I don't really know for the highest difficulties but Cravers feel very viable but you need to be constantly moving your pops around, pretty much you send cravers to your newly conquered/colonized systems.

After depletion you or abandon the system if nothing useful is located in the the system.

If you do need the strategic/luxury resources from the system you move the Cravers once more to the front (or to manpower systems where you use chain-gang recruitment to turn pops into manpower).

You leave a small token force of cravers on the system (1 craver for each planet), and afterwards fill it with what ever other pop you think is most useful, due to the cravers the system works on about 100% efficiency.

you do require a lot of approval to make this work but if the systems get to angry use a bit of feeding tanks will solve the problem and provide enough food to replace the "lost" pops.

hello,

i played a few games since release and i have little to no problems on serious difficulty with the races i played: vodyiani, united empire, unfallen. i just tried a game with the cravers and my experience was that they seem underpowered. the main issue is that their planets deplete too fast, i.e. where all other races take off economically the cravers fall into a hole.

is there something i am missing with them? in the beta they seem a bit better because you only got 1 depletion point per turn and population (although the bonus from exploitation was also smaller), so there was a smoother transition to the mid game and planet depletion did not hit that hard. is there some trick to this faction? i tried aggressive conquest but this is severely hampered in the early game due to manpower, i.e. you may crush a faction or take at least a few planets, but any other unmolested empire will eclipse the cravers very fast.

Crizis wrote:

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.  

Damn, I totally missed that. Thanks for pointing that out. Time to run another game. xD

zolmir wrote:

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

...

I've also tried playing like this. I get the most out of all my undepleted planets then move the Cravers pop either to another planet within the system or to the spaceport just before it is depleted.

It was fun and somewhat working. If I don't have the time or resources to create a spaceport, I normally designate one of the less desirable planet as a dumpster to put my Craver pops while the non-Craver pops populate the near-depleted planets. Sometimes I forget the timing and accidentally deplete one of my favored planets, so I'm like "screw it, deplete the rest of the planets within the system, then pack my bags and leave for a new system."

The main issue with this is all the micromanagement. I had to keep track of multiple depletion rates and keep track of which population is being sent to which location. The accidental depletion of planets happens more frequently as my empire's situation got more hectic.

Hum... Maybe the Cravers needs to have an adaptative depletion bonus : 250% at star, then +25% per depleted planet, so that you would want to deplete planets to get a snowball effect.

VieuxChat wrote:

Hum... Maybe the Cravers needs to have an adaptative depletion bonus : 250% at star, then +25% per depleted planet, so that you would want to deplete planets to get a snowball effect.

That would certainly be interesting. I think it would make a lot of sense for the faction to want to deplete planets rather than trying to avoid it. Some sort of stacking bonus for every planet depleted would work well. 

I still think some sort of mid or late game tech to bump up depleted planets to 75% as tesb suggested would be needed though. Or a mechanic that increases a planet's pop cap based on how depleted it is, because I mean the planet is being hollowed out right? There's more space to live. Something like a +3-4 pop increase on a fully depleted planet?

KyoPa wrote:

zolmir wrote:

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

...

I've also tried playing like this. I get the most out of all my undepleted planets then move the Cravers pop either to another planet within the system or to the spaceport just before it is depleted.

It was fun and somewhat working. If I don't have the time or resources to create a spaceport, I normally designate one of the less desirable planet as a dumpster to put my Craver pops while the non-Craver pops populate the near-depleted planets. Sometimes I forget the timing and accidentally deplete one of my favored planets, so I'm like "screw it, deplete the rest of the planets within the system, then pack my bags and leave for a new system."

The main issue with this is all the micromanagement. I had to keep track of multiple depletion rates and keep track of which population is being sent to which location. The accidental depletion of planets happens more frequently as my empire's situation got more hectic.

It requires tons of micromanagement, true. That was the real downside. I had to check every system I wanted to preserve nearly every turn to avoid unwanted depletions, and cobbling together the luxury resources to build a spaceport in many planets was distressing. The turns easily took 2-3 times more time than usual. But the snowballing effect really pays off -- the faster you tech up and get new planets, the better it is.

I've played a few more games since last posting on this thread, and they've made me lean more towards the complete opposite. Cravers aren't just playable right now, but quite easily one of the strongest races, if not the strongest for a couple of reasons.

1. The fleet size increase bonus is huge. Your fleets, if at full size, mean you never lose. But the bigger point is that it allows you to field more battleships and cruisers. The second fleet size upgrade allows you to field 4 battleships, for everyone else, it's 3 (plus one small ship which is insignificant). This is a massive disparity in power. Throw in a fleet hero, and your fleets (that were already stronger than everyone else's) are nigh on invincible in the mid to early-late game.

2. The first quest, if you choose to intercept (which you should), gives you a ship with enough manpower capacity that can easily wipe out any minor factions early. More systems, less pirates. Makes expansion really fast early, without losing too much growth from food transfer.

3. Speaking of food transfer, the early FIDS bonus means that your systems get up much faster than anyone else, other than Riftborn. Again, early expansion is really easy and really fast.

4.  The 'eat population' option means that with very little population micromanagement, you can keep systems growing and ecstatic, even when you have far exceeded the colonisation cap. Cravers outmatch everyone else for growth, to the point where I would seriously consider a nerf to the duration buff of feeding pits. The only 'difficult' thing about it is running out of minor population to eat, but you can always just transport some from the newly conquered systems. Just the maths on this - on normal speed pop growth number is 300. Eating a pop gives you 25 for 10 turns, so without any buildings or happiness you make a loss of 50 food. At ecstatic, you get a 25% bonus to food, which means you are now making a net gain of 1.25 food. Add in a 20% bonus from Intensive Cultivation building, and you make a net gain of 5 food. It's not much, but do it enough and you are increasing your growth considerably. Craver systems can get really big, really fast.

