Actually I tested this out and it’s only broken when you create a Major custom faction with the traits Extreme Foremen (150% FIDS on Undepleted; -1 Depletion points per turn) and the Sowers Trait (+1 Undepletion Points +2 food) which leads to 0 Depletion points per turn (so basivally you never deplete or rejuvinate planets) and then you have the Sowers Minor population which gives the +1 Undepletion points. 

The purpose to this is because regardless of whether or not you start on Husk or a random planet, the trait Extreme Foremen will leave your Home planet at around 60-70% depletion so you need to restore it with the Sowers minor pop as to get the full 150% bonus that comes with Extreme Foremen. 

Any other way, such as having the Sowers being constantly rearranged and crap, is a total pain in the ass and since Extreme Foremen has -1 while the Sowers trait has +1, your Sower population would always have to be higher on every planet than your Cravers population. Something that is completely plausible thanks to Chain-Gang (1 pop->300 manpower) but ridiculously annoying to pull off  

From personal experience, finding the Sowers early as the Cravers is a sureway to victory. Even with micromanagement, Cravers empire-wide FIDS production will eventually decrease a little after the boost coming from Extreme Foremen. The Sowers allow even a non micro-intensive Craver player to keep that boost for the whole game.

Assuming this player found and assimilated the Sowers before turn 20, he could switch to Religious ideology -if he wasn't already- to run the T3 Religious Law (Saints and Sinners Bill) right after on turn 40. With a little population micromanagement, they could reach insane levels of FIDS by having 1 Sower for each Craver on every planet. With the religious law, approval would be a non-issue, and with the recent autocracy changes (looking at the +1 Influence per population on the empowered Religious forced law), the T3 law can be reliably sustained in all kind of playthroughs.

If going Religious and waiting 20 turns would be problematic (aggressive nearby player) or less appealing (found several +approval luxuries), then you would just need to rotate planets. It's not that hard really, and even if you forget to do so, reverse depletion forgives your mistakes.

On Sowers population growth. Without their luxury, your Craver to Sower pop ratio will tend toward 2 for 1, assuming you got rid of all other minor because you want to abuse Sowers.  In that case, just deport excess Cravers away, you will reach peak efficiency a bit slower, but you will get there eventually.

What is amazing with Sowers, is that it allows the Craver player to go lax on its micromanagement. As depletion can be reversed, he doesn't have to be on the constant lookout for soon-to-be-depleted planets.

Some quick math to compare Sowers+Cravers with Riftborns.

Medium Lava Planet with 3 Riftborns:

Industry: (5+16)*3 = 63

Industry with AI Labor+Industrial Zones: (5+28)*3 = 99

Dust: (5+2)*3 = 21  (27.3 on Ecstatic)

Science: 5*3 = 15 (19.5)

Medium Lava Planet with 2 Cravers and 3 Sowers: (Cravers get +2 population slots on planets)

Industry: 16*2.5*2 + 16*2*3 = 176

Industry with AI Labor+Industrial Zones: 28*2.5*2 + 28*2*3 = 308

Dust: 2*2.5*2 + 2*2*3 = 22

Science: 0

Medium Desert Planet with 5 Riftborns: 186

Industry: (5+8)*5 = 65

Industry with AI Labor+Industrial Zones: (5+20)*5 = 125

Dust: (5+6)*5 = 55 (71.5 on Ecstatic)

Science: 5*5 = 25 (32.5 on Ecstatic)

Medium Desert Planet with 3 Cravers and 4 Sowers: (Cravers get +2 population slots on planets)

Industry: 8*2.5*3 + 8*2*4 = 124 

Industry with AI Labor+Industrial Zones: 20*2.5*3 + 20*2*2 = 310

Dust: 6*2.5*3 + 6*2*4 = 93

Science: 0

About the above examples. Riftborns should reach max population faster than Cravers+Sowers, naturally. That's not really an issue, as in both examples, half of your max population produces more industry than what all Riftborns can muster.

I could go on, but there is one important fact to remember. Cravers affinity synergizes tremendously with all population FIDS bonuses coming from improvements. If we assume you have 1 Sower for each Craver, it is on average a 2.25 multiplier to all population bonuses.

In short, I think that yes, Cravers are broken beyond reason when they used Sowers well. Even by not using them optimally, they will be incredibly strong.

KnightofPhoenix wrote:

But Cravers benefit from bonuses the more depleted planets they have so I am not convinced that Sowers are necessarily always optimal for the Cravers unless you want to have a stable ''vanilla' economy with them.

Actually, going Sowers and Cravers with Religious allows you to also take advantage of the Craver population bonus without the drawback of nearly empire wide FIDS malus.

With the Sowers/Cravers combination, you can have your old systems generate a constant output that should exceeds other empires bar a full spliced Horatio I imagine. And with the religious approval law, you can expand way over your colonization limit, depleting all non-"core worlds". That way, you combine the Sowers/Cravers amazing economy, and the Cravers natural bonus to have both a vast and unbeatable fleet.

Now, if you weren't able -or didn't want- to focus on Religious. In short that you are refusing to deplete a single planet. In that case, while you won't benefit from the Cravers damage bonus, I believe the economic advantage will far outweight the cons of forgoing the damage boost.

Let's theorycraft a bit by grossly simplifying the situation. Let's take a Craver empire with 40 planets, 20 of them being old worlds, and produce altogether on average twice as much as the 20 other planets, which have been colonized more or less recently.

Case 1:

First, we have the Sowers/Cravers empire, which has an empire wide FIDS of 135 non-depleted "new worlds" with only minor population. He is running religious, so no approval bonus.

[(20*2+20)*2.25] = 135

Case 2:

Then we have the Craver master race empire, without Sowers, which has depleted all its planets apart from the old worlds. 

> Case 2a: The depleted planets are full of slaves, so we can imagine the empire wide approval is at best 50%. This one has 60 new worlds worth of FIDS.

[40+20*0.5*2] = 60

But! He also got a +20% weapon damage bonus thanks to his pop accumulation bonus.

> Case 2b: The depleted planets are full of Cravers, and the empire wide approval is actually pretty good. Let's go with Ecstatic, because of all these wars.

[40+20*0.5] = 50 for Industry

[50*1.3] = 65 for everything else

Also got a 20% weapon damage bonus.

With these numbers in hand, each militarist Craver will beat the Craver/Sower in an equal fleet battle. In which case the state of the game will all depend on the very moment the planets of the militarist Craver start being depleted.

At that point, both empires will have an approximately equal amount of ships. Craver will beat Craver/Sower on an immediate engagement. But at that point, for each ship the Craver will produce, the Craver/Sower will produce two. Furthermore, the Craver/Sower will unlock higher-tier military techs way faster than Craver. If the Craver doesn't quickly crush Craver/Sower, or at least manage to 2 to 3 systems in one swoop, the gap won't stop increasing and Craver's weapon damage bonus will be rendered useless in front of superior weapons and defenses.

And that's the end of this short analysis. As with all depletion focused Cravers, being unable to win on the early rush will lead to inevitably falling out of the scene.

Oh, and the Craver/Sower can also use the Craver weapon damage boost anytime by overcolonizing and depleting new planets!

In short, Craver/Sower is still pretty strong, in my opinion.

DarthMelkor wrote:

Wait a minute.. the +150% FIDSI is on top of the base 100%? I thought it was actually just a +50%.

Yes, hence the "+" right before the 150% :) 

You can easily check this by hovering over your planetary production, and notice that Cravers still generate basic FIDS on top of the depletion bonus.