Progenitor Hive Advanced Tips

[Yhvh10]

So I've been wanting to try something new. And I love the idea of creating a massive and powerful Superhive with tons of independent 'hives'. Slowly ever pushing and expanding into the Galaxy. The Problem is... how?

Don't get me wrong. I understand the basics, though I am pretty used to playing Xenophobe. And with the Progenitor Hives I've played recently, I've managed to do... okay-ish? But I admit, I am not doing that good. So I'd like some tips.

Expansion is horrible, as I am ALWAYS low on Influence. Maybe I'm just spoiled with my Fan. Xenophobe 35 or 47 Influence starbase building costs, but the 75 Influence eats me alive. Which I find so weird that Influence is a mechanic for a hive mind, but I guess it makes sense for balancing. Still, 75 is horrible! And when I'm not low because of my 75 influence starbases, claiming systems takes the rest. The result is a super slow early and late expansion process that grinds to a solid halt after 2300.

Lack of early expansion really ends up hurting me alot as for some reason I cannot for the life of me successfully compete in the economy or even military of the other powers. Economically, I am always weak using the same strats that wins me easily with a Xenophobe-Militarist normal empire. I do what I think is right. Early getting Mineral world, Generator World, Agri world. I spam research buildings on my homeworld and then try and seize other worlds, but it just doesnt work.

As for getting vassals, due to never actually gaining a complete and total advantage over the AI, managing to wage vassalage wars is few and far in-between. And even when I do get the option, it sucks! I have to conquer every single participant in their entirety. Its part of the reason I stopped my Payback game. I had to conquer EVERYTHING! And a little tiny vassal on the literal other side of the galaxy, made it so they wouldnt capitulate.

Anyways, I dont know how to play hives, I will admit that. I mainly go with Ascetic and either Strength of Legions or Subspace Ephasis. I also play on Captain with the scaling difficulty set to Mid-Game. Any help would be appreciated.

[cswiger]

You have to be prudent about expansion with the normal 75 influence cost and race for chokepoints, rather than simply grabbing everything you see as a Xenophobe. Fill in unclaimed inner systems once your borders are established.

Hive-minds have a bonus to pop growth. If you can't obtain sufficient planets, get the tech and build habs once you no longer have systems to expand to. Or a ring-world later on.

Ascetic is fine, but keeping up with amenities is usually not a problem.
Strength of Legions is D-tier and next to useless.

Subspace Ephasis is awesome. So keep this and try One Mind or Subsumed Will. Getting more unity will allow you to get traditions faster, which can let you improve your influence income sooner. Getting +8 influence or +13 with the right edict will speed expansion.

As for your species, try Hive Minded / Intelligent / Rapid Breeders / Unruly. Spend the points to remove Unruly once your empire has grown enough that the extra pop costs matter.

[Yhvh10]

Originally posted by cswiger:

You have to be prudent about expansion with the normal 75 influence cost and race for chokepoints, rather than simply grabbing everything you see as a Xenophobe. Fill in unclaimed inner systems once your borders are established.

Hive-minds have a bonus to pop growth. If you can't obtain sufficient planets, get the tech and build habs once you no longer have systems to expand to. Or a ring-world later on.

Ascetic is fine, but keeping up with amenities is usually not a problem.
Strength of Legions is D-tier and next to useless.

Subspace Ephasis is awesome. So keep this and try One Mind or Subsumed Will. Getting more unity will allow you to get traditions faster, which can let you improve your influence income sooner. Getting +8 influence or +13 with the right edict will speed expansion.

As for your species, try Hive Minded / Intelligent / Rapid Breeders / Unruly. Spend the points to remove Unruly once your empire has grown enough that the extra pop costs matter.

Thanks for the reply!

So ditch Strength of Legions and Ascetic and go to One Mind and Subsumed Will. Work on getting more influence through Edicts and Traditions with additional unity.

[Soul in Shadow]

Don't forget about budding off sub-hives. While there is an influence cost, the fact that they can be permitted to expand on their own means that it is cheaper to let them back-fill the empty areas over all. There is also the increased influence gain per subject to consider, not to mention the +2 to organic pop assembly from one of the overlord buildings. You can always integrate them later if you want the systems back.

