The game is way to easy (Very hard AI controlled victory)

[Jorgen_CAB]

A few other things that I have observed about the balance is resources... I pretty much never had to bother about resource shortages aside from the beginning of the game. My priority is first focus of a sustained income of basic resources then I just build on fuel and luxury resources and pretty much disregard basic resources unless I find some really good planets or see that I consume more than I produce which is rare.

Civilian economy is usually overflowing with more money they ever use... so taxing the colonies is paramount unless I cripple their growth.

Colony stations have zero weapons aside form mobilization centers, such as the capital planet... no use for them. I want as much production capacity from them. Being able to build and upgrade ships as fast as possible is the more important thing. Having no weapons on space station and no troops on the planet makes it less of an issue if I loose the planet and need to recapture it... but it don't happen very often as my fleets are just so much stronger instead. Attack is a form of self defense in its own right...

[Es78]

One thing I am not with you is when you say the AI should have lower garnisoned unit...

It should have 10x more and remove the maintenance cost for unit for the Ai then we will talk.

With this, I would not be able to conquer 15 colony in 2 minute after a declare a war.

No... the game should be balanced so planetary defenses make sense to use... they should be more organic into the planets economy and ground units should ALWAYS be better at defense then offence. There is no way a military unit on a strategic scale would not be better at defense than offence.

Ground units garrisoned on a planet should be cheaper and should be payed from the planet income to a certain degree, not the state. Up to a certain limit of their income of course. This would make ground defenses worth investing in. Garrisoned units should also build up defensive bonuses over time.

Once you take them off the planet their maintenance should perhaps triple or quadruple in cost and be fully payed by the state. You also loose their defensive bonuses when doing so.

This way you can have planetary defenses and offensive forces as you gather them from around your empire to invade somewhere it also make sense to have forces a bit everywhere like you would in reality to spread the cost around on different planets.

It also would help the AI to deal with how ground forces is used in the game.

I actually like the direction of this idear

I would like to see that a planet with X population could maintain for free Y amount cost of troops. When you then take them of a planet these troops would start to cost as they are not supported by the planet anymore.

If you then add the following
- Low tech planet defence weapon systems that could hit space ships but at a somewhat low cost. The economy would be changed drastical, as troop cost would primary be for invasion empires. And not the defender and it would be somewhat cheap to defend a planet with planets based weapons. Right now it´s really expensive due to the diameter of planets to protect a planet with defence bases (Should only be for the abselout best and most important planets) Also the planets weapons is quite late in the game and not really used.
- The AI would build up ground forces to the free support cost (unless for invasion need)
- Planets could harm ships also early game
- Add an option to massdrive bombard planets (No other weapons)
- Add a dedicated massdriver slot to troop transports (Tier 4 tech, that is a abseloutely wonder weapon when dealing with ground forces, but not devestating the population) So they could actualy combat ground forces before your invasion and there by making a planet vs troop transport combat scenario. Where you need to bombard the groundforces untill you cvan invade but also keeping your troop transport ships alive.
Personaly i am creating a dedicated massdriver feelt out of my escorts ships, when i hit destroyers or cruissers

[MichaelJ007]

Well... I think that you should not gain bases in orbit of planets unless you board them.

I agree, though the current game mechanic is to scuttle any bases you capture in orbit of an enemy colony.

I suspectv the game code would not support orbital infrastructure like spaceports having a different owner to the planet, given how intricately the two are tied together economically.

So the options are to either destroy any orbital infrastructure, or to gain control of them as part of the ground battle (capture their ground based control centers or governing codes??).

And if that is the case, then they should add significantly to the ground battle.