Divinicus wrote:

I don't remember the exact number and I don't have access to the save. But I had all the tech and food improvements. When the system stabilized, It had ~18 Horatio pop, and the system was paying 2300 as gene hunting malus. I think I had sliced maybe 8-10 times.

That is a lot.

I'm not surprised you ended up with such high food consumption. We're still testing it out, but I'm not sure Horatio are meant to just absorb populations left and right. At some point, you'll have to make a choice who you decide to absorb.

Divinicus wrote:

I understand, but what's the point of slicing pops for food if the malus to food is bigger than the bonus?

It feels like slicing pop who provide food should allow you to slice more pop than you should normally be able to.

It was a bug, fixed by Kynrael in the 0.2.3 update (the actual Update 2) last week.

Trentius wrote:From what I can tell, Pop growth kind of alternates between your major Pop and of the minor ones present in the system, with the most populous ones being more likely. The only exception is when a neighboring pop type immigrates to your system, but so far I can't tell what makes this more or less likely to happen. Also, you can now see Population migrating from one system to another, at least accross borders, which is nice. The system will actually send a cargo ship like the spaceport ones, which will travel to its destination, arriving precisely when the Population growth happens. I did note that the ship is attributed to your empire (at least when it originates from a neutral minor faction), so maybe they could be blockaded.

First, for clarity, this thread regarded the 0.2.0 preview.  Some of the things said in it no longer apply in 0.2.3

Alright, back to this point.  So I've been playing my Craver game further and experimenting with the Tikanan.  The idea here was to get 50 of them if I could, just to see how it worked.  I ditched Cravers on their homeworld and now nothing but Tikanan breeds there.  I also send one single pop to my homeworld (which is loaded with food) and began exporting some Haroshem and a few Cravers to make room for them.  The net result was that, for awhile, the homeworld bred nothing but Tikanan.   I have a plague of them now: around 20+ total pop, while Cravers themselves are "only" at 30+ pop.  So I thought it worked the way you do too, but it seems the game "guesses" if you're trying to build up a population and helps you.

Mailanka wrote:

If I switch to Militarist, there's a minor increase in happiness (+2 or so).  If I'm in between (say, you have 3 militarist senators and 4 ecologist senators and I pick ecologist), you get something like +2 happiness and -1.5 happiness at the same time.  it seems like politics still impacts the happiness, but in a small way: it can be up or down and tends to average out, instead of being a persistent penalty, like it was before this change.

Having a rep in the Senate grants a +2 Approval bonus per senator, while having representatives not in the Senate gives a -15 Approval hit for each one. WeaponizedCaffeine flagged these values as subject to balance in the next patch, while also detailing how to change the XML ourselves for the meantime. Find his post here :

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/65-general/thread/23394-huge-decimal-point-bug-approval-in-new-patch

nalgasucia507 wrote:

Tech goes way too fast, even in fast speed.

In the fine print at the end of the devblog, Frogsquadron mentions that tech costs were lowered so we could play around the new tech tree more. Squint your eyes to see it here :

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/blog/496-horatio-update-focus-on-the-tech-tree

MezzoMax wrote:

Considering Food: There is a tech with converts surplus food to industy. Something called bio fuel plant or so. So late it still has it's uses. Also manpower generation is based on % of food production. So a system with high foodoutput will supply you with the manpower needed to fight longer and harder wars.

I wish there was a Food excess to Manpower conversion alongside the various Ind-to-something (though Exotic Rations is kind of the same thing). And the opposite, because why not? Occupy a new system then immediately and  forcefully install 9 Horatios of Pop on it.

UndeadPuppy wrote:
Isn't food exported to outposts now so they can grow? I noticed this when playing Horatio as my population was dying of starvation because of Gene Hunter and Export penalties.

Each outpost receives Food shipments from another colony, which can be chosen in the outpost's overview panel (middle-left). These shipments are actual ships that you can see zipping along, but that also have to actually reach the outpost before another one is sent (so much for systems with no starlanes). Also, blowing up supply ships with explorers now.

Mailanka wrote:

I've definitely seen that you can move a population around (though I haven't verified that this actually moves the population, or just a food equivalent, so it's nice to see that if I put a Pilgrim in a spaceport and send him to a colony, a Pilgrim pops out the other side).

The next part for understanding this will be how populations grow.  I suppose the easiest want to control for this, if I wanted, say, a gazillion Pilgrims, would be to move my native population off-world and turn the colony into nothing but pilgrims, as they'll be the only ones that grow at that point.

