Beyond Earth game mechanisms : Health

[Lord Yanaek]

Beyond Earth game mechanisms : Health

Notes :
This guide has been last updated for game version 1.0.0.574. Currently checking for changes introduced by the fall patch (there's a bunch of them)
I'm limited to 30 images so while i have the BE fonticons available to use in this post, i can't unless i split it. I'll use Civ5 or Civ4 icons as a replacement until they are available as emoticons as those are apparently unlimited. If any mod/admin wants the fonticons i extracted i'll be happy to provide them. They are 22px png with transparency.
If you notice some mistakes, tell me so i can correct those, whether those are gameplay errors or English errors (English is a foreign language for me)
If you think BE sucks and is not worth any strategy/game mechanisms guide don't waste our times and move along.
Thanks for the sticky

Introduction
Health in Civilization : Beyond Earth has been introduced as a way to limit rapid expansion. It's very similar to the Happiness system from Civ5 but with some differences that can make managing health (or not managing it) challenging for Civ5 veterans and new players alike. Health effects are actually close to the city maintenance from Civ4 This guide has been created to explain how health is calculated, how negative or positive health will impact your game, and how you can keep positive health, or not.

It should also be noted that Health in BE isn't just medical health. It's more a global evaluation of your colony's socio-medical stability as is suggested by some virtues giving health while they have no relation to medicine.






Health : the math
According to the Civilopedia, you gain from :

• Difficulty level
• Buildings and wonders
• Virtues
• Some improvements
• Colonists

You gain from :

• Number of cities
• Population
• Some improvements

The exact implementation however is a bit more complicated. First, positive health can be either local or global.

Local health is any health you gain directly from a city. Health from buildings and wonders in the city and improvements worked by the city (Biowells) are examples of local health. Local health can never be higher than the population of the city. That means if you have a 7 population city with buildings that give you 12 health, that city will only give you 7 .
Global health comes from difficulty level and virtues and is applied globally to the empire health, that is the visible health shown on your screen.
Negative health is always global and not limited by city population.

Not sure you understood? Here is an example :

Spoiler :

Top panel shows i'm at -4 health. I want to go positive again so i go through my cities and find a small population 2 city that does not have any health buildings. I quickly buy pharmalab and clinic for a total of +5 health, but i only rise to -2. Why? Because my population 2 city can only give me 2 positive health.

Health in numbers

Negative Health
The formula for negative health is quite simple, provided no virtue comes changing it

• You get 4 negative health per city that appears as "generated from number of cities" on the popup
• You get 0.75 negative health per population that appears as "generated by Population" and "generated by Specialists"

So a size 4 city will give you 7 negative health, a size 16 city will give you 16 negative health and a size 20 city will give you 19 negative health. As you can see, high population cities gives you less negative health per population point than small cities.
In addition, you gain 2 negative health per worked Manufactory and 1 per Oil well. Those improvement based negative health shows as "from Cities" on the popup. You can get the oil for strategic purpose without the unhealth if you don't work the tile.

Positive Health
There is no "formula" for positive health. You just add all sources together keeping in mind that local health can never exceed city population.
Difficulty
Base health defined by difficulty is global and has it's own line in the health popup.

• Sputnik gives you 12 health
• Mercury to Apollo gives you 9
• AI always gets 15

Buildings and wonders
Health from buildings and wonders is local and shows on the health popup as "from Cities"
Non affinity specific buildings

Building | gained | with quest | Technology prerequisite | cost
Clinic|1|2|Habitation|60
Cytonursery|1||Genetics|90
Pharmalab|2|3|Genetics|95
Gene smelter|3|4|Transgenics|350
Soma distillery|4|+10%|Social dynamics|400
Cloning plant||1|Genetic design|210

Affinity specific buildings

Building | gained | with quest | Affinity prerequ | Technology prerequisite | cost
Gene garden|2|3|Purity 2|Genetic design|200
Optical surgery|4||Supremacy 5|Mechatronics|370
Bionics lab|+20%||Purity 4|Bionics|265
Progenitor garden|+20%|+30%|Harmony 10|Artificial evolution|430
Neurolab||1|Supremacy 4|Cognition|255
Organ printer||+10%|Supremacy 8|Synergetics|390
Augmentery||+10%|Supremacy 7|Augmentation|500

