The Swarm's Buildings

Back to The Swarm

The Swarm's Buildings

Dunekeep
The Dunekeep is almost like every other keep in the game. It's large, has the typical amount of hit points and costs the usual price for its initial construction. However, the Dunekeep has almost half the build time than other keeps, even more so when you factor in the Ant's higher than average build skill. Also, the tier upgrades are slightly cheaper than those of other keeps. And finally, the Dunekeep comes with an unique ability, one that plays to the Lord of Famine's embodiment - Famine! Right from the get go, the Dunekeep can research the Famine skill which, once researched, allows the Dunekeep to start draining enemy resources for a cost of 500 crystal. The cost may seem high but The Swarm have little use for crystal early game, allowing you to spend it here. When you eventually hit late game, it cost still wont matter because it's likely you have already hit your opponents hard enough with the Famine ability already that you wont need to use it further! Keep in mind that the Dunekeep produces Lord Melkor, so place it and surrounding buildings in such a way that he wont get stuck in your base after he enters the map.

Tower (Swarm)
The Swarm's tower has a low damage amount, but it possesses a rare to find magic type. As nothing in the game has any armor to magic (though some units have a special resistance to it), it will always be hitting for full damage, ensuring that even the most toughest of opponents can be cracked. However, the low damage amount does mean that weedy units that don't normally have any armor will still be hit for the same, low damage, making the towers only really effective at hitting tough, armored units.

The building's heavy cost of gold clashes with Scarabs' heavy cost of gold, too. Although, the Scarabs could be placed into the towers to beef up that poor damage amount, in doing so, you'll be making The Swarm's easy to exploit terrible air defense even more exploitable, as well as generally weakening their effectiveness against elite infantry and the many units in the game that have a fire resistance.

Hive level 1
The Hive is similar to a keep in the sense that it too can be upgraded 4 times, reaching level 5 at its highest. However, it can't be upgraded any higher than your Dunekeep's current level. Also like a keep, it's rather large. But, unfortunately, Hives are also The Swarms main production buildings, meaning you'll be needing to build a lot of them. As such, you'll find yourself running out of space very quickly. However, each fully leveled Hive can be quite durable at 900 HP, as well as offering +6 to your army limit.

The first level only produces Ants, but considering that they can be used to fill mines, as well the Hives themselves being used later on to produce core units, you'll immediately be seeing demand for these buildings right from the start of the game and should consider opening up with around three to four of them.

Burial Hall
The Burial Hall is a simple building that produces Husks, and then later on, Bone Catapults. You'll probably never be building Bone Catapults, but Husks can be useful, especially since they cost only a small amount of metal which is shared only with Scorpions and Ants. Although building four of these would be ideal to get a full sized mob of Husks in a quick time, you'll mostly be limited to just two because, as well as fighting the enemy, you'll also be fighting for space within your base grounds. Burial Halls are, fortunately, not that big.

Hive level 2
At level 2 the Hives can produce their first combat unit - the Scorpion. Although yet another metal costing unit at such an early stage of the game, their cheap price allows for them to be produced along side Ants and Husks without many issues. Their usefulness also lasts the entire game and makes level 2 Hives useful even when you can't upgrade them for one reason or the other.

Egg Chamber
Interestingly, the Egg Chamber requires metal to be built and offers +4 to your army limit, as well as having a large 18 view. Also, it appears that the Egg Chamber, as with every other building owned by The Swarm, seems to stop defeat. Clearly there's been some careless copy n' pasting going on here. Anyway, the Egg Chamber only researches faster production speeds for the Hive. Once you obtain the ninth and last Incubation skill, your units from the Hive will be produced 50% faster, allowing you to swarm at the best! Even though the Egg Chamber offers +4 to your army limit, I would advise against building more than one of these because they too are a rather large building and the space is best used for a Hive, which can offer +6 to your army limit when fully leveled, as well as producing units.

Brood level 1
The Swarm can make good use of both of their basic and advanced fliers, as well as Dragons, of course. As such, you'll probably be building more of these buildings than you would with any other race. Most of the time you'll be producing Wasps, with the occasional switch to Harpies if your enemy goes spell caster heavy. But once Dragons roll around and clog up the production queue, you'll be making even more of these buildings, not necessarily to level them up, but to keep some Wasps in the fray. This does mean that even a level 1 Brood is useful, so you should build a couple of them when you can.

