preface:

galaxy size medium

serious difficulty

6 opponents

ok i played three long games two with cravers (one with militarist the other with the religious party) one with the ue and the cravers still have issues comparatively:

1) you are basically forced to use the religious party for the law that sets all happiness to content, reasons being:

-if you have a system with a lot of non craver pops you will have to eat them wasting precious turns building nothing while the depletion points accumulate

-to make use of the 50 pop collection bonus you want as many depleted planets as possible, meaning on medium and larger maps you will have huge issues with overcolonization

-other laws that give happiness are not as powerful and/or are conditional

to be honest the religious law feels like a cheat code for the cravers, you can ignore quite a few techs and buildings and slavery unhappiness. i tried both one game with military happiness laws and one game with religious.

2) depleted planets are a big economic issue in the mid to late game.

-depletion affects all buildings and development bonuses that are on per pop basis. basically the most powerful buildings are cut in half in their effectivness. craver systems are a lot weaker than systems of other races

3) early game the cravers are too strong

-the 2 command points make a big difference in the early game

-the economy is very strong as long as you don't have many depleted planets

-i never met an enemy in the early game i could not conquer

4) late game militarily i prefer the united empire (sheredyn faction through the faction quest)

-ue fleets are a bit smaller

-ue ships deal more damage if you choose the sheredyn faction and get their combat card and focus on projectile attacks. (the card gives -50% enemy projectile absorbtion)

-the damage bonus from depleted planets is not as strong as you might think, late game ships usually have 60-70% damage absorbtion

-needless to say the ue have a much better economy in the late game

-ue can have multiple parties, e.g. military+economists for 50% increased damage and 30% increased hull points and more laws strengthening the economy or fleet. 

cravers are basically stuck with thre religious party.

suggestions:

-depletion should be a passive terraforming process and depleted planets should simply not give any bonuses to fids. the big difference to the current system is that system improvements and development are not affected, i.e. a building that give 4 production per pop is not halved in effectivness any more. this would make the late game economy more competetive

-fids bonuses from undepleted planets should be lower i suggest 100% to 75% down from 150%. the economy is simply too strong in the early game.

-there should be a midgame tech that increases the fids bonus to 150% (current value) from non depleted planets.

-slavery unrest as well as overcolonization should have hard caps (i suggest -100 for slaves and -125 for overcolonization) this way you don't have to use the religious party

-the ship that you can capture from the starting quest should not be given to the player. it makes early game agression even easier (i conquered an enemy riftborn and all it's systems in the first few turns: i had 4 colonies the riftborn had 5)

-the craver unique building should not be an emprie unique and should be capped at 50 max happiness to prevent exploits.

The largest improvements to system yields are population and percentage bonuses. The "per planet" or "on system" bonuses are very small. So -50% FIDS on planets is a huge penalty.

The infantry bonuses are very "meh." One of the "Tikanan" assimilation bonuses for example doubles infantry. Doubles it. So a 30-50% bonus here or there is not a big deal, especially when taking over a planet is so easy to begin with. You are just saving a little manpower, and manpower is currently an ignorable infinite resource for every faction other than Riftborn.

I dont think any improvements are affected by depletion. So the 4 industry per pop building will still keep the 4 industry per pop even after depletion. The only improvements that will be affected indirectly are percentage based improvements.

Nope, anything that says +per pop is applied to the pops not the system, it's added up on the planet based on number of pops working that planet, and then effected by penalties like depletion or the hardship ready FIDS reduction. Improvements, system upgrades, hero bonuses, everything that says +per pop is reduced by depletion.

I'm going to test it, but I think you're interpreting the description wrong. Happy to be proved wrong. Will test and get back.

I'm also pretty sure improvement + per pop bonuses are not affected by depletion.

It's only base planet yields and innate racial pop bonuses.

I just did a run of Craver Jesus (religious Craver with the law to set happiness to content) and in that case I just got to keep all my depleted system for the pop collection bonus. Not having to worry at the happiness at all is very powerful, you also don't care about the political opinion of your pops since you can just select religious at every election and you don't take the happiness hit since you got it covered by the law. All you have to do is being able to maintain the influence cost of the law. 

