I think you could do something really neat with having your ground units moving about on the planet map. I think star drive dose something like that.

Well part of the problem is justifying it at all in a Space conquest game. Since realistically ships in orbit could just bombard any ground resistance into ash one they have uncontested control of the space around the planet. The only reason to send in ground troops would be to subdue the population, and secure key facilities without destroying them. Though in theory you could also just destroy their food production, and wait for them to surrender while you blockade the planet.

But yes to me this is what is missing from most Space 4X games. It is one reason why I still love to play Star Wars Empire at War. The game doesn't have much depth but at least it does have that mix of Galactic Conquest, Space Combat, and Ground Combat. The Ground Combat was not particularly well done in that game though. If Stardock is looking for inspiration for how to do Ground Combat IMO the two best games to copy would be either Total War series or Company of Heroes. Probably Company of Heroes since it's better suited to modern/futuristic combat that would involve vehicles. The gameplay should probably focus on commanding small armies to seize key objectives. Some mission ideas:

Shut down Ground to Air defenses or Shields.

Capture Mining/Production facilities before they are purposely destroyed by natives.

Seize control of Military Base or Senate without damaging it.

Raid enemy Research/Espionage centers before they delete all information.

Also they could perhaps even have some ship boarding missions to allow you to capture the largest capital ships or space stations like this.

There's also the "planetary shields powerful enough to deflect any bombardment" route for justifying ground combat (or, at least, planetary shields powerful enough to make such bombardment take a long time). Such shields could be local (e.g. protects things in the base to city size range), theater (regions, parts of continents, or continents), or full planet depending on the amount the planet owner was willing to spend on the defenses.

Of course, that then begs the question of why exactly my shields are capable of deflecting the big naval guns and yet unable to prevent landing craft from passing through.

Then there's also the "well, you CAN do it, but most of the other people in the galaxy frown on this sort of thing" route, or the "it's a violation of the Spaceneva Conventions, and if you do it you're a war criminal" route.

If they do include some form of ground combat in the game, however, I hope it's not really any more than giving general priority orders - e.g. 'take this area, then move that way', rather than anything too detailed. Or, alternatively, have the player able to command the forces involved in a couple of key battles for the planet, like the taking of a major city or an important landing zone.

I agree with Rooks.  The idea of complex ground combat definitely sounds fun, but in a 4x space-conquest game it would be too much of a time-drain if you had to fight every battle tactically.

If ground combat options are on the table I think I'd go for something like:
* add a bit more depth (perhaps some variety in ground force types which includes some soft/hard counters), yet
* keep the actual combat fairly abstract, and
* it can take more than one turn to resolve (and most likely would unless one side had a tremendous advantage) - few (if any) wars on Earth have been over in a week, let alone a war on a planetary scale.

The last point in particular would open up some nice gameplay: you would not lose a colony to invasion in the one turn, so you could try to get fleets and reinforcements to your invaded planet, in turn the invader could do likewise or opt to withdraw (perhaps even deploying mass drivers to bomb the planet until departing).

This might work, but then again it still would be a matter of numbers, blind decisions and counter decisions would be great.

Space combat needs an overhaul first and foremost. Ground combat is secondary.

If ground combat is to be implemented then I hope they do something similar to crusader kings 2. Turn-based or RTS based ground combat would be too time consuming considering how many planets there are in a typical galciv game.

I agree with this OP also, thank you Zydor for pointing out the truth, we don't have time to be overseeing every single planet invasion of such dept., However I think brad has some surprise for us, not that it will take too much time.

I also agree with this OP. Space combat seems to be the main focus of the game considering that 90% of the time you are in space, and you must make space combat fun.

I see ground combat to be heavily tied in with troop transports, planet building, colonization and military tech mechanics.

Expanding on mechanics listed above will enable developers to expand ground combat into something more meaningful but not necessarily more time consuming.  

A better ground combat system in galciv3 should not be something like battles in HoMM3 but should be more like 1 turn with 1 soldier vs 1 alien in Xcom enemy unknown.

You are attacking a small outskirt colony world with a shield generator, or grain stock, or power grid or whatever for example. 

Lets say no matter how many drop ships or troops you have you can ether choose to split them in 2 legions for a flank maneuver or trap move or keep them in one mega force, each having its ups and downs.

Then lets say drop ships carry all the equipment soldiers have access to depending on your tech, so you choose heavy assault, fast attack or covert op and again they all have their highs and lows.

