Tips for hive mind devouring swarm?

[Eko]

I have no idea how it is balanced. You get a bit more firepower and society research, in exchange everyone want's to attack you, you can't trade and when you actually win a war and conquer a planet it's useless for 10 years and you gotta fill it up with soldiers so that it doesn't rebel....

The only way i managed to survive was to build a ♥♥♥♥ ton of defense stations and get all the defense perks and hope that not to many are gonna gang up on me.. Like first 2 guys attack you, you win the war but your fleets get halfed or smth, instantly or maybe even during the previous war 2 other attack you, or even 3 and from there it's just an endless loop...

Am not seeing something? I just don't get how it is possible to even make it to the endgame crisis let alone beat that and win

[NixBoxDone]

No, what you're seeing is what has been true for a long time: many of the ethics combinations, civics and flavour civics are there for roleplaying and to give yourself a handicap, not to be competitive.

In a hard match, devouring swarms depend entirely on snowballing. You conquer enemies as you discover them at first and just keep going, similar to fanatic purifiers and the different malicious robot government types.

Staying defensive might work, but it's really not what you should be doing. Your goal is to keep any empire that can reach you too weak to properly challenge you. The term would be "set them on fire, don't piss on them".

What that means is attack as soon as you have the advantage, take as much as you can in one or two years of combat, destroy all star ports and outposts, settle for a handful of planets, begin assimilating them while you rebuild your losses and do the same thing to the next empire.

That way you'll take them out of the picture, cost them income from star systems they built up but don't have the outpost for anymore, make them rebuild all of their star ports, ships, military stations and modules and gain planets you neither had to develope or pay to colonize yourself.

If possible you should always be at a post-war truce with several empires, picking the next strongest you can reliably defeat to pick a war with so you can destroy their fleet and make them impotent for the next 10 years.

By doing so, any empire you have a truce with not only won't have the ability to contribute to an attack on you (as such truces are enforced) but will also not be able to build up - they'll be too busy scratching together minerals to partly replace what you wrecked.

[Mr Compassionate]

I only won on Medium difficulty large map as Swarm but as far as I can tell the objective is to literally be so powerful so fast that you can kill everything. I'd reccomend building for max adaptability and capture everything you can as fast as possible.

[Briggs]

I thought about going Swarm, but with the 10 year war cool down it seems pretty annoying. Why the hell would a single minded (litterally) Swarm of hungry death stop killing (and therefore eating) for 10 years just because it's suppose to play nice with the rest of the galaxy? That really kills the feeling for me, so I have no intention of playing DS.

[NixBoxDone]

It's not a realism mechanic, it's there to stop exactly what you just said: the developers wanted to make sure you don't spend 2 weeks playing a couple of hours here and there building a galactic empire only to see it destroyed in about 15 minutes by a devouring swarm gobbling up all of your planets after they nuke your fleet.

The limited acquisition of planets coupled with the forced 10 year truce are there to allow players a chance to recover from the previous loss and make a come-back. It gives you time to retool your planets if you happened to lose most of your, say, energy credit producing planets to the enemy and have a good to fair shake at fortifying/rebuilding your military, while also giving you some time to brown-nose nearby neighbours to get a defensive treaty or carefully pick an empire to become a vassal of to save your hide.

[Briggs]

Oh, I understand why it's there, or at least the reason behind it. However, considering this is the only game I've played, for any meaningful amount of time, which does not allow for unrestricted warfare I can't just swallow it.

[NixBoxDone]

I'd say that this is a case for modding. The developers couldn't allow it because it would lead to people crying into their beer over their shiny ringworlds, so you could just mod it out for yourself instead.

That way the onlyone hurt if a devouring swarm goes out of control is you. :P

[RandomDude]

High growth rate and conquering neighbours as others have said is the best way imo. I try to rely solely on conquest for food to maximise my productivity in other areas but that can be a bit risky sometimes ;)

[Red Bat]

Devouring Swarm is easily the worst of the potential no-diplomacy civics. You do get some decent benefits, but it doesn't even come close to the massive firerate bonus and either an extra boost or psionics for Fanatical Purifiers, let alone the better selection of second civics they get. The lack of happyness or factions is actually a huge penalty, since Fanatical Purifiers tend to have high happyness anyway due to xenophobic ethics attraction and they will always have high influence with the xenophobic faction. Fanatical Purifiers also get diplomacy with their own species, although I have absolutely no idea how you'd ever expect that to happen naturally.

