the defenders that means you should press retreat button(unless you want deplete enemy system's population) and bring some additional manpower deployment modules or siege some more.

IceGremlin wrote:

Ground Battles boil down to "wipe them out completely ine one move or go home," with no room for attrition on the invaders side. Which leaves things very boring if the only invasion tactic is Blitz and the only fleet build for invasions is Maximum Deployment.

The way i see it - it enables sieging - you can't just invade and take the system in one turn without it and sieging gives your opponent time to react - build ships, bring reinforcements, etc. So you actually have a choice of fast sieging or high deployment limit or mix of both but lower gunpower/movement/defense.

When it comes to taking system for yourself(oposing to pillaging/destroying/depleting pops) you bring fleet with manpower deployment and sieging modules, siege system to 0, then invade using middle tactic(sry can't remember the name) if not enough(no way) - blitz next turn. It's not boring or a problem it's just the optimal way to do it. And if i want to damage enemy system i would use high manpower low deployment limit with orbital bombardmnet tactic. And etc depending on the situation and what you want to do there would be an optimal way to do it and i can't call it boring just because i want to do only one thing - take systems for myself.

I'm not saying sieging helps against draft. Manpower deployment modules do and with them draft is just a non-factor.

BadBecauseMad:

"We're going in circles. If attackers didn't completely wipe out the defenders that means you should press retreat button(unless you want deplete enemy system's population)"

This is certainly the case, but the question is: why is this good design? Why isn't it the case that if you don't completely wipe out the defenders, you continue battling again until manpower is depleted on one side or the other? That would make combat more than 'can you wipe out the defenders in one turn?'.

It might be, as you say, that the design is supposed to be that players can choose between throwing manpower away to damage enemy systems, rather than even trying to capture them. If so, that's pretty weird. 

Dragar wrote:

I think you're misunderstanding my complaint. It's not that I can't deal with Draft. I can. It's easy - bring an overwhelming force, and even with Vodyani that's easy enough at the point it matters. 

The problem is that what's the point of all these combat mechanics, the repeat battles, the differences in manpower replenishment, and so on, if all anyone should do is drop overwhelming force on a system or not invade atall? It makes the entire combat system completely unncessary.

It functions as a threshold: got enough deployment? Take system. Otherwise, don't bother (unless you want to grind the population up). What a waste of a whole game mechanic!

I actually missed this whole post. And yea i prolly misunderstood your complaint.

Dragar wrote:

Why isn't it the case that if you don't completely wipe out the defenders, you continue battling again until manpower is depleted on one side or the other? That would make combat more than 'can you wipe out the defenders in one turn?'.

That's actually what you do - you may continue battling and opponent in order not to loose will sacrifice his pop for manpower.

Dragar wrote:

This is certainly the case, but the question is: why is this good design? 

And my question is why is this bad design?

Your complaint as i see it now  - is that draft is a lil bit too powerful if you don't seige your opponent enough. That might be so, but making it weaker will strongly reduce impact(thus importance and need) of sieging and manpower deployment modules.

BadBecauseMad wrote:

Your complaint as i see it now  - is that draft is a lil bit too powerful if you don't seige your opponent enough. That might be so, but making it weaker will strongly reduce impact(thus importance and need) of sieging and manpower deployment modules.

Only if you don't buff existing defenses to compensate. 

I did try and articulate why it's bad design: battles are no longer about empire manpower, they're about deployment limits, if you're ever interested in capturing systems without wiping the population out first.

I still can't agree with this idea just because you would just bring INSANE amounts of manpower with the fleets on the system and there will be no way invader experience any attrition ever. And reduced value of sieging that will come with it is just a terrible thing leaving your oppenent unable to react in time. Again my main point against you is that you pretty much asking to conquer anything without much trouble and not bothering yourself with sieging/manpower deployment modules - that shouldn't be a thing - there must be time/manpower/ship slots invested when conquering system for yourself. Like if you wanna fight and enjoy ground combat mechanics you can do it atm - fight, spend manpower, kill pops with draft, etc. If you wanna take system for yourself you have to do it in a certain way and invest in certain things. That doesn't take away from ground combat/manpower mechanincs.

Dragar wrote:

How is that different to now?

Now you may bring all manpower in the galaxy but if you don't siege enough draft will not allow you to conquer system in one turn even with manpower deployment modules. And that's exactly how it should work imo.