From what I can tell, Pop growth kind of alternates between your major Pop and of the minor ones present in the system, with the most populous ones being more likely. The only exception is when a neighboring pop type immigrates to your system, but so far I can't tell what makes this more or less likely to happen. Also, you can now see Population migrating from one system to another, at least accross borders, which is nice. The system will actually send a cargo ship like the spaceport ones, which will travel to its destination, arriving precisely when the Population growth happens. I did note that the ship is attributed to your empire (at least when it originates from a neutral minor faction), so maybe they could be blockaded.

uriak wrote:

I had the same feeling about food, but indeed with spatioport the need is a bit more relevant. Still since it's already the case with outpost, a possible automatisation of food exports seems quite fitting, doesn't it ?

That said, I can't help feeling the game kinda forces the player into a horizontal strategy, you can't pick a "wide vs tall"  playstyle. This because maxing out a system is so fast and easy somehow. In other 4X getting huge cities was something you had to pretty much work with, fighting against happiness, food and other issues...

I have an posted this: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/323-soft-population-caps in the Ideas forum, it could potentially help with the fact that systems can't go tall. As you said, you would just have to manage the unhappiness and food demands that comes with heavily overpopulated systems. 

I had the same feeling about food, but indeed with spatioport the need is a bit more relevant. Still since it's already the case with outpost, a possible automatisation of food exports seems quite fitting, doesn't it ?

That said, I can't help feeling the game kinda forces the player into a horizontal strategy, you can't pick a "wide vs tall"  playstyle. This because maxing out a system is so fast and easy somehow. In other 4X getting huge cities was something you had to pretty much work with, fighting against happiness, food and other issues...

jhell wrote:

And you can :)! using the new spaceport feature. To gain access to the spaceport, just upgrade a system to level 2, and you will then be able to send pop from there (bottom left of the UI window in the system view).

EDIT: once you reach the population threshold, you gain an empire-wide bonus, it's not just limited to that pop.

I've definitely seen that you can move a population around (though I haven't verified that this actually moves the population, or just a food equivalent, so it's nice to see that if I put a Pilgrim in a spaceport and send him to a colony, a Pilgrim pops out the other side).

The next part for understanding this will be how populations grow.  I suppose the easiest want to control for this, if I wanted, say, a gazillion Pilgrims, would be to move my native population off-world and turn the colony into nothing but pilgrims, as they'll be the only ones that grow at that point.

Given the cap on a system's population, this also makes colonization imperative to increasing your population, which further makes Ecology a perfect ideology for pop-based strategies.

Something else that popped up in my Craver game that had also popped up in my Horatio game, but I hadn't realized wasn't Horatio only: As your population achieves a certain level, you gain an empire-wide bonus (or perhaps a population-wide bonus, it's not clear to me).  There's a population screen that manages this, but I can't find it.

But more interestingly, and this came up in my Craver game, as I kept absorbing populations in my Horatio population, if your minor faction populations reach certain thresholds, they also give a bonus!  So, not only are you trying to absorb minor factions for their territory or their minor bonus, the game also rewards you for managing their population.  In my craver game, I conquered the Tikanan (it was the only place I could find with Hyperium!) and then turned it into a major hub for my empire, and to my surprise, I was notified that they had reached a useful population threshold.

I'd like to see if it's possible to "manage" populations by moving them around.  Say, you have a food-rich world, and you want a population (like the Tikanan) to hit towering heights.  You could move them to your food-rich world, and as they grow, send them back out to your other colonies, so you can have an entire population of Tikanan (or Pilgrims or Amoeba or...)

So, I've played (but not finished) 2 games now in the latest build, and I don't have a total experience of the game yet, but I'd like to ask a few questions anyway, get some feedback and thoughs.

Food

So, Horatio is super good at producing Food, and this is probably the first time I've really focused on building as much of it as I can, and I was worried about this going into it, and I'm still worried.  See, Food seems to have a natural cap that the other things don't.  Stated differently, people who had 1000 per turn of X would want to brag about it, but that doesn't seem to be the case with food.  If you focused on industry to a ridiculous degree ("1000 industry per turn"), that meant you could basically build enormous numbers of ships and improvements which would let you kick serious butt, and the improvements you could leverage into improvements on other resources (Ie industry leads to science improvements which lead to better science).  Dust works the same way: 1000 dust per turn supports your vast armies, lets you persuade people diplomatically, lets you quick-buy your improvements or ships, etc.  Science is slightly different, but it also leverages everything else: 1000 science per turn means gobs of technologies, which unlock great new options that you can leverage into superior military power or superior industry or dust or whatever.  Even influence lets you buy laws, adjust your focus on the fly, engage in diplomacy, acquire minor factions, and conquer regions with Influence.  You can "win the game"  with any of the resources, except, as far as I can tell, food.

If you had 1000 food per turn on a system, that system will fill up and max out in population and then you're done.  Now, population itself works the planets, which you can leverage into industry, dust, blah blah, and that's good, but once your system is full, it doesn't matter how much food you have in the system.  Full is full!  So those improvements you invested in improving your food yields is wasted.  It's cool getting +1 pop per turn, until it stops.  In Endless Legend, it didn't do this, and having sick amounts of food was a valid strategy.  It doesn't seem to be here.

