Hello. After tryed to win with cravers and terribly failed in endless difficulty i finnaly managed to set up a winnable game. In the current state of the game, those guys are tricky to manage but i don't feel they are underpowered. I tryed several time to set up powerfull rush against endless IA in fast speed, and it was a disaster. Also, when i tryed to play against cravers IA, i found that the best tool to win the war is a strong economy to support it. So that was my final toughts about cravers :

• You canno't rush anymore, so before go to war you need to build an very effecient economy designed to win war, based on production, and science only. 
• Now the depletion is slower, it's probably possible. It's maybe possible to build strong economy faster than any other faction if you manage to have a good slave population and a slow depletion.
  
• Cravers have a massive strenght : their governement. You can make everything you want with politics, because of dicature politic swtich and immunity to rebellion. Not a single faction's political power is free as craver governement is. 

So i tryed this build (fast speed):

1. Cocoon phase : In the first time. Buld a strong home system, in order to prepare the next phase : good industry, good science, good food, and some pupas if you have the time. Set your hero in your home system to get extra influence/food/industry ( i only get two point in system governor bonus, and the rest in fleet bonus). Explore as much system as you can, create a new colony with the initial pupa. Very important ! try to get your home system level 2 and have a starport. You will see the utility later. Also, get the first dust technology, to support later the cost of all your outpost.
2. Expansion phase : First election : here is susprising thing : get an ecologic governement. You can now colonize everywhere, and A LOT, without a single rebellion. Swarm the constellation with pupas. Create some minimal fleets if needed to protect your system. Don't be over agressive with IA if they contest some of your outpost. You need to delay the war to your momentum. When you have outpost on a lot of systems (for my parti it was bout 6 at the same time), your homeworld population will horribly decrease, but you need to  protect your slaves lifes. So, put your haroshem in space port. When your out post will turn on colony, send your haroshems on your new worlds as cattle. They will be a great tool against depletion and a fair food income ! The outcome they provide to your empire make the space port very very important. When an outpost turn into a colony, follow this build order : indusrty > dust > science. Meanwhile, when my basics technology are on line, i look already work on my war technolgies.
   
3. Smithy of war : Later, my home world population has grow up again very fast and it's a powerfull and productive system. my new colonies give already a fair amount of science and dust. I got my tier 3 war technologies (hull, weapon, armor) and i am about to get the techology that allow to get 20 CP+ in a fleet. I am building my first army. My momentum is about to rise ! I turn my politic in military.
   
4. WAR : My fleet is complete, i put my first hero in it, i upgrade my ground warriors , and go to fight my unfortunate neighbour. I am building a second and as strong fleet lead my the quest hero.
   

For the moment the build worked pretty well. I rushed into an other war between Vodyanis and Lumeriis. I declared hostility to both, and my momentum was very strong, i was able to ravage all of their fleets easily !

The war was Warhammer 40k size. I think somthing like 150 CP was destroyed, a ton of ground warriors and populations. Everything a craver dream i guess. I noteiced if you make super specialized ships against an IA, it adapt very well and is very rapidly able to punish you. That's why i created polyvalents fleets, able to fight well at all range, with polyvalents war tactics. It was a freakin good decision. because lumeriis was specialized in short range, and vodyanis in long range... And i had to beat both if I wanted to eat something.

I am about to conquer the lumeriis empire, and made a huge mistake against Vodyani. The lumeriis, who lost a lot of system, lost their economy, meanwhile the vodyanis continued to upgrade and improve their ships. I was too condifent, and decided to improve my economy instead of my war power. I looked for a lot of friendy technology in order to create hapiness and dust in my empire, but not a single military upgrade. At the end of the war, vodyanis has come with very strong carrier and almost wiped half of my fleets. I would have lost if he wast allied with sophons. I asked truce with sophons, so it stopped the war... huhuhu. But i will get my REVENGE ! After my breakfast. it's seafood today !

All this little story to say : i am not sure cravers are so weak. They may be tricky, but they have incredible strenghts.