From my experience I was struggling to conquer Vodyani systems using draft - the only faction causing me to cry, yet. I analyzed the reasons for and found out, that Vodyani archs seem to be the problem. In my example archs can't be attacked directly if attached to a system. So far so good. But archs obviously regenerate manpower from Vodyanis empire manpower pool and immeditaley send the manpower to ground combat zone - every turn. So I did decide to attack more than one system same time to get the Vodyanis empire manpower pool empty. This resulted in archs not loading up manpower no more at that point I cracked the empire pool reserves. Not sure what exactly is the problem (manpower mechanic) with other factions reported here. I could imagine enemy factions cloaked fleets coming in and dropping additional manpower from time to time - apart from drafting. I could imagine we find out the reason for draft mechanic (in connection with ?) causing trouble by testing and analyzing. Any ideas how to coordinate? In multiplayer games you can switch faction to AI for to have a closer look what happens exactly. My workaround, as long as I didn't use the AI tool (by the way what was it called?) to switch factions, yet.

Guess I forgot about to write the obvious: I still did lay siege (shield symbol) every turn for the system I started ground invasion.

IceGremlin wrote:

You have it backwards.

If anything having Draft cost Approval increases the value of Siege modules because instead of sieging your opponent to 0 only for them to indefinitely keep the ground battle going with Draft, you can now siege them to 0, only deal with as many drafts as their Approval can handle, and mop up the last of their Manpower once they lose the ability to Draft, even if you had less deployment in each battle phase.

This passage just doesn't make sense to me. If you sieged your opponent to 0 and brought a decent manpower/deployment for taking the system draft will never be your problem - you prolly won't even need deployment modules in that case and lately i experience that AI doesn't bother with draft if he was sieged to 0 and can't hold the system. And certainly you don't have to ?mop up last of their manpower? - they already were sieged to 0.

The change makes it so that an empire with superior Manpower reserves and Siege damage but inferior Deployment can grind down the defender through attrition of Manpower, because the defender cannot indefinitely sacrifice their Population to fend off the attrition.

Me not understanding what you wanna do is not the case. The case is that i'm telling you that imo this is a bad change. Overall for sieging/deployment mechanics and for the races that suffer from low manpower stock/generation in particular. Not to mention that this change will kill the ability to grind down opponents population.

BadBecauseMad wrote:

This passage just doesn't make sense to me. If you sieged your opponent to 0 and brought a decent manpower/deployment for taking the system draft will never be your problem - you prolly won't even need deployment modules in that case and lately i experience that AI doesn't bother with draft if he was sieged to 0 and can't hold the system. And certainly you don't have to ?mop up last of their manpower? - they already were sieged to 0.

Me not understanding what you wanna do is not the case. The case is that i'm telling you that imo this is a bad change. Overall for sieging/deployment mechanics and for the races that suffer from low manpower stock/generation in particular. Not to mention that this change will kill the ability to grind down opponents population.

You're not the one grinding down your opponents population with Draft though. They are. And if they're willing to sacrifice their population indefinitely, then clearly you're not actually harming them, or else they wouldn't do it. Which makes sense- you only need 300 Food to permanently max out population growth rate on a system, allowing you to rapidly replenish those losses in a short period of time. If they didn't have that capacity to undo the damage, you'd expect them to use System Defense or Surrender.

If you want to damage an opponents population without taking their system, you just use Orbital Bombardment and then Raze in the event you win. For each other victory action though, destruction of the local population is a negative that reduces the value of Subdue (which is where Dragar and I's complaints started elsewhere) and Occupy.

A lot of this seems to boil down to a difference in experience with enemies who use Draft. You suggest that it's extremely easy to overcome, and in general I would agree, but in my experience the AI sometimes just holds on by a thread. In which case that willingness to sacrifice every single unit of population is a surmountable-but-boring speed bump that turns every ground war into a slog.

IceGremlin wrote:

You're not the one grinding down your opponents population with Draft though. They are. And if they're willing to sacrifice their population indefinitely, then clearly you're not actually harming them, or else they wouldn't do it. Which makes sense- you only need 300 Food to permanently max out population growth rate on a system, allowing you to rapidly replenish those losses in a short period of time. If they didn't have that capacity to undo the damage, you'd expect them to use System Defense or Surrender.

If you want to damage an opponents population without taking their system, you just use Orbital Bombardment and then Raze in the event you win. For each other victory action though, destruction of the local population is a negative that reduces the value of Subdue (which is where Dragar and I's complaints started elsewhere) and Occupy.

