Wide and Healthy w/o Prosperity

[Daulnay]

An indefinitely wide and healthy empire looks easy without Prosperity:

To make each city self-sufficient in health, overcome:

• 4 unhealth per city
• .75 unhealth per population

Population is easy -

• Cytonursery +1
• Clinic +2
• Pharmalab +3

for the first 6 population, giving 1.5 health extra at 6 pop.

Artists/Aristocrats give +1
Industryrofiteering gives +1.5 for the 3 trade routes, and you can build extra idle trade units if needed or in anticipation of your next city. They don't have to be running to give the 0.5 health bonus.
Knowledge:Community Medicine give +1 for every 6 population.

(also, if you're warmongering, Mightublic Security is only 3 virtues in, and could replace Community Medicine).

That's 5 health to cover the 4 base unhealth from the city. I've seen threads arguing you have to either go Prosperity or just suck up the health penalties. What am I missing?

 

[Udey1]

You might be missing the timing. I've found it necessary to beeline the free colonist depending on difficulty. This allows for a very quick turnaround on establishing an internal trade route and grabs some land quickly.

Doing this will surely send you straight into un-health as the city grows. The infrastructure isn't there yet. This problem gets exasperated as you continue to expand, and is complicated further by more pressing concerns than building a Cytonursery (terrible building IMO)

You'll likely be building trade depot, convoys, earth relics, recyclers, autoplants, ect first. Without the necessary infrastructure, it will take forever to produce the health buildings immediately, but you just racked up 4.75 un-health. - To speed the build of the city, you will no doubt be ready with a convoy to get it internal routes for the production. The convoy usually delivers food as well as production, and you are quickly even deeper into un-health as the first couple growth points for a city are very low.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I think its just much Easier with Prosperity.

After all as soon as you have Biowells, there is no limit to your health
(16 pop+1 city+16 biowells=0 unhealth)

 

[m15a]

If you're going industry, you can also get the +0.2 health per building. That should work out to be about as good as the health virtue from the knowledge tree and/or save you from having to prioritize health buildings so much.

 

[Japper007]

Industry has two very strong health boosters, in tier 2 you have the 0,5 health per trade unit and there's also the insanely good health per building one in tier 3 (I once went from -30 to +12 just by getting that virtue). I rarely invest in Prosperity beyond the first tier actually.

 

[Soffacet]

You definitely don't need Prosperity to avoid -20. But it has the best policies for achieving +20. Prosperity 5 --> Industry should hover near -15 until you reach Magnasanti, assuming rapid expansion. Profiteering tides you over. Prosperity 5 --> Knowledge has some massive advantages but it is pretty weak on health. When using that combination of trees it will probably be necessary to tech Smelters or Distilleries.

 

[player1 fanatic]

I think its just much Easier with Prosperity.

After all as soon as you have Biowells, there is no limit to your health
(16 pop+1 city+16 biowells=0 unhealth)

You forgot -32 energy for maintenance.

 

[Xenotitan]

32 energy per turn isn't that much by that point in the game.

 

[player1 fanatic]

On the other hand, that energy could have been used for maintaining Academies.

 

[Xenotitan]

The 16 pop that can't be used to work academies because they're working biowells is much more of a detriment than the 32 energy.

 

[Strategist83]

What am I missing?

I think you're making too many assumptions.

First off, you're suggesting Artists (overpowered) or Artistocrats. The other seeding options obviously can't do this.

Secondly, you're assuming too many policies. It's not likely/feasible to have +Health policies from multiple trees early on. Both Community Medicine and Profiteering at the same time would take quite a few turns, and then you're also going for + Health specifically instead of something that might have benefitted more. If you want to spam cities, much better to just pick Prosperity and be done with it.

Third, the early buildings, as you point out, are good for only +6 Health. That means you can't support population past 8 with these alone.

Strange thread; hasn't your in-game experience proven that staying healthy is difficult?

 

[Daulnay]

Yes, I've noticed that staying healthy is difficult. I did the math, and this looked plausible. I'd really like to make a science/industry high health path work, but my Civ skills aren't well-honed enough - and my time too limited- to test a lot, so I asked for advice.

The policies are on the useful paths, or just one off them in the case of Community Medicine, so I don't see that it's 'too many' policies. And it's interesting to see what might/might not work.

Thank you, everyone who's posted to the thread. It's been interesting so far.

One more question:

Getting Networked Datalinks early doesn't seem to make a lot of difference - it's only a 2% per city gain. Memeweb however is double that, and culture is relatively difficult to get. Is it worth bee-lining iff you're going Knowledge/Industry rather than Prosperity (or does the +2 to Academies from Learning Centers make it worthwhile)?

 

[xamlop]

Going full 100% prosperity is a an easy way to stay healthy even being constantly at war and taking cities, and this has been successfull for me. The final sinergy bonus (+50% orbital coverage from cities) is pretty amazing for phasal transporter fun stuff like surrounding a capital 50 tiles away in one turn and having a planet carver ready to destroy the city.