The above post is very important to keep in mind when asking for balance:  Sometimes what appears to be weak just needs more time in the community's oven to bake. 

(Not saying I agree or disagree, I'm not a Cravers-main so I can't say much there, but I love that SuperMarloWorld knuckled down and began running tests.)

If you want to get better, rather than critcising the balance of what are probably the strongest faction right now, I suggest watching Macsen's current let's play. He's up to video 4 and is already stomping with Cravers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAec2uZCqDA

So I tried playing the Cravers on Hard difficulty earlier today. This was the first time since perhaps November - I don't really know, but it's been a while. Hard, mostly because its a fairly comfortable difficulty level (I know that I'll win, but it isn't a total cakewalk). Six players on a medium disk galaxy, nothing special. Over the course of the game I used some of the ideas present in this thread, which essentially boiled down to managing population micro and depletion micro to get the most out of every planet (well, until I stopped really caring).

.... whoah. Just, wow.

By turn 40, I had completed every but the last chapter 4 quest; I had conquered my neighbors the United Empire, as well as two minor factions (and not conquered anyone else as I was far away from them; I had 30 population in my home system and zero depleted planets (they all depleted the next turn due to the Hero's capstone ability), and had built 3 wonders in 10 turns in my capital. It was crazy. The turn before depletion, the production yields were insane. Before I had started on the wonder project I had built four capital ships in one turn.

My strategy was probably inefficient in a number of ways, but going for the 'strictly best' playstyle wasn't really my goal. I was careful to keep system and empire happiness above unhappy, I didn't really colonize until after conquering my neighbor, and I never went far beyond my colonization limit. My research was military focused and generally avoided colonization techs unless they unlocked strategic resources. I guess it was a 'tall' Craver build? Fun as hell, that's for sure.

There's so much more to say, but I'll leave it at this: player the Cravers feels like nothing else - like it's a totally different game. No other game developed so quickly. I'm still processing the game (and I haven't even finished it), but, two things: Cravers are probably OP (especially the early medium ship); and Cravers are so much goddamned fun.

By turn 40, I had completed every but the last chapter 4 quest

I was also surprised by how quick the storyline end. I have yet to test all others faction to fully evaluate its difficulty, but compared to the Vodyanis I am playing now it is nothing comparable : the Craver storyline is both far easier and far quicker to progress into.

I'm still processing the game (and I haven't even finished it), but, two things: Cravers are probably OP (especially the early medium ship); and Cravers are so much goddamned fun.

It's also my feeling : under standard galaxy settings they look really powerfull - their early game in particular, and they have all the tools to easily snowball and crush everything on their path.

the sophons quest seems even faster (depends what quest options you choose ofc, i went the military path)

I just finished a Craver game and they were absolutely fantastic. The trick is to never completely deplete the systems that you like.

For example, I captured the Unfallen capital very early thanks to the early medium ship from the quest and some attack ships. Thanks to that, I moved all of my Craver population out of the starting system before any of the planets were completely depleted. From then on, the slave race I started with filled out the whole starting system.

I did the same with the Unfallen capital -- I exploited all of the planets to the brink of depletion. But before they were depleted, I moved all of my Craver population to the newly conquered United Empire capital.

You get the idea. I ended up having to create a few depleted systems because I had way too many Craver pops. But I had four intact systems that were never depleted fully and populated by other races (Unfallen capital, Horatio capital, a system with 5 cold worlds which I wanted to keep undepleted, some other capitals to which I didn't bother moving Cravers to).

I had triple the score of my closest competitor before turn 50, and it was a steamroll from then on. This is on tiny and hard, and my second game.

Cravers were "meh" in alpha because of a bug that caused them to still get their bonus FIDS on depleted planets, so while that bonus was lower at only 50%, it meant even on a depleted planet they were getting 75% FIDS. That bug has been fixed, now they only get 50% on depleted planets, and this has completely destroyed any sense of balance the faction had with other empires. Cravers are currently trash tier right now, their mechanic allows them to slightly speed up some of the basic infrastructure or a couple ships in a system that quickly becomes useless. Hurrah. It servers no purpose and gives them no advantage. 5-10 turns of bonus FIDS in a fresh system with nothing in it before it becomes a useless barren wasteland of a system is not meaningful or interesting content.

