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It IS easier. It just has harsher repercussions.

Everyone hating you for bombarding isn't a big deal. The problem is that killing civilian population = killing your own tax income = shooting yourself in the foot.

TBH, the problem is more that as soon as you invade with a single victorious troop an entire planet will happily switch sides and give you the full income. If invading an alien homeworld didn't double my economy, but instead constantly revolted, funded pirates and drained my economy, then bombardment would be a much more interesting option.

ORIGINAL: Cindar

Everyone hating you for bombarding isn't a big deal. The problem is that killing civilian population = killing your own tax income = shooting yourself in the foot.

TBH, the problem is more that as soon as you invade with a single victorious troop an entire planet will happily switch sides and give you the full income. If invading an alien homeworld didn't double my economy, but instead constantly revolted, funded pirates and drained my economy, then bombardment would be a much more interesting option.

This depends on the race... I experienced that they constantly revolt... as a human I noticed that some races will slay my invading troops unless I outnumber them 4 to 1.
Others I could put 4 troops on planet with 8 defending troops and end up with 6 troops (they capture two!)

And I had planets immediately revolt upon capture often... as a human democracy at least...
Especially bad if you don't capture the BEST planet in a system...

ORIGINAL: Cindar
TBH, the problem is more that as soon as you invade with a single victorious troop an entire planet will happily switch sides and give you the full income. If invading an alien homeworld didn't double my economy, but instead constantly revolted, funded pirates and drained my economy, then bombardment would be a much more interesting option.

This is true, but it is scheduled to be tweaked. From Taltamir's response, maybe it did get tweaked and I just missed it.

On further reading, I think his point wasn't that conquering is easy, but that once conquered the planet immediately gives full income.
And that there is no lingering hard feeling (if you end the war with their race immediately then they will go from revolting to happy). there is no actual penalty to morale for being "conquered"... they revolted for me for three reasons:
1. I was a democracy at war
2. I was at war with their race.
3. I didn't conquer the best planet in the system.

There was no morale effect for being conquered.

That being said, there shouldn't be (because moral only affects rebellion), being conquered means that I have troops and defeated theirs, they should NOT revolt and the troops should be marked as "non native" troops and slowly convert to native troops (and a revolt should involve a percentage of troops shifting sides and the fight until one side wins). Otherwise it makes no sense for my 12 battalions on the newly conquered planet to switch sides... (oh, and my newly build large space port).
What they should have is a penalty to income after being conquered that slowly goes away as they assimilate. And a bonus to "morale" from "martial law enforced by alien troops" that counters revolting that goes away at an equal rate to the penalty to income.

Anyways, I think it should be tweaked the other way, newly conquered planets are far too liable to revolt...

Yes, my complaint is that planets, once conquered, seem to have no allegiance to their former side other then that which they get for being the same race. Usually in war, I go straight for the throat and capture an enemy homeworld. It is often hard to actually take the planet, I end up using 30+ troops that were built on a homeworld with the ruins that doubles troop power. Yet, as soon as I conquer it I'm getting a huge income boost instantly to counteract whatever I may have spent taking it (and the other side loses it instantly, which is probably about 2/3rds of their income). Since the planet was already highly developed, the populace is still pretty happy simply because of the high development and you can usually keep tax's very high if you have to adjust them at all. On top of that, I don't even have to keep those 30 elite troops there. As soon as the planet is mine, they hop back into the ship and I conquer another world.

If you attack a colony of 30 billion people, obviously all 30 billion people wouldn't immediately start praising your name just because you killed the standing army. To give an idea of what I think would work, say that after conquering a colony you only get 10% of the current taxes, while the other 90% is still given to the original owner (from smuggling, rebels, pirates, everything that goes with trying to control a hostile planet). As time goes by, you slowly gain a greater and greater share. Lets say, every month you control the planet you gain 10% and the opposing empire loses 10%, modified a bit by how many troops you have, how well your empire is liked, your race's aggressiveness/friendliness, etc. It would probably be better to give a % of private income to the enemy empire rather then a % of the actual taxes though, since otherwise the player would just drop taxes to 0% to make sure the enemy empire got nothing.