South-west tile, hill on a river next to mountain seems like a no-brainer to me, but maybe my logic is flawed?

Where would you settle and why?

Who is even designing this guano?

CA please, get this under control. If you're out of ideas what effect to add, don't add anything at all.

Everyone just cancels the fights.

We all play from different continents, and obviously ping is not going to be great, but who actually cares in a TURN BASED GAME.

This is not Counter-Strike? Why the game highlights this so much?

Staircase Map

I like the Crossroads Staircase map single hero challenge for 6 players FFA because I can fit every faction currently in the game for a fun brawl.

I find 150% with Unfair AI to be harder than 200% Apocalyptic, simply because sometimes AI is too slow to clear the map at 200% difficulty, and doesn't manage to build up good economy.

Usually on this map AIs killed me by around Turn 30, but this time around I managed to fight it off and go on counter-offensive.

In reality I only had to fight 2 massive battles - one on Month 2 vs Necro Lord with 27 Vampire Lords vs my 18 Hive Huntresses (no screenshot, unfortunately) and final on Month 3 Week 1 vs Schism Lord sieging me in the middle of the map with 77 freakin' Abyssal overseers.

Temple, Grove, and Dungeon died somewhere in the process.

Devs - it would be lovely to see some post-victory stats for the players to study, e.g. economy, armies, and who killed who.

Also some sort of multiplayer score would be very welcome - like in Civilization V or Stellaris, where you can see small table of players sorted by relative army/economy power. This way player can have at least some generic idea how his neighbors are doing and how strong they are compared to him.

Hive Philosophy - In Your Face

Hive is very strong to zerg rush enemy team on turn 1.

You really want Expert Tactics so you can be there turn 1 in enemy face, but I never even saw Tactics until the very end, and it would help immensely. Still managed without it, but it was more painful than it should've been.

Last AI decided to siege me with ridiculous army containing 77 Abyssal Overseers (no idea how he got them, the rest of his army was normal, like 38 Arbitrators, etc.) so my noob Tactics was not really needed, thank Beelzebub.

Playing Hive you don't win with magic/ranged duels. You win stacking ridiculous attack damage so even your wimpiest tier 1 Parasite hits like a truck on a freight train, and getting in there.

Hero Niev

I think Niev is the best Hive hero with her scaling Attack Damage 10% + 1% / 2 levels.

I got perfect warrior core skills with Attack - Defense - Battlecraft - Morale - Luck. I really needed Tactics earlier but what can you do.

All selectable hero stat upgrades went into Attack.

Attack sub-skill were Battle Frenzy and Shadow Blades. Anything for more damage.

Battlecraft's usage to Wait on your turn for +40% damage is insane. Waiting on turn 1 start and then rushing into attack is just brutal.

Morale primarily for +1 Initiative and some bonus extra attacks proc.

There's also a nice synergy for Defense + Luck with "As Luck would have it" sub-skill, which gives +2 Defense to your creatures for each point of Luck, so at 5 Luck it's extra 10 Defense for the bugs.

Hive Opener & Buildings

Build Apiary's Heart II, hire all tier 2 Locusts and as much tier 1 Parasites as you can, and yolo rush to secure your Wood, Ore, Gold, and Crystals. Pray that the game doesn't cuck you with a bunch of Sharpshooters waiting there. make sure to grab any Wood, Ore, Gold, and Crystals on the way, including cash from chests.

Build order is focused to set up gold income economy and rush your most important early units - Wurms and Reavers:

• Day 1 - Apiary's Heart II
• Day 2 - Apiary's Heart III
• Day 3 - Bank
• Day 4 - Paper Nest
• Day 5 - Chitinous Ziggurat
• Day 6 - Burning Soul Burrows
• Day 7 - Apex

This is a VERY tight and expensive build order, and if you are not collecting every possible Wood, Ore, Gold, and Crystals in the vicinity, tough to make. You will need to grab Resource Riches I law as soon as you get a law point for extra 2.5k gold and 5 wood/ore.