Determined Exterminators even stand out as much better, as while millitarily they might be slightly weaker, they get immortal leaders and easier colonization to let them blob out if they somehow fall behind. They also get diplomacy with other machine empires and synthetics, although I've yet to see an enclave spawn as a machine empire, so not much help there.

[Local Dent]

To play devouring swarm with even a hope of winning, you need to be an endgame crisis in your own way. Snowball early like Nix said or you're gonna get wiped by a federation before too long, and make sure to be swimming in minerals and research (or have a horde of corvettes ready to swamp opponents in)

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

Well.. really you have to play to your strengths.. obviously things are going to suck for you as a hivemind and especially a devouring swarm for the most part (really better off taking devouring swarm later).. keep in mind you don't just get the traits.. you get different tradition trees like the adabtion one which is one of the best civics in the game (insane for minerals if you build a lot of farms like a fanatic pascifist).

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

Originally posted by Krovoc:

I thought about going Swarm, but with the 10 year war cool down it seems pretty annoying. Why the hell would a single minded (litterally) Swarm of hungry death stop killing (and therefore eating) for 10 years just because it's suppose to play nice with the rest of the galaxy? That really kills the feeling for me, so I have no intention of playing DS.

No one said you have to declare peace.. you can just keep bombarding their planets till everything dies.

[Briggs]

Originally posted by Lady Crimson:

Well.. really you have to play to your strengths.. obviously things are going to suck for you as a hivemind and especially a devouring swarm for the most part (really better off taking devouring swarm later).. keep in mind you don't just get the traits.. you get different tradition trees like the adabtion one which is one of the best civics in the game (insane for minerals if you build a lot of farms like a fanatic pascifist).

You can't add D.Swarm later. It must be added at empire creation.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Pidgeotto:

Devouring Swarm is easily the worst of the potential no-diplomacy civics. You do get some decent benefits, but it doesn't even come close to the massive firerate bonus and either an extra boost or psionics for Fanatical Purifiers, let alone the better selection of second civics they get.

Farms that produce minerals is not something you can write off easily (especially with ability to fine-tune pops for that and all other kind of ptoduction). As for the fire rate, do your math: it's exactly the same as HP increase.

Originally posted by Krovoc:

I thought about going Swarm, but with the 10 year war cool down it seems pretty annoying.

Won't you still end up at war with your enemies if rebels join them? (seems like an exploit tho)

Besides, if anything, you're not in danger of running out of enemies - there are always xenos to eat.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

Originally posted by Pidgeotto:

Devouring Swarm is easily the worst of the potential no-diplomacy civics. You do get some decent benefits, but it doesn't even come close to the massive firerate bonus and either an extra boost or psionics for Fanatical Purifiers, let alone the better selection of second civics they get.

Farms that produce minerals is not something you can write off easily (especially with ability to fine-tune pops for that and all other kind of ptoduction). As for the fire rate, do your math: it's exactly the same as HP increase.

Originally posted by Krovoc:

I thought about going Swarm, but with the 10 year war cool down it seems pretty annoying.

Won't you still end up at war with your enemies if rebels join them? (seems like an exploit tho)

Besides, if anything, you're not in danger of running out of enemies - there are always xenos to eat.

No, with the way combat works, stacked fire rate bonuses increase survivability more than stacked hull bonuses. With over 100% increased firerate, you'll kill enemies twice as fast, which means you face half as much retaliation, and since combat is a pretty simplistic clash of numbers, a multiplicative bonus to damage ends up actually being an exponential bonus to fleet effectiveness. Hull strength just lets you tank shots a bit faster, but it's bonus is at best multiplicative. If you somehow get a +50% hull strength bonus when you've already got a +50% hull bonus, the second bonus is roughly equal to the first. If you get a 50% fire rate bonus when you already have +50% fire rate, the second bonus is multiplicatively more useful than the first due to the way combat works in this game as you are not only doing more damage, but you are taking significantly less due to reducing enemy fleet size faster.

Essentially what this means is that the more you increase fire rate, the more it outclasses hull points in usefulness.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

If you talking simplistic autoresolve, it's [total fleet HP]/[total enemy DPS]. Does not matter what multiplier you choose, ratio remains the same. All 'evil' empires can get extra fire rate and HP, decreasing efficiency of their initial bonus. Fire rate is easier to get, tho.