Wonders

Wonder | gained | Technology prerequisite | cost
Daedalus ladder|3|Augmentation|1550
Memetwork|2|Orbital networks|700
Precog project|2|Collaborative thought|450
Promethean|4|Transgenics|950
Resurrection device|8|Artificial evolution|1350
Xenonova|2|Alien materials|1150

Virtues
Health from Virtues is always global and has it's own line on the popup
Might

Public Security (T1) : 0.25 global for every military unit. If you can maintain a large army that's a a nice boost to global health. You need 16 units per city to compensate the city's base unhealth so it's unlikely you'll be able to keep health positive with that virtue alone but it can help.

​

Prosperity (prosperity is the king of health among virtue trees with no less than 4 health bonuses, including the most powerful one)

Mind Over Matter (T2) : +7 global . Plain and simple. Great ealry boost when health is most likely to be an issue, not so great later but later you'll have more sources of health.


Joy from variety (T3) : + 1 for every type of improved basic resource. That's possibly +12 . Often not quite as much. Note the wording, each resource type improves your health so it does not help if you have 3 fibers, even for different cities.


Eudaimonia (T3) : -15% negative health. Effectively cities will only add 3.4 to negative health and each population point 0.64 negative health. A size 13 city would only give you 12 negative health (after rounding). You will thus get positive health from cities much earlier.

Second Synergy bonus (10 Prosperity virtues) : +1 per city. Effectively this means each city only gives you 3 negative health or 2 with Eudaimonia.​

Knowledge

Community Medicine (T2) : +1 for every 6 population in a city. This might not look like the best health boost but if you do the math a size 12 city will give you 2 global health. In effect this is the same as saying your city will only increase negative health by 2. With population considered it's a total of 11 negative health but you can have up to 12 local health. You size 12 city can give you positive health if you keep supplying it with health building. Good for tall cities as is the entire tree.

​

Industry (interestingly, industry is the second best tree for health)

Profitering (T2) : 0.5 per trade unit under your control. That's possibly 1 per city if every city runs both it's available trade routes, which is quite likely.


Magnasanti (T3) : 0.2 per building in a city. 0.2 might not seem a lot, but every building will add to your health and with industry you'll probably have lots of buildings in your cities. Possibly you can skip health specific buildings completely and still be positive, or go strait to Utopian without Eudaimonia or if you build health buildings in all your big cities. Since this health is global, your big cities with lots of buildings can also "pay" for the negative health of newly founded or small cities. Very powerful.
​

Other sources

• Biowells will give you +1 in your cities. That's local health that will show under from Cities on the popup and they need to be worked to provide this bonus.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Health : the effect
Negative Health will gradually reduce your growth, , and while positive health will gradually improve those same yields. With the exceptions of Energy production and combat strenght, health basically affects every important aspect of your empire. Negative health won't immediately put you in troubles as soon as you drop below zero but it's better to keep it under control and prevent it from dropping too much as the effects can become severe when health is very low.

Here is a diagram showing how health affects you outputs.

Alternatively you can see the exact numbers

Spoiler numbers :

• From -20 to -70, Production is penalized -1% per point (up to -50%).
• From -15 to -65, enemy Covert Ops Intrigue is increased +2% per point (up to +100%).
• From -10 to -60, Science is penalized -1% per point (up to -50%).
• From -5 to -55, Culture is penalized -1% per point (up to -50%).
• From 0 to -50, Outpost Growth is penalized -2% per point (up to -100%).
• From 0 to -50, City Growth is penalized -2% per point (up to -100%).
• From 1 to 5, nothing happens.
• From 5 to 25, Production bonus +1% per point (up to +20%).
• From 10 to 30, enemy Covert Ops Intrigue is decreased -2% per point (up to -40%).
• From 15 to 35, Science bonus +1% per point (up to +20%).
• From 20 to 40, Culture bonus +1 per point (up to +20%).
• From 25 to 45, City Growth bonus +1% per point (up to +20%).
• From 25 to 45, Outpost Growth bonus +2% per point (up to +40%).

