Civ Beyond Earth. Falling Back in each game.

[ChaosWithin]

So I just started playing Civilization BE. I had pre ordered it but never got around to actually playing it until last week. I must clarify that I am not a new player though. I have played Civ 5 for at least 150 hours. I'm not the best player on the planet but I can at least play Emperor and win (though I always seem to win just by a margin).
Now Beyond Earth is a great game. I have no complaints about the game itself but after starting a new game after my first tutorial run I have noticed a very odd thing about it. It seems like BE really emphasizes on controlling a wide empire rather than a tall one. In Civ 5 I never have more than 3 cities. If I choose to play aggressively I will dominate a city but never annex it. In BE I started with one city and got my second one up by turn 35. The next 50-60 turns were pretty smooth. My score was the highest and my population was still unhealthy in spite of having all early health boosting buildings (another problem I seem to have with this game). After quite a few turns I suddenly realized my score was the lowest and every other Civilization had at least 5 freaking cities and I couldn't even settle my third city because my health was still poor. In Civ 5 I had all three cities by at least 50th or 60th turn.
Is there anything I might be doing wrong or is it just absolutely impossible to play a tall empire instead of a wide one. I admit I still haven't quite understood how to progress in the tech web in this game. It will take some more getting used to but i just.
Also is there any freaking way to stop the AI from settling right next to you. FFS it seems to happen in every game.

 

[Xenotitan]

You say you couldn't settle your third city because your health was so poor. Poor health doesn't stop you from settling new cities though. It is difficult to stay at positive health for the early to middle part of the game but it is still best to keep settling cities. It is possible to play tall and still win, but going wide is still a better strategy.

Also, ignore the score. The score breakdown in various categories is helpful to get an idea of where each AI is at but it isn't a reliable indicator of who is doing the best.

There's no way to stop them from settling next to you, but you can burn their cities to the ground.

Also, I recommend Ryoga's affinity quest fix mod. It makes the game better by removing several bugs.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

At the moment, tall empires are not competitive. You get too much from trade and each city is three more trade routes, and bad health is not restricting enough so there's nothing stopping you from getting more cities.
So sadly at the moment I'd say the game as is, is a sandbox to screw around in and see how stuff works (or doesn't) until the patch, which I have high hopes for.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Patch is out now
New cities are only 2 TRs. Health also seem to have a bigger impact (from numbers, haven't tested).

 

[stormtrooper412]

Nerfing beaker yield from a TR would have made more sense to stop the city spamming strat and let a tall colony be viable, just thinking out loud

 

[DarkestOnion]

I only need 3 cities to win in BE typically, but 6 cities puts pressure on neighboring AI's better imho.

 

[RakeWorm]

Tall seems perfectly viable. And fairly necessary, in some games.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Yes tall works now.

 

[CraigMak]

Yes, going wide is a good strat in BE. The new patch made tall play some what viable though. I believe the magic number is 5 - 6 cities now instead of infinite. 3 cities was never optimal play in Civ 5 and is definitely not in this game.

A tall tradition build wanted at least 4 core cities unless boxed in, anyone going liberty wanted 5 - 8 cities.

If you think that 5 cities is a lot in either game then your ideas are very skewed towards small & tall.

 

[WiseGreen]

Going 5-6 cities was already viable pre-patch - perhaps not optimal, but you could put up with the AI pretty well.

Maybe not viable in multiplayer, but i didn't play that ;-)

 

[RedRover57]

Does anyone have a strategy for "tall" and peaceful on Apollo difficulty? On the right map a peaceful game is possible even on Apollo, but I have been having difficulty beating the AI to victory even when bribing them to war each other, etc. In a recent game (Polystralia) I had 6 good cities (end pops: 25, 19, 19, 18, 16, 14; not super tall but the best I could do on the map) and lost to PAC transcendence VC on turn 270. I was 2 turns from building the Emancipation Gate, so still had a ways to go.

My virtue strategy was Prosperity plus Industry, with some later Knowledge. I had no health issues by the mid-game and focused on science building/science stealing, but was behind in affinity levels for most of the game. I'm thinking I may have focused too much on internal trade routes rather than external trade routes for the increased science earlier. It was nice getting cities developed quickly, but being at level 7 affinity when the AI's are already closing in on 13 is a real problem. I made up the gap near the end, but it was too late. It didn't help that I didn't get any free affinity points from quests or ruins, so in my mind a good strategy needs to not have to rely on RNG.

 

[Xenotitan]

You could use Ryoga's mod that fixes the bugs that deny you your later affinity quests. That could shave some turn time off your victory. Maybe not enough to win in your case.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

You could use Ryoga's mod that fixes the bugs that deny you your later affinity quests. That could shave some turn time off your victory. Maybe not enough to win in your case.

What? Later affinity quests got removed after the patch? I was just cursing that I lost because I didn't get any of them. Is it a bug or a game change?

 

[Browd]

Appears to be a bug: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=540358