Simple solution to this is to make use of the ability to influence the votes (via Election Actions) - instead of supporting the one you want elected (which would be fair for everyone irl, like a campaign), you choose just to "round-up" (razzia!) other possible political tendencys/your oppostion (just like a tyrant would, no?).

Works wonders. You might have some (brave) guys left but that move certainly will keep everything in check. And is nicely evil. And cruel. Hah.

Finally decided to come out of lurking the forums for this.

It would be good if you could give more info on this. Since the patch after update 2, I've had no problems at all with approval in dictatorships, including with Cravers. I play on serious difficulty, just to give the background. I wonder if you've considered the following factors:

1. Are you installing a different political party than the ones your population supports? I'm not sure whether this could be the case, as you say it's on the first election, and usually there are only 2-3 political parties kicking about at that point. Nevertheless, you can't expect to install pacifists (for example) and not expect to get approval hits. Even then, it really shouldn't be that bad (see below). You can mitigate a lot of the problem using election actions. Getting the election action tech might seem like a waste, but it's critical in imposing your will in dictatorships.

2. Are you upgrading your systems too quickly? The number of representatives in a dictatorship scales with system level just like a federation (it would be nice if it told you this in the government types screen). If you upgrade your system, then expect a greater diversity of representatives, therefore a greater hit to approval. FWIW I think this is a nice mechanic, and I think it's fairly balanced at the moment. You shouldn't develop systems that don't have improvement related buildings, or luxuries, or have lots of disapproval due to bad planets. It's a decent limitation factor for dictatorships and federations. The number of representatives for an non-upgraded system is 4. So the absolute maximum approval hit you can take is -36 (which will only happen if you back some poor political party choices). That's not really a whole lot if you build a single approval building.

However, if you upgrade a system, you can use its starport, and this can be used as a way to influence elections. Population political affinity plays a huge role in the representatives, but only the population on the planets actually get votes. You can place populations won't support your ideology in the starport during the election turn, and they won't vote. Place them back on the planets afterwards. Or you can begin shipping these populations to other systems a few turns before. They will still be in transit, therefore won't vote.

3. Are you moving your pop between planets (not systems)? Non-cravers give an approval hit if there is a Craver on their planet. Here's the trade off - a single craver on the planet increases the planet's output by 50%, and doesn't deplete it as fast. But it also gives massive disapproval if all the other pop if non-craver. At the other end, you can put all your cravers on a single planet and all your other pop on another. You will deplete faster and get less FIDs, but the approval hit is less.  You should aim for the trade off where you get the most FIDs for the least approval hit by rejigging your population every couple of turns. That kind of min-max micromanagement is super important for Cravers.

That said, I do think the Cravers could do with some buffs. I find it difficult to get the ball rolling with them as fast as say, UE or Vodyani, which doesn't really fit with their militaristic gameplay. Their strengths should be in the early and mid game, especially given that depletion kicks in hard at the late game. Maybe increasing the depletion FIDs output to 75%. But then, we are talking game balance before the game is finished.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Well Vodyani can do +50% to IDS without micromanagement at turn +/-10-12 of the game + 100% to Food + 50% to Influence + no law limitation + extatic...

See this:

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/66-game-design/thread/23907-vodyany-op?page=1#post-last

So you want to bite my legs off?  

I didn't play the Vodyani yet but as far as I understand the issue at hand is not their FIDSI bonuses as a balance problem (which you take completely out of context, they have a growth penalty for example) but the ability to spam unlimited ARKS for just essence and no other resource, which is possible without any delay in additon to normal production and can be as high as one per leeching system. I admit I didn't read into the link and have my info from the steam forums. Because, no offense of course, this thread is about the Cravers and their politics/approval penalty handling. I'd like it to stay on topic. Thank you.

Well Vodyani can do +50% to IDS without micromanagement at turn +/-10-12 of the game + 100% to Food + 50% to Influence + no law limitation + extatic...

See this:

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/66-game-design/thread/23907-vodyany-op?page=1#post-last

The whole Cravers issue is just designed around them having the possibility to have +50% FIDSI with an approval penalty when having just 1 depletion point per round - one Craver + the rest slaves. When there where not severe limitations it would just be utterly unbalanced, given their additional aggressive-behaviour enhancing faction traits. I think the slaves should be possibly kept out of the picture by using empire influence (which Cravers have no use at all for afaiaa atm) and the slave driver should get an affinity specific tech to lower it when it is self-restrictively used, for example only on one planet per system - which would be not easily exploitable.

