Could we get a Fix to "Become the Crisis Perk" in Multiplayer ?

[Wartraveler]

I mean Seriously. This Perk is so Ridiculously Overpowered that its not even Funny anymore.
The Bonuses it Provides are Insane. Generally Allowing such an Empire to effectively become so Strong that even 2 or 3 Player Empires together wont be able to make a Stand against it.
Either massively Reduce the Bonusses. Or make the Total War come up way Sooner so that AI Empires actually start Uniting against it when there is still a Chance to Beat it.

If a Player takes it. There is literally no Challenge to a Game. Because the Player can just choose the Timing on when he actually Commits to Total War making sure that by the Time anyone Notices. He is long way beyond anything that the AI could do about it. Just Nicely gobbling up his Neighbors which Stand absolutely no Chance to his Fleets which are Stronger and Cheaper than what others can get.

Effectively right now. If you want to Play Multiplayer. You either Ban using the Crisis Perk. Or you basicly all just Gang up on someone taking the Crisis Perk right away with everyone in the Game.
Because otherwise you wont stand a Chance later.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

i'm glad i don't play multiplayer. sounds like it's full of...never mind...

 

[Reman]

The simple solution would be to make it so that crisis levels unlock automatically instead of waiting to be researched. If empires take the perk in that case, it's only a matter of time before every other nation declares war on them. They'll be powerful but they're on a ticking timebomb.

I must say though, I took the perk in my Starnet GA game and found it rather underwhelming. It's powerful, but nowhere near the autowin that it was made out to be. It has some drawbacks that people like to overlook:

1. It prevents being the Custodian, which is 800 fleet cap of maintenance-free and extremely cheap ships. It's also the massive +5 influence income and assorted reforms like 15% sublight speed, +10% trade value, -15 crime, +150 nav cap, etc.
2. The relations penalty hits fallen empires as well, which means they'll spend the entire game chain-humiliating you on cooldown until you can deal with them. That's -33% influence, -10% happiness, and a lockout on the supremacist diplo stance.

As for the benefits:

1. The +50% ship weapons damage is great, the +50% build speed is nice, but the other bonuses are mediocre at best. The CBs are worthless outside of niche use cases. Maybe that ship weapon damage is enough to make the entire perk worthwhile on its own, I'm not sure.
2. The menacing ships are where most of the power of the perk comes from, but they're... a mixed bag. They're not noticeably more powerful or anything. They get perks that increase their power and their sections might be a bit different, but they don't benefit from certain techs. The real benefit is that they can be spammed more widely, however:
   • They only become much more economical with late-game techs, since their cost doesn't increase based on components.
   • It's only really worthwhile if you overhaul your entire economy to spam minerals and delete alloy production almost entirely. Minerals get far better % bonuses and are more pop efficient, but overhauling takes a long time if you weren't planning for it (as I wasn't in my game).
   • Not having menacing battleships dilutes the fleet power per-ship quite significantly. It also prevents alpha-striking from across systems with X slots, so I found a constant stream of attrition from dealing with things like starbases that I wouldn't normally face. This cuts into the economical efficiency argument.

So yeah, if you were like me and wanting to see if this perk holds up as obscenely OP in singleplayer, prepare to be underwhelmed. It takes a very specific mineral-oriented economy setup, much of the efficiency is lost when fighting against AI ship designs, and there are some pretty hefty drawbacks.

 

[DeanTheDull]

While I agree that the Crisis benefits can be overcome, and that auto-escalating your crisis level (though maybe locking the benefits to the project) would be a constraining factor, I feel you missed one part when you raised the fleet cap issue- once you become the Crisis, fleet capacity is effectively irrelevant.

Fleet cap is an issue normally because it raises the upkeep cost of the ships by the % you are over the fleet cap. IE, if you are double the fleet cap, 100% over, you are paying 100% alloy and energy upkeep per ship you have. But the upkeep cost of Crisis ships is already so small that doubling or tripling is far more economical than naval-capacity boosting on normal empires.

800 fleet cap increase is nice, but primarily for not paying more alloy upkeep, not for having larger fleets than the Crisis.

 

[Wartraveler]

The simple solution would be to make it so that crisis levels unlock automatically instead of waiting to be researched. If empires take the perk in that case, it's only a matter of time before every other nation declares war on them. They'll be powerful but they're on a ticking timebomb.

I must say though, I took the perk in my Starnet GA game and found it rather underwhelming. It's powerful, but nowhere near the autowin that it was made out to be. It has some drawbacks that people like to overlook:

1. It prevents being the Custodian, which is 800 fleet cap of maintenance-free and extremely cheap ships. It's also the massive +5 influence income and assorted reforms like 15% sublight speed, +10% trade value, -15 crime, +150 nav cap, etc.
2. The relations penalty hits fallen empires as well, which means they'll spend the entire game chain-humiliating you on cooldown until you can deal with them. That's -33% influence, -10% happiness, and a lockout on the supremacist diplo stance.

