Beyond Earth Tech Web Questions

[Rem]

So I've been playing this game off and on for a week or so, and I like it. It's a solid entry in the Civilization series, but I'm having some troubles.

Basically what it comes down to is the Tech Web. Civ 5 was the first game in this series I ever played, and I'm used to its clear delineations of various functions and uses for the individual techs. For instance, the techs that improved city defense and attack were invariably combined with the military techs, while the cultural and science techs were up top. Even though they were seperate, they were non-combative, and they tended to be nearer each other.

Fast forward to Beyond Earth, where every single function, from City Defense to Health (i.e. happiness, with some WEIRD differences) to military units and wonders are pretty much all spread completely evenly across the web. when I try to make sure I'm keeping up with my cities' health, my city defense suffers and I get conquered. When I try to work on my Affinity, health suffers. There is ALWAYS something I'm neglecting, and it almost always costs me the game, or at least a city or two.

I will eventually get the hang of it. If I grind on this game enough I will eventually learn each of the Web's nodes and "Git Gud," as the Dark Souls players like to say. But to be honest, investing that much time and effort to essentially grind my Tech Web Skill IRL until it's useful sounds like a great way to make this game absolutely no fun anymore to me.

My questions are thus: Is there an article somewhere online that can help me get the hang of this aspect of the game? Is the Web itself organized in some way that I am not seeing? I have already checked all the Civ Wikis I can find, but unfortunately this game appears to be too new for this sort of thing to be comprehensively covered. I really like this game, and I really want to KEEP liking it.

Thanks for your help, guys.

[WDP]

at what difficulty do you play? you should always go for health and affinity, and ignore the rest. science comes with population, the bigger the population, the stronger the science. also, there are only 2-3 mandatory wonders, and they are the Gene Vault (+10% growth in all cities) the Ectogenesis Pod (+1 food from all farms) and, if you got plenty generators (which is rarely my case) the Xenomalleum. go for population, and don't let the enemy cross into your borders. to avoid war, remember that the AI dislikes to broke commercial pacts and trade routes, so send at least 1 trade route to the ones you fear, and trade like 1 titanium or 1 petrolium to them for few CASH energy. the lost is negligible and the AI will be stuck with a trade agreement which won't broke since is one-sided (you are giving them titanium for 30 turns for nothing in return, since you took the energy in cash). this way you won't suffer any problem until mid or late game. also remember that the AI really LIKES to attack you if you don't have an army and if you let agree to open your borders to them. do not do that. do it if you are going for war yourself. with this strategy even at Apollo difficulty you should not have problems. note that the health penalty are so ridicolous by now that you can afford until -19. -20 health is a problem, but you have plenty of room for expansion. note also that health given by cities buildings is local, so it cannot go over the number of the population. use virtues to rebalance health. Knowledge three is currently the best

[St3amfails]

personally I don't use Williams strategy but it would work. I actually do the opposite and passively avoid city growth (no growth wonders etc) so that I can ignore health almost completely and focus on science buildings. Later in game (turn 120-200 or so) you can build biowells and have so much energy you can just buy all the health buildings.
As William says tho, the health penalties are next to meaningless so you could easily balance our approaches without any real need to worry about health.

Affinity techs>any other tech 99% of the time with the exception of the early ones that reveal resources obviously.
Affinity wins the game. Everything else is noise.

As for the web itself, its easier if you think about how real world tech progress works than the one true tech path games generally use, ie most military advancements open commercial and civilian research pathways in the real world and vice versa instead of only being military tech.
Think about actual relationships and the tree starts to make more sense.

[zgrssd]

You should try colored tech web and/or advanced tech filters mod (single player only).

You primary goal should be your "choosen" affinity and/or victory condition. Affinity affects how units upgrade and how special buildings/abiliteis unlock. Level of primary affinity is basically your "tech level". Affinity techs also often unlock stuff "fitting" for your affinity.
I wrote a guide on how wich affinity fights and general stuff about units:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=334220022

[Matthew]

Originally posted by quoththesailor:

Is the Web itself organized in some way that I am not seeing?

Actually, it kind of is.

First inner ring has cheapest techs which you will unlock every single game, along with second inner ring. Pioneering obviously as well. They all unlock the base unit types, spies, and the first round of buildings. Unless you are doing some wonky strategy like using Slav's free tech to beeline an expensive tech patch, chances are you will be researching these inner two rings every single game. The order isn't that important. You'll want Pioneering sooner than later, but for the most part by the time you "need" any of the stuff located here, it will be researched.

After that, the mid-level techs unlock tile improvements like Terrascapes and Biowells. Towards the NE is where most of the culture/happiness techs are located. Most of the satellite techs are located S/SE. Most of the farm/generator improvements are NW.

Basically you can't go wrong with researching the base techs, unlocking the tile improvements you need, then focus on Affinity techs. Many of the miscellaneous outer techs give some flavor to the game, but shouldn't sway a game one way or the other. Between trade-routes, spies, base buildings, and Affinity levels, you will have enough where the rest is "can take it or leave it".