Can anyone tell me how to take over an enemy planet?



Not looking for the simple build troops, fighters and bombers and your off. How many? What do you need to win?



I took 6 hours to first build the tech that got troops. Sent 2 to a planet and got creamed. 2 pop isa big cost but now I realize the entire pop is against you. Maybe you need 40 pop which doesn't seem feasible to take from your systems.



then I supported with siege weapons. Can't tell if siege weapons even do anything. Failed.



Then spent more hours getting fighters and supported with fighters. Got creamed. Now I have to figure out how to reload them.



Now researching bombers. Really hating the trail and error to figure out what I need to successfully invade.



There seem to be options in the forums about damaging economies instead. The concept of invasion is not straightforward. It is extremely costly in trial and error time to research techs take colonists and try different mid-game newb formulas to figure this out.



Thanks for your help.

so the first step in taking a planet is blockading it with full combat ships and destroying all enemy fleets coming to the system's aid. the second step is to send in a siege fleet, preferably having only siege modules no defense or offense, the invasion fleet sould also consist of specialized carrier ships with invasion oriented fighters and bombers, also having a ship or two with orbital bombardment against population and improvement. the third step is moving a few troop transports to the system. now a troop invasion button should be visible, mouse over the button and it will show a probability percent, if the probability is too low but you do have a ton of bombers and fighters than bomb the system to pieces, it should then be a high enough probability for you to invade successfully.

Thanks for the summary. Mouse over the invasion to see % useful to know. Still a lot of trial and error rather than rules to read.



I guess planetary invasions are set to start turn 70-100 at the earliest given all the tech requirements? Sounds like you need troop, fighter, siege, and bomber techs. The only way to take a planet is successful invasion by troops or by diplomacy where opponent agrees?



I thought I read some thread somewhere talking about a siege taking 10 turns no matter what your strength was. Ever hear that?

Played some more and have a better understanding. Here was the problem in case some one else is having it:



The ships you have in a system are grouped in fleets and presented in the bottom left corner when you are viewing them. There are six (I think) squares in a strip above your fleets that give you options. One of them is invasion.



My thinking is that I don't know if I click the invasion option, if invasion is imminent or which fleets do it. When you click it, two things happen, a "clock" starts lighting/unlighting the selection moving clockwise letting you know you selected it. And two options appear above it. As a newb, I wasn't sure when I clicked invasion and the clock started that anything was happening.



To add to my confusion, the two boxes (that were greyed out at the time) above invasion are for bombing or invading with troops. Other selections on this row don't provide boxes above them. So my thinking was that with two boxes above, this must be the only way to invade: Either I get the bomb technology and bomb OR I get troops and invade. This was the cause of my confusion about taking over planets. And Adventurer's tip of "mousing over" invasion to get the % is true but doesn't break me out of not really understanding invasion right.



By chance, when my mouse was in the overall system, it was at the right side of name of the system when in the large overall map view of the system I was invading. I had clicked invasion, but wasn't aware or didn't know how to figure out anything was happening. On the "mouse over" of the enemy system on the right of the overall system it gave me the stats of my invasion strength, the enemy invasion strength and a number of terms (likely to the completion of the invasion). OHHHHHH. I am invading and it isn't on the fleet screen that I see anything, it is on the galaxy screen "mousing over" the enemy's system name that I get the invasion stats! Now the lights went on. I now had an idea of how much siege to get, that it was even doing anything, and so on.



Pretty simps. But it took me hours to figure it out. I give 5 out of 5 stars for Endless Space for playability, and mouse tooltips, ease of use and control. I just wish the manuals of the old days existed where concepts of how to do something were discussed, rather than just saying what will happen if you press your mouse on a certain thing.



It would be useful to know that to mount an invasion:



- First, what technologies you might consider for invasion. Need names because that is how the search function in research works.

-Seige modules & Fighter/bombers modules on your ships provide a siege strength vs enemy siege strength.

-Where to find enemy siege strength would be good to know. Right now I think you have to siege to know it. But pressing the invasion button doesn't seem to have any negative ramifications so maybe just press it, then mouse over the system name and that is how you are supposed to find it. Then turn off the siege.

-Seiging this way takes a number of turns shown in the system display and then you get the system (if that is what happens - just guessing).

-Seiging for a number of turns destroys defenses over time (if it does, I don't know that it does. But I think it does).

-You can get bombs by researching it in the tech tree (not bombers who do drop bombs, but different bombs dropped from spacecraft) and destroy population and structures, which damages the enemy economy and reduces the opposing defensive strength. I don't know if using bombs has any negative diplomacy consequences with any other race. Maybe, maybe not. Trial and error baby. Reading days are over. Bombing is not really invasion but sabotage and economic destruction.

-You can get troops, only after researching it, which takes population from one of your systems. Hitting "repair" on troop ships makes them take a population from a system you are in and own. At an enemy system, you can deploy troops by pressing the option above invasion, in which case it is an invasion specific to one turn that has a chance of failure or success. Maybe troops stay on the planet maybe they go back to your ship, maybe they are lost. Not sure of the math of how many are needed to win but if you "mouse over" the invasion it will assume that every fleet you have in the system is going to use all available troops and will tell you your chance.

-That is a good thing to know - normally when you fight space battles it is by fleet. But invasion doesn't appear to be by fleet, it is all ships in the sector. You can't choose which to include or not include.

-If you succeed, you will get full use of all the enemy population, upgrades and everything, whether you know the tech or not. It just works even if you don't know how to use the tech! There is some negative approval adjustment. Don't know how much or for how long, but mousing over approval will give you some details and trial and error can help you figure out what happens. My experience was that the system went to strike with positive approval upgrades not really having effect and it took about 5 turns or so before they were content.

-I don't know yet how to disrupt an invasion. Simple thing is to attack invading ships. I don't think you can add to planetary values with space craft. If you destroy the siege and kill all ships doing it, I would guess that the next invasion has to start over from scratch and don't get any credit for the prior siege. If you are sieging and move the siege ships away and then bring in new siege ships, my guess is that the program will let you keep the original siege turns stats. But if you wait a turn, then you might lose them. Trial and error baby. Not sure how prior cumulative invasion damage is done. Does it make sense that a fleet has been damaging a system for 10 turns, then quits and then magically everything is back? Not sure how this works.



Again, I find most things pretty intuitive in Endless Space, but Invasion was a real "black hole". I still think there are challenging concepts like I thought I'd invade specific planets, not the entire system all at once. I wouldn't have guessed that blockading a system and clicking invade with no invasion troops could take it over (and still not sure it does).



There is some technology that has a picture of a thankgiving horn or shell or something and it says -20% to system buyout or something like that. Don't have the game open, but I can't really conceive of what that tech is doing. Maybe you trade systems in the game?



I hope this helps you figure out invasion faster than I did.

I have rushed invasion techs before and pretty much wiped out horatio by turn 60 on a fast game. The least amount of turns possible in a siege depends on your speed setting, but i do believe there is a limit.