Week 2 is Treasury, Marketplace, Resource Depot, Fortifications I, II, and III up, and if you managed to find and secure your Crystal Mine, a good shot at Tower of Love. Keep collecting all possible free resources, it's still tight.

With Wurms and Reavers in the army, start clearing neutrals for more goodies and resource caches.

With perfect economy opener, extra cash around, gold mine, and 3 x law nodes for extra 750 gold/day I still struggled to buy out all my units every week. Hive units are expensive, maybe too expensive.

As a side note - at the end I saved the game and tried Hive special building Sacrarium Rediti that resets the hero back to lvl 1 in exchange for stats. It gives 1 stat point to everything for every 3 levels (!), which gave me lvl 1 hero instead of lvl 20, with +6 all core stats. The tradeoff is terrible and definitely nor worth the massive loss of experience, which is finite on the map.

It's absolutely and utterly useless building. I hope devs change it to something else. Hive's other special building Beelzebub's Hand giving +2 Attack is perfect though.

Hive Army

Life of a bug in a Hive army is usually vibrant, brutal, and short.

All Hive Units went into Vanguard upgrade mode for max damage.

You want all 7 Hive units to milk the Vanguard to the max (it gives +1 Attack to your bugs for each unique Hive unit in the army).

Also grabbed 3x1 Attack for units in the Laws first row.

As it is - I nuked enemy's 77 Abyssal Overseers with 38 Maniacal Reavers (had 55, but 17 died from spells and ranged fire) and 23 Hive Huntresses.

Brave free Parasite spawned from Fortification I upgrade took off the counterattack, and they burned through Overseer's 19,404 health pool in 2 attacks. Reavers killed half of the stack on a lucky hit, and Huntresses finished the other half.

If I didn't go so hard into stacking Attack %, I don't know how I would've dealt with 77 freakin' Abyssals with absolute magic immunity. Their AoE attack evaporates anything they touch in a 6-hex radius.

Special shoutout to Pyroboros Wurms - 40 of them nuked entire enemy creature cluster with 580+ Skeleton Archers, 140+ Gravediggers, and 300+ Ghosts in 2 shots on the same turn with a morale proc. Their AoE attack is brutal, and I can only imagine how insane it gets with artifacts that remove ranged penalty. They are also blazingly fast and can nuke any shooters outside of upgraded Angels before those get their turn. You can also manually select Area Attack to target their AoE more carefully.

Overall MVPs are Wurms and Reavers, who can carry you hard from Week 2 onwards (and you really should focus on building them on Week 1), then Hive Queens, and then Hornets (Stingers) who are insanely fast and surprisingly helpful all over the battlefield. All 4 units are very fast and is the core of your rush.

Upgraded vanguard Stingers have 12 Initiative +1 from Morale + 2 from their laws - guaranteeing you will ALWAYS go first to do your magic or use faction ability to cook some eggs.

Scorpions were doing okay damage with 30% damage stance, they are slow as hell though, but can also work to pop 30% Defense shield and take off someone's counterattack, so the faster unit who waited before them can swoop in and nuke it.

Tier 1, 2, and 3 units are just there to take off counterattacks from something scary (you have to manually select "Melee Attack" for Parasites, otherwise they just swing from long range). Harvester Locusts are very nice early game with their double-strikes, but in the final fight all 163 just died to a one shot from 38 enemy Arbitrators.

Magic Woes

Got Primal magic Expert by the end which felt useless and lackluster for the most time with its meh spells and pathetic damage.

Like, why bother with Hksmilla's Rampage on 1 unit when I could Bless entire army without any downsides?, Armageddon is a dead meme spell (devs - it badly needs to spare your army as final upgrade to be anywhere near useful and relevant). Primal Remnants barely do anything and are worse than a stack of Larvae. Chain Lightning and Fireball felt weak af. Lightning Bolt is fine for level 1 spell. Only Ice Bolt stands out as a winner. it hits hard and reduces Initiative - very solid spell, but it's level 2 and you don't even need Primal magic skill to use it...

