Suggestion of strategy for tyranids?

[DrakEmono]

Hiya! Being a fan of Civilization and Warhammer's universe, I gave this game a try and I bought the tyranids DLC. The game seems promising, however, I kinda struggle with starting and the tutorial doesn't give that much explanations...
I'm already getting familiar with the system, but I notice that tyranids are very weak compared to other races at the beginning, so trying to rush them too early doesn't seem to be the solution...
Although I know that I should adapt depending on my first opponents, what strategy I usually should start with at the beginning? On my case, I'm starting with rushing the creation of units and heroes, then resources, but not sure if it's the best.
Thanks for any advice!

[Jey]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2368197173
It's old, but the basis is still good now.

[DrakEmono]

Ah, thanks! I will give it a look

[Stardustfire]

an early Alpha helps with clearing and holding the starting gants alive.
dont underestimate your citys ability to eat no longer used or heavily dmged units for resources. you can even pair that with the gant production of the Healer Hero Unit.
Tyranid citys are smaller, but get researchable boni that dampen the backlash of owning multiple citys, so you can have more than the other races without as much drawback.

[DrakEmono]

Originally posted by Jey:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2368197173
It's old, but the basis is still good now.

Excuse me, jsut a question... it mentions a "settler building", but there is no explanation about what's that... even google isn't helpful.

[Jey]

It's the Aedanthropum.
Settler building is the "Building that builds the unit that makes more citites".

[Will be deleted]

They have an very aggressive playstyle. Their economy is the most basic out of any faction with biomass being like what food, ore and electricty is for most factions. While they lack good multipliers and their cities being limited to size 2, instead of normal 3, they make up for it by getting biomass from each tile they annex and their ability to consume units mean they can setup new cities much faster than everyone else, like by getting up a second construction building a few turns after the city is founded, by which point you can annex tiles around the city at 1-2 turns.

Overall their economy is more burst like rather than long term productive, each tile you annex is also destroyed, meaning each tile you annex permamently weaken the potential of other players, while also giving you biomass. You still going to mostly want biomass producing buildings in your cities, with loyalty and influence also being important, don't assume the biomass gained form annex tiles will be enough, use it to get ahead early on.

They may very well have some of the strongest but amongst expensive heroes, the hive tyrannt is particular noteworthy due to being able to give each city +6 loyalty which is huge when you have like 5-10 cities. Their mid hero can spam units for free, which your cities can consume for biomass and production if you don't use them for battle. Even the first hero can make tyrannid warriors significantly more deadly with the accuracy buff and can remove half armour on enemy units, which make otherwise hard to kill 9 armour units much easier to kill.

Their support units can completely cripple enemy units, like removing half accuracy or half attacks and give your own units ranged defence. Their main weakness is dependency on short range combat, but later in the game you can unlock units with range 3 and also one that can create tunnels to quickly move units around the map, also their healing is limited to an expensive hero unit, so expect to suffer a lot of losses but on other hand do a lot of damage in return, if you have the economy, you should be able to produce several hundreds worth of biomass in units every single turn anyway and with tunnels have them at frontline the same turn as produced by which point you should simply overwhelm the enemy and while doing so, use your city builders to consume tiles for biomass and deny them for enemy, so even if they somehow push you back, they left with useless land.

[DrakEmono]

Originally posted by Jey:

It's the Aedanthropum.
Settler building is the "Building that builds the unit that makes more citites".

Thanks! Next question... (Yeah, I really start xD) How do I disable a research? Clicking on the research doesn't stop it, and I don't even see the ability to skip them when one is done. Unless that was something from a previous version?

[Will be deleted]

Why would you want to freeze research, you can switch tech to research however.

[DrakEmono]

I don't know, I'm currently following the guide and at some point, it asks to stop the research for a turn.

[Jey]

Originally posted by DrakEmono:

I don't know, I'm currently following the guide and at some point, it asks to stop the research for a turn.

It says to disable the research building.

If you follow the guide, when the Aedanthropum is finished, you should have 4 active buildings BUT only 3 pops.
You incur a malus in this case, which would slow down the production of your malanthrope, which is bad.

To not suffer the malus, you disable a building (by pressing the "-" sign to its right).
Next turn, your population should be at 4 and you can reactivate it (by clicking the "+" sign)

[DrakEmono]

Aah! Ok, I'm feeling so dumb... xD But I have to admit that the guide isn't very rookie-friendly x.=.x I'm getting it now, thanks!

[Will be deleted]

Manage buildings is pretty good idea to try to learn, like turning off unit producing buildings and turning on resource producing buildings when not using them to build units, assuming you don't have enough population to run all buildings at maximum efficiency.

[DrakEmono]

I see, a good strat to know.
Also, where can I see a list of the key-word for each building? I guess what they mean by infantry, hero, etc... but not for bio, inf, barrack... That would help ^^"
Thanks!