Some caveats: I seem to remember food improving colony ship production, and it certainly supplies the pop necessary to fill a colony ship, so I presume extreme population growth can fuel extreme colonization efforts, but this can be slowed down by slow science and industry (though being Ecologists will help, which is natural as Ecology and Food production are meant to be synergistic).  It also seems there's an early tech option for turning pop into manpower, and if you have a ridiculous amount of food, that really accelerates manpower, though food is supposed to do that anyway, though I'm still not really clear on  how manpower works.

Am I missing something?  Thoughts?

Politics

So far, I've played as both Cravers and Horatio, and both are dictatorships.  I've experimented with switching parties and it doesn't seem to produce unhappiness.  At least, it doesn't tell you that in the politics screen.  However, in my Cravers game, I noticed something interesting: there's now a happiness note for how much representation a group has in the senate.  That is, if you elect 7 Militarist senators and I choose Ecologists, there's a small decrease in happiness (-2 or so). If I switch to Militarist, there's a minor increase in happiness (+2 or so).  If I'm in between (say, you have 3 militarist senators and 4 ecologist senators and I pick ecologist), you get something like +2 happiness and -1.5 happiness at the same time.  it seems like politics still impacts the happiness, but in a small way: it can be up or down and tends to average out, instead of being a persistent penalty, like it was before this change.

I think this is a good compromise between the "Politics should never punish you!" camp and the "You should have a reason to game politics!" as it becomes a zero-sum game (doesn't really punish you), but those who understand and game politics will have an advantage over those who blindly plow through their people's wishes.  With the addition of propaganda, we also have more tools to control things.  I could stand for the happiness bonuses and penalties to be more extreme than +/- 1 to 2.  How about +/- 5 to 10?

Also, I noticed in my Cravers game that if you let them get unhappy enough, there's a count down to rebellion.  I want to see how that plays out!  If they start launching ships against me or try to take my planet, I'll be delighted!

Tech

I'm loving the new tree.  It's shades of ES 1 and the new "era" system.  I also love the this-or-that options, as it gives empires distinct flavors.  Heartily approve.  But it seems to go really fast.  I'm like 40-50 turns in and already in the 3rd-to-4th era in several of the techs.  There's also still references in the game to things like "You'll have X bonus until era 2."  What is "era 2" now?  Is there a second tech tree after this?  Is it when I hit era 2 in any of the techs?  Or all of them?  Seems like an artifact of the old design system.

I think it's a good direction, but there may be a few kinks to work out in there.

Finished a Cravers game: Supremacy victory is now a thing.  Woohoo!  Makes a military victory much easier.

Furthermore, if you upgrade your worlds to level 2 or higher, you can move population around!  So, indeed, you can have a system totally specializing in food and it can still make sense.  Also, there's an option for relocating colonies now, which gives you a monetary amount equivalent to the old colony plus its improvements. VERY handy for a craver-type population.

This is a much better game.  The only thing I dislike is that I find politics much less compelling than before (Though I do appreciate being able to unlock more parties far faster) and that tech seems to go far too quickly.

Mailanka wrote:

A few additional comments from playing the Cravers:  Sufficient unhappiness will indeed result in outright rebellion, and it's glorious.  They'll use your own ships against you and you'll have a serious fight on your hands, and then a few turns of peace.  I love this addition.

Also, the ability to evacuate systems is very helpful.  I'm pretty good at carefully balancing my happiness as Cravers now.  This is a vast improvement.

There's an option (a tech) for turning pop into Manpower (exotic rations, though this might be a Craver-only thing, not sure), and it's turning out to be much more useful than I expected.

The exotic rations is for everybody. Man I love fighting the cravers. Maybe after update 2 is solid I will conquer the galaxy with them. I have only done that with UE on normal difficulty.

Divinicus wrote:

I played Horatio once, ended up with a -3000 gene hunting malus on food. So I'd say the contrary, they're really really bad at producing food, and you will never max out any system with this faction.

What do I do wrong?

The Gene Hunter affinity says that spliced populations will add a 5% food upkeep to the original empire population, but I think that there's another, hidden cost, which is that every unit of Horatio population in the empire increases food costs for every other Horatio once you've spliced genes. If you build literally all of the food producing improvements and don't go crazy with the gene splicing, you can probably max out system population. Because they're pertinent: how many Horatio were in your empire? How many populations did you gene-splice into the Horatio?

I played Horatio once, ended up with a -3000 gene hunting malus on food. So I'd say the contrary, they're really really bad at producing food, and you will never max out any system with this faction.

What do I do wrong?