Hivemind Civics are Seriously Lacking

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Agreed, Hiveminds, Machine Empires and MegaCorps all have for the most part very uninteresting civics. I am hoping this will improve once Paradox implements the changes to civics and origins (i think was the term) they talked about.
 
Of course that's moddable. The point is you should not be forced to mod hivemind civics to make them interesting or good and equal to normal empires civics, that should already be part of the base game. Normal empire civic get basically added or reworked with every dlc to make them more interesting, yet hivemind only get touched if absolutely necessary. Look at the rework of technocracy or warrior culture, while hivemind still have the old version of them.

Oh I do agree with it, it's just that seeing as devs can adopt some mods into the base game (or at least get inspiration from them) like Glavius, I think that modding a reasonably balanced yet flavourful and different civic would encourage them to do so too.
 
I'd like to see a psychic based hive mind that has unique interactions with the Shroud and gets access to the psionic tech. It could open up some diplomatic options for how they would react to spiritualists and vice versa.
 
I'd like to see a psychic based hive mind that has unique interactions with the Shroud and gets access to the psionic tech. It could open up some diplomatic options for how they would react to spiritualists and vice versa.

Wait a minute, what if Psychics could ascend to a Hivemind like Synthetics go to robots? Maybe it would need to be carefully balanced but... Sounds like a cool ascension perk imo, especially if there’s a Psychic Hivemind.
 
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I'd like to see a psychic based hive mind that has unique interactions with the Shroud and gets access to the psionic tech. It could open up some diplomatic options for how they would react to spiritualists and vice versa.

Oooh, that would be quite cool! What about something along these lines?

Psi-vampire: "This hivemind needs other lesser yet conscious minds to consume in order to power itself and reach its true potential as a multi-brained psiconic single entity. After consuming the mind of other lesser beings, their useless bodies will wonder aimlessly, flesh husks devoid of all sentience that will eventually succumb to fatigue and starvation"
 
Been asking this in every dev update since 2.2. Nongestalt civics get almost completely overhauled, Hivemind civics get ignored. Even after that, Warrior culture gets reworked, Strength of Legions is untouched. It makes no sense.

Hiveminds are already struggeling since 2.2.7. Why play Hiveminds when you can simply play Machines, the clearly superiour Gestalt empire? The only good civics Hiveminds have is Devouring Swarm. The rest are outdated, bland, boring or simply bandaid civics like -15% amenity usage. There is no reason to play a non- Devourign Swarm Hivemind, its simply an inferiour version to other empires. Of course its cool and we players love Hiveminds, but for competitive multiplayer they are garbage.

Another problem is how the game favours anything with Robots since 2.2. Robots are used for pop growth, for habitability especially since 2.3. If you have no Robots, you have less growth and less habitable pops. But Hiveminds cannot produce Robots. They should be able to grow 2 biological pop types instead.

Its honestly insulting when you have this vision of a rapid breeding hivemind yet in the lategame you have Synth empires with > 12 Synth assembly speed (increase this to 18 with Cybrex relic) and in ADDITION to that they can still grow organics with 6-16 growth speed depending on migration.

Why play Hiveminds?
Other empires have better pop growth in the lategame, better alloy output, Machine worlds are strictly better than Hive worlds for some reason (10% less housing usage), deviancy is a huge problem while non-gestalt simply enact crime lord deal for 10 bonus stability. Hive Mind Ruler suck! They gain 0 Agendas and Rulers gain 0 traits over the course of the game. Synth rulers get all those benefits and are immortal aswell! Hivemind has a huge pile of issues because so many things are lacking for them which adds up.
 
Not just Hive minds, Mega-Corps too. Criminal empires are basically unplayable without cheesing around the AI, ethics drift nerfs mega churches hard.

Honestly I like Stellaris, but it feels like the pace of new content addition should be slowed so they can do another creative and refinement pass on what we have.
 
Been asking this in every dev update since 2.2. Nongestalt civics get almost completely overhauled, Hivemind civics get ignored. Even after that, Warrior culture gets reworked, Strength of Legions is untouched. It makes no sense.

Hiveminds are already struggeling since 2.2.7. Why play Hiveminds when you can simply play Machines, the clearly superiour Gestalt empire? The only good civics Hiveminds have is Devouring Swarm. The rest are outdated, bland, boring or simply bandaid civics like -15% amenity usage. There is no reason to play a non- Devourign Swarm Hivemind, its simply an inferiour version to other empires. Of course its cool and we players love Hiveminds, but for competitive multiplayer they are garbage.

Another problem is how the game favours anything with Robots since 2.2. Robots are used for pop growth, for habitability especially since 2.3. If you have no Robots, you have less growth and less habitable pops. But Hiveminds cannot produce Robots. They should be able to grow 2 biological pop types instead.

