I just played through a couple games with the Behemoth Fury to get a feel for the crisis, how transformative it is, and really, how it stands up to the other playstyles. Figured I'd share my thoughts, see how they resonate with others, and maybe get a little bit of feedback going! This'll be a bit of a long one, but hopefully I can stir up a bit of discussion.
The Behemoths
These really are the heart of the crisis. And overall, I do think that they're quite well done! With a T3/T4 behemoth being the equivalent of several endgame fleets (and boy are they beefy), I really got to feel like I was making and evolving massive, galactic-scale threats. They're not invincible (and they shouldn't be), but you can roll through anything but the most defended systems, and they punch above what their fleet power might imply. And yet, they still come with downsides. Much like a big, ornery animal, you have to keep them happy, and the more you have, the more of an effort this becomes (until the final stage, which has its own way to keep things balanced).
The weakest point of the Behemoths themselves was, to me, their animations. And that should say that I find them quite well designed mechanically. But really, I was truthfully hoping for something just a little more grandiose here. Especially the eat planet animation. Every other planet-killer weapon has unique animations for when they fire. Most aren't crazy flashy, but it's at least an acknowledgement of what is happening. Here, the planet just kinda... disappears. The Behemoth munches for a bit, and then the planet's gone mid-chomp. You don't even get to see it get engulfed by the behemoth before it disappears! But ultimately, this is just a minor quibble that comes down to flavor more than anything.
Growing Pains (and playing as the crisis)
The main critiques I've seen about this crisis come down to its effects on economy, which I'll try to break down a bit and give some meaningful discussion about.
The Economy: The situation at the end of the crisis, Growing Pains, absolutely decimates your empire, and this has been the greatest source of confusion that I've seen about this crisis. How are you supposed to maintain an empire when the situation cripples your economy, while still requiring you to pay upkeeps, pay large amounts of food to use behemoth abilities and hatch behemoths, build or repair fleets, etc...? It's a fine balance, and one that took some time to figure out for me. Ultimately, I found that using the Mindlink is pretty required (for other reasons too). This makes sense from a flavor perspective, but the link to the economy really isn't clear. However, that district makes a TON of research/unity as you transfer pops, and all without needing pop jobs or upkeeps. So you can upload all of your research/unity, reduce your job upkeeps substantially, and get over the hump, while keeping around your resource production. Still, this is NOT intuitive.
The Progress of the Situation: Everyone I've seen talks about how slowly Growing Pains progresses. At the endgame, taking 40-50 years to complete is HUGE, especially with the economic maluses that worsen along the way. But empire size has a disproportionate effect on this. You are heavily penalized for a wide empire with a lot of pops. Again, flavorwise, this makes sense, but in practice, it's just not fun. Growing Pains goes *dramatically* faster <1k empire size. 900 empire size makes it go twice as fast as 1k, and all of this is because of the stacking reduction to situation progress that just can't be overcome. Along with the above, it forces you into a lean build with few planets and fewer pops. Again, not that intuitive.
But Can I Eat Things?: The last aspect that I think bears talking about is the meat of the crisis - how much you (don't) need to actually interact with its core mechanic. Eating planets, pops, bioships, and everything else that comes your way. The only real advantage that this has once you begin the mind meld is to increase its speed through the 'Growth Factor'. Unfortunately, this caps at a very low amount, and so, the incentive to keep eating things is dramatically reduced once you hit this cap. It does decay, but at a negligible rate. And so you are really not that incentivized to even interact with the core mechanic after a short while, since there are NO other discernible benefits to eating planets. In my first run through, I ate a fallen empire, and then was capped, and my behemoth just sat around after that waiting for Growing Pains to finish. It felt unsatisfying.