Once you finally unlock it (after 3 elections) it also basically remove the concept of overcolonization so you can just spam colony ship to every available system. In fact I tried to deplete planets as fast as possible by also having the religious law to only grow cravers. Late game with multiple depleted systems my fleets and troups were just unstoppable and I could directly invade a system in one turn without having to siege at all (i also had assimilated the minor faction with the bonus to infantry)

I'll just correct one mistake above - the 50 pop bonus is plus damage to ship weapons and plus damage to infantry. I thought it was plus damage and health to infantry. Doesn't change the basic point.

I'm still struggling to tell whether depletion affects population improvements. I'm *fairly* sure it doesn't, but it's difficult to tell with so many multipliers and effects going on. Maybe a dev could wade in on this to confirm?

I tested the effects on pop bonuses in relation to depletion before I made that comment. I am 100% sure improvement and hero related per pop bonuses are reduced by depletion. I did the test again using the same save and took screenshots.

Here's the hero used:

Here's a depleted planet with 2 pops on it:

You'll notice the planet has 5 base industry per pop, plus the 2 from the hero is 7 industry per pop. With 2 pops on the planet it's only producing 7 industry.

Here's the planet after building the interplanetary whatever inprovement that adds +1 industry per pop:

As you can see industry only went up by 1 instead of 2.

Fair play! Thanks for the testing. 

thank you for settling this.

Astasia wrote:

I tested the effects on pop bonuses in relation to depletion before I made that comment. I am 100% sure improvement and hero related per pop bonuses are reduced by depletion. I did the test again using the same save and took screenshots.

<snip>

thank you for settling this.

C0ldSn4p wrote:

I just did a run of Craver Jesus (religious Craver with the law to set happiness to content)  <snip>

i think this law is somewhat gamebreaking. you basically loose out on the ecstatic happiness bonuses which are minor (25% food and influence) but you can ignore all happiness buildings which is a lot of production that can be used on ships or other improvements. in my current craver game i have about -100 happiness from over-colonization i just can't make this up with happiness buildings. if i want to expand further and keep my planets at content i basically have to build all happiness buildings and terraform all planets and this compared to one law. the military laws that give happiness are a bit too unreliable/weak in my opinion as i usually are at at war with one or two factions.

another issue is that the unique technology and building that gives gives happiness per ship is once per empire although the tooltip does not say so. if this building could be build on every planet the happiness issue would be fixed from my perspective. it would also encourage cravers to spam many little ships as compared to my current goto strategy of the biggest ships possible full with the best modules my strategic resources can provide.

i read your post but it does not cover my experience. the religious law is just one law you need the miltarist have multiple laws (including a neutral one) and in the end they don't scale as well with larger empires. you have to consider that some systems have way bigger happiness penalties due to planet types and anomalies (which can be removed/terraformed only late in the game)

i am not saying the laws are bad or your strategy is invalid (to the contrary), just that in my experience the religious law covers all your need with just one law, no matter the size of empire, the size of the galaxy and so on (also you do not need to be at war with multiple factions all the time).

once i reached a size of 70+ planets the happiness bonuses from the military laws are just not enough and this is with happiness buildings.

imho turning the craver empire unique building into a regular improvement would be fine (the tooltip afaik currently does not say it is an empire unique, but it is)

Astasia wrote:

Taking everything you just said, would it not be even more powerful to heavily micromanage your systems to avoid complete depletion and very strongly favor minor faction pops? You'd still get most of the bonuses you listed in your points, but also have an empire full of planets actually producing a solid amount of FIDS.

Not really. Of course, you can do that if you want to, and I'm sure it will improve your FIDSI output a bit, but you're getting diminishing returns for the amount of work being put in. You're not really missing out on a whole lot with depleted planets if the system has a few decent developments.

For example: Take a 6/6/6/6 FIDS output planet, that has a pop cap of 10. Let's total it up for ease, and say you are producing 240 FIDS total just from population. After depletion, you are producing 120 FIDS less. But depletion doesn't affect system developments, and 120 FIDS is not a whole lot. It's around the equivalent of 4 early game improvements. With larger systems with larger pops, your loss is more, but your development yields are also greater.

In terms of total Empire output, as most games on normal speed only last around 150 turns, fiddling around with population to stop depletion isn't really going to help that much given that the diminished output will not be running that long anyway until victory. You could maybe move pop around from your first systems when they start to be fully depleted.