Its honestly insulting when you have this vision of a rapid breeding hivemind yet in the lategame you have Synth empires with > 12 Synth assembly speed (increase this to 18 with Cybrex relic) and in ADDITION to that they can still grow organics with 6-16 growth speed depending on migration.

Why play Hiveminds?
Other empires have better pop growth in the lategame, better alloy output, Machine worlds are strictly better than Hive worlds for some reason (10% less housing usage), deviancy is a huge problem while non-gestalt simply enact crime lord deal for 10 bonus stability. Hive Mind Ruler suck! They gain 0 Agendas and Rulers gain 0 traits over the course of the game. Synth rulers get all those benefits and are immortal aswell! Hivemind has a huge pile of issues because so many things are lacking for them which adds up.
To say nothing of lacking flavor text for them. A Hive Mind can talk with the Prethoryn, but a Devouring Swarm has no special dialogue (Nor does a psionic purifier). Those genocidals can ask the Prethoryn for peace! Xenophiles will tell a Devouring Swarm that they can't wait to free their 'people from the evil of their government' and that same Swarm will then tell a Megacorp that "Soon we will expose you as fraudsters to the entire galaxy!"

Or Archaeology. A gestalt consciousness can get the Bickering Archaeologists event!

More and more it feels like Gestalts aren't even a part of the game. They're something Paradox added once, and regret doing so, and wish they could just make go away.
 
And now we have to wait another half year, until the next (most likely diplomacy) dlc hits so they can drop a balance patch. So then MAYBE they will address hive minds, spiritualists and so on. I was honestly hoping for new civics for hive minds this dlc, you know Baol being a symbiotic one...
 
It would be neat if there was a civic whereby the "Hive Mind" was actually a council of individual "queens"(or whatever). This might work a bit like an oligarchic government, whereby the "Queens" periodically choose one of their number as the executive, and they might all have somewhat different personalities. Would probably be a bit more amenable to non-gestalts, as the "queens" understand interacting with "individuals" better.

Definitely need a bio-hive civic too: buildings are just mutated organisms, Zerg-style, that cost food to build instead of minerals. Ships would still require alloys(at least for part of their cost), but have increased regeneration(due to being partially biological).
 
Himeminds of both kinds might work better if it was a 2 ethic pick, not a 3, allowing a dash of 'personality'.

Extermanator hives are xenophobe, that actually creates the question what does a militarist hive look like? Something more Darwinian perhaps? seeking the fight and he struggle as path not to genocide but their own perfection?

Or the Hive mind that has long since decided it is a god, showing a less shroudy take on spiritualist, instead promoting teraforming and megastucture monuments to its vast glory?

Or the traditional ant hive inspired, with caste system of drones set againt a hive whose drones are more free willed (egalitarian)?

give them not factions, but Moods that represent shifting of their thoughts and passions.

As it is gestalts cut away too much of the actual game-play.
 
Ideas for Hiveminds.

Killiks. Star Wars.


Basically for tall play. The Killiks were the builders for the celestials. Big bonuses on building stuff, maybe tech and megaengineerung stuff.

Breeding Swarm.
Non devouring but big growth rate buffs. Growth comparable to empire with organics plus droids, big navy and army stuff. Quantity over quality

Driven Assimilators Swarm Style.
More face buster. Captured pops are used as egg carriers and are transformed into your pops
 
One reason to play a hive mind, which is a not a devouring swarm, is the additional challenge.
IMO hive-minds need to be played differently than other default empires. Hive-minds do have an edge concerning growth.
You only need one building for increasing the growth. Fast settling of all inhabitable planets, resettling pops, so that the first
building can be build, should usually result in the hive-mind being able to "outgrow" most other empires (in the early stages).

Thats not "Hivemind played differently". Thats simply using all the bandaids you have to make up for being punished the hardest by habitability and having no access to Robots, aswell as having poor energy output for terraforming and resettling.

I did play non Devouring Swarm hivemind in 2.3 and it was awful. Of course I picked "extremely adaptive" and took the adaption tradition tree 2nd for an addtional 10% habitability. This brought up my pops to 50% habitability on 20% worlds. And I was still struggeling with my economy!

Meanwhile every Machine empire had more pops than me and still settled more planets. Of course Machine empires are drowning in energy aswell, so they can start terraforming their planets into superiour machine worlds easily.

Its an insult to be forced into multiple bandaid decisions and still not be able to keep up with Machine empires. Machine empires are utterly overpowered and Hiveminds are punished the hardest on top of being ignored and nerfed since 2.2!
 
I just tested a devouring swarm, extremely adaptive, rapid breeders.

Energy is always in negatives, as long as you can keep steamrolling it's ok. Stability is also an issue along with producing anything relevant due to the need to build maintenance drones.

