For the craver experts out there, how do you handle your expansion in the early game? Do you try and expand at a rate that lets you keep up your approval so as to not lose out on the bonus or do you say forget the bonus and expand as quickly as possible and maybe just try and keep approval in the "content" range?



Thanks in advance!

Last time I played the Cravers, I just kept expanding with taxes at 0. Ended up with -2000 dust at some point. Ah, the good old days of the alpha... :-)

Why do Cravers disaprove expansion anyway? I mean, isn't in universe constant expansion and war their thing?

You know,it's funny you should mention that, I was just thinking yesterday that the cravers should get positive approval for expanding and negative approval for not expanding fast enough. Or at the very least, tie it in with the +25% FIDS bonus (and later negative).



I love the concept behind the cravers; a race that burns hot but eventually burns out--Zuul is my favorite SOTS race--but I wish they had been done a bit differently. Currently, my biggest issues are the approval problem, and a sense that the +25% is largely wasted as the lions share of the bonus seems to be wasted when you are colonizing as it takes too many turns for the colony to become productive, meanwhile the locust points are accumulating.



Although, as I write this, it occurs to me that colonization isn't really their strong suit, it is taking away developed colonies from other players that is really the name of their game. This probably explains why I do better with the cravers the closer I start next to other players.

I played another game to completion over the weekend and I think I have the cravers figured out now.



I set up the game as a normal, 5 player medium disk with 4 AI.



Observations:



Once the early game prep is over with—researching a couple early game weapons tech’s getting your early fleet cap bonuses researched and building an appropriate fleet is done—you are ready to start the conquest rolling and never stop. Taking over developed worlds from other players is key to maximizing the use of the +25% FIDS bonus as you avoid wasting 30 of the 40 turns you have in waiting for an outpost to become a colony. Researching the tech (I forget the name) that lets you build an improvement that cuts locust point generation by 50% is also a great way to extend the turns of FIDS bonus that conquered worlds give you.



As far as bonus’ go, the racial affinity can be a nice perk, but it is a bit of pain to deal with and it means adopting a very one dimensional style of play that can get a bit boring to be honest. The real bonus the cravers get isn’t the FIDS bonus, IMO, it is the increased cap size of their fleets, including the unique techs they can easily research to increase it. Toward the end of the mid game I had size 21 cap fleets crushing everything in their path and the advantage of bringing in more ships to bear was quite evident.



Fun game, but overall, when it comes to going the military conquest route, I’ll stick with the Sheredyn.

Yes, keeping your approval high is paramount. Do not expand faster than you can maintain the desired Happy/Fervent state (the only exception being on game start where it's impossible to have better than 'Content' colonies since you don't have tech for happy-buildings yet). After Supermarkets, keep your populace happy at all times. In multiplayer, you could theoretically run into a situation where you want to rush to colonize and fortify a chokepoint world and thus accept some unhappiness but from a purely economical standpoint you should never expand faster than the approval can keep up.



The Cravers are beastly because their downside of depleting worlds only applies after a *very* large number of turns have elapsed and they have a major advantage up until that point. You are right about the benefit of their affinity mainly being a military one; you should build a much, much larger fleet when playing Cravers than you would as other factions (build much more military and relatively less infrastructure). The nice thing about Cravers, though, is that if they start isolated with ample room to expand they can do just as well as (if not better than) the more economical races due to the FIDS-bonus affinity, then switch to pure military builds as they run into opposing empires. The Hissho have no such option and are extremely weak if they don't have somebody to fight right from the beginning. Cravers are thus actually pretty versatile despite being a pure military faction.

I feel it's lees about the Cravers not liking expansion, but more the internal struggle of keeping distant parts of the hive in check when then battle fleet is away.



That's why id love if all factions could have systems that disapprove a lot, could turn pirate or independent, and try to establish their own empires, and build their own fleets.



That could turn ES from a bog standard 4X into a game of epic proportions where players no only battle each other, but the management of their own empires, where games can be changed forever with massive revolts, renegade captains, and unloyal princes all ripping their own chunk out of greedy empires, making the bigger empires less powerful for the economy's and resources they control.