If you could cancel out the approval penalty completely you would have plenty of fun when dealing with a clever player who just has one Craver pop-unit per planet and the rest slaves on as many planets as possible. You can already do that while being religious which I don't think is worthless for Cravers. You can do exactly that plus you can expand without any penalty. No limits, endless consumption. What do you want more? You become literally the biblic plague of Exodus 10 - a giant swarm of Locusts.

That's also the reason they have no use for influence or any other means to efficiently up their religious favor (except the rebellios way...) - they would get access to the religion party way too fast and just steamroll everything.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Lobotomite wrote:

I just wrote this here because although as intriguing as the mod solution for example is, imo, it is totally overpowered and takes away all the challenge from the new political system.

If you played it, I would be interested in your feedback so I can improve it : it's not difficult to change it if this is only numbers.

For me, it's fine, and the game is still difficult to very difficult with the mod. But I'm not a Craver specialist ! :)

I didn't play it. My impression came from just reading it.

It's just 5 laws at the same time seems waaay to overpowered to me. It just takes away the "give or take" situation completely imo, because there are actually multiple ways to handle the disapprovement - you just can't ignore it completely at some point as it was in ES1. If you don't choose a religious dictatorship that is. An then you'd only have the ability to attack neutrals (which results in counter-war usually), plus permanent "content" status. Not as big of an advantage if you ask me, apart from having no trouble with approval anymore. But also no benefits.

Just don't assimilate additional species or pick the ones you really want. Separate them in reservates (sounds familiar, eh?) to avoid hostilities etc. Adds so much more character to this particular species, than having the ability to completely "remove" a gameplay element by making it negligible. I don't claim it''s perfect right now. There are already threads with good suggestions for additional tools to manage/influence slaves., so I leave it at that.

That being said, I mod myself too. I wouldn't want you to cater it to my personal taste, just make it so you can enjoy the game. And thanks for sharing your work with others.

I don't want to talk anyone out of his opinion. I'm playing in the "endless" time setting and sometimes I also get already problems in the first elections (every 40 turns in endless time-setting). I tried several things for a workaround, what I described worked best. I sometimes also just "follow the masses" and just let another political faction rule for a period. Sometimes even beneficial. You can circumvent this by using planets for your slaves (or provide the option to separate them from your Craver slave drivers to avoid penalties), keeping your Craver-slave ratio at a healthy level (spaceport travel to nowhere/full system) and using round-up during the actual vote if you still get problems. Currently I didn't get the full tech tree, maybe there are even more possibilities. Ships in orbit, supermarket, colonial rights, unique system improvements sure do help.

I just wrote this here because although as intriguing as the mod solution for example is, imo, it is totally overpowered and takes away all the challenge from the new political system. Amplitude should just provide the means to properly commit "genocide" on alien populations (don't get real life opinions about the matter into the discussion please, doesn't reflect mine too - period). In ES1 it ended just up in "you can ignore everything just spam fleets and steamroll stuff". I like the encessity for micromanagement even in endgame better.

Lobotomite wrote:

Simple solution to this is to make use of the ability to influence the votes (via Election Actions) - instead of supporting the one you want elected (which would be fair for everyone irl, like a campaign), you choose just to "round-up" (razzia!) other possible political tendencys/your oppostion (just like a tyrant would, no?).

Works wonders. You might have some (brave) guys left but that move certainly will keep everything in check. And is nicely evil. And cruel. Hah.

That could work if you could manage to get the required influence in less than 20 turns, which I really doubt.

Let's talk bad design for a moment.

The first election is doomsday for the cravers because they WILL have representatives from other parties GUARANTEED. On top of this reality is the fact you get a massive amount of representatives for very normal things like searching curiosities.

Now I am sorry but if 40% my representatives are scientists EXCLUSIVELY because i used my explore ship, then it is VERY BAD DESIGN.

Getting hit with 60% negative approval for a full term is hilariously nonsense.

Why do dictators receive 3x the penalty for representatives not in the government? Lore wise that makes no sense. If anything, the more discontent a banned ideology, the harder it should be to create said buildings.