As for the benefits:

1. The +50% ship weapons damage is great, the +50% build speed is nice, but the other bonuses are mediocre at best. The CBs are worthless outside of niche use cases. Maybe that ship weapon damage is enough to make the entire perk worthwhile on its own, I'm not sure.
2. The menacing ships are where most of the power of the perk comes from, but they're... a mixed bag. They're not noticeably more powerful or anything. They get perks that increase their power and their sections might be a bit different, but they don't benefit from certain techs. The real benefit is that they can be spammed more widely, however:
   • They only become much more economical with late-game techs, since their cost doesn't increase based on components.
   • It's only really worthwhile if you overhaul your entire economy to spam minerals and delete alloy production almost entirely. Minerals get far better % bonuses and are more pop efficient, but overhauling takes a long time if you weren't planning for it (as I wasn't in my game).
   • Not having menacing battleships dilutes the fleet power per-ship quite significantly. It also prevents alpha-striking from across systems with X slots, so I found a constant stream of attrition from dealing with things like starbases that I wouldn't normally face. This cuts into the economical efficiency argument.

So yeah, if you were like me and wanting to see if this perk holds up as obscenely OP in singleplayer, prepare to be underwhelmed. It takes a very specific mineral-oriented economy setup, much of the efficiency is lost when fighting against AI ship designs, and there are some pretty hefty drawbacks.

For Singleplayer its perfectly fine.
Your Enemies Cheat and dont care about Economic Advantages.
Moreover. If you Rush a Singleplayergame to be Finished before Endgame Stage you are only hurting yourself.

The Crisis Perk is not very Powerful in Endgame itself.
Its very Powerful in Early and Midgame. Which allows it to gain a massive Advantage in these Game Stages.


Custodian Bonuses are certainly very Powerful.
But you can become the Crisis as the 3rd Ascension Perk which is very Early if you put some Effort into Culture.

Thats why its killing Multiplayer Games.
Its effectively allowing Players to become very Powerful very Quickly.
And then either use that Power gain a massive Advantage for Endgame.
Or just kill other Players right away.

 

[Reman]

For Singleplayer its perfectly fine.
Your Enemies Cheat and dont care about Economic Advantages.
Moreover. If you Rush a Singleplayergame to be Finished before Endgame Stage you are only hurting yourself.

The Crisis Perk is not very Powerful in Endgame itself.
Its very Powerful in Early and Midgame. Which allows it to gain a massive Advantage in these Game Stages.


Custodian Bonuses are certainly very Powerful.
But you can become the Crisis as the 3rd Ascension Perk which is very Early if you put some Effort into Culture.

Thats why its killing Multiplayer Games.
Its effectively allowing Players to become very Powerful very Quickly.
And then either use that Power gain a massive Advantage for Endgame.
Or just kill other Players right away.

Can you discuss how it's powerful early game? To me the opposite seems to be the case, where it's mediocre early-mid game but becomes quite good later on. Here's my reasoning:

• The alloy cost of normal midgame ships is low enough that the base cost of menacing ships doesn't feel particularly special. It's only once you get to late game ship components that there starts to be a huge savings, since the cost of menacing ships doesn't increase.
• Late game gives you more time to tailor your economy to deprecate alloy jobs and put everything on full mineral production. Transitioning early in a single player game will lead to being invaded, or at least significantly stagnating expansion. I guess if you're in a MP with several decades of enforced peace at the beginning then this point would matter less since you're in an artificially protected environment.
• Late game mineral production can skyrocket innately from tons of % buff stacking and a matter decompressor.
• Menacing ships scale much better as you get to super high fleet cap. You can get through the midgame with federation fleets (600 cap) and the GDF (800 cap), but those are the upper limits that will certainly be exceeded in the late game.

 

[Jamaican Castle]

Effectively right now. If you want to Play Multiplayer. You either Ban using the Crisis Perk. Or you basicly all just Gang up on someone taking the Crisis Perk right away with everyone in the Game.

Is that not the intended reaction when someone becomes the crisis, to join forces against them?

 

[DeanTheDull]

Effectively right now. If you want to Play Multiplayer. You either Ban using the Crisis Perk. Or you basicly all just Gang up on someone taking the Crisis Perk right away with everyone in the Game.
Because otherwise you wont stand a Chance later.

Seems like a pretty good dynamic for a competitive game? High risk, high reward, dependent on managing diplomacy and strategic timing, a mass prisoner's dillemma where while everyone wants to stomp the crisis early, they'd much rather someone else weaken themselves bearing the brunt of the fighting and then capitalize...