growth (and outpost growth) will both strike you as soon as you get into negative health. As long as you stay close to zero, the effect is barely noticeable, but you can actually get to a point where you won't grow at all (except through conquest) if you let health drop to -50.
Intrigue. This will affect how much spy activity will increase the intrigue level of your cities. Starting at -15 health intrigue will rise faster in all your cities, up to twice as fast. If Arc is your neighbour and they are trying to undermine you with spies it can cause troubles but most of the time AI is not very efficient with it's spies and you probably won't get to the highest levels anyway as you will stop growing before.
will affect the output of all your cities. There is a 70% difference between the worst and best health levels in all of those important yields! It won't affect from trade routes and you can still buy all your buildings and units but there is nothing you can do to avoid the reduction. Fortunately those do not strike immediately and the penalties rise slowly but this can potentially make a very large difference.

Health : how to keep it positive and why (not) do it
3 of the buildings listed above : the Clinic, the Cytonursery and the Pharmalab are available right from the start or very early. They don't cost a lot and two of them give you science on top of their health. Two of them have a quest giving them +1 health. On total they can give you +6 local health. That's enough to cover the negative health from 8 population in a city. Few cities will have more than that early. The Gene Smelter and Soma distillery, available much later (at Transgenics and Social dynamics) can add another 8 on top of this (with quests) for a total of 14 local health. If you want more than this, you'll need the affinity specific buildings or Biowells. Biowells can really add lots of health to your big cities, give you 2 each and are available with a tech you probably want anyway as Bionics will also unlock the Institute.

However, you only cover unhealth caused by population so far not the city itself. In fact, you can't combat city unhealth with buildings early. A size 16 city will produce exactly 16 unhealth while smaller cities will give more unhealth than their population but their local health will still be limited by population. If you want to stay positive, or as close to positive as possible before you get some big cities, you'll need health from virtues. Fortunately you have virtues giving global health in all trees. The easiest way to get positive health, and by far, is to progress in the Prosperity tree. If you go all the way to Eudaimonia you'll cut base city unhealth almost by half (you only get 2.4 from every city), population unhealth by 15% (down to 0.64) and you get something between 10 to 20 global health. You can now have positive city health as early as 9 or 10 population (depending on rounding) if you have the required buildings.

Note that local health is limited. The maximum health you can get from those buildings, provided you always choose health bonus on quests, is 23. You can then increase this by 80% up to 41, but you need purity 4, supremacy 8 and harmony 10 affinities. It's more likely you'll be limited to your main affinity buildings so you can't grow cities indefinitely.

Is it necessary to keep health positive
Disclaimer : This last part isn't as "mathematical" as the rest so you can disagree with what i wrote. Feel free to discuss as long as discussion is constructive and respectful of others.

Short answer : no. Long answer follows.

If you are used to playing you probably panicked the first time your health dropped negative and you didn't found a way to bring it to positive fast. That's because happiness was so punishing in Civ5. Health impact on a game is more subtle, but it's still real. However unlike Happiness that just had to be kept above zero, you have three options when you consider health.

