Barbaric Despoilers- not as bad as people think?

[Karina]

Comparing to fanatical purifiers-

-No combat bonuses.
-No purging bonuses.
-No armaggedon bombardment.

+Gain raiding bombardment for free, +1 ascension perk basically.
+Very limited diplomacy is still possible, under right circumstances.
+More ethic flexible, can take Mechanists civic.
+Does not have to kill all aliens.
+Can access enclaves.

[Seaghauwn]

as a civic for a slaver empire I love barbaric despoilers

[Dakota]

They're flexible but really just have a bunch of negatives that aren't made up for.

-No combat bonuses
-No purge bonuses
-No Armaggedon bombardment
is just the start.

Raiding bombardment is fun to play around with, just going around and scooping up pops to put on your world, but when you look into it the entire thing is entirely useless and less ideal than just conquering the planet which is much faster, gives you all of the planet population at once, gives you a bunch of buildings on the planet for free, gives you a whole new planet to build on, increases your pop growth because you now have another planet worth of growth, etc. I guess with purifiers you'd be unable to set those new pops as slaves or residents so no free specialist labor, but purifiers do get the options for neato things like forced labor and livestock along with a unity boost that massively pumps up their economy in the short term long enough to string together to not have to worry about traditional slaves catching up.

Limited diplomacy is still very hard to get through and is against the goals of the empire anyway, if you're looking for diplomacy you might as well just pick a different civic, against AI they'll mostly dislike you already anyway and you *want* to be at war with them all the time so that you can be stealing pops from them all the time to make use of that civic.

Sure I'll give it a bit more ethic flexible and not being forced to kill everything you meet as bonuses compared to fanatical purifiers, though that doesn't really make up for the big bonuses fanatical purifier gets to things that help mirror those benefits you get from being allied to aliens.


This just coming from my experiences using barbaric despoilers a bit, a lot of my time using nihilistic acquisition builds focused on filling my few planets with hundreds of pops as soon as possible, and my time playing fanatical purifiers, hiveminds, determined exterminators, etc.

[Wokelander]

They're fun to play but mechanically you're better off just invading planets the old-fashioned way and enslaving/liberating the pops.
It's one of those civics that are fluffwise very cool and mechanically pretty sub-par, unfortunately.

I do still love my Tomb World Despoilers who have a constant need for new slaves as the old ones keep dying from the hellhole conditions on their homeworld but from a optimisation standpoint it's ridiculous

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Khorvale:

They're fun to play but mechanically you're better off just invading planets the old-fashioned way and enslaving/liberating the pops.
It's one of those civics that are fluffwise very cool and mechanically pretty sub-par, unfortunately.

I do still love my Tomb World Despoilers who have a constant need for new slaves as the old ones keep dying from the hellhole conditions on their homeworld but from a optimisation standpoint it's ridiculous

I know the feeling, it's really fun to do it, just kinda wish it had some reason so I keep trying to find one.

Maybe, just maybe, there's some benefit from stability.

think about it: if you conquer a world as a fanatical purifier and start purifying the place then there's going to be low stability, very low stability, on the planet that you just took and are melting down the population on so you'll get far less resource per pop than if you have it on a relatively stable world such as your homeworld. Sure the homeworld itself is likely to suffer a drop in stability too or a requirement for more enforcers, but it'll be much higher resource per pop put into forced labor than on a world where the slaves outnumber your pops.

Still not sure if that makes up for the lost efficiency on your regular jobs though.

[Nightmyre]

What they need for it to truly work well, is privateers, similar to how other games have it. No flag on your privateer ships, no war declaration, but perhaps as a consequence, a weaker overall fleet.

[Wokelander]

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

What they need for it to truly work well, is privateers, similar to how other games have it. No flag on your privateer ships, no war declaration, but perhaps as a consequence, a weaker overall fleet.

Maybe something totally new and unique like the ability to toggle raiding stance on an army- I mean fleet, letting it cross into enemy territory to siege- I mean combat, enemy holdings- I mean stations, for loot?

Seems like a decent quick and dirty fix to me; you can assign as much of your fleet power as you want to privateering but obviously the privateer fleet also risks being intercepted and destroyed by an enemy. And it should probably also have the ability to gain some loot from small-scale piracy on trade lanes, without having to raid stations or planets

[galadon3]

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

What they need for it to truly work well, is privateers, similar to how other games have it. No flag on your privateer ships, no war declaration, but perhaps as a consequence, a weaker overall fleet.

And that would make it truly work how? You don't need to declare war but thats it, you still risk your fleet and would be better off just declaring war openly and taking the planets.