Health and how to deal with it.

[Skirlasvoud]

I'm just musing out loud about how I see the health system working. Maybe it will help some people, otherwise feel free to jump in when my reasoning is wrong.


Things that lower the health stat are global population count (-0.75 on normal) and each new city (-4 on normal).

Basically in Beyond Earth, your cities are supposed to stay somewhat smaller than in most other Civ games, especially in the beginning. After all, you've just landed outpost on a strange world. You're not supposed to have sprawling cities yet. You start out with 9 "disposable" free health (on normal difficulty), but it's very hard to really get more than that until the mid-game.

This is because even though you do unlock +health buildings like the clinic pretty soon, these - rather deceptively - won't actually help you get *more* health than the disposable starting 9: They only compensate for the population penalty. This means that health from city buildings, isn't really disposable. If you create a city with a population of one and build +6 health worth of buildings, all of that is wasted on that single person and you STILL incur a -4 health penalty for the city itself.

So what to do with the starting health that truly is disposable?


Two beginning strategies:

A) "Tall" One city with a population so large, that it has more people than health buildings, allowing it to eat away some of your disposable starting health and being more productive.
Let's say you have a +2 clinic and a +3 Pharmalab following this strategy. That will support 5 people. You have 9 more disposable starting health, minus the -4 penalty from the city itself, meaning you can support 5 more people on top of that.
This means you have one big 10 population powerhouse of a city.


B) "Wide" Several cities whose population is carefully kept in perfect balance with the amount of health buildings you have. If you have a +2 Clinic, than you're allowed to have 2 population in each city. If you have a clinic, pharmalab, genegarden amounting to 6 health, you can have 6 population in each.
All the disposable starting health goes to the penalty for having several cities. This means 2 cities is very managable and that 3 is a stretch.



In Civ5, the city penalty would be compensated for by luxury resources, but no such thing in the beginning of Beyond Earth.



So how do you keep your population low enough?
Build farms sparingly for the Tall strategy, and don't build any farms for the Wide strategy. Even eating dirt, your population will grow quick enough that they're badly managable really quickly. You can still tell your city to focus primarily on production by clicking the cog in the upper left meny, which should slow it a good deal, but it not, simply take people out of the field and lock them down in such a way your growth situation is always "stagnation".
In its infinite wisdom, Firaxis was dumb enough to omit an "avoid growth" button like Civ5 had, which is especially ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ now that it has become 10x more important to manage growth. When you excavate artifacts and they give you extra population, or heaven forbid you research tech that gives you growth and food on top of certain buildings, it's almost a punishment now towards the Wide strategy.

Health wonders also, only work for the city they're build in. In other words: A health wonder does nothing for a Wide strategy, but will help make the city it is based in Tall without penalty.



If you want more truly disposable health, virtues are your first port of call, then certain improvements like the Biowell. By then however, you're already halfway down the tech-tree and you've started living on the planet in stead of just surviving.



For the last two games, I've managed a Wide Strategy fairly well. Using all my virtue health on new cities, and carefully scaling those cities to only be as large as I had health buildings to compensate for the increase in population. They slowly went from 4, 6, 7, 8 and still managed a respectable amount of science and production.



Without a friggin "Avoid Growth" button this is more laborious than it damn well should be, especially to newcomers whom I'm guessing Firaxis hates so much they're outright trolling them, but other than that this system has a certain charm.
You've landed on a brand new planet. Carefully prioritizing resources (like healthcare) to stay alive and within the means of your band of haggard survivors, seems fitting.

[Ryika]

There's really no reason not to go to negative health early on. Science is very low anyway, so the 10% don't really make a difference - getting internal trade routes up and running however is very important. So instead of "forcing" yourself to stay small, just expand until you have all the cities you want, get the trade routes active, maybe squeeze in some health buildings if you need them to stay above -20 and by the time everything is in place you should have enough health buildings and production to get back to positive health relatively fast.

[Skirlasvoud]

Originally posted by Ryika:

There's really no reason not to go to negative health early on.

Interesting. Hadn't tried that. I'm the kind of person who'll brook no negative attribute anywhere, but maybe it isn't so bad.

So are their gradations to bad health? What happens at -20? Anything at -10?

[Acken]

Between virtues, biowells and buildings there's not many reason to slow down growth or expansion, and getting in the negative is not an issue.

The game is clearly not thought about carefully and slowly expanding to not get negative health. It's clearly (as of v1.0) rigged toward expansion and growth, dipping in the negative and then later if you want you'll grab health to fix it.

