True, Federation is a little less reliable now, but the design is also just not as clean as it could be, especially since Heroes are such a weird and variable thing to assign. I'd much prefer if it had stayed the same as it's original form of a flat Colony Cap increase, but was increased by the later Empire Development stage unlocks just like Law Slots. That way it would be a known, predictable integer every game.

In regards to Hero Threshold, the nice thing is it lets someone have a lot of Heroes as a choice. These various Hero-tied abilities like the Vodyani and Horatio traits, or the Umbral Choir empire improvements from their Scientist path or the new quest rewards from Celestial Worlds, all start to make more sense when the use of Heroes becomes such a deliberate thing.

Overpopulation and Food are, as usual, the more difficult thing.

I don't think hacking has made federation governments weaker really; it's just made government flipping a more obvious choice when the enemy is a fed.  I'd say that makes it RISKIER though...

The hero threshold is a curious notion to me.  It does force a bit of a rock paper scissors choice between heroes, population or systems, which the game could probably use.

As far as approval neutering goes, part of the issue may be that approval generating bonuses give SO MUCH approval.  T1 approval buildings give as much system approval as some T3's, depending on system resource and planet composition...and for only a fraction of the industry and upkeep.  Add on to that the fact that we have a completely separate stat for "disapproval" and things start to look a little messy for balance, at least from where I'm standing.

The overpopulation thing though?  I have to agree on that one; the fact that overpopulation is inevitable AND punishes approval can be a bit of a sticking point.  The only justification I see for it is that it does force you to seek new worlds and find at least SOME approval bonuses to keep your pops productive, but I still have to wonder if that was the best way to do it...

Daynen wrote:

...The hero threshold is a curious notion to me.  It does force a bit of a rock paper scissors choice between heroes, population or systems, which the game could probably use.

As far as approval neutering goes, part of the issue may be that approval generating bonuses give SO MUCH approval.  ...

The overpopulation thing though?  I have to agree on that one; the fact that overpopulation is inevitable AND punishes approval can be a bit of a sticking point.  The only justification I see for it is that it does force you to seek new worlds and find at least SOME approval bonuses to keep your pops productive, but I still have to wonder if that was the best way to do it...

Glad to see the Hero Threshold is of interest.

Regarding Approval and Overpopulation, my big issue with Overpopulation is that in my experience it's always very low. The highest I've ever seen was -30 Approval from Overpopulation, as opposed to Planet Type Disapproval which can really hurt sometimes. It's low of course because the game would grind to a halt if it were high, because we have no choice about whether we want to incur it.

If it were attached to some sort of planet-specific, repeatable population slot improvements, it would actually be optional, and thus could be a fair bit higher for each of those extra slots. Making Food the resource with which you pay for those extra slots would just be a nice way to fulfil my dreams of Food becoming the resource of straightforward vertical development again.

Yes, good observations overall. Approval, hero gameplay, and food management are by far the top things needs to get reworked. 

I think some approval buildings should get nerfed for starters. Also, politics should be more concern for players to a point player not only think about which buildings in which order are needed, but have to do certain things just because of the political climate. This should start from the population traits because they are too forgiving. Anti...of something should really cause problems when a player does things against that population. Because they are still contributing to their anti-X political pool. 

I think for population and food management luxury resources has to play a bigger role. In Endless Legend the player was more engaged with the luxury resources. It was allowing the player to skip many buildings and all part of a strategy. In ES2 however, I feel like I only use them a few times and mainly for selling them. I wished they are tied to food mechanics. E.G. player should design the farm buildings (just like system development) and has to pay certain upkeep(luxury resource) for that farm. This could introduce a big strategy. Maybe you can even target your opponents their upkeep luxury resource and try to starve their empire. 

A soft Hero limit lock could be something and I think it can be tied to the politics as well. Idle hero gameplay can be useful for UC too. Maybe the senators can't be anyone but we have to appoint them? Maybe not only we need to get better senators to level up "better" laws? I dunno really but all of these heroes could use some gameplay attached to them and tied to politics.

I believe ES2 has enough new gameplay features (we even have espionage) and it's time to rework these current features and making them a new deal. Politics, approval, luxury resources, and hero gameplay are the top things what most of the people think, they are lacking behind right now. I think ES2 needs 1 or 2 DLC without putting a new major faction pressure and since we have only one major faction left (by looking the competitors limit) I say save it for later. Good ideas within the ES2 getting treated like an unfavored child and gets abandoned like politics.