• Don't really care. This was totally viable in the release version but the first patch changed this. You will get to negative quickly if you don't try to prevent it. But life on this new planet is harsh and everyone has to live with it no? You have other priorities. If you go this way you'll probably soon have very slow growth and then get various penalties and it might go to a point where only combat is a viable option. I kept this from the release version of the article but i doubt it's till viable, maybe someone will try it again post patch and share his results.
  Pros: you won't loose researching techs that give you only health building nor waste building them so you can concentrate on actually winning the game.
  Cons: you will get less yield from all your cities and they will grow at half speed, preventing you from working new tiles to get more yield. All around, you'll be doing worse at everything but combat.
  How to work around low health?. Trade routes will give you that's not affected by the penalty to cities yield. They will also give you energy to buy what you can't build fast enough. Internal TRs can boost your and in big cities. Of course, Domination is probably the most natural victory for someone ignoring health as combat is not affected.
• Try to keep it positive, barely. This would be similar to the usual Civ5 happiness management.
  Pros: Relatively easy to do from mid game on. You won't have to suffer from the most extreme effects.
  Cons: You'll have to invest some for at least the most basic health buildings and get at least one health virtue. It might be difficult to balance so you'll have small negative health at times. You probably want some Biowells to help your big cities and they have a maintenance cost of 2. You won't benefit from the effect of very high health.
  How to do it and when?. As was said, build at least the 3 basic buildings, get at least one virtue and possibly some biowells. Not all virtues are available in the early game and Biowells are not so you'll go negative early. Don't panic, you can keep playing and even expanding while negative, just try not to fall to low to avoid stalling growth as larger cities have a better citizen/health ratio than small ones. Health will get back under control around mid game.
• Go as high as you can. You are not here to let your people suffer. You want a better world then the one you left behind and you'll get it.
  Pros: Nice boost to all yields. Protection from spies. Faster outpost and city growth.
  Cons:You need to dedicate some of your efforts to keep health that high. You'll need more than the basic health buildings so you'll have to research them. You'll need more than 1 virtue and this might require that you go into multiple trees.
  How to do it and when?. The easiest way to get very high health is to use the Prosperity tree. That tree has but two purposes : allowing you to expand quickly and stay healthy. Another option is to use Industry, especially Magnasanti and build lots of infrastructure in all your cities. Clearly this is more suited to a builder player than a warmonger.
  You probably want to keep health as high as possible as early as possible, so the "basic" health buildings will be among the first ones you build in new cities and Genetics will be a priority tech. You also want to choose the health reward for quest whenever possible. You won't have very high health before you get your second or third health virtue. You want to avoid the penalty as much as is possible without crippling your expansion completely as it would delay that exact virtue you need so ideally you want to stay above -5 even in the early game.

Is one of those strategies better? I don't know, it's too early to really know. Hopefully all are valid and can make for different ways to play the game.

 

[Roxlimn]

2nd Synergy Bonus from Prosperity needs clarification: Local or Global? This makes a difference. Local just means that Prosperity players will need less Health Buildings as their cities grow, or can afford to grow their cities faster. Global means that Prosperity cities under the syngergy start off with less negative Health and attain neutral Health faster.

System observation:

CivBE's system looks superficially like Civ 5's Happiness system, but it's really a lot closer to Civ4's Maintenance system. Each city starts off negative, but ultimately pays off for itself and a new wave of expansion can begin at neutral cost. Civ4's Maintenance system forced you to stop expansion at the steepest of costs - Beakers. Since CivBE is more like that system than Civ5's, the penalties could probably be mapped to Civ4's effects for a more pronounced similarity.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I think it's global, but i'm not completely sure. I haven't been using prosperity at all in recent games so i would have to test it to be sure.
Good point about the maintenance system.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

It appears that all virtue health is global. Also I've heard that joy from variety is 1 health for every basic resource, even duplicates, but I haven't noticed myself. If it is every one, and if that's intentional then it should be local.
Personally I think everything that is tied to a city should be local to prevent getting cities that add no base unhealth which is possible, so the effective +0.25 health per population can shine l. Vertical growth to allow horizontal expansion. Like the days of civ 4.

 

[Tarukito]

Thanks for this great breakdown

 

[Minor Annoyance]

In addition, you gain 2 negative health per Manufactory in your territory and 1 per Oil well.

I remember checking and the unhealthy from improvements only functions when you work the tile. Maintenance improvements I usually lock so I'm not paying for nothing but with oil wells I don't get the unhealth but still the resource.

 

[sprang]

I remember checking and the unhealthy from improvements only functions when you work the tile. Maintenance improvements I usually lock so I'm not paying for nothing but with oil wells I don't get the unhealth but still the resource.

If you dont need the oil, once you build the petro plant, you dont need to build any more wells. Your other undeveloped oil still gets the +2 culture, but now without the unhealth.

 

[sprang]

Great post so far.

As I mentioned in the other thread, which of the other health effects are global? I'm assuming:
Mind over Matter (P: +7), Joy From Variety (P: +12 for Basic Resources), Public Security (M: military units), and Profiteering (I: trade units).

But Magnasanti is city-based (buildings), as is Community Medicine (Health for pop), as well as Artists/Aristocrats and the Prosperity Synergy 2. So are those all local?

If you have lots of cities that are at their pop=health limits - perhaps you built Pharmalabs quickly? - the Global virtues will give far more benefit than the Local ones.

 

[pwoz]

I just did some testing with IGE.

