How to play Barbaric Despoilers?

[Mastikator]

This is my first real game with them and... the 500 energy credits thing...

I'm kinda flabbergasted. I'd probably lose more than that just by undocking my fleets. Raiding should provide some kind of scaling rewards based on planets taken and the size/wealth of the target.

The reward scales with size. Don't remember if it's theirs or yours.

Still I agree with GloatingSwine on this, the adaptability tree is awesome for a conquerer.

 

[Turnil]

in 2.2 despoilers will work differently with the new economy system.
I'm planning to play tall in my first playthrough by stealing pops.

 

[RabbaDooDabba]

in 2.2 despoilers will work differently with the new economy system.
I'm planning to play tall in my first playthrough by stealing pops.

I think they will be immensely more fun in 2.2. Despoilation to get large amounts of energy, using the galactic market in tandem with a specialised economy, slave labour is more easier to apply without the tile system, selling slaves as an additional way of income and with the apparant removal of the "neighbouring" requisite for Despoilation CB you can raid far flung smaller nations.... yeah, Barbaric Despoilers will be great.

 

[SpectralShade]

I played them without slavery. I envisioned them more disliking other empires, but respecting its own citizens.

I found it actually quite nice to be easy to declare war for despoil without needing to bother with claims or anything for a war. I was in quite a few wars, and abducted some citizens here and there too which became productive members of my empire.

The borders with empires I raided, I fortified with defensive starbases/fortresses/citadels. My neighboors were never really able to get in a position where they were threatening because they were held down by the economic reductions I imposed on them by raids. When I sent a raiding fleet, I merely needed to go into their territory, do some damage so their exhaustion were over mine (and nap a few citizens if I felt I needed some), and then retreat to my border fort while waiting for war exhaustion to slowly tick up and force them to loose the despoil war.

I think it have been one of the games where I ended up the most 'ahead' so far, and when the khan spawned with level 3 tech, I had star fortresses with level 4 weapons that easily could repel a single fleet from them at a time. At one point the khan died by running himself into one of my fortresses, even. Then he stopped bothering me.

In the end, only the combined power of 2 awakened empires both getting mad that I didn't want a part in their war was something that could actually threaten me (and even there I had all techs researched, an equal fleet and they only had advantage in successive research in end techs). I didn't even once make a claim on any system from another empire. Only expansion I did was take over the territory from some fanatic purifiers that thought they could expand through me (they couldn't), and the machine empire bordering me which I declared war on to vassalize, so I got a decent sized chunk without needing to lay claims to them.

First game where I didn't deal with the claim system actually, so my influence was spent building up my empire instead.

 

[unperson]

Seems 2.2 has indirectly buffed Brarbaric Despoilers.
Because now there are a lot more pops on planets and lot more room it becomes more profitable and easier to steal pops.
The slave market also means you can sell unvanted pops that you currently have no room for.

 

[Tiny Turtle]

Being able to buy slaves and set them free within your xenophilic empire is just the most kickin' rad cool idea. Doubly so for rogue servitors, who could amass quite the zoo. Buying slaves stolen by other civs and then giving them back to the original empire could be interesting as well. Good because you're bringing people back home, bad because you're basically paying a ransom and fueling the slaver machine. Speaking of which, planetary ransoms could be awesome. Occupy a planet and then demand a tribute or you'll start leveling it and abducting the entire population. Could take years?

I'd also really like to see some of these empires and pirates using weapons with a chance of disabling ships instead of destroying them, then using armies to board and take command. Maybe double that with the ability to buy and sell ships on the market? I don't know. There's so much you can do with all these different civics but I have on idea how much work it takes to implant any of it, or how broken it would be. Fun to think about though.

 

[Surimi]

Raiding in general is much more powerful in 2.2, which is a huge buff to barbaric despoilers since you can sweep in, raid a few pops and as long as you occupy a few systems you will get a big payout at the end of the war. Also, with the economy now split between minerals and alloys, it becomes much more viable to make the despoilation CB part of your economy, since you can build an economy with lots of alloy production but low mineral output, then just steal the minerals you need to grow your planets.

Starting as barbaric despoilers in 2.2, and especially if you focus hard on strengthening your military in the early game, it's easy to get to the point where you can just reliably farm all your neighbours and end up with a huge population, a strong economy and a fleet much bigger than you should realistically have.

Megacorp as an expansion also makes me think that barbaric despoilers would be a great candidate for a similar rework into playable pirate factions.

 

[Fnordo]

I have tried some games playing Barbaric Despoilers and came to following conclusions:

• Do not declare way on neighbors as you do not want to claim emptied planets later on
• If you do declare war on them, claim the good planets and abduct pops from all other planets.
• Make sure you have a good mineral income & building speed to grant enough jobs & housing
• When declaring war to capture slaves, claim a planet system of your enemy which you will not invade. The plundering war goal is achieved way too fast and you want to make sure to capture all those pops.
• Choose the Survivor Civic as it lets you colonize all types of planets which you will need for all those slaves.
  
