a special colossus weapon should be added at the last level of the crisis named "asset liquidator" that turns all pops, buildings and districts on an enemy planet in to energy credits

please add in in the description: descriptions of each crisis bonus, so that the player knows what to expect (skipping events, etc.)

Hi. I suggest adding a building that grants a 1% trade value bonus for each branch office. I would make it available at the first level so that you can scale with it better. It would give an extra incentive to create more branch offices, especially for trade builds (my beloved).

On a side note, the suggestion from "Vietnam" is very cool. The conversion rate would have to be around, I don't know, 500 EC per pop? (And for more fun, when the planet is "cracked," play a register sound.)

It can be a bit too difficult to take down the AI when they select this trait (or I am just bad at the game). I had an empire start the consolidation process around 135 years into the game, complete opposite side of the galaxy as me. The progress filled around 4.5 per month, giving me a little less than 20 years to either wipe the empire completely off the map or lose the game. I think my biggest issue with it is that I didn't know they were crisis seeking until the event to consolidate the market begun, and by then it was too late.

There's no Casus Belli given to fight the empire, so if you're playing as a Fanatic Pacifist you just lose the game. AI also doesn't get enough of an opinion debuff on the crisis empire, the AI in my game just hid behind 3 defensive packs with other empire so no one else could stop them. Taking their planets or capital during the war did nothing to slow the progress down either.

I've only played one game with this on, so I might have just gotten unlucky. I also haven't taken the trait myself, so do with that information what you will. Just sharing my experience with the AI taking it and maybe if others are in the same boat I am it can be tweaked a little bit to be more fair.

The experience of fighting the Monopolist crisis is definitely something I am looking for feedback on. I added the Consumer Interest total war Casus Belli in yesterdays patch to allow empires that use the Prioritise Break Up situation approach a bigger opportunity to fight back. I'm also looking at adding notifications for when you gain access to the Monopolist Partner Trade Policy.

I have also realised that the situation can finish much quicker than I initially thought, especially if you have to break diplomatic ties with the Monopolist since this leaves you with a 10 year truce. I am planning a rework to how the situation progress works but that might take a while to finish.

I'm open to any suggestions for ways to uncover a Monopolist Empire earlier or on new ways to fight back and slow them down once they reach tier 5.

I dunno how present crisis reactions are for the other nations. I definitely suggest things happening in the wider galaxy that has a writing vibe of "What, who is blowing up our market." while keeping the megacorp doing the crisis writing on the "This will totally work" vibe. As crisis level increases having chances for markets to just implode (ruining production for a good while) on high share worlds should be a good signal that things are happening for opponent empires, though I'd have some of these events happen on your own with flavor text that makes it clear the guys reporting the market crash drank the economics koolaid and thinks capitalism always works and is ideal. Easy space to make jokes about irrational markets historical (Tulips) and current (NFTs). Maybe a situation spawns for opponent empires that requires social science to do paperwork to find where the errors originated to signal to people that that someone is going this path.

After all we need a crisis to do absurd stuff to get the vibe through, gotta have "on par" threats to blowing up stars, lol. Which on that note...

Gotta have some events that are like the cosmosgenisis crisis, like maybe even a direct equivalent to the changing the laws of reality style of galaxy impact. Just make it a social research, named like "Market manipulation" and flavor everything around irrational market behavior, trade lines backing up, deliveries that were supposed to be food getting changed out for mouthwash, causing intense problems that would prompt reactions.

Maybe high cost quality of living like Shared burdens and utopian abundance are very resistant and you get special event variants for that. Let commie empires be resistant, that'd be very in theme and would give empires on earlier crisis stages some answers at a policy level to try and cope before it gets out of hand.

...

Also maybe each step of the crisis should give the megacorp way more max energy credit/money storage, I think that is well into theme.

Besides some broader things, a lot of the design for this crisis will probably have to change with the upcoming 4.0 update, so besides deciding on events balancing is sorta moot until it lands. I really like the idea of this mod though, I wish you luck working on it. :)

Last crisis level should remove loyalty penalty for divided patronage on subjects or give overall loyalty bonus so that if the situation succeeds, breaking off via independence would throw whoever attempted so into a war with the whole galaxy because all the ai subject empires are loyal and won't want to help you break off. Or equivalent mechanic.