 

[Tamwin5]

I'm not sure if it has been fixed (I suspect not), but I know there was a bug where becoming the crisis only counted the number of AI empires for determining menace scaling, and just ignored player empires. So if you were playing in a no-AI or low-AI mp game, a crisis empire could scale up to 5 times faster than it should have.

 

[Reman]

Is that not the intended reaction when someone becomes the crisis, to join forces against them?

I mean, I'd kinda get where the OP is coming from if a single perk requires a "unite or die" response from your enemies. At that point everybody would just pick the perk themselves to remain competitive. That reduces strategic diversity, although I'd say the game is certainly still playable considering SP has its own set of must-pick perks if facing difficult challenges (GA Starnet or early 25x crisis).

That said, it's kinda hard to feel sad for MP lobbies in this case because, from what I hear, they tend to use a highly artificial set of game rules that exacerbates this issue significantly. Menacing ships just aren't that much of a boost early on UNLESS you tailor your economy towards it super hard, i.e. making tons of minerals and unity while ignoring alloys as much as possible. This build would be very vulnerable to early rushes, which is exactly why it didn't feel that powerful in my SP games. You'd need guaranteed peace for several decades at the beginning of a campaign, which is already highly questionable against difficult AIs and would practically be a nonstarter against humans who know what you're doing. That said, many MP servers use some variation of "no war for the first 30 years" from what I hear, which is exactly the sort of timeframe that a Become the Crisis play would need. Of course the game's balance is going to be warped heavily if that's the case, because 30 years is a long, looooong time in the hands of a player who knows what they're doing.

 

[Ryika]

Menacing ships just aren't that much of a boost early on UNLESS you tailor your economy towards it super hard, i.e. making tons of minerals and unity while ignoring alloys as much as possible.

Just build a normal economy, and then buy a ton of cheap minerals on the galactic market for that initial power boost.

 

[Reman]

Just build a normal economy, and then buy a ton of cheap minerals on the galactic market for that initial power boost.

This just makes a mineral problem into an energy problem.

 

[Ryika]

This just makes a mineral problem into an energy problem.

No, since energy is a lot more efficient to produce, and minerals drop to very low prices on the market on higher difficulties. You can easily halve the "real" price of a crisis ship (while you still have access to the market) by going the energy route (compared to producing minerals directly in a build not designed around maximizing minerals production), and the only change you need to make to your economy is that you add a bit of extra energy production earlier than you normally would - which you'll need anyway to pay the upkeep of your ships.

 

[Secret Master]

Minerals get far better % bonuses and are more pop efficient, but overhauling takes a long time if you weren't planning for it (as I wasn't in my game).

But wouldn't this literally be the reason you start down the path in the first place? Why would you take it on a whim given the "minerals for ships" aspect?

The rest of your assessment seems spot on, but this stuck out to me as a weird way to look at the situation. Of course you'd plan for it from day 1, right? Stack those mineral bonuses, get to Crisis Level 2, and just run rampant against everyone.

Sure, I could take it all the way and wipe out the galaxy (I did it once), but in terms of raw gameplay advantage, I would think that the goal is menacing corvettes, existential expulsion, and a mineral tailored economy. Or am I not seeing something?

 

[Verx90]

whats the point of being a crisis, if a single empire can defeat you ? ...


should they rename it to " become a midly annoiance " too?

 

[Reman]

No, since energy is a lot more efficient to produce, and minerals drop to very low prices on the market on higher difficulties. You can easily halve the "real" price of a crisis ship (while you still have access to the market) by going the energy route (compared to producing minerals directly in a build not designed around maximizing minerals production), and the only change you need to make to your economy is that you add a bit of extra energy production earlier than you normally would - which you'll need anyway to pay the upkeep of your ships.

Hmm, you might be right here. I can only speak to Starnet AI behavior where the opposite happens and minerals skyrocket in price once the galmarket hits, but with vanilla AI this could be true. This would require:

1. The Galmarket forming by the time you need it, but that's plausibly achievable by spamming science ships to meet 70% of other empires and immediately sponsoring the motion yourself.
2. The AI actually cooperating and selling enough minerals quickly enough to make this worthwhile.

Never tried it myself, but I could maaaaybe see it working with vanilla GA.

But wouldn't this literally be the reason you start down the path in the first place? Why would you take it on a whim given the "minerals for ships" aspect?

The rest of your assessment seems spot on, but this stuck out to me as a weird way to look at the situation. Of course you'd plan for it from day 1, right? Stack those mineral bonuses, get to Crisis Level 2, and just run rampant against everyone.

Sure, I could take it all the way and wipe out the galaxy (I did it once), but in terms of raw gameplay advantage, I would think that the goal is menacing corvettes, existential expulsion, and a mineral tailored economy. Or am I not seeing something?

