Necrophage Origin for Terravores?

[Franton]

I'd like to try a Terravore empire, but I haven't played a hive mind since the introduction of Origins, and never an "organic" hive mind. Looking at the available Origins, I wonder how some of them would play out, especially Necrophage:: the Origin may be available to choose, but I don't get how a genocidal species can have a secondary ('prepatent') species. I would very much like to assimilate conquered pops into my own species, but does this actually work for a genocidal species? And what happens to the "prepatent" species I start with?

Can I even grow pops of the prepatent species - if not I would have a severe pop growth issue! I've read that you can avoid having to purge your prepatent species by choosing the exact same portrait(!?) as for the main species, but this isn't possible in 3.1.2 - maybe this was a bug and fixed recently.

Has anyone tried necrophage with a genocidal species before, in 3.1? Does it even work?

 

[DeanTheDull]

I'd like to try a Terravore empire, but I haven't played a hive mind since the introduction of Origins, and never an "organic" hive mind. Looking at the available Origins, I wonder how some of them would play out, especially Necrophage:: the Origin may be available to choose, but I don't get how a genocidal species can have a secondary ('prepatent') species. I would very much like to assimilate conquered pops into my own species, but does this actually work for a genocidal species? And what happens to the "prepatent" species I start with?

Can I even grow pops of the prepatent species - if not I would have a severe pop growth issue! I've read that you can avoid having to purge your prepatent species by choosing the exact same portrait(!?) as for the main species, but this isn't possible in 3.1.2 - maybe this was a bug and fixed recently.

Has anyone tried necrophage with a genocidal species before, in 3.1? Does it even work?

Genocidal necrophages are overall the strongest genocide-civ in the game, but also have the steepest early game curve. They have the slowest growth of any basic empire build, and can't pop-bloom or economy-bloom their way to dominance, but they're the only genocide civ that can retain (most) captured pops.

Necrophage genocide-civs, including hive midns, will default to using necro-purging on all other species, including their prepatents. (Non-genocide necro-hives will necro-purge everyone BUT their prepatents.) Between your prepatents and guaranteed primitives, you should have a marginal pop advantage, which you can leverage into a alloy-rush snowball.

That said, I'd recommend you wait until the upcoming patch before you do a genocide or lithoid necro-hive. The patch will do away with the specialist/worker bonus/malus. As necro-hives have to be their own workers in all resources, and can't make use of prepatent livestock, this will be a buff for your worker economy, even though it's a bit of a nerf for the non-genocidal necro-hive cataltytic converter-livestock build as a whole.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

It might be one of the more luck-based concepts.
Terravore means you can convert any planet you don't want to keep into pops and resources.
Necrophage as a genocidal empire means you can convert any pops into your main pop.
It is a massive growth potential, but the downside is that with both traits you have -100% to base growth and pop assembly, so natural growth will happen very slowly (any boosts to the rates push it back into positive).

The next patch (this month, probably next week) will make some changes, liek reducing the necrophage growth reductions for hives and removing the pop production changes (as a hive you have to use your main species for all jobs at the beginning) that should make such an empire perform a bit better.

 

[Franton]

I'd recommend you wait until the upcoming patch

The next patch ...

Thanks for this tip, I wasn't aware of the changes.

It might be one of the more luck-based concepts.

I was wondering about that: In my first Doomsday species experiment I didn't find any habitable planet in the first 12 years of exploring (mostly) with 10 science ships. That was extremely frustrating. If as Necrophage I don't find suitable races to conquer within the first ~15 years, it could be even worse: at that point it will get extremely hard to hold my own against well developed AI empires at high difficulty setting...

 

[Ferrus Animus]

If as Necrophage I don't find suitable races to conquer within the first ~15 years, it could be even worse: at that point it will get extremely hard to hold my own against well developed AI empires at high difficulty setting...

It's the interesting thing about lithoid necrophages. You are extremely good at converting what others have to yours, but bad at making your own.
As a terravore you can and should eat some planets to jumpstart your economy witht eh free minerals, alloys and pops. If that gets you into a place to start eating empires, or parts of them, you're good.

I think it is important to exxploit resettlement though. unemployed pops move eventually off planets, and if you terravore eat a planets last bits all pops get sent to your capitol.

 

[theBigTurnip385]

It's the interesting thing about lithoid necrophages. You are extremely good at converting what others have to yours, but bad at making your own.
As a terravore you can and should eat some planets to jumpstart your economy witht eh free minerals, alloys and pops. If that gets you into a place to start eating empires, or parts of them, you're good.

I think it is important to exxploit resettlement though. unemployed pops move eventually off planets, and if you terravore eat a planets last bits all pops get sent to your capitol.

if you turn up habitable planets at game start then you will have more planets to eat and a way to create pops before you get your war machine going.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

Similar for primitives, which provide a two-in-one snack of pops and planets to absorb.