Turn one or two into bulwarks and you can have them join you in subjugation wars by adjusting their vassal contracts or forming a federation, such as a Hegemony, which overrides the join overlord/vassal wars setting. Seeing as you can use the contracts to force vassals to vote with you, you will have complete control over the federation from the get go.

[ScreamCon]

In my experience hive minds don't compete with regular empires ethic boosts. Regular empires have 6 direction of ethics they can lean on. Also hive minds don't have trade value and can't sell relics for money. Making them weaker in the early years, but if you can survive, and maximise efficiency of your hive jobs their much more efficient then regular empires.

Rather their bonus is the fact that they have many resource production jobs. Every district gives 3 instead of 2. Have you tried hive mind on the size 30 ocean start? Its pretty good. I compared regular empires resource production builds on the ocean world start also. The authoritarians resource boost.

Now hive empires I'm not sure if they can build eccumonopolis. So I don't think they can consolidate industry as good late game. You might be able to take them though :D

Slavers of regular empires can use slaves for an endless amount of amenities, hives have finite amenity production more so. But, you definitely can get enough for a world to max its amenity bonus. Since amenity production uses up so many drones with hivemind you want to get pop traits that boost amenity production.

The biggest thing is if you can negate the need for unity and amenity jobs more so hives are pretty awesome capacity wise. Of course, slavers on a megacorp also compete so its situational and how you want to play.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by ScreamCon:

Slavers of regular empires can use slaves for an endless amount of amenities, hives have finite amenity production more so. But, you definitely can get enough for a world to max its amenity bonus. Since amenity production uses up so many drones with hivemind you want to get pop traits that boost amenity production.

^
This, specially this.

Hiveminds are "supposed" to have a simpler economy and less micromanagement, but in practice it's the complete opposite.

Every civ needs to micro away from clerk jobs, as they suck.

Well, hiveminds have managed to create a job that's far worse than a clerk, those maintenance drops are quite literally a pop tax, dead jobs that don't really do anything at all, so you'll want to stack as many amenity bonuses as possible, get the one from your species, get the one from your civics, and rush as your very first tradition Synchronicity just to get the +2 amenity bonus from synapse drones, then you can ignore the rest of the tree and get whatever else you wanted as normal.

If you can limit, or even reduce to zero, the number of maintenance drones in your worlds your economy will get much stronger.

Other than that it is as they said, get the choke points, fill the rest of the worlds eventually, enjoy the fact that hiveminds have higher reproduction speed and colonize absolutely everything, but don't just develop every planet, only focus on the good ones, one good factory world, one good farm world, one good mineral world, one good generator world, etc... Only ever create another specialized world when the previous one is filled up, and just let the rest of your underdeveloped worlds breed new drones for you with no available jobs other than pop assembly and synapse drone(s) as needed.

As said above, habitats are also very good for this strategy, having a ton of breeding grounds for habitats can be very useful, even as their smallest versions.

I haven't played a non-DE progenitor hive, but one thing other empires can do is releasing small vassals with a ton of habitable worlds/habitats to colonize, then re-absorbing them decades later after they have grown many pops for you, can they do it as well? That's one way to peacefully bypass the pop growth nerfs.

Edit: And yes, manually set every world to allow for 0 maintenance drones, only ever change this when it's absolutely necessarily, and never just allow all of them.

[Lucifearus]

hi i play a lot, and i play progenitor hive a lot. i can teach you how to always have a very good start or play-style run with them with a few simple steps tbh. most people here are saying generic stuff thats nice but not very experienced

1. earlygame expand fast and wide, u want more than 1 sector immediately as proginitor, secure all choke points IMMEDIATELY and build progenitor overlooks and defenses so theyre beefy. sometimes the ai hates hives and attacks u out of spite etc.

2. once u have multiple sectors, balance ur econ out and immediately designate ur lesser sector as a vassal. set an envoy to the vassal for relations and add a overlord army garrison building to increase loyalty, later change contract so theyre a bulwark or rsearch nerd for u

3. amenities and pop growth are really good, covered, so to boost your economy find pre ftl worlds early, invade ones with decent pop, immediately cancel the purge on them and instead set their species rights as slaves, this will make them permanent livestock that produces HUGE food income for you. If youre using a civic like codyseptic, which is rather strong for taming biological life, they generally upkeep HEAVY amounts of food, as well as your pop growth as a hive. later enable nutritional benefit edict for even more growth on top of budding / progenitor hive building . hive also has very good alloy and tech rush early so make use of that. Your largest resource rush will definitely be energy and food, but alloy and tech are very easy to stack and needed. Save 10k energy at least per planet once you tech rush up to the hive planet ascension

4. if you're on gand admiral difficulty especially, you need to get supremacy or unyeilding like second or third tradition, ASAP to build proper defenses. You also dont have access to commercial pacts or mercs, so keeping that in mind you NEED to have large fleets growing and on standby.

5. the more advanced part, as for ship building, as a prog hive ur prob best going torpedo cruiser spam for this meta like most builds, but id probably install artillery AI computers or further distance AI computers into your overseer ship models in order to prevent them from dying early in battles which can and WILL cripple your fleet

6. All your leaders will passively level up over time, therefore you do want to rapidly employ them to their positions, even if they sit idle (fleets for example) because they will level and gain traits passively, which is huge on admirals and scientists or gov

[cswiger]

Originally posted by ScreamCon:

Also hive minds don't have trade value and can't sell relics for money.

Well-managed trade can be a benefit, but not having trade means you don't need to deal with piracy. The biggest downside is that hive-minds usually don't win the competition to host the galactic market.

Now hive empires I'm not sure if they can build eccumonopolis. So I don't think they can consolidate industry as good late game. You might be able to take them though :D

No, no ecu's for hive-minds-- their upgrade is the hive world, which competes with Gaia worlds. You can colonize relic worlds just fine and use those as-is for research and/or rare resource production, or take an ecu from someone else as you noted.

Yeah, your alloy production won't be as strong. But you can go for industrial habs once you have the tech and do OK....

Slavers of regular empires can use slaves for an endless amount of amenities, hives have finite amenity production more so. But, you definitely can get enough for a world to max its amenity bonus. Since amenity production uses up so many drones with hivemind you want to get pop traits that boost amenity production.

You don't really need to boost amenities.

If you terraform worlds to the hive world, then each housing district gets +6 housing, which gives you a huge population and you can easily generate a surplus of amenities if you don't have anything better for your drones to do.

[Half Phased]

For a progenitor hive, the best civics are ascetic and subspace ephapse.

Ascetic is just good, all round, the reduction in amenities usage is essential, especially early game as you won’t have any bonuses to amentity production or alternate sources, so reducing your consumption early game is critical. The +5% habitability early game is also great, with the adaptive trait, your starting habitability planets are 95%, same type is 75% and others are 35%, which is a major leg up on biologicals.

Subspace ephapse I’d list as essential, as it gets you more progenitor corvettes to act as tugs and, crucially, partly counters your non-progenitor ship in system penalties on movement speed, meaning that your construction ships don’t need tugs, allowing you to put all your corvettes into being tugs for science ships instead.

Influence wise, build a navy. Ship count is what matters for force projection, not power, so 18 corvettes in your homesystem absolutely crippled by penalties still produce as much influence as normal corvettes. And as an added bonus, once a offspring ship arrives in system, they become extremely powerful, again. If you picked ascetic as a civic, the extra drones you don’t need to be maintenance drones can be used to boost early game alloy production to pull this off.

On the flip side of “hives don’t have trade”, they have orbital solar panels, which are far better early game. A hive’s early game economy can easily be sustained off of orbital solar panels and hydroponics bays. But for a progenitor hive, anchorages are often better to get the extra offspring ships to act as tugs.

I do also recommend opening prosperity tradition tree first, before getting the synchronicity boost. You start the game with 4 synapse drones on your capital, which would generate the same amenities as 2 maintenance drones. Meanwhile, prosperity boosts orbital mining by 20%, reduces building upkeep by 10%, increases complex drone output by 5% and reduces job upkeep by 5%. The finisher is +5 stability and an ascension perk slot, which is either technological ascendancy (because of course) or one vision, which boosts further unity gain and reduces amenity usage (see a pattern?)

After that, then open up synchronicity to get the synapse drone bonus is generally best, as by that point you’ll have enough synapse drones for it be worthwhile.

But stacking amenity consumption decreases means that hives can get down to 0.65 amenities per pop, or 2/3rds, which is better than any other empire type and with their synchronicity perk, they can completely disregard their maintenance drones, making them arguably better than regular empires as their unity gain becomes their amenities as well (except planets specialised into research.)

Also, as a progenitor hive, hire your admirals and generals early and assign them to fleets and armies. Since they auto-level up, an early war (year 10-20) is far more viable, as a level 5 admiral with progenitor hive buffs is +20% fire rate, +5% evade, +5 chance to hit, +25% sublight speed (you did take subspace ephapse, right?) before traits. Which is almost unassailable. If you’re on the defence, add +10% to all of of those stats, as you should have the starbase building instead. Even fanatic militarists struggle to match those bonuses to ship performance.

Edit: as a final note, whatever vassals you do get, beyond the core 3 of scholarium, prospectorium and bulwark, spam the off-shoot hive building on them, along with the overlord propagandist building, and laugh in the insane pop assembly you can reach on your homeworld. 20 pop assembly a month isn’t even that hard.

[Yhvh10]

Wow! Thank you all for the tips!

Originally posted by ScreamCon:

Now hive empires I'm not sure if they can build eccumonopolis. So I don't think they can consolidate industry as good late game. You might be able to take them though :D

Hives get Hive World. Which seems to be like an organic version of the Ecu. But I have yet to properly get them.

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Lucifearus⎠⎞:

hi i play a lot, and i play progenitor hive a lot. i can teach you how to always have a very good start or play-style run with them with a few simple steps tbh. most people here are saying generic stuff thats nice but not very experienced

2. once u have multiple sectors, balance ur econ out and immediately designate ur lesser sector as a vassal. set an envoy to the vassal for relations and add a overlord army garrison building to increase loyalty, later change contract so theyre a bulwark or rsearch nerd for u

3. amenities and pop growth are really good, covered, so to boost your economy find pre ftl worlds early, invade ones with decent pop, immediately cancel the purge on them and instead set their species rights as slaves, this will make them permanent livestock that produces HUGE food income for you. If youre using a civic like codyseptic, which is rather strong for taming biological life, they generally upkeep HEAVY amounts of food, as well as your pop growth as a hive. later enable nutritional benefit edict for even more growth on top of budding / progenitor hive building . hive also has very good alloy and tech rush early so make use of that. Your largest resource rush will definitely be energy and food, but alloy and tech are very easy to stack and needed. Save 10k energy at least per planet once you tech rush up to the hive planet ascension

5. the more advanced part, as for ship building, as a prog hive ur prob best going torpedo cruiser spam for this meta like most builds, but id probably install artillery AI computers or further distance AI computers into your overseer ship models in order to prevent them from dying early in battles which can and WILL cripple your fleet

These were very helpful! Thank you so much! Going to use them when I try my hand at the Hive Mind again later today.

Originally posted by Half Phased:

I do also recommend opening prosperity tradition tree first, before getting the synchronicity boost. You start the game with 4 synapse drones on your capital, which would generate the same amenities as 2 maintenance drones. Meanwhile, prosperity boosts orbital mining by 20%, reduces building upkeep by 10%, increases complex drone output by 5% and reduces job upkeep by 5%. The finisher is +5 stability and an ascension perk slot, which is either technological ascendancy (because of course) or one vision, which boosts further unity gain and reduces amenity usage (see a pattern?)

Yeah! Honestly I usually go for

Discovery > Supremacy > Unyielding and then either Mercantilism, Prosperity or Subterfuge depending on whichever seems to be the most helpful.