Health and stealing tech?

[mvm900]

Well to say the new DLC doesn't really add much I'm disapproved about the game about might be an understatement. I enjoy the game a bit but keeping health at neutral is pretty difficult. In the game I'm currently in I'm far above the other players but my health is still at -15. It's really hard to fix this. I hope new buildings and stuff to help. There are like two virtues I haven't picked that might tip me in neutral but I have to like run down the virtue tree to get it.

Stealing tech is pretty weird because my current problem is getting an affinity I don't care for. It's not a huge problem but a couple of times, while stealing tech, it's thrown my dominant affinity to another place. Kinda has a bad feel to it.

I sure hope they fix these two things and maybe add in a UN or somethin', since that was almost always fun. Doing stuff like raising or lowering the oceans, etc etc.

[Ryika]

You don't need to be in positive health to have a working Empire, -15 is perfectly fine if you don't spend too many resources to improve your health. If you want to get into positive health, play a strategy that uses Prosperity and Biowells and/or get the Promethean.

Steal tech gives you a random tech that you can research. There are some modifiers for tech costs (techs that take longer to research than the steal tech process are less likely to be stolen) and you get a *1.5 multiplier on techs that yield affinity of the dominant tech that the defending player has. That means you should steal from players that have the affinity that you want to have a better chance - but in the end it's supposed to be random. It's counter-balanced by the fact that you get a whole tech each time, while steal science - which is the option that you should use if you want to guarantee to get something useful - gives a lot less progress.

[gimmethegepgun]

Do note that Steal Science steals a percentage of the cost of the tech you are currently researching (I don't remember how much it was) and is completely independent of the city's yields. Make sure to pay attention to when your spies are finishing a Steal Science op, so you can switch to an expensive tech (that you want) when they finish so you get more science.
This is a good way to get outer ring techs (like Nanotechnology for Nanopastures) far earlier in the game than you ought to.

[Ryika]

It's 15/20/25 percnt, depending on the Level of the Spy

[biochimera]

Coming from Civ 5 I used to care a lot about health too. This gemini game I'm playing I dropped down to -26 health and it wasn't really an issue (It dropped after two factions gave me largish cities for peace, even though it had really been a cold war for like 200 turns). I've found that as long as you aren't too complacent in building health buildings it kinda takes care of itself, and mid-late game you are easily running positive, especially with magnasanti, the health bonuses from trading units (and if you haven't got every town running a trade route you aren't doing it right) and the health bonuses from the military and knowledge trees. Right now I've colonized everywhere I can and sitting at 41 health, and as my cities grow larger so their health caps rise I go even more into positive if other games I've played are any guide, I've been sitting over 120 health at game end. And yeah, I aim for about -15 whilst expanding, It can slow the growth rate of the cities, I don't care, don't go touching my production though, and expansion is the name of this game. As for your comment about running down the virtue trees, I find that best to do. Start off with the industry tree, get that 1% bonus energy perk, go down to magnasanti, then start going down knowledge, and end up with military, doing my best to avoid the weak virtues in each tree. I might be alone but I don't touch the prosperity virtues at all, they seem either way inferior to the other trees or easily compensated for by the other trees.

As for the spying, I hate the affinity being tied to what you research, especially as purity (my fave affinity) has for the most part inferior/worthless techs associated with it. I generally just stick to stealing science points now. And shamelessly savescum worm skeletons. Why not beat one silly mechanic by exploiting another.

[mvm900]

Well that's not the point I mean I can run a game with tons of negative health. It's still a malus that's rather... annoying to have. I find it annoying to have an ability to get positive health but almost impossible to get there. I understand Civ V's happiness system was easily able to sit in the positives. Either way, I still think there aren't that many options.

As for the stealing tech, and affinity tech in general, I still don't see why the randomness can lead to me sometimes flipping me to the opposite of my intended affinity path. But that's still a small thing. As for affinity and affinity techs I also agree because sometimes it's just annoying grabbing leaf techs for your affinity. I wish it was a bit more organic.

[Ryika]

It's not "almost impossible" to get positive health, it very easy is you actually want it. Like I said, use Prosperity and Biowells and you'll be drowing in positive Health later on. Is it good design though? Well... no, the fact that "effective" Strategies stay in negative (or around neutral) health all game long is certainly not ideal and it doesn't "feel right" to many people. Especially not given the fact that it doesn't even seem to be intentional as the developers really try to stay in positive health all the time in the development streams and as low health was punished with a diplomatic penalty in one of the videos.

[mvm900]

I mean it's not like I'm an especially bad Civ player. It's not easy to stay in the positive and also do well at the game. I'm rushing to try to get all the health virtues and I'm still in the negative and well above.

[Ryika]

Well, unless your constantly conquering neighbors it seems like you're doing something wrong then. Here's a screenshot of a quick 6 City Academy-Focused Prosperity game I just played just to see where I'd end up:

http://postimg.org/image/erge8b8m1/

I obviously performed horribly and also completely ignored tile improvements in the bottom cities (mainly because I rushed through the turns), but still - turn 123, Health problems solved. All Health I have comes from the Buildings that are available in Ring 1 (+their quests - you should always choose the Health-Option in Building Quests) and the Health-Virtues in Prosperity.

If you want to go taller or a lot wider than that (this strategy could easily handle 2 more cities without any changes), then you still have Biowells to give you "infinite amounts of happiness"- and at this point I could unlock Transgenics in 9 turns, giving me access to an additional 3 happiness per city (via Gene Smelter) and the Promethean which cuts the unhealthiness of the population of one city completely - if I built it in size 12 megan that would be 9 additional health.

[mvm900]

Whenever health is an option in building quests, I usually choose it. And I had much more than 6 cities so.

[Ryika]

Yeah, well again... Biowells. Other than that, just randomly spamming as many cities as you can is not a good strategy and it shouldn't be one.

[biochimera]

Randomly spamming no. But in the end having more cities puts you in a powerful position. And yeah, either get that health disabling mod or accept it. BE does play more like the earlier civs where aggressive expansion is the best way to do it.

[Mr. Crowbar]

I make getting the +0.2 Health per Building virtue my first priority in the game. You'll probably get the trade health bonus on the way, and combined those seem to be enough to keep health stable at 3-5 for the early-mid game. Then health should really take off once you add other health virtues into the mix. I don't even bother with Prosperity.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by biochimera:

Randomly spamming no. But in the end having more cities puts you in a powerful position.

That's not really true for refined strategies, from my personal experience the fastest victories (on some maps that's sub turn 200 on standard speed) are done with 5 cities, or 6 if the growth potential is low - but that will already delay things.

The reason for that is simple: You have a TON of stuff to do in the early game and spending ~9-10 turns on building an extra settler for a city that will then drop your health even lower early on and and force you to either losing a lot of production and growth or focusing on health-buildings earlier than you'd want to build them - all of this will further delay the things that you really want to be working on in the early part of the game. No matter what you choose, the whole development "per city" will be staggered by a lot, making each additional city that you try to squeeze in even more painful.

[biochimera]

Difference in play style then. I don't consider the game winnable until all the techs are researched, rushing towards the victory condition isn't that fun for me and I'm not interested in playing on speeds outside of marathon. Plus as I said earlier, I don't let health drop to the point it gimps my production. Growth loss fine, production loss no.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by mvm900:

Whenever health is an option in building quests, I usually choose it. And I had much more than 6 cities so.

I get the other option on a few of them (most notably Gene Gardens, +3 energy and no maintenance is so helpful for ignoring energy, and Cloning Plants obviously, because food storage is great)