Hi everyone,

you know the statistics from "update 3 in numbers" so I'm opening a thread on the cravers, because obviously they're the least favoured race. The green guys are the second least favoured but I like to play them a lot, even though I don't remember their names right now.

So, I got the new beta version today, haven't played cravers with it yet, but from the game menu, it doesn't look like they received any changes yet.

Now the Problems I had when playing cravers was the approval drop, when you refuse a truce. Which is kind of ridicolous, because they're a warrior race, and when you got someone cornered you need the strike the coup de grace. Simply because, if you don't the other race will get ahead of you, since they got more economical, sci and industry focus. This makes playing them infuriating, because you need to put down so many uprisings with forces you need for your dropship. And pressing surpress all the time sucks.

I understand that they need something to slow them down, but you know, it should be in a fun way.

That's problem number 1.

Second issue, is they have an early game advantage, which means you need to kill your enemies fast, in late game they're kind of obselete. Other races can research faster and get the big ships faster, and even though cravers have the number advantage, a 6cp big ship can rip through small hunter class ships like a hot knive through butter and other races get the strategic ressource weapons faster, thus cravers are beaten in their own game.

OK, those are my issues, I'm sure others have some as well, after all they wouldn't be the least favored race if there wouldn't be some problems.

Suggested solutions :

Cravers loose influence when refusing a truce, not approval,

Cravers get an invasion bonus, not the 5 hp, something big. Make them a harrasement army with fast ships, this would decrease problem 2 in a fun and tactical way. They get infantry which has a 10% invasion force bonus on both health and attack. This way, you can make fast ships and simply take out key star systems in the late game, forcing the enemy to focus on defense instead of blasting you out of space with orbital class ships. Since invasions can be held of in early game rather easy, it wouldn't make them a "rush race".

My big problem with Cravers is approval... As a hive-minded race they should not be affected by it at all. Neither should the slaves. Happy slave or sad slave? What does it matter in a Craver warlike dictatorship?

Right now what's holding me back from playing Cravers as I feel they should be played is being afraid of approval loss.

+1 to what Lulz! said.

Other ways to manage approval for Cravers is to move your population about. The -5 malus only occurs when your Cravers and another species occupy the same planet. So it can be a balancing trick. Effectively it allows Cravers to swap approval for extra FIDS. Example: You have 3 planets colonised on a system. There are 10 Cravers in the system, and 10 of other species. You can put all the Cravers on 2 planets and all the other species on a single large planet. You get no disapproval, but no extra FIDS. Alternatively, you can put 2-3 of the other species on the same planet as the Cravers. You get -15 approval, but you also have 50% extra FIDS from that population. With the right buildings and laws, you can maintain high approval while at the same time getting extra output from your population. It means that population management is key to getting the most out of your systems (this is true for all races, but especially Cravers).

The whole truce mechanic is not a problem for Cravers at all. You can accept a truce, and so long as militarists are in the senate (why wouldn't they be?), you can immediately declare war again without any cost. This will lower the trust that other races have for you (so they are less likely to do deals with you in future) but who cares? They are your food. The complaints about the force truce mechanic have been highly overblown given how easy it is to accept the force truce and immediately declare war again. If you're not a militarist, then it will eat your influence, but that really isn't a problem for us Endless-spawned insectoids as we are always militarists (unless you want to RP something else).

Finally, you should be at war fast. They are not quite the rush race they used to be in Endless Space 1, and they truly shine once their pop is at 50 (that 40% production is insane), but being at war is essentially free approval from Warmonger's Paradise. With some of the unaffiliated laws, you can boost your approval even further. My last playthrough as Cravers, I had no problems with approval at all. 

My first win on Endless difficulty was with Cravers and it was fairly straightforward. Don't build anything fancy other than basic buildings, focus on industry and science early to get your systems rolling and some good ship tech. Declare war on every minor faction you meet and conquer them. When you run out of minors, declare war on your neighbour. Conquer them, move populations about, upgrade ships, troops, and fleets, declare war on the next one. Don't specialise systems, don't try and build wonders, don't try and run a super slick empire. If you do have any systems that difficult to manage in terms of approval, raze them, and recolonise with the colony ship produced from the raze. The galaxy will be yours in no time.

It's not that the approval would be a problem to deal, it's just extremly boring to do so, and being focused on approval so much, let's you delay other things,

The problem with the truce and declaring war solution, yeah I know you can do that, but it feels like cheese. Somehow I think the option of redeclaring war after a truce isn't supposed to be in there, and that's why I'm not using it. Would be cool if a dev. could say anything about it.  So is any dev here to give us insight??

Now cravers are not in a good spot, even if you guys feel like it, because only 4% are playing them, look at the numbers. 

And as I said it's more about how fun they are to play, and how fun it is to manage the problems they have, and overfocusing on approval basically isn't fun, even if it's managable.

Take the chain gang solution, it would be pretty fun, if the dynamic would be changed. Instead of calling it chain gang, call it eat slaves, (I wonder how riftborn taste) and let it have some pros, like you can eat more than one slave and some cons, like you're cravers are getting obesete, or a malus to population growth, that would be fun.

Chain gang program usually targets my Craver pop not the slaves... Otherwise it would make sense

thiasss wrote:

It's not that the approval would be a problem to deal, it's just extremly boring to do so, and being focused on approval so much, let's you delay other things,

The problem with the truce and declaring war solution, yeah I know you can do that, but it feels like cheese. Somehow I think the option of redeclaring war after a truce isn't supposed to be in there, and that's why I'm not using it. Would be cool if a dev. could say anything about it.  So is any dev here to give us insight??

