Is there any reason to pick barbaric despoilers other than RP?

[Sledjer]

I get that it was never high tier, but at least you could justify it before as a way to get adaptability tradition without being a total war civilization. Now though, it seems like all you get is a free ascension perk, which sounds like a bad deal considering you get 8 ascension perks and only 3 civics. Am I missing something? Or has it dropped from mediocre to just straight bad?

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

i don't play stellaris in mp but knowing how pop raiding works i imagine this civic to be a pain in the a*# as it forces the losing player to patiently idle while being spammed with notifications about abductions

and then there is that -20% while the truce lasts; basically you not just knock someone down and are looking forward to the next round after the truce ends but you also make sure that he's crippled and stays down

 

[Cry_Havok]

You get 8 ascesension perks, but also at least half your slots are must-have things, and nihilistic aquisitions is a pretty weak perk. Despoilers might have lost a bit of its niche, but also civics are a bit more balanced that you feel less hamstrung giving one up.

It probably doesn't need to be a locked civic though

 

[Fenris_SE]

I like it for RP purposes and it does free up an ascension perk if you were considering nihilistic acquisition as a possible option. I know a lot of people call both of those worthless, but I find with a couple of fleets moving around to different planets I've been able to steal close to a 100 pops before the war ended.

That said I rarely take it anymore. I can't count the number of times I've taken it and every empire near me is a hive mind. Other times when there are nearby possible targets their habitability would be so low as to make them worthless and I've been unlucky, or researched the wrong tech to get to unlock gaia worlds. I suppose with the Voidborne origin that wouldn't be a problem, I just can't force myself to like habitats no matter how much I try.

 

[Franton]

Haven't actually tried the civic, but just tried out Raiding Bombardment using the Perk (picked it up late), and in about 12 years of war with about two thirds of the galaxy (including 2 FEs) I now have +2000 pops! It was quite a strain to my economy to provide enough jobs and move all these pops to the right planets - next time I'll make sure to pick up that perk earlier, if not going for Despoilers off the bat.

P.S.: here are two screenshots taken early in the galactic war, and ten years later:

If I were to take the perk earlier, I'd spread out the wars more, so I have an easier time to move the abducted pops around - these ten years drained my coffers by 120K energy and a similar amount of minerals - in case of the latter you can't see it from the numbers as I traded >60K from my allies. However, my fleet increased by 50% in numbers and 100% in fleet power, and my Research output doubled.

 

[Ryika]

Pretty much an RP pick in my opinion.

Raiding is generally weaker than just conquering, but I can see the appeal of staying somewhat local and just dragging the pops back home in the long term. However, early on that's almost certainly not what you want to do. If the option is to conquer the first neighbor or to abduct their pops, I'll always go for conquest to double not only my pops, but also my Lebensraum, and gain access to the established infrastructure and extra growth that comes with it.

So essentially, the Civic does nothing during most of the early game, aside from lowering everybody's opinion and making it more likely that they'll ally against you. I'd much rather have an economic Civic that gets the snowball going and then pick Nihilisitic Acquisition when it starts making sense.

 

[Incompetent]

Pretty much an RP pick in my opinion.

Raiding is generally weaker than just conquering, but I can see the appeal of staying somewhat local and just dragging the pops back home in the long term. However, early on that's almost certainly not what you want to do. If the option is to conquer the first neighbor or to abduct their pops, I'll always go for conquest to double not only my pops, but also my Lebensraum, and gain access to the established infrastructure and extra growth that comes with it.

So essentially, the Civic does nothing during most of the early game, aside from lowering everybody's opinion and making it more likely that they'll ally against you. I'd much rather have an economic Civic that gets the snowball going and then pick Nihilisitic Acquisition when it starts making sense.

