I like where you're going with it, but I didn't quite understand what to do. Your idea is definitely going beyond what Stardock attempted to implement in Crusade. More interactive and not just "place your legions and see what happens".

That is my intention

What to do can be seen by the text below the map, essentially:

- Place defenders' units (split in immobile defense artillery mainly to protect the capital and mobile legions)

- Place attacker's units (only legions). Placing attacker's units adjacent to a defense artillery means it's shot at while landing, reducing it's strength.

- Perform turn based battle (since there is no AI by playing both sides manually). Every unit has one action per turn, either move one field or attack adjacent unit.

- The map is generated randomly every time (press F5 if you are not content with the layout), on it the capital is placed (the purple circle with the black center) as well as a bunch of other "improvements". To give the player more to do than just attacking the capital there is the possibility to destroy or raid improvements as described in the text to the right of the map together with some descriptions how battle works.

I hope it's now a bit clearer what to do

Very good. This is exactly the kind of tactical ground warfare I`d like, but you`d need a decent attacker\defender AI to make it work well.

Not sure about the random terrain buildings thing though since once you know a planet`s terrain, youknow it- It wouldn`t change. Buildings should always be where first placed.

The Devs should definitely look into implementing something like this (with the corresponding sound effects!)

I like the demo but I think it is wrong for Galciv3. GC3 is about strategy for a whole civilization and as such there aren´t room for a more hands-on develoment when it comes to battles/invasions. This is as I understand it why SD left it out in space battles and why they probably will leave it out for invasions. 

On the other hand I think there are lots of other things they should add to the game both in the invasion and the space battles.

1. Aggresiveness setting for fleets/invasion,. How much losses are the civilization willing to accept before withdrawing from the battle? In the ground based game a high agg. rating could mean that you are more likely to win the invasion, but at a higher loss, more destruction of property and loss of population et cetera.

2. A general setting for what kind of military material your armed ground forces use. Anti-grav meaning a swift force that uses its mobility to attack isolated defenders. If you are defender attacking isolated invading forces with overwhelming numbers. Mecha for low mobility but high defence and attack and finally tracked for a even distribution of mobility, defence and attack. 

3. Traits for ground and space leaders to add to the strategic choices you can make as high commander a civilizations armed forces. 

Thank you Whatever else you want to tell me with that ...

You're hired.

*bump* - since some people expressed interest recently.