If I recall corectly, they used to have 1 depletion point per pop. Now they have 2 which is IMHO way to much.

Hi!

Thanks for picking that up. It's true that now with the bug fixed where they still had their 150% bonus applied on depleted planets, they do need some love - we'll probably go back to 1 depletion point per pop instead of 2. :)

Cheers,

Kynrael wrote:

Hi!

Thanks for picking that up. It's true that now with the bug fixed where they still had their 150% bonus applied on depleted planets, they do need some love - we'll probably go back to 1 depletion point per pop instead of 2. :)

Cheers,

That would be great! Thanks!

Cravers have a number of huge problems, including:

- slave happiness penalty;

- planet depletion being too fast;

- expansion cap: designed for neverending conquest with a cap of 16 systems (after techs) before disaproval kicks in and murders your empire (as if slave unrest wasn't enough). 

Typical example for lack of synergy: you conquer sweet system with 20 population an it's only logical that you want to double FIDS output through sending there few cravers to become proper slavedrivers (talking about +100% FIDS output from other races when craver is present on a planet). Your cravers land there and slaves start producing -10 disaproval each (-200 for system with 20 population).

Another problem is that you're depleting planets, that forces you to move on and during conquest spree you're going over the system cap producing global disaproval becouse of overcolonization. And pretty fast after you stop conquering you'll be lagging behind other major factions. 

Also, the higher difficulty is, the better bonuses AI recieves, so past hard even measly Lumeris AI can field enough forces right of the bat to stall you for quite some time and by the time you conquer it, your core planets ran out of gas already. 

Cravers have a fun aproval building that provides 1 aproval for every fielded ship, thematicaly it's great but on practice it costs around 6.000 production and that's a complete overkill when you'll need it in every system way before you'll be even half way to clearing your conquest objective. Also keep in mind what amount of production is needed to field enough ships to support this kind of building.

Still, at the moment there's a weird workaround - start promoting religious faction right away to unlock law that forces hapiness to content. Thanks to it now you can have as many slaves as you want and conquer any amount of systems, needed for victory. But... that law upkeep costs 3 influence / population so you'll need a lot of it (and it's not a good news since it only increases amount of techs, really essential to pull of a strategy). 

Actually the best cravers trait (imo) is +1% dmg / depleted planet (think population collection bonus), that allow your fleets to have a serious advantage by mid-game and be completly insane by late game. 

To close it off cravers are indeed underpowered, but not unplayable (well a single religious law makes them playable the way, they should be played...).

At present it's not hard to fix cravers in two steps:

1. Reduce depletion points per population. Atm the window of opportunity for cravers is too small so it may work on medium map, but on large+ they're at serious disadvantage.

2. Move craver specific hapiness building (forgot it's name) one era earlier and reduce it's cost to ~1500 production. If cravers rely on military (ships in our case) to produce hapiness, then they're playing the way they should be played: building military and conquering in neverending cycle. 

P.S. Also for the sake of fantasy, it would be nice if slaves were slowly dieing off (dunno why they removed it after beta).

Crizis wrote:

Cravers have a number of huge problems, including:

- slave happiness penalty;

- planet depletion being too fast;

- expansion cap: designed for neverending conquest with a cap of 16 systems (after techs) before disaproval kicks in and murders your empire (as if slave unrest wasn't enough). 

Typical example for lack of synergy: you conquer sweet system with 20 population an it's only logical that you want to double FIDS output through sending there few cravers to become proper slavedrivers (talking about +100% FIDS output from other races when craver is present on a planet). Your cravers land there and slaves start producing -10 disaproval each (-200 for system with 20 population).

Another problem is that you're depleting planets, that forces you to move on and during conquest spree you're going over the system cap producing global disaproval becouse of overcolonization. And pretty fast after you stop conquering you'll be lagging behind other major factions. 