For instance. Lot's of science people getting blocked? instead of 60% disapproval on systems, you make science buildings and ships cost 60% more industry because the workers don't support you.

The whole idea of disapproval working on a macro level in a dictatorship is laughable. It's suppose to mess up minor tasks, not major.

In a democracy, i can see not being representated having 3x more disapproval. For the life of me I can't figure out why this is the same for a dictatorship.

I don't care if there are ways around this design flaw, we need to straight up hotfix it for now until it can be addressed in detail later. A good example of a fix is to simply remove the 3x penalty they have FOR NO REASON.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Happy dictator in 0.2.5.S1:

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/75-modding/thread/23517-mod-happy-dictator

This makes things a little easier with Cravers, without removing too much of the difficulty.

Basically, Dictatorships got more laws. Instead of x3 to disapproval from non representatives in senate, they get:

* x1 if you have 1 active law (only the basic unavoidable law)

* x2 if you have 2 active laws (same law situation as vanilla, malus nerfed from x3 to x2).

* x3 if you have 3 active laws (Dictatorships now get 1+2 laws in Empire development Era 3). This is vanilla malus.

* x4 if you have 4 active laws (now 1+3 laws in Empire development Era 4)

* x5 if you have 5 active laws (now 1+4 laws in Empire development Era 5).

This means when you have too much unhappiness, then remove some laws, pass a turn (sorry, I couldn't make this real time) and you'll be fine.

With this mod, Dictatorships will tempt the player to use a lot of laws, but this makes the people unhappy so the player have to find a balance. He always can remove all the laws if he have a problem : Dictatorships will be a lot more stable because the player have more control over the unhappiness.

Other regimes have no changes, except they get +1 law in Era 3, 4 and 5 (because why not).

Warning though, the Craver AI may have trouble with it if it tries to use any available law slot (I will try to find if I can do something but I doubt about that). Horatio AI should be fine if they use the content law.

If you try this mod, you should restart a new game, or else the bonus laws won't unlock nicely.

A very intriguing approach that I think might have merit for other problems facing the current political systems.  Well done!

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

Happy dictator in 0.2.5.S1:

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/75-modding/thread/23517-mod-happy-dictator

Basically, Dictatorships got more laws. Instead of x3 to disapproval from non representatives in senate, they get:

* x1 if you have 1 active law (only the basic unavoidable law)

* x2 if you have 2 active laws (same law situation as vanilla, malus nerfed from x3 to x2).

* x3 if you have 3 active laws (Dictatorships now get 1+2 laws in Empire development Era 3). This is vanilla malus.

* x4 if you have 4 active laws (now 1+3 laws in Empire development Era 4)

* x5 if you have 5 active laws (now 1+4 laws in Empire development Era 5).

Very nice solution. I like it.

TheTakenKing wrote:

+1 for hotfix. Could be something as simple as changing Dictatorship 'representatives not present' penalty to -1 per, which I'm sure with the Militarism laws and aggressive playstyles could compensate for the approval penalties in the early game.

Longer term, though, I'd recommend changing the way that Craver populations deal with approval. It's in their nature to expand and consume, so why do they get approval penalties for doing it? They should either have a lesser expansion penalty, or none at all. Or they could get bonus approval on planets that aren't depleted. Like every other faction in this game, they should approach the mechanics differently, promote asymmetrical gameplay. Just having a default of not being able to make peace isn't enough.

better yet, expansion + approval lol.

Technically the bigger the harvest, the happier the pops.

+1 for hotfix. Could be something as simple as changing Dictatorship 'representatives not present' penalty to -1 per, which I'm sure with the Militarism laws and aggressive playstyles could compensate for the approval penalties in the early game.

Longer term, though, I'd recommend changing the way that Craver populations deal with approval. It's in their nature to expand and consume, so why do they get approval penalties for doing it? They should either have a lesser expansion penalty, or none at all. Or they could get bonus approval on planets that aren't depleted. Like every other faction in this game, they should approach the mechanics differently, promote asymmetrical gameplay. Just having a default of not being able to make peace isn't enough.

Kweel_Nakashyn wrote:

It's not a problem of Cravers, it's a problem of general non-religious Dictatorship.

Well yeah, but it gets even worse with the Cravers and their innate slave driver penalty. 

Everyone is aware. There's dozens of thread about the same topic. It will be fixed.