Kjades said:
Hi,
as the title says, I need some in-depth tips on how to play a necrophage – hive mind faction (non-lithoid, with catalytic processing).
I do have quite some experience in Stellaris, but this is the first time I approach this kind of setup.It’s in moments like this that the game you think you know pretty well slaps you in the face and whispers
“You need to git gud, son”.
Or daughter. We don't discriminate, even against Dark Souls players.
This is coming from an edition or two ago, so here goes...
Kjades said:
So, I understand the underlying mechanics of pop ascension/conversion from a pool of biological slaves every 10 years or so. First question is, does pop growth speed affect the ascension/conversion speed?
Not directly, and not in the early game.
At tier 1, your number of necrophytes is limited by pop growth over the last 10 years. This is why the necorphyte job opening changes- as you grow an additional pop, it changes the number of necrophytes for the rest of the time until ascension.
Early on, pop growth will be good enough that 3 pops will grow a year, and 3 necrophyte jobs will open by the time of the ceremony. As pop growth lows from low-growth worlds or empire pop size, this goes down.
Kjades said:
Then, what I find most tricky is to keep a steady growth pop-wise in order to boost your economy.
The thing is, every pop that is created via the ascension/conversion process automatically fills in the standard “menial drone” role, a job that (correct me if I’m wrong) does not have a cap.
Every time new pops ascend, the cap of menial drones increases.
Gestalt employment is finnicky. It does default to filling complex drone jobs is opening, but sometimes will try to prioritize maintenance drone jobs over other jobs.
Kjades said:
So, that means that if you want to keep your economy in good shape you will always have to walk on a thin thread, ensuring that you have as many menial drones as possible to keep the planet stable, but not too many, otherwise you are not devoting pops to resource production and other, more important jobs.
Is that a good assumption?
Kind of, but not really.
In theory, yes, but the thing is the only pop that grows for necrophages are the livestock, and the ascension transition is too slow to rely on. Your number of specialists will trail behind other empires, even as your econ margins remain pretty low because the food production of your livestock is pretty much consumed by cloning bays and necrophyte jobs, leaving you almost no extra profit.
Necro-hives are not pop-or-econ bloomers to grow over time. If you try, eventually you'll be at bio-ascension, and could have been a different hive build with better benefits.
Necro-hives are a hard-core aggressive build that needs to go to war early and get pops it can necro-purge into drones. Go to war, get livestock more more alloys or necropurge for more pops, and then go to war again. It's a brutal, beautiful cyle, but it's all about the offense, not the pop growht.
Kjades said:
Any other (constructive) suggestion is more than welcome.
Cheers.
Several.
Unyielding Starbases: While Map the Stars is the new meta for a first tradition, the real strength of necrohive comes with Unyielding, for the Unyielding starbase spam. Unyielding, the Starbase edict, and the first starbase tech can get you 12 starbases in 12 systems- each starbase producing 10+ food and 12+ energy, for 120 food and 144 energy you don't need worker drones for. This food goes into your alloy economy, and your energy into buying minerals for construction/science, and is the key of your warfighting economy. Get used to doing it, and prioritize starbases and 12 systems over colonizing other worlds. You should be able to get 12 starbases setup within 15 years, and use that to fuel a year 25 war.
Starbase placement and upgrading: The ideal place to put a starbase will be in a nebula or in an enclave system, where you can get a hydroponics bay and a second unique building slot. If you can build a second building, upgrading a starbase ASAP is functionally instant productive pops from the 2 solar panels and new building. As a rule, always expand first towards a nebula.
Starbase and the Galactic Community: The second research tree resolution of the galactic community doubled the base energy of starbase solar panels, meaning that your 120 energy becomes 240 pre-modifiers. With this, starbase upgrades, and even the +5 starbase perk, you can get a mini-dyson sphere from starbases, largely avoiding the need for technician drones.
Unity per Necrophage: After the starbase spam in the Unyielding tradition, go into the Synchronicity tree. Necrophytes have a unique tradition that gives 1.5 months of unity per pop necrophaged, up to 100 a pop. You want this before you necro-purge any pops, including your guaranteed worlds. This is usuallly a good benchmark for when you should invade your primitives.
Study Primitives: Don't invade your primitives at first. You are mineral-constrained, and the long-term growth comes at the expense of using those minerals to develop your homeworld industrial districts for starbases (worth pops) and science districts. Instead, study them for early powerful society techs. 20 society a month will greatly decrease the time to getting hydroponics bays, and a few other early goodies. Invade when you can afford to build infrastructure, after you get the unity-per-necrophage job.
Livestock Research: Society techs for food still generally affect livestock. The food processing building for +1 is especially high priority, but % modifiers do as well. The only buff that doesn't affect livestock is Farming subsidies. This is fine, as you'd much rather have mining subsidies for your worker buff to cover science, but honestly you probably won't use that one much either.
Necrophytes and Food Balance: THIS IS THE HARDEST THING TO MANAGE. Because livestock provide food, but the necrophyte job consumes food, you will consistently have extreme food swings as Necrophytes go from food providing livestock, to necrophytes, and necrophytes get promoted to food-consuming drones, while new livestock are cycled in. This creates swings of 12+ food an ascension, so 'the narrow line' of food is probably going to throw you into a food deficit.
