Nihilistic aquisition, barbaric despoilers, raiding stance now useless. Patch or mod needed.

[FPC]

Nihilistic acquisition, barbaric despoilers, raiding stance now useless since a major nerf sometime in July. Prior to the patch, raiding stance was extremely OP. Now, it is beyond useless, with almost no pops abducted regardless of bombardment strength or relative power. Complete waste of time. I feel like there should be a happy medium, and we have not yet found it. If anyone is up for modding the game to tweak the values here and make it useful again (without becoming OP as it was pre-patch) I would be eternally grateful.

I am going to go play Baldurs Gate for a month. Maybe the dev's will tweak it by the time I get back. Hope springs eternal.

[Archmage MC]

They don't do anything unless the planet is already near 90% devistaiton right?

[FPC]

Not sure. Ive not gotten them to work at all since the change. I will try to completely devastate the planet first and see if it goes any better...but there is some balance there. Pops do die in the bombardment. Before the patch, you did not need any particular devastation amount to abduct pops.

[Spore]

I wasn't aware of any change to Nihilistic Acquisition, after selecting it and finding out it was TERRIBLE, I searched online and found others talking about it. My Experience, within 30 seconds of bombarding a planet in raiding stance, I got a pop. This seemed slow but I figured N.A. was in need of a nerf. Then 4 minutes of bombing with "raiding" stance and nothing.

Found people saying, "Use corvettes to raid", tried it, nope that wasn't it.

Found people saying, "planet needs to be 10% (and also 90% and 100%) devastated", tried each, nope that wasn't it.

Found people saying, "must have killed all defense armies", tried it, nope that wasn't it.

Found people saying, "war exhaustion based", tried it, nope that wasn't it.

Hours of game play wasted, cancelled game and started over, do not pick N.A. It is useless.

[mss73055]

Its RNG appears to get stuck at times. Re-engaging works, while it should not work.

Make sure you don't allow surrender by bombardment.

Make sure your allies don't "help" you by occupying the planet.

[FPC]

Originally posted by Spore:

I wasn't aware of any change to Nihilistic Acquisition, after selecting it and finding out it was TERRIBLE, I searched online and found others talking about it. My Experience, within 30 seconds of bombarding a planet in raiding stance, I got a pop. This seemed slow but I figured N.A. was in need of a nerf. Then 4 minutes of bombing with "raiding" stance and nothing.

Found people saying, "Use corvettes to raid", tried it, nope that wasn't it.

Found people saying, "planet needs to be 10% (and also 90% and 100%) devastated", tried each, nope that wasn't it.

Found people saying, "must have killed all defense armies", tried it, nope that wasn't it.

Found people saying, "war exhaustion based", tried it, nope that wasn't it.

Hours of game play wasted, cancelled game and started over, do not pick N.A. It is useless.

Same experience as I had. Big waste of time. Devs nerfed it too hard. Killed my playthrough and build

[Biggs]

its still a useful perk, to get some pops from a planet in a system you cant conquer yet.
very useful. pops are power

[Spore]

Originally posted by zil:

its still a useful perk, to get some pops from a planet in a system you cant conquer yet.
very useful. pops are power

Zil, if you are saying the perk is still beneficial, could you please let us know how you are getting it to work? It seems maybe you missed what people are saying. Everyone other than you in this thread saying it is broken (not working at all) as opposed to broken (because it was overpowered a month ago). Yours is working? Or you missed the point of this thread?

[Spore]

I finally found this, which explains everything. Essentially your fleet needs to bomb planet to kill defense armies, then you could switch to "raiding stance" because unless you have killed defense armies you will not be able to abduct pops. I am fine with this. I just couldn't find any in game description to tell me how to use "Raiding Stance".

Patch 3.8.x or something: The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops has been dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 2 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony)