YEEHAA! I did it! I did it!

[CW]

The date is August 2413, a really special month for the people of CW's Dictatorship! For their new Sphereworld has just been completed, after almost 5 years of hard and sometimes boring work. The Sit of Power of the CW's Dictatorship will shortly be transfered to the new, giant and monumental capital. A competition is currently being held to select a name for the new capital planet, and the best entry will win... well... can you expect anything at all from a dictator? Anyway, the best entry will be selected as the offical name for our great capital!

[CW]

That reminds me of a question: Say your enemy has a fully populated sphereworld with no troops on it, how many troops to you need to capture it??

[Taqwus]

Well, there's one militia per 20M, and they're supposedly 10 large planets in size, so that's what, 40B people? That would translate to 2000 militia.

My experience suggests that even with decent large troops, it's best to drop more troops than militia if you want to take the planet in one turn. Keep in mind that the first (several) wave(s) might get completely annihilated by sheer numbers...

It might take you less time (6 years) to build your own sphereworld than to train and gather those troops.

So, basically, it'd be easier to use PPP, if you're not willing to bring out the planetary napalm.

Or, bLast it to Deadly using contamination ops, sabotage the facilities, and use anarchy Groups so it riots.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[CW]

On to riots, I'm running a pretty good sized empire with more than 200 planets and 180 ships. It seems that as the empire gets larger more nasty things happen. I'm seeing a lot more riots than I used to, and I have to put aside a whole invasion fleet just to keep the peace. But 20 Big-Gun DNs overhead and a ship load of shock troops calms the people down REALLY quickly though!


[This message has been edited by CW (edited 08 August 2001).]

[DirectorTsaarx]

Build an Urban Pacification Center in every system; that'll help quiet the rioting.

Of course, if you have temporal tech, the Temporal Vacation Service facility provides twice the happiness bonus of a UPC. Keeps those populations Jubilant...

[rdouglass]

Also Religious Tech has the Fate Shrines. Those increase happiness as well...

[Suicide Junkie]

Try the 1KT Police troop.

With just a cockpit, you can build 30 of them in one turn, and then you get the benefit of happiness without any facility spaces.

Of course, you will want to replace them with serious military troops over time, so you can attack and defend. With the police troops, they will still absorb the first few rounds of fire, protecting your militia.

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[Taqwus]

For riots...

* Yes, use UPCs / Fate Shrines / TVFs. One per system should be standard, even in core systems you wouldn't expect to get unhappy. The Applied Psychology tree is pretty cheap, and it's vital if you want to be a conqueror.

* Check your Happiness Type. In my view, peaceful is the easiest to manage, since you even get happiness points for colonization and so forth. Neutral strikes me as the toughest, because doing just 'bout anything annoys your worlds.

* Your culture type, as well. Most are neutral to happiness... I don't recall if any has a penalty (and Artisans has a bonus), but if you chose one... there's even more need for UPCs, et al.

* Yes, troops calm riots. Even unarmed troops, and those are cheap to train if you don't have a nearby invasion force.


A nasty thing to do if you're dealing with a packed enemy sphereworld: hold it hostage by making it clear that you could readily obliterate all 40B (say, bring in a load of heavily escorted planetary bombers), and threaten to do so unless it's handed over to you. A human player might realize that if it's surrendered to you, he has a *chance* of getting it back intact (via PPP or whatever), while if it's torched (colony napalmed to death, after rendering it Deadly and 0/0/0), then there's practically *no* chance of getting it back and in working order in a game of remotely reasonable length.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night