Hive level 3
In tier 3 the Swarm only gain access to a single new unit - the Scarab. The Scarab is a fantastic unit that causes your army to revolve around them. They are produced from level 3 Hives which warrents the need to upgrade them as soon as possible. With Scorpions still taking up most of the production queue, you'll now start to need to think about building more Hives.

Watcher
The Watcher is an odd building. Firstly, it's dedicated towards view sight researches, which nearly all other races that have access to a building like this have access to it at tier 1. Secondly, its stats seem out of place. For a scout tower like building, it has a poor view sight - shorted than it's attack range. In addition to this, it can attack both ground and air units, as apposed to just air. Finally, it has an odd cost, requiring metal again and a weird 120 stone. Why not 125? Regardless, it does the same duties as all other scout towers, so if you're not playing with fog of war or / and hidden map, then you can forgo building one of these. The pitiful 10 electrical attack is hardly worth a reason to build one of these, even if The Swarm could do with more anti-aerial support.

Hive level 4
Still following on with the pattern of what each Hive level brings, the Hive level 4's new unit is the Scorpionman. Being the only stone costing unit produced, there is little as to what conflicts with them being produced. The only thing that does even building more buildings. As they take up 2 army points each, massing them can cause army limit issues, especially when you're massing other Swarm units. This can potentially reduce the amount you can field, and with yet another new unit added to the Hive's production queue, you'll once again find need for more Hives,

Queen
Slightly larger than the Shrine of Melkor, but slightly weaker, slightly cheaper and quicker to build. The Queen is a building dedicated towards researching skills. The researches it offers increase attack speed and combat. Both of which greatly improve The Swarm's attacking capabilities, allowing even their most feeble of units to hit decently and before the enemy can make their attack.

Shrine of Melkor
This small building is another building dedicated towards researching skills, but some of the more better ones in The Swarm's arsenal. Summon Mana is great for Heroes and Scorpionpriests, who also get their own specific research in here, too. But the most important and sadistic research to be had is Melkor's Curse. This skill can actually make poison viable. However, it affects the poison mechanic, meaning all poisons in the game become affected by this, even the enemies. As the building is small, it can be chucked in your base somewhere without much care. Just remember that you still need to keep a clear path from your Dunekeep for Lord Melkor's arrival.

Brood level 2
Most the time you would want to make sure you have a Brood at level 2 late tier 4 just so you can quickly get to Dragons come tier 5. But for the Swarm, each Brood level is useful as each unit they bring can offer some useful traits the the Swarm army, and encourage a need to level up your Broods as and when they become available. Brood level 2 brings Harpies to the Swarm race, who can use their Drain Mana spell to prevent enemy spellcasters from casting those multi-target damaging spells that most spellcasters carry. These would normally cause a headache for the Swarm player - smiting down swarms of their infantry with ease. Due to the usefulness of all Swarm fliers, you'll probably need to build a couple more at this point to ensure you can still pump out Wasps while upgrading. However, due to the stone and gold cost of the Broods and their level upgrades, they can intervene with your production of Scarabs and tower building. Although there are still plenty of Swarm units to produce while upgrading Broods, your defensive production will take a hit.

Hive level 5
At Hive level 5 the Swarm can produce their General. Although cheap for a General, the crystal cost is also needed for other things at this stage of the game, such as Famine, Hive upgrades, Dragons, Lord Melkor and even Harpies. As such, it might not be easy to mass produce Scorpionpriests when you first come into tier 5, which means upgrading all of your Hives to level 5 isn't of much importance. Go for a couple or so and then upgrade the others later on when you can safely interrupt the production queues of more common units.

Brood level 3
Because of the Swarm's great economy, it's much easier to get a Brood to level 3 than with other races. But it doesn't stop there, either, as even producing a Dragon is not that difficult for them. Because of this and the fact that you would certainly already have a bunch of level 2 Broods, come tier 5 and you can immediately start upgrading at least one of your Broods, ready for that inevitable Dragon production. But of course, Dragons hog production queues and with the earlier fliers actually useful this time around, you'll probably find yourself starting up some more Broods. It's not uncommon to reach around four to six Broods in a typically battle as the Swarm.