4.3 Thoughts vs Eater of Worlds

Overall, I like what 4.3 is doing, even though I am very sure I will not be surviving the crisis.

I survived the Khan (other side of galaxy) and took the L-Cluster and held my own as a peaceful empire. By 2450 I still was not done my last tradition tree, had just touched on repeatables, and had only ~200k fleet power filling ~1k worth of capacity.

When a wraith appeared early midgame, it was terrifying and I was not going to be able to defeat it. I just followed around repairing damage and waited it out.

The fleet changes to 4.3 feel off and overly slow at first but make fauna and pirates challenging again. Also gives great importance to bastions and I am really liking that shift. My terminal egress station even without Unyielding or EV was 75k power in an era where the strongest federation fleets against me were <50k, and it could engage those trying to sneak through the gates, which I appreciated.

But then, without warning, I was suddenly at war with the largest federation, Total War, despite carefully maintaining friendly relations with them. They were not prepared for war either and ended up losing dozens of systems and multiple colonies as I rolled through the closest. But TW against 5+ fronts is both annoying and overwhelming when fleets are now limited. They were even in other wars when it all kicked off.

I have not formed a solid opinion of 4.3, but I do have a crystal clear idea of what I think about Eater of Worlds.

**Eater of Worlds should not be in the game, at all, in its current state**

It is Genocidal without any of the Genocidal diplomatic limitation, and skipping Federation war laws is deeply flawed.

1. It should be tagged as Genocidal for relations, so that Federations start kicking them out and falls apart on opinion from within. No one wants to be in a major military alliance with a crackpot who starts randomly targeting everyone and dragging them into TW without their say or laws.

2. It needs to go to Federation vote or default to laws. If they say yes, cool, that's the game. But needs to follow established rules when other empires are involved in alliances.

3. Far too common. Deeds to attract that covenant needs stronger weight to terror bombing and purges, killing armies and killing ships. Otherwise regular non-xenophobe empires should not be catching the Eater of Worlds. Callings of building some armies and ships or setting a Claim is NOT a high enough bar. If not outright limiting to Genocidal / xenophobe empires, should at least be strongly weighted towards those not forming federations.