Quick question on legions...

[Jeffreyac]

Hi folks,

Pretty new, just relearning GCIII after a long absence (and a bunch of new content I'm not familiar with). Finally have a game going well, and figured I'd try out legions - so I just started building them at all the colonies that had nothing left to build.

Then I noticed my neighbors needed invading... :) so I warmed up the fleet, moved into position, and went to build some transports. Unfortunately, I had built all my legions as garrisons - disn't realize there was a hard limit on those... So, questions:

1) Once you've established a legion as a garrison, can I move them? If I move them to a planet with a shipyard, could I then build transports with them?

2) I notice that several are garrisoned at the planet that supports my main shipyard - but I still can't build transports. I take it you can't use garrisoned legions to create transports?

3) When I do get all this figured out and get some transports, what happens after an invasion? Do the surviving legions remain on planet as garrison, and I have to build new tranports, or do I get them to reboard their transports and head to the next world?


I tried disbanding a couple of the established legions, but founf I still couldn't build transports at my shipyards - do they still count against the limit once they;ve been disbanded (sort of a hard limit on the number you can build, not on what you can have?)

In short - how do legions and troop transports work now? (I guess I still remember loading up my bear-people and running amok - not quite like that now, I gather!)

[private1028]

No. Basically once you turn a legion into a garrison it is no longer available to load on a transport. The change is permanent. I prefer training citizens as generals and then deploying them to a planet. Each general creates 5 legions.

[INSANEcyborg]

1: No, you can't move them. Once they are on a planet, they are stuck there.
2: Transports need legions from your global reserve, not from planets.
3: Surviving legions stay on the transport.

Other FAQs:
Transports can't reload unless they have 1 legion left. Or 1 per transport module, if the ship has more than one.
Decomissioning the transport will return any remaining legions to your global pool.
A general will add 5 legions, 5 more when promoted, and 5 garrisoned legions if assinged to a planet.

[Jeffreyac]

Originally posted by INSANEcyborg:

1: No, you can't move them. Once they are on a planet, they are stuck there.
2: Transports need legions from your global reserve, not from planets.
3: Surviving legions stay on the transport.

Other FAQs:
Transports can't reload unless they have 1 legion left. Or 1 per transport module, if the ship has more than one.
Decomissioning the transport will return any remaining legions to your global pool.
A general will add 5 legions, 5 more when promoted, and 5 garrisoned legions if assinged to a planet.

Ah! I think I see my mistake - I thought I was creating the legion... I guess what really is happening is I'm garrisoning one of my existing legions from my pool.

....so... how do I increase my pool? Is it only through generals (and, now that I think of it, tech research? I think there are some techs that grant some, if I remember how I got my original 10...)

[Quevik]

there's a building you can place on a planet that allows you to create legions on that planet. Forget the name of it and which tech grants it tbh. But i think it's the same tech that allows you to build transports.

Legions cost 5 durantium to create.

Edit: spelling fix

[Infarkt]

"military academy" its called

[Dray Prescot]

Once Legions or Garrisons die in combat you can rebuild them at any world with a Military Academy and this returns that Legion/Garrison to your Global pool that newly constructed transports draw on. It used to be that you could only rebuild dead units, most of which you originally got by training Citizens into Generals. (There are a few other one time only ways of getting additional legions, from Tech, etc)

I think that it is now possible train new Legions (at a Military Academy) even if there are no dead Legions that need rebuilding. Either way, you will need a fair amount of special resources available to build them.

You might want to build one or two specialized Worlds to (re)build Legions. Basicly, you are trying to raise the (building) level of the Military Academy, in particular, by using bonuses to buildings (i.e. the Military Academy)(as well as Factories) in adjacent tiles, and you also need Construction Points in general as well, on such a World.

[Infarkt]

Originally posted by Dray Prescot:

You might want to build one or two specialized Worlds to (re)build Legions. Basicly, you are trying to raise the (building) level of the Military Academy, in particular, by using bonuses to buildings (i.e. the Military Academy)(as well as Factories) in adjacent tiles, and you also need Construction Points in general as well, on such a World.

For my understanding the level of the military academy has no effect - it's just the Social Manufacturing. Am I wrong here?

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Infarkt:

Originally posted by Dray Prescot:

You might want to build one or two specialized Worlds to (re)build Legions. Basicly, you are trying to raise the (building) level of the Military Academy, in particular, by using bonuses to buildings (i.e. the Military Academy)(as well as Factories) in adjacent tiles, and you also need Construction Points in general as well, on such a World.

For my understanding the level of the military academy has no effect - it's just the Social Manufacturing. Am I wrong here?

I think building a legion counts as social construction.

Building legions is very expensive. My first successfull game I had one production focussed precursor planet capable of building them. About 18 pop, about 22 tiles, two workers etc, total of about 220 social construction per turn IIRC. It could make one legion every two turns. Except it couldn't becasue of the 5 per legion Durantium cost.

Howevber you get 10 legions for free whdn you research (I beleive) Planetary Invasion and you get another 5 per general you recruit.

Personally I have yet to garrison any planets witrh legions. I have them loaded into troop ships and keep them safe in a miltary base protected by a sizable fellt when not in use. In use I stack a ship with very long range scanners with them and usually escort them with a mega-fleet to keep them safe. Of course they are safest of all in the bank, but once they've been deployed once you can't put them back in the bank.

My working theory is that if an enemy invades one of my planets I can always get it back with them and they are far more effective and veratile overall in troop ships than on planets - you can't protect all your planets with them anyway and, crucially, you can't redeploy them. If you could redeploy them it might be different. To this end I worked with always having 10 in the bank so if necessary I could quickly build a couple of troop ships and retake any planets.

Also AI tends to garrison planets liberally with 5 to upwards of 10 or 12 legions. Which means unless you want to lose a lot of precious legions during invasions you need to use a metric crap ton of them, the more the better, and this again argues against using them as garissons IMHO.

I won this game against five opponents on medium map, the default opponent number anyway, and I think I built or acquired via generals about 35 of them and had about 23 left at the end after the final invasions, either in troop ships or in the bank. That;'s just to give an idea of the scale you need to plan for, obviously this is going to be a lot more on a bigger map.