Armies - I always forget about them

[Sentinel 08295]

Everytime I play I practically end up ignoring armies. Sometimes I get in trouble, sometimes not. I have no problems micro managing the details of the game but for some reason I just skip over armies. Anyone else do this? Any suggestions?

[Shahadem]

I usually forget to keep building more because the army system is extremely cumbersome. The armies don't move with the fleet, you have to move it yourself. UI also places armies at the bottom instead of right under fleets.

[brian7772]

Name them Dre and you won't forget.

Also on a more helpful note when you declare war have all core systems build 2 then combine them into a fleet as long as they don't get shot down in flight it should capture you at least 1 planet. If there's small loss reinforce them otherwise use your army again.

[fmalfeas]

Well, the sector governor is an idiot when it comes to armies, even though it insists on building them. Even clone troopers take a couple weeks to build, but the governor for a sector will put like, 3 defense armies (the weakest there are) on each world.

So, I make a point of, when I have spare minerals and am near fleetcap, pausing, opening the colony screen, and filling every single world I own. Usually with Assault armies, since they're more powerful than Defense armies (pretty much the same health/morale, but more damage, and take longer and cost more, but the difference is worth it.) If the world has the ability to make slave/clone armies, I'll use them instead. Critical worlds get whatever my level best troop is, and then once they're all built, the critical worlds will have those troops get equipped with fortifications to lower the upkeep and increase their toughness.

May seem like a waste, but you know how irritating it is to try and invade a planet and discover it's got 25 units of space marines/androids/xenomorphs/psi-troopers on it? Well, the ai will sometimes just chuck giant armies at a world that's lost the spaceport, but is still fully fortified. With those forces in place, even a massive army with a 5 star general will be repelled, and they'll have to divert fleet power to bombardment /and/ rebuild all those troops you just slaughtered in your meatgrinder of a planet.

Bonus - once you've done this, basically every single world in your empire can deploy their garrison to seize an enemy world. And when you have them do it, you just pause and order a new garrison, on the assumption that either the old one is getting a new world to guard, or most won't be coming home.

Basically, you do one big, uber-micro spree, and from then on, you're pretty well set. Even Praethoryns and Jingoists will have a hard time on invasions, letting you focus on fleet work.

[Hopeless Knight]

Originally posted by Shahadem:

The armies don't move with the fleet, you have to move it yourself. UI also places armies at the bottom instead of right under fleets.

Left click your "target" army, right click to your Military Fleet.

They will now follow every order you gave to your fleet.

[meiam]

Honestly, just keep ignoring them for the most part. Just make one medium army and park them somewhere, when war start its usually pretty obvious where the AI will attack, so just have your army standby on that planet until you're ready to attack.

The maintenance cost isn't worth paying to fortify every planet you have, better put that money toward more ship anyway. And on the offensive you only really need one medium ish army anyway, once you can make psi trooper or cybernetic army you only really need like 10-15 of them anyway.

[fmalfeas]

I'm usually on the recieving end of half the galaxy invading at once, so I gave up on defense penny pinching. And on divided fleets. So everything's fortified, I lay out Fortress Stations in a death lotus in commonly used paths, and my doomstack zips around mopping up their stuff while they're bogged down in stuff designed to just take forever to kill. Eventually, with dips into their turf when I have a breather to smash spaceports and mining stations, I wear them down enough against the meatgrinder that is my empire that they submit to vassalization as the price for getting out of the war they declared on me.