Allow the option to perform a Raid rather than a true Invasion on a system as an Empire Improvement.


This would be achieved by giving the attacking player the option on the Ground Battle screen to turn the Invasion into a Raid. A Raid will end the invasion with one last Ground Battle. The player then gains a set amount of loot based on how well they did, ranging from 0 to 20 for Luxury and Strategic Resources and varying amounts of Dust and Science (balanced against Curiosity loot results), and the Invasion ends, returning all troops to their orbiting Fleets with their ill gotten gains.


This would allow players to leech off of other Empires resources through direct combat, providing themselves with an economic boost based on their military capacity. If taken with the Economic Quadrant Privateers idea I have made, this would replace the spot of the current Privateer technology, providing an economic improvement for factions who went all-in on the Military quadrant to support their war machine with luxuries and strategic resources.


This idea is meant to be taken as part of a set with my Economic Colonialism, Economic Quadrant Privateers, Comparative Economic Victory, and Luxury Addiction ideas to improve the  state of Economic gameplay in ES2 currently.


Now for fun times with historical context!


Before the advent of currency and discrete pricing systems, even those based on haggling and bartering, there was the so-called Gift Economy. The Gift Economy on a generalized notion of favors with no effort towards measuring their exact value; if you have a bad harvest and I have a good harvest, I do a good turn for you by sharing, with the expectation you would do the same for me because of the good rapport we developed. There is no attached number, and there is no measurable "debt" you owe me that you must at some point settle; you are not understood to "owe" me in such a fashion that you wish to get rid of the debt, but rather you are expected to help myself and others as common course, as we do for you.


A variation on this system was used by the Vikings as the basis for their alliances and rivalries within their society, putting a more violent and controlling spin on the concept of the gift economy. In order to maintain the loyalty of their allied families and clans, clan leaders would give gifts to one another from their store of loot, and also provide similar gifts to their followers and fellows within their clans and raiding parties. This was a way to indirectly assert authority and seduce followers, who would otherwise find a leader weak or ineffectual if they could not pay up with loot from raiding; essentially, in relation to ones followers, a Viking leader was constantly at risk of being abandoned or replaced unless they used the Seduce action constantly.