My biggest issue was how fast they did it. They slowed it down, but yeah… they don’t really seem to have any massive advantages that outweigh their downsides that I’ve noticed.
They get a boost, but that boost seems to be so short that I’m not sure what edge it really gives them. They always seem to stagnate and then get demolished past the early game.
Yeah, the Cravers seem to be worse than a neutral race with no special powers.
They really do.
They get a 50% bonus to their colonies… while they’re still weak and trying to build up. Then once those colonies start to become worth anything, they take a 25% hit to those colonies forever.
So… they can kind of get a colony going fast? But compared to the Ark ships and tree roots… those are basically no-advantages in a lot of ways. Once they run into resistance they become inherently weaker than every other race. Sure it fits the theme: they have to constantly expand or they’re screwed. But it’s not like they’re going to easily roll over the entire galaxy, especially since they constantly get weaker as time goes on. They might get one or even two races before they get their feet under them, but then they’re going to run into established empires that can out produce them in every way.
Then as an added bonus they can’t engage in diplomacy.
I’m going to play Cravers next, just to see. But one point:
Early advantages can be deceptively powerful in a 4X.
They can be, but here I don’t think they really are. It’s a slight buff to your starting planet for the most part. New colonies seem like they’d deplete before they were worth anything. 50% more of next to nothing is still next to nothing. Then you’re stuck with 75% of a lot forever and 25% of a bunch is… a bunch.
Edit: Maybe you hard shift all your population to each new planet as you get them? But that requires tech you probably don’t want to invest in since you need to work on military for the inevitable fight with a neighbor to keep the system sustaining itself. I’m interested in giving them a go myself after they got buffed in the last patch, because initially they were pretty horrible.
Do the cravers have other advantages like the Sots Zuul? Like really cheap high firepower ships, ability to take slaves or steal tech from combat or conquest, infest a planet etc?
The Cravers AI is kicking ass in my current game. I only have 8 factions in the largest galaxy, so they’ve been able to blob a lot of it. I’ve been able to halt their advance in my direction, but they are starting to creep around me. They haven’t been able to take out any of the other factions, but they seem to be wittling away at them.
I only played them once in EA, but they are definitely a race that needs explosive expansion to outrace the inevitable diminishing returns. I’m too much a turtler to ever play them effectively.
This really sucks. I can’t finish a game because of this bug. I gave up on my UE game and now my unfallen game just got stuck too. Their patch notes do not even mention the issue. I was planning on playing this all weekend, but apparently not.
Yes, this has ended two of my games too.
They’ve posted about it. But it is very annoying it was released in this state.
Yep, I saw somewhere else that it may be out by Tuesday… but that’s when I go back to work. Anyway, I’m considering starting new games as other races to get a feel for them and go back to my UE game once a patch addresses the issue. A shame since that was a heck of a start for my UE.
Yeah, I’m pending on turn 85. Strange bug, in that the game does not freeze. You can open and close stuff, look around, whatever, but the turn never finishes processing.
Sorry that it’s this way, but to be honest, the weak documentation bothers me more deeply.
Weak documentation bothers you more than a game breaking bug with no work-arounds?
Come the middle of the week, the “pending bug” will be nothing but a memory, and we are likely to get a sincere apology.
Lack of documentation is a gaming trend, a standard way of doing business. It won’t be fixed here any time soon, and don’t hold your breath on any apology. And the next well designed game will be sent out the door the same way.
I’m off to play GalCiv 3 Crusades, which has no documentation.
I mean, I understand if others feel differently, but me, this is what bothers me the most.
I mean, so are game breaking bugs in released, high-budget titles.
I’m with you on this as well. And it might be just because I’m taking up the mantle of resident Endless Space 2 apologist, but most of the game is above-board enough that you can figure it out with tooltips, which I consider part of documentation.
That said, the parts that aren’t are really frickin’ galling.
-Tom
I have to agree on this one. To be honest, I don’t usually care too much about an actual manual/documentation these days. Games usually provide enough information via tooltips and/or tutorials that I don’t feel the need to read through a manual to figure out how to play, and wikis can usually fill in the rest. There’s a few things here that really need to be explained somewhere, because it is very opaque. And if no one can understand how something works, it’s not possible to explain it on a wiki.
I don’t feel that I need a big meaty manual for Endless Space 2, but I would really like an explanation of the various terms and how they work (diplomatic pressure comes to mind).
I’m having so much fun playing as the Unfallen. They suit my turtling personality perfectly. (In the name of community harmony, I’m resisting the temptation to make more tree puns here.)
On diplomatic pressure, I’m not sure if this explanation from Reddit is authoritative, but it sounds plausible:
Your pressure on another empire = ((Influence generation per turn) * 0.03) * (1+(Number of peace deals) * 0.05) * (1+(Number of alliances) * 0.15) * (1+(Number of wars) * -0.05) * (1.25 from that one policy) + ((Number of trade agreements) * 0.5) - (Their pressure on you)
Put another way, your pressure on another empire is affected slightly positively by the number of peace and alliance deals you have, is affected slightly negatively by the number of wars you are in, and is affected immensely positively by the number of trade agreements you have. Additionally, your influence point generation on a per turn basis directly affects it. Finally, the target empire’s ability to apply pressure directly negates your ability to apply pressure to them. The law is also fairly significant because of where it lies in the formula.
One final note is that while the pressure trend caps at 6.5/turn, total pressure lies on a range between -100 and 100. After about 16 turns of applying max pressure, it won’t help you anymore. More if you were in the hole.
TL;DR: If you want to apply lots of pressure, enter lots of peace and alliance deals, avoid war, generate lots of influence points, and make lots of trade agreements. Targeting empires that don’t do those things helps too.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessSpace/comments/67s7x4/es2_how_does_diplomatic_pressure_work/
That’s all good and well, but the more important question than how is pressure generated is what does pressure do?
Because if it’s just a way to make demands that piss off the other empire so you can get into a war without spending the couple hundred influence that you likely have anyway if you’ve built up the influence it takes to create that much pressure in the first place, then I honestly couldn’t care less how it’s generated. Unless I’m missing something, pressure seems like a marginal gameplay system at best.
-Tom
Yeah, to me it has the feel of a cool feature from the design document that they only “stubbed in” and never got the chance to finish. A technical implementation lacking a gameplay implementation.
Conceptually it’s a cool system, but it appears to have no use. It’s a case where some documentation would clear up the confusion.
Yeah, 100% pressure and a demand for something minor results so far as I can see in a guaranteed war. It’s pretty funny when some pissant little empire that’s one tenth your power declares war on you because you asked them for some minor tech you skipped past.