5. Your starting hero is really good. 20 food and 20 industry at level 3. Only the Riftborn heroes come close to being that good. Solus is also an overseer, so you are going to be raking in industry and food, which means things build faster, which means he levels up faster.

6. Autocracy is dictatorship without the hassle. An extra law early, and you don't need to worry about any minor factions messing with your ideology as they don't get to vote.

7. Your population bonuses are probably the best in the game for what you're made for, and you reach them fast. Faster ship building is so good, but where they really shine is the infantry bonus from depleted planets. Don't even bother with tanks or aircraft, your infantry alone are good enough to plow through systems.

8. Depletion isn't that much of a worry, as your overall FIDSI will come from owning lots of planets with lots of population. Equally sized empires and populations will be producing more, but there shouldn't really be a point where you are not a bigger empire than everyone else. It doesn't matter if your planets produce half the FIDS when you have double the planets and double the population of everyone else.

Finally, and this might be a weak point, but the AI seems to know all this too. Craver AI reliably destroys all the others, and they are the only AI I have been beaten by so far. Mind, this is on Endless difficulty. I'd be interested in the analytics if the devs are still recording the game results.

I think a lot of the critique of Cravers has come in because some people here are playing them like a standard 'builder' empire. But they're not. Minor pops aren't there to be micromanaged. They are your food and happiness, nothing more. If they are unhappy about being enslaved, eat them. Planets are not there to be cleverly developed and optimised, they too are your food to fuel your war machine. Trying to optimise a system that will be deadzone in 30 turns is a waste of time, so just see those planets as a means to an end - either making more ships and manpower to get more planets, or producing dust and science so you can build more and better ships to get more planets.

WeLoveYou wrote:

I've played a few more games since last posting on this thread, and they've made me lean more towards the complete opposite. Cravers aren't just playable right now, but quite easily one of the strongest races, if not the strongest for a couple of reasons...

did you play with the new patch, because i found them to be a lot stronger with it (1 depletion vs 2 depletion points per craver pop and turn)?

in my current game with the new patch i found them very strong.

as to your your points:

1. agreed, but you can still be whittled down from numerous engagements or even loose fights if the enemy specializes his ships to counter yours (i had this happen a few times)

2. i have chosen the other option, i.e. i did not get a ship, but minor factions are not that big of deal to invade early.

3. only true in the early game, the fastest growing population is vodyiani once you have the second tier essence modules for your arks (i.e. midgame+)

4. in general this is true, but you actually need the other pops to eat. i usually eat the pops on newly conquered planets (to make them grow faster and stabilize in terms of approval) instead of sending them back to my core worlds. i also am not fond of the micromanagement. usually my core worlds have most of their craver pops, but need approval, i.e. the food bonus from eating would be wasted. eating the pops of newely conquered worlds gives me food and approval, both of which are needed.

5. i can't judge that as i skill all my heroes as admirals. although in hindsight the first hero should be an administrator as his ship is so damn slow (only 7 movement with a 2 engines and he can have only two)

6+7. agreed

8. depletion is much better to handle with the new patch, before (i.e. all the other posts in this thread) it was a huge issue. i don't quite agree on your general point regarding double population size of other empires:

a) approval hits from over colonization are a thing (quite a big thing)

b) i find overall population and number of systems size not that important, to me the most important thing is having access to the most strategic resource nodes as weapon and defence modules that you can get from strategic resources are much stronger and a fleet equipped with them can usually take one many fleets equipped with normal modules.

my conclusions from playing on serious

-overall i would rate the cravers as a very good race now (with the patch), however i think vodyiani are still stronger.

-you can still have problems due to diplomacy i.e. instead of facing an easy 1vs1 war you can easily find yourself fighting multiple wars at the same time

-therefore craver power highly depend on galaxy settings, making them stronger the less enemies there are.

-their support mid tier ships (3 command points) is the best ship for them as it has enough support modules for 2 engines (my minimum, i just can't play with slow 1 engine fleets) and a siege module, making invasions a lot better

Hi Tesb!

Just checked the patch notes for 1.05, I hadn't noticed the depletion points change! Wow! Not sure about that one.

These observations have been across both 1.04 and 1.05, but I only noticed the AI being a wrecking ball since 1.05.

I can't stand playing as Vodyani as I find their start way too slow, but maybe I should just try harder. I agree that map settings can make a huge difference. I usually play on medium maps with 5 opponents, so it's quite crowded. That's possibly a huge determining factor, as I can imagine on bigger, more spaced out galaxies, the Cravers might suffer a little more. Saying that, there isn't really any race that isn't hugely affected by map settings. Larger galaxies with more space will always favour peaceful play.

Funny how different people focus different things. I don't think I've ever equipped more than one engine to anything other than a coloniser. I'll try double engines in my next game and see how I feel about it.

I try to have multiple wars, as it means my approval is through the roof. I will often keep near dead opponents alive just to keep the war going. I can see that it might sometimes be the case that the warring can get out of hand, but usually everyone is too terrified of you to ever declare war on you, meaning that any wars that do occur, occur on your terms. 

WeLoveYou wrote:

I've played a few more games since last posting on this thread, and they've made me lean more towards the complete opposite. Cravers aren't just playable right now, but quite easily one of the strongest races, if not the strongest for a couple of reasons.

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.