Also, the higher difficulty is, the better bonuses AI recieves, so past hard even measly Lumeris AI can field enough forces right of the bat to stall you for quite some time and by the time you conquer it, your core planets ran out of gas already. 

Cravers have a fun aproval building that provides 1 aproval for every fielded ship, thematicaly it's great but on practice it costs around 6.000 production and that's a complete overkill when you'll need it in every system way before you'll be even half way to clearing your conquest objective. Also keep in mind what amount of production is needed to field enough ships to support this kind of building.

Still, at the moment there's a weird workaround - start promoting religious faction right away to unlock law that forces hapiness to content. Thanks to it now you can have as many slaves as you want and conquer any amount of systems, needed for victory. But... that law upkeep costs 3 influence / population so you'll need a lot of it (and it's not a good news since it only increases amount of techs, really essential to pull of a strategy). 

Actually the best cravers trait (imo) is +1% dmg / depleted planet (think population collection bonus), that allow your fleets to have a serious advantage by mid-game and be completly insane by late game. 

To close it off cravers are indeed underpowered, but not unplayable (well a single religious law makes them playable the way, they should be played...).

At present it's not hard to fix cravers in two steps:

1. Reduce depletion points per population. Atm the window of opportunity for cravers is too small so it may work on medium map, but on large+ they're at serious disadvantage.

2. Move craver specific hapiness building (forgot it's name) one era earlier and reduce it's cost to ~1500 production. If cravers rely on military (ships in our case) to produce hapiness, then they're playing the way they should be played: building military and conquering in neverending cycle. 

P.S. Also for the sake of fantasy, it would be nice if slaves were slowly dieing off (dunno why they removed it after beta).

Hey! Thanks for your full feedback.

About your approval problem - have you tried using the Feeding Pits during your games to mitigate that or not? The idea was that on systems with few cravers and many slaves to use the Feeding Pits for good approval / growth boosts.

Craver units also need something to help boost their siege capability. As it stands, in the mid-game a fully decked Craver fleet still needs at least 10 turns to bring down a system's manpower enough to survive an invasion, let alone be successful in it. With all the improvements to destroy invasion forces available to all races, the Cravers make like wet tissue paper against everything late-game, because they can't maintain any kind of momentum past the mid-game.

Kynrael wrote:

Crizis wrote:

Cravers have a number of huge problems, including:

- slave happiness penalty;

- planet depletion being too fast;

- expansion cap: designed for neverending conquest with a cap of 16 systems (after techs) before disaproval kicks in and murders your empire (as if slave unrest wasn't enough). 

Typical example for lack of synergy: you conquer sweet system with 20 population an it's only logical that you want to double FIDS output through sending there few cravers to become proper slavedrivers (talking about +100% FIDS output from other races when craver is present on a planet). Your cravers land there and slaves start producing -10 disaproval each (-200 for system with 20 population).

Another problem is that you're depleting planets, that forces you to move on and during conquest spree you're going over the system cap producing global disaproval becouse of overcolonization. And pretty fast after you stop conquering you'll be lagging behind other major factions. 

Also, the higher difficulty is, the better bonuses AI recieves, so past hard even measly Lumeris AI can field enough forces right of the bat to stall you for quite some time and by the time you conquer it, your core planets ran out of gas already. 

Cravers have a fun aproval building that provides 1 aproval for every fielded ship, thematicaly it's great but on practice it costs around 6.000 production and that's a complete overkill when you'll need it in every system way before you'll be even half way to clearing your conquest objective. Also keep in mind what amount of production is needed to field enough ships to support this kind of building.

Still, at the moment there's a weird workaround - start promoting religious faction right away to unlock law that forces hapiness to content. Thanks to it now you can have as many slaves as you want and conquer any amount of systems, needed for victory. But... that law upkeep costs 3 influence / population so you'll need a lot of it (and it's not a good news since it only increases amount of techs, really essential to pull of a strategy). 

