Clone armies

[Space Viking]

Do they actually work well? I always go for whichever units are "best" (most HP, do the most damage, etc.)

[Bumc]

For offence not really.
Once your all armies don't fit into the planet combat zone you want something elite rather than a bunch of expendables.

Now on defensive they might be the best unit to spam if enemy transport ships are expected in the next several years. Still not very good, but you also get style points for having a single super strong pop to clone everyone from.

[Big mean bunny]

Normal armies are capped by pop size so you can run out but clones are not restricted. If you have just 2-3 pops of super strong, noxious, resilient cyber (etc etc) lithiods they would be excellent clones. They are also cheaper and faster so to clear up habitat spam etc they are quite handy.

[Kalemenos]

It's a matter of return on investment. You want to pay less for more damage. The way I see it is this:
1. Assault army: Your standard go-to, the good soldier. Best average stats.
2. Clone army: Big mean bunny is right: you can always make these. But they're your weakest soldiers.
3. Xenomorph army: great damage for the price.
4. If you play with artifacts, and you find the Cybrex War Forge, you can build "Cybrex War Forms." Damage 18.00-36.00 (big ouchie). Sadly, 500% collateral damage. I'd like to see a study on how collateral damage affects effectiveness and value of an army. They cost alloy instead of minerals.

You can improve an army's damage.
1. If you can modify traits for a species (genetics, cybernetics, synthetics, occasional techs, etc.), two traits are "strong" and "very strong." You can take all or part of a species and give them higher damage stats. For the same price, more damage.
2. You can build a Military Academy, and focus on building your armies just from that planet, or collection of planets. They start with more experience. One of the buttons on a transport can tell you how they rank, and if you mouse over it will tell you how much that rank affects that army. For example, "experienced" is +10 damage - not bad.
3. I usually create a sector or two dedicated to making armies. So if I need to spam a ton of armies, I can develop them simultaneously on all those planets. But the thing is you can appoint a governor with the "army veteran" trait. He/she makes +20% speed building armies and -20% cost - again, low cost for the same damage.
(I rotate governors through sectors, now to build, now to remove blockers, now to build ships, now to build armies, and so on. Paying attention to that detail is amazingly productive and offers great savings.)

There are other options, like robot, slave, etc., armies. The wiki shows a longer list. In summary, I'd use clone armies mostly to fill in once a certain species' number of assault armies maxes out and you can't make more, but it's a "strong"/"very strong" so you still want to have them there. In that case they do the job. Just some thoughts in case they help.

[Locklave]

Honestly, min maxing ground combat is pointless. Even if they are amazing in ground combat the difference is minor and not worth the effort to reach for. Given that you can simply bomb enemies into surrender now ground troops are relegated to the garbage pile even more then before. They were at least required before.

Ground combat in this game is stupid and has never held any real importance. If you can't take a planet with 20 troops then send 40, fire them when the job is done. Time spent thinking about it or working on it are better used on everything else.

I mean hell there is even Battle Thralls slave types with bonuses for ground combat. Something I bet no one playing seriously has ever used. Ground combat is an after thought to the devs and I bet it will continue to be in the future regardless of patches.

[Kalemenos]

An afterthought, perhaps. But the player is stuck with the problem: you just can't win a war until the ground is taken. I find that I can carefully design fleets, and, when well calculated, sweep quickly through an opposing empire. But then there is this tedious experience of all the ground battle. And it really gets to running the clock out until my 3000 army conquers the 324 army on the planet. Over and over.

Being stuck with it, I do try to see how to get more punch for less money. I need to use those minerals for other things, and if I can get a 10-14 damage army for 100 minerals instead of 2-3 damage, it is simply more economical.

Wouldn't it be interesting if one could design armies like one designs fleets? Which weapons, which defenses, which auxiliary elements. It would make it, maybe, more interesting instead of a point of tedium.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Locklave:

Honestly, min maxing ground combat is pointless. Even if they are amazing in ground combat the difference is minor and not worth the effort to reach for. Given that you can simply bomb enemies into surrender now ground troops are relegated to the garbage pile even more then before. They were at least required before.

Tons and tons of time wasted. Seriously. 2 x 400+ size fleets doing 0.11% damage per day + constantly reset a bit of damage dealt when enemy spawn a new army - ouch...

Originally posted by Locklave:

And it really gets to running the clock out until my 3000 army conquers the 324 army on the planet. Over and over.

Dunno, when I'm throwing 3k army of Cybrex Warforms on 324 planet - it's over in matter of days. Probably your army is strong only on paper (read - 3k is from countless amount of weak armies)?

Invest into repeatables and generals and you will see the galaxy burn. Except you're psionic - their armies are pretty bad against robots & stuff immune to morale damage.

[Wyzard]

how do you get the Bio Xeno Army ?

[corisai]

Originally posted by Wyzard:

how do you get the Bio Xeno Army ?

Xenomorph army : random rare project after unlocking gene modding.