http://imgur.com/a/4Y6pV

Pictured, the 4 out of 20 systems I own NOT in utter and complete rebellion.

I started this game somewhat normal and built a little infrastructure along with my fleet.  At some point an election happened and everyone wound up pissed (I still have 0 idea how to stop that).  

So I said screw it and did the following:

1. Invaded EVERYTHING.  Not that I wasn't anyways but the sole goal was to take planets quickly and hoard manpower.  I sitll have my original fleets of about 15 ships total and have killed 2 AI's, taken all the minor races i've found (maybe all of them in game) and have the final two races on the ropes.

2. Built in order of priority:

A. Colonize another planet in the system

B. Study anomalies

C. A colony ship if there happened to be an system with an acceptable colony for me to take (rare).

D. Nothing (didn't even bother to research the industry to X tech)

3. Ignored my econ.  It went negative for 10+ turns or so for god knows why, but who cares. I  sold a bunch of junk (automatically) and then continued my spread.  I jumped back to postive for awhile and have now again sunk back to losing dust per turn.

4. I've basically researched passive upgrades and that's it, so mostly the colony approval stuff in era 2, and all the colony techs, and then CP, and finally some weapons and ship tech i'll never use.

My ships are mostly kitted out attackers with 1 laser and 1 beam (both using resources) and double armor (using resources) and an engine.

So while I get that they're supposed to be the unholy spreading scourge, I feel something is pretty off here.  Some of this is just the awful AI not building any new ships or ever getting a decent fleet together (although I did take out one of the two lumeris very fast), but really it's so very easy to just ignore the entire empire building part of the game and still win, in part because it feels futile with the cravers in the first place due to their constant happiness problems.

Cravers are going to remain broken until devs add the ability to raze colonies. You can't really make a slash-and-burn plunder economy gameplay style work if you have to hold on to all your depleted assets.

atejas wrote:

Cravers are going to remain broken until devs add the ability to raze colonies. You can't really make a slash-and-burn plunder economy gameplay style work if you have to hold on to all your depleted assets.

Well I mean this worked, it just wasn't very interesting.  They are making the ability to raze planets, but at the same time I see that the fundamental issue was that this worked at all?  I literally just ignored approval and construction entirely and waged war

Eji1700 wrote:

atejas wrote:

Cravers are going to remain broken until devs add the ability to raze colonies. You can't really make a slash-and-burn plunder economy gameplay style work if you have to hold on to all your depleted assets.

Well I mean this worked, it just wasn't very interesting.  They are making the ability to raze planets, but at the same time I see that the fundamental issue was that this worked at all?  I literally just ignored approval and construction entirely and waged war

The global FIDS penalties from low approval are pretty severe and kind of kneecap your research and production. Plus if your dust goes into the negative you start losing fleets. 

You can make it work right now because churning out ships is easy with the Militarist law and the AI is dumb, but once there's a proper lategame implemented I imagine the Cravers will need new options to prevent them from collapsing under their own weight.

The fact that non-craver populations can even have a say in anything at all is absurd, they're little more than food to the all consuming man-bugs of the Endless Space universe, I mean come on their bloody loading screen is a Craver Soldier yanking some poor bugger out of a holding pen, probably to munch on him on the other side.

They don't have a say, which is why you pick the composition of 100% of your Senate. The post-election approval malus is meant to represent a slave revolt.

atejas wrote:

They don't have a say, which is why you pick the composition of 100% of your Senate. The post-election approval malus is meant to represent a slave revolt.

Reasonable enough, except they're Cravers (it always comes back to that). They have the Slave Driver trait, which gets more production from all those slaves who are waiting to be eaten, I don't know how they do it, but they do. 

These slaves are going to be eaten, they spend their non-working time in the food cages, so they are already not exactly very happy. Then they didn't get represented in the election and it pushed them over the edge? What is this, no devouring without representation? 

atejas wrote:

Eji1700 wrote:

atejas wrote:

Cravers are going to remain broken until devs add the ability to raze colonies. You can't really make a slash-and-burn plunder economy gameplay style work if you have to hold on to all your depleted assets.

Well I mean this worked, it just wasn't very interesting.  They are making the ability to raze planets, but at the same time I see that the fundamental issue was that this worked at all?  I literally just ignored approval and construction entirely and waged war

The global FIDS penalties from low approval are pretty severe and kind of kneecap your research and production. Plus if your dust goes into the negative you start losing fleets. 

You can make it work right now because churning out ships is easy with the Militarist law and the AI is dumb, but once there's a proper lategame implemented I imagine the Cravers will need new options to prevent them from collapsing under their own weight.

Except I completely ignored the fidsi penalty and was still producing just fine off the slave base pop.  Again i basically stopped building anything but colonies and researching nodes.  I got my money/science from the gold from a ship law and still amde 200 a turn in empire dust.

atejas wrote:

Cravers are going to remain broken until devs add the ability to raze colonies. You can't really make a slash-and-burn plunder economy gameplay style work if you have to hold on to all your depleted assets.

I'm afraid that's not enough. They also need the over-colonization penalty to be toned down, maybe half of what it is now either in duration or effect.

Cravers are building stuff so quickly and yet have to wait many turns before they start expanding again, because of this penalty (among other happiness problems). 

They're gameplay needs to adjust and play like they should, which is basically locusts.

Eji1700 wrote:

atejas wrote:

Eji1700 wrote:

atejas wrote:

Cravers are going to remain broken until devs add the ability to raze colonies. You can't really make a slash-and-burn plunder economy gameplay style work if you have to hold on to all your depleted assets.

Well I mean this worked, it just wasn't very interesting.  They are making the ability to raze planets, but at the same time I see that the fundamental issue was that this worked at all?  I literally just ignored approval and construction entirely and waged war

The global FIDS penalties from low approval are pretty severe and kind of kneecap your research and production. Plus if your dust goes into the negative you start losing fleets. 

You can make it work right now because churning out ships is easy with the Militarist law and the AI is dumb, but once there's a proper lategame implemented I imagine the Cravers will need new options to prevent them from collapsing under their own weight.

Except I completely ignored the fidsi penalty and was still producing just fine off the slave base pop.  Again i basically stopped building anything but colonies and researching nodes.  I got my money/science from the gold from a ship law and still amde 200 a turn in empire dust.

If anything, then, the rebellion penalty should be even stronger, but the player should be more empowered to counteract it. I don't imagine life under the Cravers is particularly pleasant but I doubt the devs meant for players to run thriving empires with 2/3rds of their planets in revolt.

vahouth wrote:

atejas wrote:

Cravers are going to remain broken until devs add the ability to raze colonies. You can't really make a slash-and-burn plunder economy gameplay style work if you have to hold on to all your depleted assets.

I'm afraid that's not enough. They also need the over-colonization penalty to be toned down, maybe half of what it is now either in duration or effect.

Cravers are building stuff so quickly and yet have to wait many turns before they start expanding again, because of this penalty (among other happiness problems). 

They're gameplay needs to adjust and play like they should, which is basically locusts.

This is what kills them with me. "Colonize everything as fast as possible, but don't colonize too fast!"

They're still fun, but need some work.