So my first game in 4.0 I decided to do the Behemoth fury crisis path. I saw it and was like that looks like fun. It was fun at the beginning, using it to empty my war targets worlds. Getting it to grow up and then finally stage 3 and then 4 after the mind meld.
Then it stopped being fun when my empire imploded. As you progress through the growing pains situation you get a negative empire modifier. Which gets worse, slower pop growth. Less job output. More pop food upkeep. More empire size effect. You get happiness as the only benefit to this modifier. The negatives start out as 15% penalties but reach 120% at the end. Empire size goes up to 200%. Destroying your economy and tanking your food production, which you need to use your behemoth abilities. The happiness bonus went from around 10% to 80%. (Some numbers may be incorrect. May update after more Behemoth runs.)
I think this could be offset with a few more bonuses or a reduction to the penalties. Maybe lower consumer goods upkeep of pops to offset the reduced production of them. Maybe have the penalty of job production not affect farmers.To reflect how they're more focused on food over material goods.
Another issue is the mind meld job. That transfers 10% of the pops working it into the Behemoth, to boost its growth factor in the situation. But all this did was eat up all my workers on my capital and reduce the bonus fire rate and armour I got from the mind transference jobs and give tiny amounts of research and unity. I ended up switching the job off. losing pops paired with massive pop growth reductions doesn't feel good. Also you can get plenty of growth factor by just eating the colonies of your enemy. You don't need to waste pops by transferring them into the beast.
I have a couple of suggests, like making the pop transference a Behemoth ability. Rather than it happening on its own every 6 months. I get that it's there to keep the growth factor from declining too quickly. But I think players should be able to use them like a resource. If it's made into an active ability then it could be used to heal the Behemoth based on pops absorbed. Maybe for a temporary buff of some kind. Like fire rate and range or temporary non regenerating shields and hardening. In addition to providing growth factor.
Another option would be to increase the time between transference or have a policy option to set the time or turn it off. So pops have a chance to re-populate and migrate.
On a quick side tangent the bonus to fire rate and armour feels important. But I'm not sure if it affected the Behemoth, its fleet power never seemed to change even with a 100% fire rate and armour bonus. It also never changed with ability improvements. I assume this an issue with the UI not updating properly. This also happens with abilities in combat where new ones wouldn't appear in the command bar.
Then there's the combat AI of the Behemoth which made the final battle awful. I lost so many times because of how the Behemoth would move during combat. It would approach the final boss and turn to the side. At least we can manually move it around. I would have to try and manoeuvre it to face the enemy, so it could use its best weapons. Which involves the risk of moving too far away to turn around and having the boss exit combat and regen all its armour and hull in a matter of days.
I think it would be best if the Behemoths after class 1 behaved more like artillery or if we had more controls for the class 4. Like a order that makes it face the point we clicked. A button that changes its combat behavior between approaching and staying in place during combat. Instead of it just approaching everything it fights and losing damage output because it can fire its many deadly energy bursts.
Other than those issues I had fun with it. I might not play it as often as cosmogen.
Edit: number corrections. Spelling.
Then it stopped being fun when my empire imploded. As you progress through the growing pains situation you get a negative empire modifier. Which gets worse, slower pop growth. Less job output. More pop food upkeep. More empire size effect. You get happiness as the only benefit to this modifier. The negatives start out as 15% penalties but reach 120% at the end. Empire size goes up to 200%. Destroying your economy and tanking your food production, which you need to use your behemoth abilities. The happiness bonus went from around 10% to 80%. (Some numbers may be incorrect. May update after more Behemoth runs.)
I think this could be offset with a few more bonuses or a reduction to the penalties. Maybe lower consumer goods upkeep of pops to offset the reduced production of them. Maybe have the penalty of job production not affect farmers.To reflect how they're more focused on food over material goods.
Another issue is the mind meld job. That transfers 10% of the pops working it into the Behemoth, to boost its growth factor in the situation. But all this did was eat up all my workers on my capital and reduce the bonus fire rate and armour I got from the mind transference jobs and give tiny amounts of research and unity. I ended up switching the job off. losing pops paired with massive pop growth reductions doesn't feel good. Also you can get plenty of growth factor by just eating the colonies of your enemy. You don't need to waste pops by transferring them into the beast.
I have a couple of suggests, like making the pop transference a Behemoth ability. Rather than it happening on its own every 6 months. I get that it's there to keep the growth factor from declining too quickly. But I think players should be able to use them like a resource. If it's made into an active ability then it could be used to heal the Behemoth based on pops absorbed. Maybe for a temporary buff of some kind. Like fire rate and range or temporary non regenerating shields and hardening. In addition to providing growth factor.
Another option would be to increase the time between transference or have a policy option to set the time or turn it off. So pops have a chance to re-populate and migrate.
On a quick side tangent the bonus to fire rate and armour feels important. But I'm not sure if it affected the Behemoth, its fleet power never seemed to change even with a 100% fire rate and armour bonus. It also never changed with ability improvements. I assume this an issue with the UI not updating properly. This also happens with abilities in combat where new ones wouldn't appear in the command bar.
Then there's the combat AI of the Behemoth which made the final battle awful. I lost so many times because of how the Behemoth would move during combat. It would approach the final boss and turn to the side. At least we can manually move it around. I would have to try and manoeuvre it to face the enemy, so it could use its best weapons. Which involves the risk of moving too far away to turn around and having the boss exit combat and regen all its armour and hull in a matter of days.
I think it would be best if the Behemoths after class 1 behaved more like artillery or if we had more controls for the class 4. Like a order that makes it face the point we clicked. A button that changes its combat behavior between approaching and staying in place during combat. Instead of it just approaching everything it fights and losing damage output because it can fire its many deadly energy bursts.
Other than those issues I had fun with it. I might not play it as often as cosmogen.
Edit: number corrections. Spelling.
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