Hi, I have two mostly unrelated questions (the first of which may prove to be a bug report in disguise).

First, I have a system that's been under siege for ages and I'm doing my best to turn it into space Vietnam for the orbiting Cravers. To this end I've chosen the Draft option multiple times when choosing my defence... and the population doesn't seem to be going down! This is supposed to cost me a population point, correct? It always seems to for the AI, but I'm unaccustomed to being on the defending side of these situations. I don't think the system has enough food production for the population to keep bouncing back up (it's three planets, two sterile and none fertile).

Second, do the leader characteristics - Wit, Labour, Command, and Curiosity - do anything, or are they just there to give a rough measure of what sort of things a leader is likely to be good at? One of them goes up whenever you choose an ability, but unlike the similarly named characteristics in the original Endless Space, I've never noticed any mention of them doing anything in and of themselves.

Thanks in advance for any answers. It's my first game on Serious difficulty and a game I thought I was pretty good at is now kicking my ass. Congratulations on making something that's held my interest for this long, albeit in an on-and-off sort of way.

Yes, you draft manpower at the cost of population unit. That is atop of the civilian population you can lost in battle regardless (casualties).

Yes, those simply show what you Hero is good at.

Well, it's not removing population in my current game. Is there a known bug along these lines?

I tried searching these forums, but the search function on this site is useless. Minimal options for filtering and sorting and then every link you get 404s.