How to fix it?: Others will probably have better ideas than I! But I did have some ideas to share. For me, I think that a rework of the core mechanics would go a long way towards fixing all of these issues, and really force players to engage much more with them. Here are three things that I would implement to fix (most of) these issues:
-Remove (or at least tone down) the penalty to Growing Pains from empire size: This just makes the endgame tedious. 90% rate reduction is HUGE! It makes having a big empire feel even worse than the huge penalty you already get from Growing Pains to empire size effects.
-Slow down Growing Pains, but remove the cap on Growth Factor: Going hand in hand with the above, Growth Factor is cool. You progress more from eating things. The issue is how early it caps. Galactic Nemesis needs to eat a ton of stars to get enough dark matter. Cosmogenesis benefits from feeding tons of other empires to the Lathe. This makes sense for crises. Behemoth Fury needs more incentive to eat planets, beyond just having glorified biological colossi. In fact, once you cap growth factor, right now, you benefit from just sitting back, making peace with everyone, figuring out your economy, and waiting out the situation. Allowing the situation to scale further would very much emphasize interacting with the core mechanic.
-Grant resources (especially food) from devouring things: This would help offset the feel-bad feeling of the Growing Pains situation and having to manage ever dwindling resource production, while also feeding back into making eating things actually meaningful. Even if it murders your production, if you can get back resources by eating things, it both enables the Behemoth abilities that are right now very hard to use when you can't make food, and also engages interacting with the mechanics more.
How It Ends [SPOILERS]
The other disappointment I had with the crisis comes with its ending. The crisis is built up as an empire becoming a galaxy-endangering threat. And it feels like it's going that way. You build up. Become the true Apex. Complete your transference... and then just get one victory screen that does little, gives you two options that do nothing, and then it's over. I *loved* how Cosmogenesis altered the galaxy at its end, and even Galactic Nemesis's blow up the galaxy ending had weight. I wish that Behemoth Fury showed you the galactic consequences of your choices at its end, and on that front... It just does not deliver. Ultimately, this is a huge fail on flavor in my opinion for a crisis that is otherwise defined by its flavor (and that of the galaxy, heh). It honestly feels unfinished.
Tl;dr. Good foundation, feels bad on wide empires in unintuitive ways, and needs more incentive to actually eat things! (Oh, and give it a proper ending.)
The Behemoths
These really are the heart of the crisis. And overall, I do think that they're quite well done! With a T3/T4 behemoth being the equivalent of several endgame fleets (and boy are they beefy), I really got to feel like I was making and evolving massive, galactic-scale threats. They're not invincible (and they shouldn't be), but you can roll through anything but the most defended systems, and they punch above what their fleet power might imply. And yet, they still come with downsides. Much like a big, ornery animal, you have to keep them happy, and the more you have, the more of an effort this becomes (until the final stage, which has its own way to keep things balanced).
The weakest point of the Behemoths themselves was, to me, their animations. And that should say that I find them quite well designed mechanically. But really, I was truthfully hoping for something just a little more grandiose here. Especially the eat planet animation. Every other planet-killer weapon has unique animations for when they fire. Most aren't crazy flashy, but it's at least an acknowledgement of what is happening. Here, the planet just kinda... disappears. The Behemoth munches for a bit, and then the planet's gone mid-chomp. You don't even get to see it get engulfed by the behemoth before it disappears! But ultimately, this is just a minor quibble that comes down to flavor more than anything.
Growing Pains (and playing as the crisis)
The main critiques I've seen about this crisis come down to its effects on economy, which I'll try to break down a bit and give some meaningful discussion about.
The Economy: The situation at the end of the crisis, Growing Pains, absolutely decimates your empire, and this has been the greatest source of confusion that I've seen about this crisis. How are you supposed to maintain an empire when the situation cripples your economy, while still requiring you to pay upkeeps, pay large amounts of food to use behemoth abilities and hatch behemoths, build or repair fleets, etc...? It's a fine balance, and one that took some time to figure out for me. Ultimately, I found that using the Mindlink is pretty required (for other reasons too). This makes sense from a flavor perspective, but the link to the economy really isn't clear. However, that district makes a TON of research/unity as you transfer pops, and all without needing pop jobs or upkeeps. So you can upload all of your research/unity, reduce your job upkeeps substantially, and get over the hump, while keeping around your resource production. Still, this is NOT intuitive.
