Endless Space 2 – Cravers Campaign Tips (Early Game)

Early Game Tips to Campaign as Cravers

Сrеdit gоеs to Freny!

In Shorts

Cravers don’t rush their enemy, they exploit planets until the planets are devestated, so you need to connect your aggressive expansion and sync it with the depletion.

Build up a good production and time it so that by the point you NEED to expand (cause your planets are getting weak) you are ready to attack.

I would argue that a faction which is more agressive even earlier than cravers would be Hisho, due to their need for the special resource Keishi. Cravers actually just need to expand. And if it happens that an enemy faction is in the way, that is when they start eating them.

In Details

You need to micro manage their depletion mechanic, as in as long as you have 1 depletion point the planet still produces full FIDS. When you get to 1 point, move the Craver pops elsewhere. If the System is good, I milk it so no planets get depleted (or place the extra Cravers on a good for nothing planet). For bad ones, just deplete everything.

The problem is science down the road, so you might want to have a fleet of 20+ protectors ASAP with science per CP killed support modules to help with that, attacking everything that moves (and if you need dust, equip some adamantian dust modules as well). You also want as much per pop bonuses as possible on undepleted planets, because they also ride on the depletion mechanic bonus (laws, AI Labor building, etc.).

And yes, Hissho is a more aggressive race play style, but there is no issue with Cravers invading others. In fact, you need to because the more slaves the better (the happiness issue is easily managed thru war declarations, or you can eat-pops* for 25 happiness as needed, it stacks). Hence, you want to rush invasions on nearby minor civs or empires to get more slaves quicker.

• Feeding pits is a fixed turn cost “construction”, and as such it uses no industry so it gets pooled. Max pool for industry is 1 turn’s worth. Hence, if you need to eat 2 pops, you might want to queue some building in between them to not waste the pooled industry.

Note: This applies to all races, you basically want to abuse their mechanic. With Sophons, the Onmiscience trait to max the bonus science they get (you can use the racial techs for that). With Horatio, the splices. With Cravers, the deletion mechanic. With Riftborn, the singularities, the bad ones in particular: you place a -FIDS singularity on Hissho Home System and they are basically done (other races on their Home Systems, the earlier the better, so invest on Scouts). With EU, the influence science/production buyouts. With Vaulters, the Material Expertise trait. With Hissho, the mining probes. And so forth…