Maybe try to push AI for some alternative buffs ? Make it attempt to get commercial pact with every empire and have no upkeep for them. Build up more fleets to push for hostile takeover war or possibly have some kind of extra value for the situation. Like count total branch offices divided by 100 for example and add that to the progress bar for only AIs.

AIs that are trying to prevent them from succeding do it too well, the progression isn't just stuck, they have quite the advantage in keeping them from progressing. Whenever situtation passes to second stage, they swarm them with espionage to decrease the progress, then they even get a break until they do it again.

Domestic Business Priority 2 GC resolution seems to decrease progress by -40% while it says the 1st one also decreases progress by -20%, I'm not sure whether they stack (but it looks so) or are each -20%. Would say each of the resolutions should be -20% for a total of -60%. Not like I can force you to do so, but looking at it, the balance feels like Antitrust (-50%), and -60% total (currently with missing Domestic 3) should be the limit resolution-wise.

Possibly reduce espionage buff/debuff to 1 instead of 2, the sabotage mission feels like it passes in less than half a year since start.

I suggest this from having AI as crisis, not playing it.

Splendid work how the whole system works though, but the AI is missing the most crucial weapon, that makes it impossible for them to succeed.

Hey, I have a few suggestions, though some of these might just be straight up impossible to mod in, idk I haven't really made any mods for this game.

1.) I think that the "Prosperity Cruiser" perk should also be able to make you build branch offices on other megacorps' planets.
2.) I've noticed you don't do much with shares during the consolidation situation (yeah, you use it for branch office buildings but that's only a couple hundred and they make it back very fast), so maybe you could add a perk to tier V which replaces the influence requirement for opening branch offices the "classical" way to using shares instead.
3.) This might be because of my other mods or maybe this would be different on higher difficulties, but I've noticed that the AI didn't put up a fight AT ALL. Like, they didn't even try to propose a single one of the emergency market regulation resolutions or anything. Not sure how to fix this, or if this even needs a fix, but maybe just make the weight the AI has for proposing and supporting those resolutions way higher?
4.) Maybe the amount of progress a regional market administration adds to the situation should be dependent on empire size or economic score? Currently, getting a majority share in small, single planet empires is way easier than large empires, yet they contribute the same to the situation, which doesn't make much sense neither logic-wise neither balance-wise.

Again, some of these might be impossible to implement, in which case sorry for wasting your time, but I really loved playing with this mod and I wanted to share some of the ideas I had!

If you could find a way to build in a effect (possibly in the first level of the crisis) to stop a Subsidiary from becoming a Protectorate inside this mod that would be cool otherwise I suggest that you change the crisis progression from being only Subsidiary's to both, that would work much better.

I love the theme that the Subsidiary gave progression but in my game it felt bad to be losing those free annual points because my vassals got too weak.

I have tried being the monopolist and also tried beating the AI monopolist, and I have a few questions/suggestions in regards to AI in this:
-Apart from the negative opinion modifier (for picking the crisis perk), could there be like additional events like others suggested (maybe weird planet modifiers or stuff from higher crisis level) or if its too much (especially if it might cause event overrides with other mods), just label the empire as some market-flavored text (like idk "Exclusive Shareholders"?)

-Also, is there any specific weights to the Ascension perk? Because I had several megacorps in my "beating the AI" and found so far maybe its only their galaxy control? (how much of the galaxy they control)
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3472841909

-I'm not sure if I should have dealt with this differently, but the monopolist joined a federation (a hegemony I think force spawned in by me) and they ended up being a hindrance as they would keep sending mercenary fleets through gateways after I annihilated most of their normal fleets (can see now why people limit habitats, gateways and no mercenaries for AI...) and while I stopped them with the "consumer interest" war type, the war did not end as the other empires were still considered "at war" with me
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3472842056

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3472871949
(edit to add screenshot of the empires with casus beili...that ended up aiding the monopolist empire)

I do want to add additional events around the actions of a Monopolist empire but I'm currently waiting for 4.0 to come out to see what changes I need to make to the mod.

The base AI weight for the ascension perk is the same as the other crisis paths but it is increased based on the number of subsidiaries and commercial pacts an empire has, if the empire is authoritarian or the leader of a trade league.
The AI are prevented from taking the path if there is already another empire pursuing it, if they are egalitarian or they have the Space Ranchers civic.

The Consumer Interest war goal is based on the Payback war goal, though I will admit I overlooked the inability to end the war once the Monopolist was dealt with if it had allies. I will see if I can get the war to end if the Monopolist is defeated.