For Hive, any sort of mass spells that buff army are amazing. Nothing else is really worth opening that fancy book for.

In a hindsight - for warrior hero army you really want Daylight magic for zerg rush because all cool army toys are there.

Like, almost every Daylight spell is insanely good. Army-wide Bless to buff up to 35% damage, mass Weakening Ray removing ALL counterattacks from entire enemy army (!), Riposte is amazing army-wide buff with +1 preemptive counterattacks that hit first before the enemy, Arina's Touch army-wide +1-2 Initiative and HP, Heavenly Blades on entire army adds extra pure damage and healing on attacks, Radiant Armor is just broken with up to 40% army-wide damage reduction from ALL SOURCES, and finally the new Implosion - level 5 Judgement, to nuke any single target into oblivion.

I see people complaining about Temple power creep, but in reality it's not the Temple, it's Daylight magic. Any army will be strong af with its army-wide buffs and insane single target nuke. Other schools are not even close, Nightshade and Arcane are probably next best thing.

When you have a zerg meat wall buffed to the gills charging in and 1-shotting anything they touch, it's a sight to behold. I guess that also leaves Necros and Grove somewhat screwed, because some Daylight spells don't work on Undead, Constructs, and Magical Creatures (e.g. Blessing, etc.).

I haven't tried Doreath's Tide level 5 in Arcane, and it does look interesting for the Hive's 1st turn spell to buff all army initiative and speed, but...

Both Necro and Schism lords just blocked my Spellbook on 1st turn. I guess both of them have lucked into orb of Inhibition, so it's probably not so Rare.

Which makes me ask myself - "why would I even bother investing immense resources in magic, when any scrub can just lock my book"?

I hope devs reconsider this and balance it out. As it is, any lord relying heavily on magic will be just ran over by melee rush before they can even use their fancy book. The HoMM 3 artifact that blocked magic was extremely rare and powerful for a reason - and giving any lord ability to just lock someone's spellbook on the 1st turn, which is the most important turn - feels very bad. Orb should be unique on map and more rare, like a Legendary tier or something.

On a flip side - I'd love to have the Orb of Inhibition because that basically leaves no chance to the enemy on turn 1 when my zerglings rush them.

All Astrology points collected over entire game went into Town Portal and its upgrades. I don't see any reason to bother with any other map spells.

Eggs, Larvae, and How to Cook Them

Initially I thought nothing of the Hive faction mechanic ability, but once you can chain laying an Egg and immediately popping it into Larvae, with my lvl 20 hero and Thy Children sub-skill, it spawned 580+ stack of Larvae, and you can plant it anywhere on the map!

Larvae seriously hurt anything they touch with your insane Attack % buffs, and enemy really struggles to deal with them. This is amazing to lock down backline ranged units or plug frontline holes, and is stronger than any summon spell out there. Very useful faction ability.

Found a nice cheese - once you start fights with at least 1 focus point, you can lay the egg next to some ranged unit or a Dragon and they always smack it on their turn, giving you enough time to close in.

Why Hive

I saw very conflicting comments from some people claiming Hive sucks, and then some other people saying Hive's zerg rush is unstoppable, and wanted to try it out myself.

I really love the faction, and it does feel like playing demonic Starcraft Zerg 😄

Thanks for reading, and thanks Unfrozen devs for the awesome game!

Meet the guy who played 100+ hours since EA already for almost every faction … and still somehow missed the giant glowing Magic Observatory button for map spells that was literally screaming ‘TOWN PORTAL GO BRRR’ at him the entire time.”

Don't forget to use your Astrology Points.

A bunch of Skeletons is fine, Vampire Lords seem totally out of place.

Looks like a bug in a script upgrading neutral stacks over time.

One more note - this is Apocalyptic Unfair AI Staircase map.

I play Necros and just captured my neighbor's Hive city on Month 2 Week 2.

He didn't build anything relevant, including Apiary Heart and Burning Soul Sorrows, which I built myself. AI seem to struggle a lot with securing economy on Apocalyptic.