Magnasanti is global health. (added buildings to a city that was at local health cap and unhealth went down)
Prosperity Synergy is global health.
Joy from Variety only counts once for each resource type.
Community Medicine is global, but it only applies for your cities (or annexed cities). Puppets do not contribute to this virtue.

 

[Roxlimn]

Strategic analysis for Prosperity:

Starting Health is 9 Global
Mind Over Matter +7 Global
Joy From Variety +3 to +12 Global
Eudamonia: 25% less negative Health

Once you reach Eudamonia, each city only gives 3 base unhealth + 0.6 per Citizen (about 6 Unhealth for a size 5 City). This makes the neutral breakpoint about between size 3-4 for Prosperity players, which is easily instantly achievable with Settler Clans.

What this means is that with heavy Prosperity investment, players can create immediately Health-neutral cities by selecting Artists or Aristocrats and purchasing a Clinic, allowing for indefinite, Health-neutral expansion.

This means that, regardless of Trade Routes, it is always profitable for a properly set-up Prosperity game to expand indefinitely; at least as far as it's still likely to have returns on the end-game goals.

Not sure how I feel about that. I'm trending to, "That can't be good."

 

[chazzycat]

This means that, regardless of Trade Routes, it is always profitable for a properly set-up Prosperity game to expand indefinitely; at least as far as it's still likely to have returns on the end-game goals.

Not sure how I feel about that. I'm trending to, "That can't be good."

health is not the only penalty for expansion though. there is also the culture and tech cost per city to consider.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I remember checking and the unhealthy from improvements only functions when you work the tile. Maintenance improvements I usually lock so I'm not paying for nothing but with oil wells I don't get the unhealth but still the resource.

Thanks, corrected

I just did some testing with IGE.

Magnasanti is global health. (added buildings to a city that was at local health cap and unhealth went down)
Prosperity Synergy is global health.
Joy from Variety only counts once for each resource type.
Community Medicine is global, but it only applies for your cities (or annexed cities). Puppets do not contribute to this virtue.

Thanks, will be corrected.
Good to know IGE does work for BE. Next time i won't have to play like 60 turns on quick to test something.

 

[Roxlimn]

health is not the only penalty for expansion though. there is also the culture and tech cost per city to consider.

True. A more in-depth look at the entire expansion/Health system might be a good discussion, but this one is on Health, so I'm inclined to end it on this post, in deference to Bob.

The main thrust of my post was that Prosperity-heavy players can arrange it so that all their new cities are Health-neutral from the get-go.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

This means that, regardless of Trade Routes, it is always profitable for a properly set-up Prosperity game to expand indefinitely; at least as far as it's still likely to have returns on the end-game goals.

Not sure how I feel about that. I'm trending to, "That can't be good."

But that's exactly why I feel prosperity is weak! You *can* expand indefinitely but it doesn't help you reach any victory condition more quickly, unlike all the other 3 virtue trees.

 

[Xenotitan]

Except expanding gives you more of pretty much everything, helping you reach your victory conditions.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Yep, prosperity is all about expanding quickly and staying healthy. Is it always the optimal strategy? Not sure. I certainly hope it's not. Trade routes go a long way towards making infinite expansion the best strategy of course but we'll see how they turn out after the patch.

Thanks to whoever stikied this

 

[pwoz]

Except expanding gives you more of pretty much everything, helping you reach your victory conditions.

This depends how late in the game you are and on your current empire.

Given a new city increases science costs, it has to reach a certain amount of science output before it will cover the cost of itself. This payoff time can be longer than it takes for you to win the game (or research all the techs you need to win the game). In that case, expansion is not the correct choice, even if it is neutral health impact.

There can be an exception for harmony victories where you immediately buy the buildings that accelerate your win condition, but it seems like you need quite a few to drop the turn count.

 

[Anomandaris]

Prosperity after the free colonist is all about staying healthy. And staying healthy is not worth the effort. The bonuses from the other trees far outshine being healthy. You can already expand infinitely even without the prosperity tree. In fact, you would do it more quickly without prosperity and largely ignoring health (or optimally keeping it over -20 because that and only that slows down your expansion... and not by much).

 

[docbud]

Thank you for writing this up, Bob Morane