Well, fair enough. Mind tho that Raze costs approval.

A lot of this seems to boil down to a difference in experience with enemies who use Draft. 

That seems to be the case, yes.

You suggest that it's extremely easy to overcome, and in general I would agree, but in my experience the AI sometimes just holds on by a thread. In which case that willingness to sacrifice every single unit of population is a surmountable-but-boring speed bump that turns every ground war into a slog.

Well, yea, that's just not my experience. But in any case if you are on par with your opponent in terms of manpower/deployment/troops distribution/health/damage that is how it should be - that's where Empire's manpower stock comes into play(tho it's almost never the case to be fair). Only case i can think of when AI sieged to zero could held by a thread with draft and not me poorly combining my fleet(modules,manpower)/troops(health, damage, distribution, deployment limit)/tactics, etc is Amanthoid system upgrade and maybe some particular system/pop/faction/hero, etc bonuses.

Dragar wrote:

This is certainly the case, but the question is: why is this good design? Why isn't it the case that if you don't completely wipe out the defenders, you continue battling again until manpower is depleted on one side or the other? That would make combat more than 'can you wipe out the defenders in one turn?'.

It might be, as you say, that the design is supposed to be that players can choose between throwing manpower away to damage enemy systems, rather than even trying to capture them. If so, that's pretty weird. 

I would say the answer to why is that lowering population is a form of "siege" in-and-of itself.  It makes sense that an entire system should be able to draft more people as long as they have people to fight.  It should be hard to overwhelm a system, even over a long period of time.

What doesn't make sense (as mentioned already by others and yourself) is that there doesn't seem to be a proper limiting factor to Drafting as long as the enemy can generate enough food to replenish their population quickly and continue the fight.

The solution(s) that the devs could apply if they felt so inclined could be:

• Drafting takes Approval and has a threshhold required to be used (already suggested)
• Drafting takes more population each time (slimmer and slimmer pickings from the remaining population, not everyone is a strong, capable adult)
  --First draft 1 pop > second draft 2 pop > 4 pop > 8 pop > etc.
• There should be more siege and invasion "options" for invaders who have differing agendas

Also, I didn't see this mentioned at all yet -and I assume you are all doing this, but just in case you aren't- don't forget that while you are sieging, it's a great opportunity to look at their manpower ratios and couter properly before you innitiate the invasion.  Makes a huge difference.

videovillain wrote:

Also, I didn't see this mentioned at all yet -and I assume you are all doing this, but just in case you aren't- don't forget that while you are sieging, it's a great opportunity to look at their manpower ratios and couter properly before you innitiate the invasion.  Makes a huge difference.

Don't get me started on the manpower distribution stuff...

After reading through this lengthy discussion I have made the decision to throw in my personal experience woth this system.

First of all, I think it is great. As someone who is incredibly fond of logistics and the puzzles good logistical choices provide, i think amplitude as implemented something that outshines the ES1 system in almost every concievable way. I have never see a system quiet like the manpower system they implemented and it is a unique way to solve the problem of how do we handle invasions.

That being said, it is far from perfect. There are several things that either are not intuitive or make a lot of sense, but in general it works.

The biggest complaints i have are about how underdeveloped it is. The entire thing has such potential that seems lost in the shuffle of other concerns and game mechanics.

To address drafting...it seems like a very poor choice for a military tactics card. I am of the belief that drafting should be removed entirely as a defensive tactic and sinoly replaced by the production que of chain gang. This makes eay more sense to me, as it seems that they both kinda serve the same purpose. Just allow a chain gang to recuit X manpower in defense of the system at a cost of 1 population when being seiged. 

This porvides more itneresting choices for milotsry tactics. They spent so much time on all those naval battle tactics it baffles me why the ground battles dont have similar interesting choices.  Imagine if ground battle tactics were a deverse set if optimizations and hindrences that were tied to technology, heroes, and maybr even specific options only available if you have certain population types. ie each population has its own specific battle tactics they like to employ but your system must include them to use it. 

Also it is absolutely assinine for me to have space ships...but not tanks or air supoort at the beginning of the game. Every faction should have access ti all three from the beginning of the game and some factions should have differing starting breakdowns of troop types. This would open up more options for specific battle tactics that interact with trooo types and give morr tactical choices.