Conquering is definitely better if you have a total war CB. If you don't though, the cost of claims, the politics of CBs and the requirements to make the AI surrender can get in the way, especially if the target is involved in other wars; this last one is a big issue if you play with Starnet AI for example, because the galaxy quickly becomes a mess of wars and mixed occupations. Raiding on the other hand starts giving pops a few months after you park your ships over their planets, regardless of what is happening at the formal diplomatic level. So I think there are situational arguments for it.

From a less minmax and more "how it feels to play" perspective, early on you're desperate for established colonies and infrastructure, so taking another empire's homeworld feels much better than just stealing their pops, but after a while it just gets tedious to have so many colonies and to keep acquiring new ones that are either sparsely populated (and will realistically never have a large population) or have a big population that needs to be stabilized and the colony that needs to be redesigned to make it somewhat efficient. Gradually feeding pops into your existing colonies can feel more satisfying (provided you have enough colonies to start with that it really is gradual; you don't want to funnel pops so fast that your ability to add districts/buildings gets overwhelmed).

None of this is a particularly good case for taking a locked civic instead of a single AP though. Despoilation CB really needs to be made powerful enough to justify the civic.

 

[Franton]

the cost of claims

I've found that it's easiest to claim some cheap system off the path and then make sure to not conquer it, so you can make repeated use of it as a CB.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I get that it was never high tier, but at least you could justify it before as a way to get adaptability tradition without being a total war civilization. Now though, it seems like all you get is a free ascension perk, which sounds like a bad deal considering you get 8 ascension perks and only 3 civics. Am I missing something? Or has it dropped from mediocre to just straight bad?

Ascension perks are generally far stronger than civics, and if you aren't going wide-conquest Nihilistic Acquisition is one of the strongest. +1 Ascension Perk > 1 civic is all it needs to be.

 

[blahmaster6k]

Conquering is definitely better if you have a total war CB. If you don't though, the cost of claims, the politics of CBs and the requirements to make the AI surrender can get in the way, especially if the target is involved in other wars; this last one is a big issue if you play with Starnet AI for example, because the galaxy quickly becomes a mess of wars and mixed occupations. Raiding on the other hand starts giving pops a few months after you park your ships over their planets, regardless of what is happening at the formal diplomatic level. So I think there are situational arguments for it.

From a less minmax and more "how it feels to play" perspective, early on you're desperate for established colonies and infrastructure, so taking another empire's homeworld feels much better than just stealing their pops, but after a while it just gets tedious to have so many colonies and to keep acquiring new ones that are either sparsely populated (and will realistically never have a large population) or have a big population that needs to be stabilized and the colony that needs to be redesigned to make it somewhat efficient. Gradually feeding pops into your existing colonies can feel more satisfying (provided you have enough colonies to start with that it really is gradual; you don't want to funnel pops so fast that your ability to add districts/buildings gets overwhelmed).

None of this is a particularly good case for taking a locked civic instead of a single AP though. Despoilation CB really needs to be made powerful enough to justify the civic

If you don't have a total war CB, it's still better to claim the capital, vassalize, then integrate than it is to raid pops.

 

[Franton]

If you don't have a total war CB, it's still better to claim the capital, vassalize, then integrate than it is to raid pops.

The difference is that if you raid them down to ~15 pops per planet, they'll grow back very fast, and can be raided for more. If you integrate then, it'll cost a lot of influence, and pop growth essentially stops. That, and raiding costs at most the amount of claiming one cheap system, so you can use the remaining influence to build more ECUs, Ring Worlds, and even habitats, to house all the abducted pops.

Or, raid their planets down to 2 pops (that's the minimum although the tooltip says 1), and then vassalize and integrate them at a much lower cost: most of the influence cost typically comes from pops.

 

[Dragatus]

It doesn't do you any good in MP, but the plunder CB has -25 surrender acceptance compared to -100 for most CBs, which allows you to win vs the AI much faster than normal. And it'll cripple their economy, slowing down post-war recovery. So you can grab their capital and subjugate them with less effort, while also having the option to steal their pops during a humiliation war.