I ate 4 or 5 empires early all worng terrain. 50% habitability doesn't cut it sent pops to better world's. Was behind on tech way behind on unity. Ragequit game when I was eating my 6th or 7th victim and war in heaven fired cutting my fleet off adjacent to awakened fallen empire.
 
Were you always deactivating some jobs on your small colonies?

Of course, maintenance drones and hunter killer drones should be deactivated at the start. However being forced into extremely adaptive means you can't take charismatic anymore, which was very useful for hiveminds to be able to get rid of more maintenace drone jobs.

Normal empires usually have a little less pops than Hiveminds (of course since Hivemind already start with 32 vs 28 for Megacorp and 24 for normal non-gestalt)

However with the use of robots and especially in the mid into lategame they catch up and surpass hiveminds.

Thats obvious since Hiveminds have the weakest lategame growth, something like 8.88 with Devouring Swarm. DA already goes above 9 while growing 2 pops, so way more specialized. Cybrogs are not even affected by habitability. They still grow and produce normal ressources regardless of habitability.

Non-Gestalt Synths get 20-30 pop growth easily and anything with Robots benefits from overpowered cybrex relics aswell.
 
Of course, maintenance drones and hunter killer drones should be deactivated at the start. However being forced into extremely adaptive means you can't take charismatic anymore, which was very useful for hiveminds to be able to get rid of more maintenace drone jobs.

Normal empires usually have a little less pops than Hiveminds (of course since Hivemind already start with 32 vs 28 for Megacorp and 24 for normal non-gestalt)

However with the use of robots and especially in the mid into lategame they catch up and surpass hiveminds.

Thats obvious since Hiveminds have the weakest lategame growth, something like 8.88 with Devouring Swarm. DA already goes above 9 while growing 2 pops, so way more specialized. Cybrogs are not even affected by habitability. They still grow and produce normal ressources regardless of habitability.

Non-Gestalt Synths get 20-30 pop growth easily and anything with Robots benefits from overpowered cybrex relics aswell.

Being basically forced to take extremely adaptive and charismatic whenever possible to even stand a chance as a normal empire is just bad design and needs to get changed.

Comparing their pop growth to synths isnt appropriate. Their pop growth is just insane and needs get looked at and normalized. I would try to compare them to regular empires, but even then they are bad because they can't grow two pops at once because they don't have robots, which also ignore habitability.
 
Being basically forced to take extremely adaptive and charismatic whenever possible to even stand a chance as a normal empire is just bad design and needs to get changed.

Comparing their pop growth to synths isnt appropriate. Their pop growth is just insane and needs get looked at and normalized. I would try to compare them to regular empires, but even then they are bad because they can't grow two pops at once because they don't have robots, which also ignore habitability.
Another factor to look at is how long it takes Hive Mind colonies to actually DO anything.

With no traditions and techs, for a standard empire the first 1 new pop is devoted to a Colonist job and doesn't really do anything. Only then can new pops work as Miners and such.

For a Machine Intelligence, who gets +1 pops on colonizing by default, it has 2 jobs to fill (Coordinator, Replicator, Hunter-Seeker Drone, Maintenance Drone all come with the colony outpost, 4 jobs) before it can make mining drones.

But for a Hive Mind, their colonies start with 2 Synapse Drones, 2 Maintenance Drones, and 1 Hunter-Seeker Drone jobs, 5 slots, 4 of which are empty on a new colony, before they can FINALLY start making miner-drones.

Hive Minds skip the 'small colony' phase, but they don't skip the 'lower number of pops' phase, so colonizing a lot of territory makes you STARVE as all your pops go into Synapse Drones.
 
Another factor to look at is how long it takes Hive Mind colonies to actually DO anything.

With no traditions and techs, for a standard empire the first 1 new pop is devoted to a Colonist job and doesn't really do anything. Only then can new pops work as Miners and such.

For a Machine Intelligence, who gets +1 pops on colonizing by default, it has 2 jobs to fill (Coordinator, Replicator, Hunter-Seeker Drone, Maintenance Drone all come with the colony outpost, 4 jobs) before it can make mining drones.

But for a Hive Mind, their colonies start with 2 Synapse Drones, 2 Maintenance Drones, and 1 Hunter-Seeker Drone jobs, 5 slots, 4 of which are empty on a new colony, before they can FINALLY start making miner-drones.

Hive Minds skip the 'small colony' phase, but they don't skip the 'lower number of pops' phase, so colonizing a lot of territory makes you STARVE as all your pops go into Synapse Drones.

Why do machine empires even get an additional pop for new colonies? If a empire gets more starting pops for colonies shouldn't that be hives since they are about strength in numbers design wise with their districts giving more jobs, while machines were supposed to be about efficiency, like their pops produce more than normal pops?