The Progress of the Situation: Everyone I've seen talks about how slowly Growing Pains progresses. At the endgame, taking 40-50 years to complete is HUGE, especially with the economic maluses that worsen along the way. But empire size has a disproportionate effect on this. You are heavily penalized for a wide empire with a lot of pops. Again, flavorwise, this makes sense, but in practice, it's just not fun. Growing Pains goes *dramatically* faster <1k empire size. 900 empire size makes it go twice as fast as 1k, and all of this is because of the stacking reduction to situation progress that just can't be overcome. Along with the above, it forces you into a lean build with few planets and fewer pops. Again, not that intuitive.
But Can I Eat Things?: The last aspect that I think bears talking about is the meat of the crisis - how much you (don't) need to actually interact with its core mechanic. Eating planets, pops, bioships, and everything else that comes your way. The only real advantage that this has once you begin the mind meld is to increase its speed through the 'Growth Factor'. Unfortunately, this caps at a very low amount, and so, the incentive to keep eating things is dramatically reduced once you hit this cap. It does decay, but at a negligible rate. And so you are really not that incentivized to even interact with the core mechanic after a short while, since there are NO other discernible benefits to eating planets. In my first run through, I ate a fallen empire, and then was capped, and my behemoth just sat around after that waiting for Growing Pains to finish. It felt unsatisfying.
How to fix it?: Others will probably have better ideas than I! But I did have some ideas to share. For me, I think that a rework of the core mechanics would go a long way towards fixing all of these issues, and really force players to engage much more with them. Here are three things that I would implement to fix (most of) these issues:
-Remove (or at least tone down) the penalty to Growing Pains from empire size: This just makes the endgame tedious. 90% rate reduction is HUGE! It makes having a big empire feel even worse than the huge penalty you already get from Growing Pains to empire size effects.
-Slow down Growing Pains, but remove the cap on Growth Factor: Going hand in hand with the above, Growth Factor is cool. You progress more from eating things. The issue is how early it caps. Galactic Nemesis needs to eat a ton of stars to get enough dark matter. Cosmogenesis benefits from feeding tons of other empires to the Lathe. This makes sense for crises. Behemoth Fury needs more incentive to eat planets, beyond just having glorified biological colossi. In fact, once you cap growth factor, right now, you benefit from just sitting back, making peace with everyone, figuring out your economy, and waiting out the situation. Allowing the situation to scale further would very much emphasize interacting with the core mechanic.
-Grant resources (especially food) from devouring things: This would help offset the feel-bad feeling of the Growing Pains situation and having to manage ever dwindling resource production, while also feeding back into making eating things actually meaningful. Even if it murders your production, if you can get back resources by eating things, it both enables the Behemoth abilities that are right now very hard to use when you can't make food, and also engages interacting with the mechanics more.
How It Ends [SPOILERS]
The other disappointment I had with the crisis comes with its ending. The crisis is built up as an empire becoming a galaxy-endangering threat. And it feels like it's going that way. You build up. Become the true Apex. Complete your transference... and then just get one victory screen that does little, gives you two options that do nothing, and then it's over. I *loved* how Cosmogenesis altered the galaxy at its end, and even Galactic Nemesis's blow up the galaxy ending had weight. I wish that Behemoth Fury showed you the galactic consequences of your choices at its end, and on that front... It just does not deliver. Ultimately, this is a huge fail on flavor in my opinion for a crisis that is otherwise defined by its flavor (and that of the galaxy, heh). It honestly feels unfinished.
Tl;dr. Good foundation, feels bad on wide empires in unintuitive ways, and needs more incentive to actually eat things! (Oh, and give it a proper ending.)
- 10
- 7
- 2