I took it in my game on a whim expecting it to be trivially abusable with how overpowered people claimed it to be. I was sorely disappointed. It was basically a wasted ascension perk for decades, and possibly even net-negative with how much I lost from being chain humiliated. It eventually became quite useful with maxed tech and a massive crisis that required spamming fleets, but I should have taken it as my 7th or 8th ascension perk, not my 3rd.

Maxing resource eco is standard operating procedure in most games with stuff like the +20% techs and especially the +50% edict, so the only other optimizations would be things like Mining Guilds which have pretty significant opportunity costs.

The main problem with tailoring your economy towards minerals over alloys from the start is that it makes you incredibly vulnerable early on. This is a complete nonstarter with Starnet, and is still pretty iffy on vanilla either requiring galaxy settings that make early peace more likely (like less than max empire spawns) or you'll need to fish for guarantees, which is always questionable. At the very least, it'll have the same problem that other eco booming playstyles have, where the opportunity cost is early conquest to start the snowball faster. An optimized Become the Crisis opener might be powerful, but it needs to compete with alloy rushes that can conquer 2-3 homeworlds by that point.

 

[Secret Master]

It eventually became quite useful with maxed tech and a massive crisis that required spamming fleets, but I should have taken it as my 7th or 8th ascension perk, not my 3rd.

That makes more sense. I understand what you are saying now.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I took it in my game on a whim expecting it to be trivially abusable with how overpowered people claimed it to be. I was sorely disappointed. It was basically a wasted ascension perk for decades, and possibly even net-negative with how much I lost from being chain humiliated. It eventually became quite useful with maxed tech and a massive crisis that required spamming fleets, but I should have taken it as my 7th or 8th ascension perk, not my 3rd.

Chain humiliated? I get what you mean, but I'm surprised- when I first played around with it, when I go to the point where the local Fallen Empire started constant wars, it became an influence and tech bonanza. Despite being super out-teched I went hard into disruptor tech, camped the hyperspace lanes, and got reams of salvage and humiliation war-goal influence. It funded the influence for a number of mega-structures, skyrocketed my tech past other empires, and I didn't even have L-slot disruptor cloud lightning or a matter decompressor.

That might have had something to do with specifc Fallen Empire threshholds- I wasn't fighting multiple at once until I took the next stage of the perk- but my take-away is that I could have taken the perk earlier than I did, and just gated the threshold easier.

I believe Fallen Empires only start humiliating you when their opinion gets to -100. Crisis level 3 comes with a -80 opinion penalty, which mixed with Fallen Empire demands or ethics might be a tipping factor.

 

[Reman]

Chain humiliated? I get what you mean, but I'm surprised- when I first played around with it, when I go to the point where the local Fallen Empire started constant wars, it became an influence and tech bonanza. Despite being super out-teched I went hard into disruptor tech, camped the hyperspace lanes, and got reams of salvage and humiliation war-goal influence. It funded the influence for a number of mega-structures, skyrocketed my tech past other empires, and I didn't even have L-slot disruptor cloud lightning or a matter decompressor.

That might have had something to do with specifc Fallen Empire threshholds- I wasn't fighting multiple at once until I took the next stage of the perk- but my take-away is that I could have taken the perk earlier than I did, and just gated the threshold easier.

I believe Fallen Empires only start humiliating you when their opinion gets to -100. Crisis level 3 comes with a -80 opinion penalty, which mixed with Fallen Empire demands or ethics might be a tipping factor.

It's not possible to go up against 300k fleet power in 2240, even with perfect counter weapons. At least not without seriously cheesing the AI.

Also, I've heard the -100 threshhold before, but it didn't seem correct as I got humiliated at level 3 with no other opinion modifiers. I think the threshold is actually -75, but I'd need to investigate it more.

 

[Mcgan]

Also, I've heard the -100 threshhold before, but it didn't seem correct as I got humiliated at level 3 with no other opinion modifiers. I think the threshold is actually -75, but I'd need to investigate it more.

Spoiler: fallen_empire_events.txt

# Fallen Empire sends a warning
country_event = {
    id = fallen_empires.3
    title = OK
    desc = OK

    hide_window = yes

    mean_time_to_happen = {
        months = 1
    }

    trigger = {
        is_country_type = fallen_empire
        is_at_war = no
        NOT = { has_country_flag = fallen_empire_lost_war }
        NOT = { has_country_flag = fallen_empire_sent_warning }
        fleet_power > 20000
        any_country = {
            is_country_type = default
            has_communications = root
            root = { opinion = { who = prev value < -99 } }
            NOT = { root = { has_opinion_modifier = { who = prev modifier = opinion_refused_fallen_empire_demand } } }
            NOT = { has_country_flag = fe_demand_made }
        }
    }