• Pops are not automatically assigned to their habitable worlds and assigning them manually is too much of a hassle. (I am writing this because my whole empire collapsed after reassigning 400 pops dough!)
• You may want to go down the synthetic evolution path to give all your slaves enough habitability and avoid resettlement
• Barbaric Despoilers are quite spawn sensitive and have a hard time when spawning in between Swarms, Exterminators and Ascendancies. Therefore it might be a consideration to skip the Barbaric Despoiler civic and only choose the Nihilistic Acquisition Ascension if valid targets are available. This way to heavy diplomacy penalty is also avoided and one can finish research projects in open borders.
• My autocracies always crumble in the mid game as all other factions have better ethic attractions, so i keep choosing materialist instead.
  
• I am getting problems specializing planets late game as slaves outnumber my main pops and do not fit specialist roles. This makes it necessary to unslave several of your species.

In my next games i will try to solve this problem by playing as egalitarians without slaves and see where it leads me.
I really like the mechanic & i hope it will see some more quality of life in the future.

 

[Kairos Val]

I have tried some games playing Barbaric Despoilers and came to following conclusions:

• Do not declare way on neighbors as you do not want to claim emptied planets later on
• If you do declare war on them, claim the good planets and abduct pops from all other planets.
• Make sure you have a good mineral income & building speed to grant enough jobs & housing

Good points generally, but I disagree with the "Do not declare way (war?) on neighbors" part.

According to the in-game text, despoliation has two effects:

1. Grants you 500 energy and minerals in escalating chunks based on the number of colonized systems your enemy owns, and;
2. Reduces energy and mineral income on the entire enemy empire.

The way I play BD in Le Guinn is *super* early game aggressive and alloy-hungry. The trick is making sure that you have enough navy to start winning wars against your nearest neighbors as early as possible so you can reduce their pops, mineral and energy income as early as possible, slowing them down and making up a bit for having gone all-in on military so early.

So you can declare war without claiming anything, and still get the benefit of punching their fleet in the teeth, slowing energy and mineral income, and stealing their pops. If your fleet is big enough to win the war, it's totally worth it. Once you steamroll past them make you can make them your tributaries.

I'm a fan of feudalism as the 3rd civic for BD empires so you can RP as the Khan. ^_^

In the early game I only ever claim systems if I'm trying to grab good choke points that I can build up later.

That said, I do feel that the reward for the despoliation civic is too low now given the new economy. I'm thinking that consumer goods and alloys should be seized as well, but at a reduced rate. Thinking about modding the underlying file for despoliation to grant something like 100 consumer goods and 50 alloys per colony bracket, as that feels like a balanced compensation given the new economy rules.

 

[pryr]

By my opinion Barbaric Despoilers is nice way to play tall aggressive empire. Just pump your economy with forced immigration and additional resources. At least for early game, when conquering mostly brings undeveloped planets. And slavery is not necessary for Barbaric Despoilers. Sudden immigrants will happily take any available job.

 

[Defiler99]

Question for people who played with them. How did you find this civic?
Looking for tips on civics, traits, ethos and gameplay.

When is it better to just steal some pops instead of taking territory and whole planets?

I've been enjoying them greatly. My last two games were as Barbaric Despoilers.
Of the two, I think the Spiritualist, Militarist, Xenophobe variation was stronger.

Non-Adaptive, Slow Breeders, Venerable, Charismatic. Barbaric Despoilers, Life-Seeded.
Charismatic/Repugnant no longer influences other empires opinion, and is all about Amenities.
Charismatic means you'll never need to build anything but Commercial Zones to get your amenities.
Life-Seeded gives you a giant world to load up with slaves.

Conquer vs. Raid: When you conquer a planet, you've got a period of unrest, and you're also likely dealing with a crappy AI-managed world that still has tile blockers etc etc.
Additionally, you have to pay influence to make claims, and a decent-sized enemy will have many systems that are not adjacent to you.
With raiding, you can go de-populate their capital planet without spending influence, and the new slaves end up on worlds with high stability, instantly producing useful output.

With large fleets, the raiding speed is insane; roughly one pop stolen every 10 days. I ended up restoring some ringworlds just to have places to put all the slaves.
When you get deep into the endgame and only care about specialists, you can simply sell your excess slaves on the market for a tidy profit.

Bonus:
A fun side-effect of Life-Seeded is that it's now pretty easy to cause the 'self-modified' gene-modding events to trigger. If you immediately mod them back to your primary species, the subsequent events apply to your main species. This is an easy place to pick up Strong and Fast Breeders.
By the endgame, my pops looked like: