A guide to Tyranids, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love consuming worlds.

[adozu]

Introduction

Hello there, I decided to write this guide because of how many players try nids out, don't quite get them, and come complaining about how weak they are.

I will share here my multiplayer experience, go into details on the strenghts and flaws of the faction and give a basic step-to-step of the early economy setup, hopefully this should help anyone have fun consuming biomass all over Gladius.

I do not claim to have the absolute best build possible but it definitely works well for me.

Overview

So, let's begin with a basic overview of the nids gameplan: currently (as of patch 1.2.5) nids have the best tier 1-6 army and production in the game, this should give you a very strong edge between turns 45-60.

Unfortunately, past that phase enemy elite t7+ units will eventually outscale you. The basic idea then becomes to deal a deathblow before that point that will make the enemy eventual defeat inevitable.

The reason for this falling off mostly comes from the 1 range syndrome of nid units: an enemy with a good defensive line will only allow its units to be attacked from 2 tiles at most (all it takes is a good chokepoint really) and there is nothing in nid's arsenal that can kill a unit with, for example, 10 armor and 40+ hp from just 2 tiles (an upgraded vindicator, for example). Unfortunately the range units in your arsenal, which could solve the issue, are kinda bad, but we'll get to that later.

The opening

So, without further ado, let's get to the part that i assume most people want to read about, the step-to-step early game guide.

The first 20-25 turns are basically fixed, after that you will have to start making composition choices.

First of all your objective is to establish your second city as soon as possible, the key to achieve this is to research the settler building (aedanthropum) immediately and don't lose your starting termagants.

Since research is key we ideally want to start on a high research tile: my favorite is next to a vaul's ruin to later grab the additional 20%, snow tiles next to other outposts also work (and of course snow+vaul is just amazing but unfortunately also rare), for this guide i will assume we settled on a 20% tile.

The next step is to immediately start building additional research, while you do this you can explore around your base and try to grab outposts with your termagants but make absolutely sure not to lose them. to keep them safe make sure not to attack wildlife unless you are absolutely sure you can dispatch of it easily, if you don't shoot at it most enemies will leave you alone on their turn.

As for t1 researches you will need gargoyles and alpha ovopository. At t2 immediately start researching the settler building.

After this and after having grabbed a second tile start building a brood nest and sacrifice a termagant to speed it up by 2 turns. this will take 4 turns. if you had the proper amount of research you will complete this on the same turn as you will finish researching the next building.

Next, build the settler building and sacrifice another termagant to speed it up. Start researching Tervigon and recruiting a gargoyle unit as you do.

If you were lacking research you will need to wait here: if you are off by 1 turn just wait it off, if you are off by 2 take the opportunity to grab the outpost tile, just make sure to construct the settler building asap.

When that's done start recruiting a malanthrope and speed it up by 2 turns with your last termagant: if you did everything right you should be done by about turn 19, allowing you to settle your second city on turn 20-21. Also start building your hero building (and build a tervigon).

At this point you will have 2 cities, use your first one to build gargoyles and malanthropes non stop. Now is the time to make choices but we'll see it in the next section, to finish the "generic" part of the start you will want to use your malanthropes, gargoyles and tervigon (when it's ready) to start clearing the wildlife around you, farm xp and capture outposts.

Make sure to use your malanthropes to grab as much free research as possible, take overwatch fire for your gargoyles and if needed spit poison at stuff. You can also eat tiles for biomass just watch your influence and try not to eat forests you might want to fight in later. (and as a little bonus remember units in range of synapse cannot be stolen by squids). As for your tervigon put 1 level in termagant spawn first then level up the heal every time you can.

also for the last part that is "fixed" start researching birthing canals as your first t3 research, that one's really good and will save you a TON of influence (50% less inf upkeep on production buildings).

Also, you will put down a 3rd city on a good resource spot (my rule of thumb for when to put it is after i've build 4 more malanthropes, the 4th goes into a city. if i had a loyalty artefact or just feel like it i will use the 3rd for it instead). Stuff your third city with biomass production or whatever else you might need (but that's usually more biomass).

Whenever you need more bio remember your malanthropes can eat tiles for a quick fix. Also remember heavily wounded units make for perfectly fine snacks.

The choices

I mentioned it will come a part to make choices: basically what it boils down to is pick 2 out of carnifex, zoanthropes and raveners.

• Carnifex are very research intensive but they have the best possible damage
  
• Raveners are amazing at killing infantry and flanking but really struggle vs armor
  
• Zoanthropes are just pretty amazing in general but they are expensive and you don't want to stack too many of their recruitment buildings because the give no biomass

It comes down to preference and matchups, personally my list goes like this:

• Vs orks: raveners and zoans (maybe carnifex if you expect killa kans or a lot of buggies)
  
• Vs SM: zoans and carnifex (raveners die too easily to orbital strikes)
  
• Vs AM: zoans and carnifex (raveners die too easily to basilisks)
  
• Vs necrons: raveners and carnifex (zoans if you prefer but i find the high dmg of carnifex more reliable here)
  
• Vs other nids: zoans and raveners (they have no high armor targets for carnifex to kill)

but it's not a strong rule and other options are possible, this is just to give you a good base to learn.

So, what do each of these choices entail? Based on what you pick your city devlopement will change:

• if you picked zoans you need to make a second aedanthropum in your base city
  
• if you picked carnifex specialise your second city in producing monsters with a mix of monster buildings and biomass buildings
  
• if you picked raveners and carnifex use your first city to produce the raveners (2 or 3 buildings are enough for it), if you picked zoans and raveners specialise your second city in producing them instead

So at this point your first city will have a sci building, a hero building, a settler building, an infantry building, and either a second infantry or second settler building. After that make an influence building (or before if you are running too low already, depends on outposts rng). This is exactly 7 pop but wait, at this point you probably don't need your hero building anymore, so build a third production building if you are making raveners or a biomass building if you are making zoanthropes and disable the hero one after you go over pop cap.

Why do i stop at 7 pop and don't increase it?

That's because, as i said, we want to have the most power possible around turn 50-60 and spending research and resources (and time) on pop cap increase doesn't mesh well with it, i rather have a stronger eco in the short term and a slightly weaker eco long term. if the game goes on long enough i will get the pop increase later.

The other choice you want to make is your second hero after tervigon: the prime is the default choice but the hive tyrant is much stronger, so why is it a choice? because the tyrant is REALLY expensive, if you have good luck with outposts and have a lot of influence and biomass you can go for it otherwise i usually just skip it.

If you've followed this correctly by about turn 45-50 your army should have swelled to a fairly ridicolous amount, split your army in 2 smaller groups, find the enemy forces, attack them from 2 sides, profit.

Researches

i'll compile here a quick reference on what to research:

T1: gargoyles, alpha ovopository
T2: settler, tervigon
T3: birthing canals

that's fixed, after that:

T3: brood haunt if carnifex, coherence node if not (and place one in your cities as last building), alternatively hive tyrant if you wanna go for it.
T4: Gigaborer hives, raveners if you wanna use them (duh), if you are going for carnfiex but not raveners pick Spine Banks (this is a small boost to dmg, can skip until later if you go for raveners and carnifex)
T5: Ravener deathspitter (that's a key tech for raveners, +50%dmg) if raveners, Zoanthropes if zoans, bone mace if carnifex. Grab infantry armor later if you ran out of other key stuff.
T6: Bio plasma if carnifex, Bioweapon symbiosis.

After that it take a bit more of a discussion: should you go for lictors? depends on matchup, they are basically better but more costly raveners: if you can afford them it might be worth it but they shouldn't make up the backbone of your army.

Should you go for paroxysm? It's a really strong skill but low on my priority list as zoans already come with a similar skill, will definitely grab bio plasma and melee dmg bonus first.

Should you go for exocrines? HAHA good joke. (actually they are quite good, just overpriced)

Should you go for gaunt instincts? No

T7: Grey matter dispersion! this tech is the best tech and the reason we rushed tiers, after you grab this one feel free to go back down the tree and pick whatever you left behind.

Units analysis

So, here i want to go down the list of nid units and give an opinion on them all so you can decide when/if to diverge from my guide:

Termagants: good cannon fodder and scouts, almost never worth making them, just use your tervigon.

Gargoyles: extremely powerful t1 unit, your midgame army should have many of these to jump around the enemy lines and assassinate anything that isn't high armor veichles.

Hormagaunts: these are just sad. they have a niche if the map is very high on forests and ruins since they are purely melee but gargoyles are simply better fighters and termagants are cheaper scouts. they serve nearly no purpose. Grab toxin sacs if you really want to use them.

Nid warriors: this is a weird unit. their 7 armor and 18 hp makes them unusually tanky, they have okish dmg when upgraded and decent with a prime support. The problem is that nid armies have little use for "balanced" units, what you need is burst dmg. not a bad unit but a unit with a niche that you generally don't need.

Carnifex: the highest dmg unit in your whole arsenal... when upgraded. these are a huge science sink but you will need them whenever you expect to fight a lot of armor.

Haruspex: the worst unit in your whole roster, avoid. They supposedly are able to tank stuff well but their regeneration really isn't all that good, their damage isn't good, and well, nothing about them is good, basically just a worse carnifex.

Raveners: 5 base movement and very good dmg when upgraded makes them a terror in the midgame, capable of oneshotting most infantry in the game. they also have no armor pen to speak of so they fall off later in the game.

Zoanthropes: these are basically mini heroes. extremely solid units, almost too much.

Lictors: amazing units, but also expensive for what they do and relatively simple to kill. Go for them if you think you can properly support them and have the resources to produce them in high numbers, they won't disappoint. If you went raveners there's no need to rush lictors, wait to transition to them once raveners start falling off.

Exocrine: it's a decent unit, good ranged dmg, even better melee and they fill a useful niche, problem is that they are very very expensive. if you expect a long game and have a really strong eco it can't hurt (you) to add some to your army. They are made kinda obsolete by tyrannofex later on as they fill the niche better for the same price.

Hive crone: hmmm a necessary evil. They are really expensive (120/6, the highest) and tbh not very good for their price, you will need them if it gets really late into the game however as they are the only reliable way to fight enemy flyers. Overall a somewhat mediocre unit that you can't really skip.

Trygon: this is a great "support" unit, the ability to move your army across the battlefield quickly is invaluable if it gets to that point in the game, they are however less powerful and more expensive than carnfiexes so make just a few.

Tyrannofex: a resounding "meh". this isn't a "bad" unit, but it's a very bad t9 unit. they are really expensive and only deal mediocre damage, if it gets to that point you will still want a few but it joins hive crones on the list of really expensive necessary evils.

Conclusion

If you took the time to look at the unit list you can see how there are simply amazing units early on (gargoyles, raveners, zoans, carnifex, lictors...) and just nothing really good later on, especially when faced with high armor. This is where the need to finish games in the midgame really comes from.

I hope this guide will help figuring out how to develop a solid army and economy (even though of course i couldn't put *everything* down here, so it's more of a starting point).

I'd be glad to answer questions or discuss alternative ideas or fight you online ;P

[rgb651]

Hmmmm, hive crone is my #1, but i'm playing only in single player games. Also, carnifexes are very research dependent and countered with air units. Obviously, not my choice. Tyranids are very bad faction for playing, their gameplay don't even represent their numbers (

[adozu]

Well this guide is from a 1v1/2v2 perspective, in that context tyranids are very very strong. My issue with hive crones is that their stats are unimpressive and cost a whopping 120/6. They aren't "terrible" units, but if you compare to a carnifex well, the carnifex trades manouverability for more damage and a much more affordable price (80/4).

Also hive crones are very research intensive themselves, a t7 and t8(? i don't remember if their upgrade is t8 or 9 whitout checking it) as opposed to t3+4+5+6, consider lower tier researches take a lot less to complete.

Still, as i said you will need them regardless to keep enemy flyers at bay.

[Spector1331]

So now that 1.2.6 has rolled around and Gargoyles are T2, what is the other T1 tech you're taking?

[adozu]

i've recently been using hormagaunts since their price reduction, my early build has changed a little bit i'll get around to updating it at some point.

[I sniff U @ Nite ;)]

Looking forward to your update!

[Jey]

You can see the update in the guides : https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1906422452

[Khalagar]

Tyranids are pretty weak IMO, and I say that as a mainly Nid and Necron player. They are just SO limited in their gimmicks, especially in larger games.

I like to play Very Hard with 1 of each faction, which is extremely different from just 1 vs 1 which usually ends by turn 80 at most. Nids are pretty weak early game and rely solely on heroes, are okayish mid game against 1 faction but not great against multiple ones, and late game literally their only remotely viable tactic is to just use Trygon tunnels to try and back door your army in and assassinate their base, because your army flat out CANNOT stand in an open battle against other late game armies.


1 vs 1 guides try to make them seem like they are better than they are, but they really do need some balance buffs IMO