New civic first impressions (potential spoilers)

[Cerl]

Once again Paradox has shafted hive gestalts.

The new civic gives each empire type a benefit to go along with the penalty of 10 fewer pops and access to the skipdrive:

Normals get +15% sublight speed, +20% survey speed, and +5% anomaly discovery chance

Megacorps get +30% speed to building starbases and modules, and to upgrading the starbases, as well as +25% to resources gained from orbital stations.

Machine gestalts get 50% more insight from observing primitives, a unity bonus every time they finish a first contact, +20% first contact discovery speed, and +3 monthly unity for every primitive observation outpost.

Pretty good bonuses for each of the empire types so far, so you might think that hive gestalts might have something good as well...

Hive gestalts get +1 sensor range. +2 hyperlane detection range, and -20% cost to starbase distance construction costs. They also start with reduced intel in their home cluster...meaning you don't get any of the initial outposts in your home system already built. You have to build them ALL. It also comes with a new trait called "stargazer"

Sensor range, hyperlane detection range are merely ok in the early game, but are quickly made obsolete even before you reach midgame, and once you can build megastructures are completely useless. The new trait locks out the 'sedentary' (-1) trait. Hives are the only one with a new trait inflicted upon them by the new civic, and thus the only one to be subject to this additional trait selection restriction. The 20% distance discount does not apply to hyperlane adjacent systems, you still pay the full 75 influence to claim the system, then 135 for 2 systems away (-15), and 195 for 3 systems away (-30). Thus, the discount is nearly useless as you cannot afford to be claiming systems 2 hyperlanes away in the early game.

Overall, I'd rank the hive civic at 1 out of 10. Weak and mostly useless benefits that in no way compensate for the early game penalties. Normals get faster travel which is useful the entire game, better chance at survey special bonuses and events, and faster surveying. Megacorps get a massive economy boost and the ability to throw up their defenses a lot faster at need. Machines get a potentially huge boost to overall unity production which could fund more edicts. How about showing some love to the hives, Paradox? Make the 20% discount apply to hyperlane adjacent systems as well at the very least. Give them a bonus to outpost construction speed and/or reduction in outpost cost. Plenty of other things that could have been done as well. In short, quit shafting Hives on every update!

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Cerl:

They also start with reduced intel in their home cluster...meaning you don't get any of the initial outposts in your home system already built. You have to build them ALL.

You've misunderstood the tooltip. Your "home cluster" is not your initial star system, it's the stars around your starting position. You start with visibility on everything in a 3-jump radius.

Having to build your mining and research stations (they're not "outposts") is something that is part of ALL new Origins and Civics.

Originally posted by Cerl:

It also comes with a new trait called "stargazer"

A Trait that gives 25%(!) Growth from Immigration and 10% Habitability, along with a resettlement cost reduction. That's 3 trait points at no cost. Interesting that you failed to mention that.

Overall, you should make sure you actually understand what you're talking about before ranting about nonsense.

[Cerl]

Yes, I missed mentioning what Stargazer actually does for you, and the effects it gives are mostly minor things few people would bother taking at the start of a game, and which are mostly irrelevant by midgame. That doesn't change the fact that the rest of the Hive "bonuses" are complete garbage compared to everyone else, or that pretty much every "bonus" the Hive gets from the civic is made completely obsolete by midgame, unlike everyone else. The "immigration" bonus adds very little pop growth for a gestalt, even once you can assimilate and have migration treaties. The hab bonus is nice, but made completely useless by terraforming and the various hab boosting techs. By the time you're doing much manual resettlement, the cost for that is usually negligible. The only truly GOOD thing about that trait, it doesn't take up a trait pick slot.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Cerl:

Yes, I missed mentioning what Stargazer actually does for you, and the effects it gives are mostly minor things few people would bother taking at the start of a game, and which are mostly irrelevant by midgame. That doesn't change the fact that the rest of the Hive "bonuses" are complete garbage compared to everyone else

10% Habitability are really good if you get them for free. Combined with the other bonuses, there is an obvious strategy, which is to forward jump to some choke points, expand fast and wide and settle everything you can find. Combine it with Slingshot to the Stars and you have 95% cost reduction from distance, which essentially allows you to build outposts wherever you want as long as you can reach it.

Growth from Immigration and additional Habitability play exactly into that playstyle.

Probably not anywhere near meta-level of good, but it does provide a coherent and unique playstyle.

Originally posted by Cerl:

The "immigration" bonus adds very little pop growth for a gestalt, even once you can assimilate and have migration treaties.

That's not true at all if do it properly. You can easily have a constant stream of immigration from your large plants towards your new planets, especially if you're willing to do some Maintenance Drone micro to increase/reduce immigration pull selectively.

This does not amount to a large difference overall, but it is something.

Originally posted by Cerl:

The hab bonus is nice, but made completely useless by terraforming and the various hab boosting techs.

By the time these become available, the habitability will have had plenty of time doing work for you, an it's generally a waste of energy to do normal terraforming on non-core planets. While the bonus will eventually stop being relevant, its snowballing effect continues until the very end of the game.

Also, most of the effects of the version for default and machine empires stop being relevant by the midgame as well.