I'm in this sweet alliance with two other empires minding my own business when one of my teammates wants to declare war on a puny neighbor, me and the other ally are down with it and agree.
I quickly send in a huge fleet and start bombarding a planet, I take down its defenses and send in a ground army to mop up their defending army. After taking them down I get this sweet victory screen saying I am successfully occupying the planet. My assumption was that it was going to be like Civ 5 and ask me to choose what to do with it, such as kill off the people in it or take it over as my own planet and make it a part of my empire; no such luck, instead it seems like I can do nothing with it, and it remains under control of its owner, sort of.
My armies are chilling on the planet, I am able to remove them, but should I? When I go to the grid screen it says nothing can be done and nothing is being produced because of the occupation.
This is a one player game, all the other empires are ai controlled. I did not start the war, instead I got an alert asking to vote whether to go to war or not.
What do I do now? Do I just ignore it and continue on with my war? Should I remove my armies? Do I ever get the planet?
What do I do with occupied planets?
Best Answer
You occupy the planet, you do not control it, this works similar to EU4.
The occupation grants a large amount of warscore and you can send your armies away, Your opponent has to reinvade to liberate the planet.
Whether you get the planet in the end depends on the war goals, the occupation merely provides additional warscore, with which you can press your demands.
Most importantly though, it prevents the enemy from using the planet and getting resources from it without you having to constantly bombard it and requiring an invasion from your opponent to liberate it.