Actually the best cravers trait (imo) is +1% dmg / depleted planet (think population collection bonus), that allow your fleets to have a serious advantage by mid-game and be completly insane by late game. 

To close it off cravers are indeed underpowered, but not unplayable (well a single religious law makes them playable the way, they should be played...).

At present it's not hard to fix cravers in two steps:

1. Reduce depletion points per population. Atm the window of opportunity for cravers is too small so it may work on medium map, but on large+ they're at serious disadvantage.

2. Move craver specific hapiness building (forgot it's name) one era earlier and reduce it's cost to ~1500 production. If cravers rely on military (ships in our case) to produce hapiness, then they're playing the way they should be played: building military and conquering in neverending cycle. 

P.S. Also for the sake of fantasy, it would be nice if slaves were slowly dieing off (dunno why they removed it after beta).

Hey! Thanks for your full feedback.

About your approval problem - have you tried using the Feeding Pits during your games to mitigate that or not? The idea was that on systems with few cravers and many slaves to use the Feeding Pits for good approval / growth boosts.

Hello! 

Of course i've been using them, but to get meaningfull results you need to do quite a bit of butchering, replacing existing population with cravers and that only leads to faster planet depletion. All in all slaver-slave relationships aren't lasting long enough for cravers (without religious workaround). 

Also in terms of efficiency  religious law allow you droping a craver on each conquered planet and enjoying 200% FIDS from slaves till the planet is depleted, and even after depletion slaves will work at 100% FIDS instead of 50% cravers. That leads to another problem, you're butchering slave for approval boost and growth boost , essentially killing pop to replace with another that will become significantly worse after your planet is depleted (and the more cravers on planet, the faster it depletes duh). Also the more slaves you kill, the less effective slavedriver trait becomes. 

Still cravers are probably the only race completly designed for expansion victory and imo that's the most tedious victory condition on large+ maps. Think on large i need to own 50 systems for victory, and so far i've been able to finish it (without cheesing alliances) only with the help of religious law setting happiness to content, becouse there's no other mechanics that allow you to beat 340 disaproval from overcolonizing by 34 systems (at least i'm not aware of such). But that's a generic problem, since 16-18 systems before disaproval hits is a very low number for large maps. Half the time i can grab that amount with small war or without even going to war at all. 

Cravers unique building would serve wonderfully for fixing happiness problems, but it costs over the top, considering how much production you need to stay ahead in military and still improve your systems. But thematically it's a wonderfull building, shame i've never built a single one.

All in all fixing cravers at this point is all about tweaking numbers a bit.

gigabytemon wrote:

Craver units also need something to help boost their siege capability. As it stands, in the mid-game a fully decked Craver fleet still needs at least 10 turns to bring down a system's manpower enough to survive an invasion, let alone be successful in it. With all the improvements to destroy invasion forces available to all races, the Cravers make like wet tissue paper against everything late-game, because they can't maintain any kind of momentum past the mid-game.

You can equip every ship with a siege improving module (2d tier military tied to fleet size), single fleet  easilly reaches 500+ siege and endgame fleets are pumping around 1000, so sieging a planet in 2 turns (and even 1 turn if couple of fleets involved) is possible at any point of the game.

Also the more planet you deplete, the better your troops become.  

Weird. I've been absolutely smashing it as Cravers on Endless difficulty. The changes to the depletion and FIDS output, along with the feeding pits is much appreciated.

If you're getting overcolonisation approval hits, try a 'deplete and ditch' strategy by pumping your food and approval with feeding pits, depleting the planets, then evacuating the system. The AI can recolonise if it wants, but the system will be utterly trashed. I feel like I should be doing this a lot more, as I always end up with some 1-2 planet system that I don't really need.

Also, are you using laws to their full effect? With a single war you can have +55 approval (I think) with just 2 militarist laws (the force law and 'Us and Them') and Toys for Boys. You can always just declare another war if you need a bit more approval. It's often worth not completely finishing off your opponent so you can live off the approval the war with them is giving you (assuming you can afford the force truce influence costs).