Hive Mind too hard

[mishai]

Tryed this "new" payd DLC option several times and its always same. Everyone around me gang up agaist me as fast as they can and wipe me out. Hive advantages are nothing compared to 2-3 empires gang up in early game year 20-30. Even damn pacifist go berserk on sight... Don't take me wrong I like challenge, spend almost 300 hours in this game, but losse a game in 60 minutes is not fun.

[kbrayaquar7]

Gestalt Consciousnesses are harder. As nobody trusts them (non-devouring swarm hiveminds are at -30 relations right off the bat. Devouring Swarms are -1000. On the synthetic side, Driven Assmilators are -100 I think, and Determined Exterminators are, again, -1000). Be very skilled if you want to play them. of the 4, Hiveminds/Devouring Swarms are the hardest of the 4, as they have the fewest benefits to outweigh their disadvantages. But they ARE the ttoughest to play. As the Boy Scouts would say, "Be Prepared." I find them worth it though. Their difficulty makes them fun.

[Army Pea]

Take the charismatic trait and everyone will LOVE you

[kbrayaquar7]

Well not quite. The hivemind is -30%, charismatic is +20%... you still end up at -10%. But it's only -10%. Either way, if you're cooking with hivemind, be prepared to handle the heat.

[mishai]

Originally posted by kbrayaquar7:

Gestalt Consciousnesses are harder. As nobody trusts them (non-devouring swarm hiveminds are at -30 relations right off the bat. Devouring Swarms are -1000. On the synthetic side, Driven Assmilators are -100 I think, and Determined Exterminators are, again, -1000). Be very skilled if you want to play them. of the 4, Hiveminds/Devouring Swarms are the hardest of the 4, as they have the fewest benefits to outweigh their disadvantages. But they ARE the ttoughest to play. As the Boy Scouts would say, "Be Prepared." I find them worth it though. Their difficulty makes them fun.

without devouring swarm hive mind seems pointles because have no happy benefits or faction benefits nor robots or psy stuff... so yep only worth doing is devour swarm and as I sayd ..it seems too hard compared to bonuses it offers... way bigger naval capacity would be handy cus it is always 2-3 vs 1.

[kbrayaquar7]

That's what the subspace ephapse civic is for.

[GrandMajora]

By their very nature, Hive Minds aren't really designed to play nice with others.

Unless you take the civic (driven assimilators) / ascension path (genetic modification) that allows you to assimilate people into your hive mind, your empire doesn't tolerate the presence of other sentient life forms. Your citizens will automatically seek to purge them if you don't tell them to do otherwise, and your citizens will begin dying if separated from the collective. This makes migration agreements impossible.

However, the Hive Mind empire gets a lot of benefits that make them a good choice for conquest themed empires. They have a bonus to reproduction that cancels out the Slow Breeder flaw, which means you can take it for a free perk point. And they get a bonus to military damage. If you select perks or civics that further increase these bonuses, you can have one of the fastest growing empires in the game. Which is probably why the other empires think it's a good idea to take you down early.

[mishai]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

By their very nature, Hive Minds aren't really designed to play nice with others.

Unless you take the civic (driven assimilators) / ascension path (genetic modification) that allows you to assimilate people into your hive mind, your empire doesn't tolerate the presence of other sentient life forms. Your citizens will automatically seek to purge them if you don't tell them to do otherwise, and your citizens will begin dying if separated from the collective. This makes migration agreements impossible.

However, the Hive Mind empire gets a lot of benefits that make them a good choice for conquest themed empires. They have a bonus to reproduction that cancels out the Slow Breeder flaw, which means you can take it for a free perk point. And they get a bonus to military damage. If you select perks or civics that further increase these bonuses, you can have one of the fastest growing empires in the game. Which is probably why the other empires think it's a good idea to take you down early.

Thats looks nice on paper, but never worked for me.
1) Grow bonus, Planet with 3 dferent races grows way faster.
2) Consume way, You as Swarm don't take other pop, you just get food stock blocking any valuable resources for 10+years which makes any conquered planets almost useless for seriouse period of time and then you have to repopulate them. Compared to others, which just take planet, deal with unrest fullfill via migration and go on with 100% efficency in few years, Hive way is way slower process.
3) Army bonus...honestly I never felt any need of that, defensive forfces are very easy to overcome once the planet is bombarded so such bonus seems pointless to me.

I would love to have the ZERG feeling of consuming galaxy, but after 6 tryes in row 5losses within hour and one semi succes in last try where I get totaly lucky I really don't feel any advantage agaist AI on very hard difficulty. While with other setups I'm fine and gets my empire stronger way faster...

At the end it felt more like lacking other options and features with no factions, diplomacy, robots just to have bit more ships and grow bonus. Maybe somebody felt better playin them, but I not:(