 

[sprang]

Third, the early buildings, as you point out, are good for only +6 Health. That means you can't support population past 8 with these alone.

Worrying about health has significant costs.

Those three buildings are 245 bolts (not hammers ). There's an extra +2 science, +1p as well, but you can get an Observatory for 100p and still have 145 left over for other stuff.

Like more colonists. Because hey, in for a penny, in for a pound.

 

[Xenotitan]

That's why I usually don't prioritize health buildings. But if you completely neglect it you get stuck with -50% growth when it dips below -20.

 

[Roxlimn]

Yes, I've noticed that staying healthy is difficult. I did the math, and this looked plausible. I'd really like to make a science/industry high health path work, but my Civ skills aren't well-honed enough - and my time too limited- to test a lot, so I asked for advice.

The policies are on the useful paths, or just one off them in the case of Community Medicine, so I don't see that it's 'too many' policies. And it's interesting to see what might/might not work.

Thank you, everyone who's posted to the thread. It's been interesting so far.

One more question:

Getting Networked Datalinks early doesn't seem to make a lot of difference - it's only a 2% per city gain. Memeweb however is double that, and culture is relatively difficult to get. Is it worth bee-lining iff you're going Knowledge/Industry rather than Prosperity (or does the +2 to Academies from Learning Centers make it worthwhile)?

I've already done a Knoweldge/Industry game. It was okay. Kind of needed to get Gene Gardens to make up some Health, but otherwise manageable. Didn't even use Biowells.

 

[omniclast]

Doing this will surely send you straight into un-health as the city grows. The infrastructure isn't there yet. This problem gets exasperated as you continue to expand, and is complicated further by more pressing concerns than building a Cytonursery (terrible building IMO)

You'll likely be building trade depot, convoys, earth relics, recyclers, autoplants, ect first. Without the necessary infrastructure, it will take forever to produce the health buildings immediately, but you just racked up 4.75 un-health.

This. There are so many things I'd rather be building than a cytonursery. Even if it takes less than ten turns to build, +1h is hardly worth it. Those are turns I could have been building something actually useful, like a trade unit or OER.

The main reason though, as someone pointed out, is that getting Eudaimonia is just so easy and fast -- whereas getting any two virtues that would add up to it takes far longer. That's because the time to get each virtue doesn't grow linearly -- you get your first virtues far faster than later virtues. Spend your first 6-7 virtues to get Eudaimonia, you can be healthy all game. Try to get the end-stage industry bonus, plus community medicine, that will take twice as long even though it's just a handful of virtues more.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

This. There are so many things I'd rather be building than a cytonursery. Even if it takes less than ten turns to build, +1h is hardly worth it. Those are turns I could have been building something actually useful, like a trade unit or OER.

The main reason though, as someone pointed out, is that getting Eudaimonia is just so easy and fast -- whereas getting any two virtues that would add up to it takes far longer. That's because the time to get each virtue doesn't grow linearly -- you get your first virtues far faster than later virtues. Spend your first 6-7 virtues to get Eudaimonia, you can be healthy all game. Try to get the end-stage industry bonus, plus community medicine, that will take twice as long even though it's just a handful of virtues more.

Which is why it needs to be ~10-20% instead of 25

 

[Serenum]

This is something I really dislike, managing health is so much more needlessly complicated and yet unrewarding than managing happyness was in Civ5. All those 0.something bonuses from virtues, all those different buildings plus quest options... Was it really worth it? I honestly think that Health is a distraction from the fun part of the game, in Civ5 Happyness always felt like a natural extension of the game, a barrier to overcome in order to expand but not something that took you away from buildings or units. In BE I find myself constantly struggling in order to keep healthy or just disregard health alltogether and exploit the OPness of internal trade routes to overcome the negative growth and production penalities.

 

[Aimeryan]

Health I find fairly easy to manage, except when it comes to a domination game. You'll usually go minus for a little while, but not hugely so, and its a minor thing. Eventually you are swimming in health.

When you go domination though, each city you take can be a large amount of unhealth, with no way to really get rid of it and becoming worse as the city gets larger (population unhealth scaling is greater than one in captured cities). I wouldn't mind this if it did not for some reason make all my nice very healthy cities a continent away less productive, less scientific, etc.

Basically, I would love a mod/change that made health/unhealth, and the effects of it, local only (including virtues, tiles, etc.). Probably would need to be a lot stronger in that case, but I don't really care if that city I just took was only somewhat useful if that meant it weren't bringing down every other city in the empire.

Most my domination games are just constant razing because of the lack of a courthouse equivalent. Only very good cities that are worth the huge health loss do I keep around (which are very few), especially early/mid game. Unless you are going for a domination victory or really need to curb a particular faction, it seems a major loss to play aggressive - you wont benefit from it personally even if you are capturing cities, and any other faction that has not been involved has benefited from not being at war.

I agree being at war and not capturing things should be a loss of time, effort, and resources, but to be a loss even when you are capturing cities (and easily too) just by the nature of having actually captured a city...