[Acken]

Originally posted by skirlasvoud:

Originally posted by Ryika:

There's really no reason not to go to negative health early on.

Interesting. Hadn't tried that. I'm the kind of person who'll brook no negative attribute anywhere, but maybe it isn't so bad.

So are their gradations to bad health? What happens at -20? Anything at -10?

http://apolyton.net/wiki/CivBE:Health

The bonuses/penalties

[Grumpy]

While your musing hits all the right spots one thing that everyone who mentions health seems to forget is that in civ5 base, upto -19 happiness was no penalty at all and while it did have luxury resources, you still needed workers out there to improve the resource and the technology researched too, which with barbarians running around meant you either settled directly on the luxury resource or you had to get an army in place.

When I read the civopedia it said that if health gets too low your units will suffer a combat penalty however I haven't experienced this nor has anyone reported that being the case yet so I imagine WHEN the game gets patched/extra content, that will be one of the penalties like it was in BNW and that will mean it matters much more.

Honestly why they didn't make it work ala Civ5:BNW is a mystery to me because Civ5 & Civ5:G&K had the -20 unhappiness = no more making settlers (which didn't stop you making or capturing new cities mind you) and it just didn't work. Wide was the only way to go in those games although tall could work due to how good wonders were.

In Civ:BE going wide is the ONLY way to play, even to the point that trying to go tall is futile, wonders are pathetic this time around. None of them will swing a game in your favour, at all! So you don't so much 'deal' with health as you do just flat out ignore it! Which can I add; why include a game mechanic if players can simply ignore it?

[Brother PaciFist]

the trade routes and solar satelites snowball a wide empire towards victory. later you get +10 energy and 7 research for a trade route with a foreign empire. You get 5 to 7 industry for every internal traderoute. With values like joy by diversity you will get tons of +health for cultivated resources. there is a value for 0.25 for every intercontinental trade route you have. how cool is that?. -10% for getting into health deficite until -19 health. With some effort into research you can have as many health building as you need. the max health capacity generated per building is some 28. Dont hold back on farms, even the expensive terran landscapes 6 energy are worth their costs. Not on every tile thought. You just pay for them with trade routes. a later value have -25% on negative health modifier. You will get so much research for trading that you can literally fly through the tech tree.

The strongest empire in Civ BE is the one with the most trade routes. With the right starting corporation you get max 5 trade routes per city. 1 internat for industry, 4 foreign traderoutes for money and research. You will have problems finding enough trade partner cities for that trade monster :).

Does somebody have an idea what energy form is generated on trade routes. I wonder what energy sources they trade. What generates the energy on a trade route? I thought a convoy or tradeship would consume energy and not generate it magically out of thin air. It can't be paper money. FIAT money would be totally worthless on a new planet, where you have to work for every resource you need. An imaginery currency system could not feed the new settlers. The solar collector produces energy out of the sun. The thorium reactor out of fissionable material. I do not get where the energy in trade is generated. the research for trade routes is actually very accurate. Trade was the most important factor for invention and introducing new technologies, beside the ability to write and read.

Have a nice day

[Acken]

Originally posted by Brother PaciFist:

The strongest empire in Civ BE is the one with the most trade routes. With the right starting corporation you get max 5 trade routes per city. 1 internat for industry, 4 foreign traderoutes for money and research. You will have problems finding enough trade partner cities for that trade monster :).

Polystralia is 2 for capital not 2 per city.

[Black Hammer]

Originally posted by Brother PaciFist:

Does somebody have an idea what energy form is generated on trade routes. I wonder what energy sources they trade. What generates the energy on a trade route? I thought a convoy or tradeship would consume energy and not generate it magically out of thin air. It can't be paper money. FIAT money would be totally worthless on a new planet, where you have to work for every resource you need.

Energy/Gold in Civ games represents commercial sector growth, while food is residential and production is industrial. So energy from trade represents things like luxury goods, rather than just watts or newtons.

[Matthew]

Not really practical to be in positive health until later on, when biowells unlock and health from virtues begin to kick in.

Flow of the game seems to be to expand a few times and get trade routes up, which will allow you to get enough science to research later techs (i.e., biowells). Then at that point you can, if you choose to do so, work on getting positive health for the healthy bonus.

I wonder how things would be different if -1 to -19 health was colored yellow instead of red. Seems to be largely psychological, that people just hate seeing that red number even though it isn't affecting them that badly.