Moving large amounts of population around is risky, means you have population doing nothing for a long amounts of time, and it's not always clear you are making any overall gains in the long run, as you are going to have to regrow whole systems with minor faction populations, while those systems could have just been at full pop that whole time, albeit with some diminished output.

But the REAL reasons you want to be actively depleting planets is your 50 pop bonus. 1% health and damage increase on infantry for each depleted planet. That's huge. Who cares if you have loads of depleted planets, when you have super-soldiers that can just take more. Cravers already get a health boost to infantry, so with just 10 depleted planets, and no upgrades, your infantry are 30% more effective than anyone else's infantry other than Vodyani (20% more effective) and Sophons (50% more effective). Don't even both upgrading to tanks or aircraft, as your infantry is just as effective, and you can field way more of them. In other words, depleting planets helps you get more undepleted planets faster. 

ok something has to be done to save the cravers.

i currently play a game with a custom faction and have cravers as an empire:

-they are not at war, theyhave all the time to develop

-they are stuck and are seriously behind all other empires

-they abandon their own colonies

this is on serious difficulty. imho something is wrong if even the ai with some(?) bonuses can't even keep it's own empire afloat.

tesb wrote:

ok something has to be done to save the cravers.

i currently play a game with a custom faction and have cravers as an empire:

-they are not at war, theyhave all the time to develop

-they are stuck and are seriously behind all other empires

-they abandon their own colonies

this is on serious difficulty. imho something is wrong if even the ai with some(?) bonuses can't even keep it's own empire afloat.

It's the problem in itself that they aren't at war, since without expansion they'll get stuck with depleted planets. But that's for players, AI cravers spam impressive fleets from fully depleted systems heh.

In my expirience (playing serious difficulty too) cravers are the only race that can become runaway AI (being way ahead of the rest AI's) and pose a serious military threat (it's not uncommon to meet their doomstacks of 20+ CP with 3 carrier class ships in them by turn 130+-). 

Atm imo they're the strongest AI becouse increased difficulty doesn't improve AI gameplay (just look at conquered colonies, they're always awfull with barely any buildings) but give them FIDS bonuses, then that bonuses are multiplied by cravers 150% FIDS bonus and as a result when cravers spawned near me i saw their core world supporting 3 outposts and still growing population (if human player try this, he'll starve it's homeworld to death). 

So in your case cravers got unlucky with starting location, didn't have space to expand or smth. else. For example in my recent Unfallen game i literally screwed cravers by turn 80 and now they're worse of all AI's, but that doesn't mean cravers have problems in general - they've some countradictory mechanics but still in right hands with right aproach they're one of the strongest races.

Crizis wrote:

In my expirience (playing serious difficulty too) cravers are the only race that can become runaway AI (being way ahead of the rest AI's) and pose a serious military threat (it's not uncommon to meet their doomstacks of 20+ CP with 3 carrier class ships in them by turn 130+-). 

i made this experience with the riftborn, they tend to spam vast amount of fleets comparativly. i never saw this with cravers

Atm imo they're the strongest AI becouse increased difficulty doesn't improve AI gameplay (just look at conquered colonies, they're always awfull with barely any buildings) but give them FIDS bonuses, then that bonuses are multiplied by cravers 150% FIDS bonus and as a result when cravers spawned near me i saw their core world supporting 3 outposts and still growing population (if human player try this, he'll starve it's homeworld to death). 

So in your case cravers got unlucky with starting location, didn't have space to expand or smth. else. For example in my recent Unfallen game i literally screwed cravers by turn 80 and now they're worse of all AI's, but that doesn't mean cravers have problems in general - they've some countradictory mechanics but still in right hands with right aproach they're one of the strongest races.

they had room to expand, in fact they have uncolonized systems within their borders that they don't colonize. i saw colonies they had for many turns being vacated/abandoned (the colony disappeared and they got a colony ship in return). it is not the case that they lack room to expand. 

however i am talking about the late game here. i agree that cravers are too strong in the early game before depletion sets in (see my suggestions in the second post above yours) for both the ai and the player. as a player the main problem with the need to expand for cravers is overcolonization (which the religious law neatly negates), maybe the ai suffers from mass unhappiness?

i add the savegame if any is interested:

androleth.zip