About switching Slavery on and off, that should certainlly *not* be possible. Cravers wouldn't even consider not just eating the other species. Turn them into food, get more Cravers. That's the way to go!

Mailanka wrote:

- Cravers need to have the expansion disapproval removed completely. This race is meant to expand and consume, it is their core mechanic. Every new colony they settle or capture should give a happiness bonus, not penalty. The actual value of expansion disapproval is not that big, but it will definitely help.

Counter proposal: If we get the system razing/destruction mechanic paired with the population movement mechanic, we could allow races to abandon systems and move on.  This suits the theme of Cravers pretty well, in that they can stick around with a smaller number of worlds, but sort of "sweep" through the galaxy like a fire, consuming what they find, then ditching the ruined system and moving on to the nex worlds.

I assume it will help them a little bit, depending on how it's managed. If there's an unhappiness penalty associated with it, it'll screw them just as badly as before. For what it's worth, I liked their suggestion of removing the expansion penalty for the Cravers, it would make them better able to compete.

- Cravers need some sort of racial mechanic to consume local population and turn it into food for their own pops. Think of Stellaris "Purge" mechanic, with dinner involved. This will give them much needed jumpstart in new systems, since they are expanding fast they need some boost to get going in newly gained worlds.

Or at least have local populations dwindle somehow. Or some way to turn slavery on or off?

Either option, or just remove other races from the voting system altogether in the Cravers case. It shouldn't matter if my food dislikes my decisions.

- The Ecologists law which equalizes entire Empire into "Content" happiness definitely should belong to Militarists, as it will help Cravers immensely and is tailored for them much better than any other empires. Think of it as keeping the food, err slaves at bay with your ground forces.

You're trying to fix a Craver problem with a Militarist law.  Cravers aren't the only ones who'll be militaristic.  Should militarist Vodyani or Sophons be able to enforce a level of contentedness?  Does that even make sense?  No, the problem isn't that Militarism needs better happiness management, but that Cravers do.

The Vodyani already have access to enforce a level of contentedness, and the Sophons typically are completely happy anyways, so it wouldn't affect them much. Putting it under military does make a lot of sense, to be perfectly honest.

- There should  be no way to force truce Cravers. Otherwise their whole "Endless War" concept is just a bad joke.

Yeah, that's kind of weird, isn't it?

Yup.

- Dictatorship should be immune to political frolicking by default.

I see a lot of people saying this.  Doesn't it make sense that dictatorships cause discontent without extensive propaganda efforts?  And, again, I think we're trying to fix a craver-specific problem with a dictatorship fix.  This would make a Sophon or Vodyani dictatorship equally stable, and I don't agree that this is a good idea (and probably a discussion better for the political volatility thread)

Personally, I don't care on this one either way, but I'm not sure we're trying to solve a Craver problem here. We're trying to solve a problem that all dictatorships in the game suffer, including the latter two if you swap them to dictatorships.

- The cravers "Spoils of War" law of extra science/ dust is nerfed compared to the first game into per ship, not per destroyed CP as it was. It falls off very, very fast, and basically does not mean anything by era II. It should either upgrade with eras, or have it changed back to "per CP".

Again, just a note, this is a Militarism law, which is not unique to the Cravers.  Any change you apply here will propagate to other militarist civilizations (which is not meant as a mark against it.  I think this is just as good an idea for Militaristic Sophons as for Militaristic Cravers)

Alright, even if it's a military law, they're right. The old system worked because it maintained utility even against Dreadnaughts, whereas the current system does not. Coupled with the lower fleet sizes this time around, and it becomes doubly weak.

Romeo wrote:

The Vodyani already have access to enforce a level of contentedness, and the Sophons typically are completely happy anyways, so it wouldn't affect them much. Putting it under military does make a lot of sense, to be perfectly honest.

Point of order: The Vodyani do not have access to a law that enforces a level of contentedness, the religious party does.  There seems a lot of confusion between political party and race in this thread.  The Cravers can be religious and gain access to the same law that the Vodyani have, and the Vodyani can become a military dictatorship if they wish, at which point they have the same sorts of legal options that the Cravers do.  But the Cravers alone have this problem where they need to keep colonizing new worlds because they keep depleting old worlds.  Vodyani don't have this problem (and neither do the Sophons).