Now cravers are not in a good spot, even if you guys feel like it, because only 4% are playing them, look at the numbers. 

And as I said it's more about how fun they are to play, and how fun it is to manage the problems they have, and overfocusing on approval basically isn't fun, even if it's managable.

Take the chain gang solution, it would be pretty fun, if the dynamic would be changed. Instead of calling it chain gang, call it eat slaves, (I wonder how riftborn taste) and let it have some pros, like you can eat more than one slave and some cons, like you're cravers are getting obesete, or a malus to population growth, that would be fun.

Wait, so it's not really a balance/mechanical problem, it's that you find dealing with approval boring. Those are two very different things. I like micromanaging my population to get the most out of them. If you don't then maybe Cravers aren't for you. Approval is a key aspect of the game and must be managed by all races, it's just that for Cravers it is tied to their core unique mechanics. I don't find it compelling to be a science monster, so I don't tend to play Sophons. But I don't think that Sophons are weak or broken (from a gameplay perspective - Sophons are obviously small and pathetic). I just don't find their unique mechanics compelling.

I don't know about the breaking truce thing being intentional, but it's not cheesy. You have to have militarists as the lead party for it to be free - otherwise you are talking huge influence costs. The option to declare war immediately after a forced truce has been in the game for a long time now, so I suspect it is intentional. Either way, it's an option round a game mechanic you don't like. If you choose not to use it, that's your choice, but again that's about your preferences, not the game.

4% doesn't mean anything in terms of flawed design. 'The numbers' are not explanations in themselves. There are plenty of reasons why players might choose to play other races so much, or not play Cravers. For example, Cravers are pretty one-dimensional in that they revolve almost entirely on military. If you like building mega systems and economic powerhouses, as I suspect many of us do, then they are not really for you. Again, that doesn't mean they are in a bad place, just that they find a niche preference - players that like military. I would be willing to bet that in the multiplayer scene they get played a lot more as multiplayer tends to be far more militaristic.

All that said, (and I've said this elsewhere) I would like to see some changes to Cravers to make them a little more 'Cravery'. The devs have already said they will give them some unique techs to consume populations. I'd also like it if you got a bit more of a FIDS bonus for slave drivers. But these are just my preferences. They are a solid race to play now that the dictatorship approval penalties have been changed, and I like dipping into them occasionally when I'm not turning new peoples into new patriots. 

More recent, internal versions of the game have seen the Cravers receive significant buffs. Some of it relates to approval & government (they have a new, "better" dictatorship), and some of it relates to the Slave drivers traits (more powerful), and the depletion mechanic (faster, but gives more resources during depletion).

We think you'll enjoy them.

Frogsquadron wrote:

 some of it relates to the Slave drivers traits (more powerful), and the depletion mechanic (faster, but gives more resources during depletion).

This is exactly the kind of thing I wanted. Awesome!

Frogsquadron wrote:

More recent, internal versions of the game have seen the Cravers receive significant buffs. Some of it relates to approval & government (they have a new, "better" dictatorship), and some of it relates to the Slave drivers traits (more powerful), and the depletion mechanic (faster, but gives more resources during depletion).

We think you'll enjoy them.

WOW. I am really glad to hear that you are working extra hard to get a good game for release. Cravers will be my first playthrough. They never clicked for me in ES1 (Sowers all the way) but I immediatly fell in love with them in ES2. I am curious about the changes to slave driver. I hope they will eat the slaves like in their discription.

To all the others thanks for the gameplay tips.

Like what I see from the Frog. I am able to Micromanage the Cravers. Am also able to keep the Rebellions at zero. But it sometimes feels like wasting prescious time controlling the Approval and Rebellions.

(Lulz if you read this we have answered the comments of the others for quiete a while now. It's not that I don't know how to properly play the Cravers, I think it's fun to micro them, but the Cravers aren't supposed to be like the other Empires, Lorewise. And that's the reason why I think they shouldn't have the same Game Mechanics as the others.)

This is probably off-topic, but can't help it:

Kaada wrote:

..[T]he Cravers aren't supposed to be like the other Empires, Lorewise. And that's the reason why I think they shouldn't have the same Game Mechanics as the others.

I see what you're saying, but if you think about it, there's nothing lore-wise about the Cravers that suggests that they couldn't have politics or government (Wiki only says it's hard to apply to Cravers) at all, or are completely controlled by some sort of central mind such that differing opinions would never arise. Craver society, in as far as I can talk about such, seems to me highly stratified; there's a worker-class (Craver drones of some sort), a warrior-class (your run-of-the-mill Craver), a ruling-class (Bishops), and the Queen (or queens? Seems like there has to be more than one. Oroyo Ner Freed is, or was, a queen). Drones probably don't have "free-will" and simply follow commands like robots, and the Warriors might be sort of half-and-half (hard to say -- Kren Solutus is the longest surviving Craver warrior, who also became a bishop; it seems to possess its own mind). Bishops and the Queen(s?) definitely seem to have a great amount of intelligence if the Wiki is of any help, which suggests they are capable of self-direction and individual thought. Given their cruel bent and hierarchical structure, it's not difficult to apply the idea of a Dictatorship or even a Republic to Cravers; it's only Democracy that really seems out of place for Cravers (but not impossible to imagine -- just really unlikely).

That's all (potentially meaningless) speculation as far as the game is concerned. But to be honest with you, I don't really get this thought that goes something like, "it really feels like I'm playing four-armed (insert Empire) right now".