Re: Troops
If there were diplomatic penalties for genocide things would be different. As things are, yes, it's often simpler to just 'wipe the slate clean' and start over. Besides the diplomatic effects, the changes I suggested long ago to planet damage and troops on the ground would make things much more interesting too.
It's far to easy to glass a planet. The damage ratio should be 100-to-1 or higher for normal weapons. Then give "planetary weapons" a special ability to cancel the ratio. Suddenly, you'd need specialized ships for bombarding planets. If the techs are properly tuned, they'd be expensive and vulnerable ships, too. You'd have to escort them and take great care with them. Glassing a planet would be much more difficult. Most other 4X games, like MOO and Stars!, require special weapons for attacking planets. Why not SE?
Then, troops should either be protected by the planetary damage ratio or they should be 'spontaneously' produced like militia, just in smaller numbers. this would force real troop to troop combat which currently almost never happens.
The life of an interstellar despot would be much more interesting with these changes.
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