The solution for this is to actually disable the third necrophyte job, and build a livestock surplus on worlds before opening the third slot again. Yes, you'll have fewer drones via natural growth... but this is measured in ones and twos, compared to the dozens you're adding via starbase spam. But you'll have fewer econ crashes, and again- war meta. You'll get more than enough drones via necro-purging later on.
Livestock, Stability, Necrophytes, and Amenities: Livestock are naturally unhappy and drop stability, but Necrophytes actually raise stability through excess amenity production. Necrohives have lower-than-normal popular approval thanks to livestock, but the amenity impact from necrophytes means that Necrohives have a higher-than-average stability potential. As long as you don't build absurd livestock surpluses, your conversions and the amenities of the necrophytes will be a net boon, and when the warbuild gets rolling becomes a big asset.
Spawning Pools: Necrophages have a penalty to pop assembly, and you can't bio-assemble livestock. Until you get another hivemind drone, these jobs are solely for the amenities, and not really worth it for the assembly. For catalytic war purposes, it's better to let livestock-necrophytes provide the amenities, and skip the spawning pools early on to support an early conquest.
Gestalt Manufacturing: Gestalts have access to the Extraction/Manufacturing economic policies. which trade a 20% buff for menial or complex drones for a -20% malus to the other. This is really really good, if you have the basic resources, as it's basically a Fanatic Egalitarian-Meritocratic to all your complex drones. For a Catalytic Necrophage, it's important to note that the -20% menial drone malus does NOT apply to livestock (who aren't drones), so your alloy economy is untouched. It is an issue for mining drones, who support science and construction, but this is why you conquer early.
Early Corvette Dominance: You do not want to wait for cruisers, but to go all-in on corvettes. Corvette hull tech is the most important tech to research if it pops up, followed by the cost. The best early game corvette build will be to use critter weapons: 1 Tiyanki Energy Syphon, 2 Mining Drone lasers, with a 2 shield/1 armor bias. 1 in 10 corvettes should be a point defense corvette with 2 mining drone lasers, to mitigate starbase defenses.
Conquest Priorities: Your earliest war should be a claim war if you have the influence for the capital, or a rivalry war if not. Your influence economy will be significant in time, but for now the best use is for the 30-odd pops you can seize and necropurge for more drones. It's better to save the influence by making one deep claim, and then doing a follow-up claim war in a decade from inside the empire for its colonies, than to spend all influence at once.
Necropurge as a Norm... to a point: At least until mass diplomatic relations are a thing, it's not bad to have necro-purge as the default policy. When a homeworld is mostly purged (say to the last 5-6 pops), change the species rights to stop, so that you can enjoy their 100% growth on their biome/use their habitability.
Subjugate Machines and MegaCorps.: Machine Empires are your best vassals, and tributaries is really all you can use them for since you can keep the pops. Making Machine Empires prospectorium to give you the minerals you struggle with- and a hefty alloy boost- is very powerfull. Megacorps are even more powerful for pure energy, which can power slave market purchases.
Annex a Hive Minds ASAP: If you conquer even one pop of another hive mind, you can use their pop in your pop assembly and get full use of your spawning pools well before genetic ascension. This makes other hives your highest priority target.
Galactic Diplomacy: As an aggressive necro-purger, you are going to be loathed by the galactic community as intel gains make people away of your necropurging, Egalitarians and Xenophiles especially. Dominate them first, and with them out of the way not only will other empires care less if they know at all, but also preserve the slave market. You can buy llivestock off the slave market. Once you get powerful enough, you'll be able to dominate the galactic community regardless.
Hegemony Federation: As your other empires are either prety or tributaries, the best type of federation is the Hegemony Federation, where you can give your resource tributaries more resources to fight you, but personally have all the power and they can't leave. The best way to start a Federation is to find a new/uplifted empire, as those don't the diplo penalties of past necro-purgings. A Hegemon + Custodian is more powerful than a Galactic Emperor, though having a galactic rebellions isn't a terrible thing because-
Nihilistic Acquisition: Although maybe not the first choice, since claim wars are superior, Nihilistic Acquisition is an Ace late-game ascension perk. As a hive, one of your limitations is that you can't release vassals, and thus your own natural growth slows. Instead of relying on the galactic market, you can instead turn non-territory wars into pop acquisition drives. The other empire will hate you, but who cares?
Grasp the Void: A low-tier great pick for gestalts when stacked with Unyielding and the Solar Panel doubling of the galactic community. 5 more nebula starbases for 50+ food, 50+ minerals, 360+ energy, 5+ exotic gas and whatever your secondary buildings doesn't sound like much, but it's an excelent catalyst for both getting and staying at the top with as many complex drones and as few worker drones as possible under manufacturing economy.
Hive Worlds: Necorphages have a unique dynamic in that non-hive pops (livestock) can live on and benefit from the hives.
Bio Ascension: Bio-Ascension is where a necro-hive's unique ability to convert livestock into usuable drones goes away, as other hives could use assimilation to make pops into drones. Some argue that you should just do that with NecroHive, but I disagree: necropurging still gives 100 unity a pop, great for racing through traditions, and in a manufacturing economy delicious livestock are better farmers than farming drones limited by districts. You can't necrophage drones, or peacefully necrophage nerve-stapled pops, so if you already have an evil reputation at this point in the game, own it.