So you know its a small colony with one very important structure so you choose the optimal setup to tackle this particular battle. You know if you disable the shield generator for example defenders gona loose morale under fear of orbital bombardment and fold fast, so they have concentrated defense in that one area. So you choose -> Megaforce -> Heavy Assauult -> and drop location, the rest is automated.

This is something i just cooked up in my head in like 5 min, but the idea is you get more options when carrying out planet battles depending on what kind of world it is and what is your tech.Unlike galciv 2 where if you had stronger tech and stonger troops you are almost guarantied a victory, this system should provide the game play with situations where player does not always have favorable conditions and based on the situation must make the best of it with 2-3 choices and the rest should be carried out automatically because that's all she wrote if we are trying to keep it tight and on schedule within the frame of 4x strategical game. Multiple layers of rock, paper, scissors ,lizard, Spock are implied.

I don't care if I can't control my ground-forces, I'll play another game for that type of combat.

What I would like to see is that you have to actually build invading forces; tanks etc.

I think something simple that would take multiple turns with an invasion type screen similar to gc2

turn one you do the invasion

1) soldiers                     destroys 50% population  50% buildings    occupation time reduce 0%   , population is likely to fight back (IED's Guerrilla warfare)

2) mass drivers             destroys 50% population   70% buildings    occupation time reduced 50%,    shock and awe the population is demoralized as their infrastructure is destroyed it will take time to get this planet working again

3) information war          destroys 30% population   40% buildings    occupation time reduced 70%,    propaganda demonize the government and make the people see you as their savior some will resist and be "quelled" by the people you turn government buildings get destroyed by riots

4) poison gas                destroys 100% population    0 % buildings  occupation time reduced 100%   , useless meat sacks only good for slaves.... oops                  population is destroyed but buildings remain untouched we need to repopulate this planet likely to take some time

turn 2-10 is occupation where you get to take several other choices (1 per turn)

* during occupation both planet population and soldier count is reduced per turn by a percentage of the population of the planet (this means the planets population will decrease by a percentage each turn and shouldn't reach 0 but the soldiers count will decrease by a percentage of population and could reach 0 if this happens the occupation fails)

o1) fortify your position                                  bonus to defense if counter invasion  lowers loss of soldiers due to rebellion

o2) control structure (food water power)           make the people dependent on you for basic survival reduces occupation time but lose soldiers due to rebellion

03) propaganda                                             control the news make the people like you reduces occupation time and loss of soldiers

the defenders would have a different set of options based on what was used as well

d1) incite rebellion         30% loss of planets population     10% loss of enemy soldiers

d2) supply weapons         decreases loss of population        increases loss of enemy soldiers

d3) supply food/water      increases duration of occupation

d4) counter propaganda      increases occupation and increases loss of population / loss of enemy soldiers

d1 only available of government structures remain intact, d2,d3 only available if no blockade (bribe/stealth my allow with blockade) d4 only available if defender still controls news

As the forum ate my post (it WOULD be the one time I forgot to copy-paste it for just such an occurance), I will be more abbreivated.

Something like Moo3 would be probably the best option. Have different units that contribute factors to the various statistics your ground force (so that ground force composition becomes an interesting series of choices, rather than just "my best unit currently available"). And then have the option to select various tactical options and then let the engine resolve it abstractly, rather than abstract it just as much as an RTs ot TB-skirmish mode.

By tactical options, I mean things like choosing a tactic (which would be a series of rock-paper-scissors sort of affair - that worked with only three attacking and defending options in Gamws Workshops' now-defunct tabletop Mighty Empires, and you could afford to be more expansive), how much collateral damage you wanted to inflict, how aggressive your force were (i.e. how mcuh damage they wee prepared to accept verses deal out) and so on.

Something GalCiv's maps would enable, that M003 didn't is you could effectively fight over the planet map using the improvement slots as nodes. Real warfare is only even fought essentially over strategic points and the transport networks connecting them anyway, so it's even realistic. (And the rational is, given that you can subjugate a population from orbit with a starship, you need your ground forces to take all the strategic targets to actually control the population properly and thus keep them in line.)

One of the tactical options, therfore, might be to pick your initial invading location improvement slot, and assign a target list (or priority) of where your ground forces go next. This would serve two purposes - giving a way to visually show your progress of captured are on the planet (even if you take the whole planet it one go) in an interesting way, and also giving you some choices  - and if you're not trying to use ground combat as a skirmish map, choices become the important bit that maks it more than just "click button, hope you get lucky" which characterised GalCivII's rather poor ground combat engine.