I've only recently started playing GalCiv2, so I'm not sure if this has been thought up before. However, after skimming over the forums for a while I haven't seen mention of it, so I thought I'd throw it in here.
The basic idea here is Planet Quality (+20%) race perks, plus the Super Annihilator ability. The S.A. ability, for those who don't recall, lets you create spore ships which "uncolonize" a planet and turn it to a Toxic atmosphere. So what I was thinking was this: Rather than invading a planet, you could simply Toxify it then colonize it.
This has a number of advantages I can foresee:
- Increases the base quality of the planet compared to normal conquest, since only (re-)colonizing triggers the PQ bonus. Normally +20% if you just use the skill bonus, but if you use Political Parties mod like me you can choose the Anarchist party and boost your PQ to +35%. That means you can turn a Class 15 minor race planet into a Class 20 planet!
- Spore ships are 100% successful with just a single ship, and therefore can be built faster and much cheaper than the multiple troop transports usually required to take a planet.
- You save yourself a lot of unnecessary research by never needing to research the Planetary Invasion branch. You also don't need to research the Extreme Colonization tree, since Spore ships convert all planet types (even radioactive, heavy grav, etc) into Toxic.
However, since I am somewhat new to the game, I don't know if this is good compared to other possible builds one could spend their points on. The PQ bonus costs 8 points for the max level, and with the Anarchist Party strategy, you also lose potential bonuses you could get from another party. Do you guys think that this strategy would be worth the points spent, or would they be better off put into more standard bonuses like Weapons and Military Production?
