Ectogenesis Pod

[Xenotitan]

How many external trade routes are you using? I have about 1 internal to 2 external trade routes and I have more than enough energy to pay for biowells even though I tend to pick my external routes based on science instead of energy.

Biowells being on bionics is actually a plus for biowells. Bionics gives the institute building, which has a free tech as one of its quest options, so bionics should be a priority anyway. Also, an extra worker or two per city is hardly a crapton of hammers and maintenance.

You don't mention biowell culture output at all. Did you pick up the tech that gives them a culture yield of 1?

 

[Roxlimn]

No. I specifically avoided that tech because I was trying not to get any Purity points - a self-imposed limitation I was putting on myself for that game, otherwise I would have just picked up Vertical Farms and Ecto Pod.

As PAC with extra worker speed quest rewards, I was using something like 3 or 4 Workers per City - an extra worker or two. Each worker adds something like 3 or 4 EPT, has to be built, and the Biowells being less efficient means that I'm losing hammers on tiles where I have to put up and work extra Biowells and Generators where I could be working Manufacturies or Academies.

I have 1 external route for every 2 internal routes. If I have to divert more, then I'm gonna lose even more hammers and food to this Biowell thing than I'm already giving up.

I try not to prioritize Bionics for the free tech every game, otherwise all my games would start looking and feeling the same way. I did for this game, and I got the free tech, but it was less useful when playing Supremacy because I had no reason to pick up Servomachinery.

I did notice a nice culture spike when I tech-stole Alien Genetics (gives +1 culture per Biowell). Biowells being half a dome at that point was pretty handy, especially since I was avoiding the tech that gave Domes (led to Vertical Farming). Maybe I should pursue that faster?

 

[S.K. Ren]

I won't have access to my save till Sat night to provide specific numbers, but I have to disagree with you saying that trade routes don't affect add to the cities' respective outputs for their own calculations (obviously a route won't apply to it's own yields, but it affects other routes established later). Back to my capital example, I produce ~130 raw food from the city alone and 106 is used for Pop. This leaves a surplus of ~24 food. My satellite cities have a surplus ranging from ~1-8. This leaves a difference of ~16-23. This is not nearly enough to achieve the enormous food yields in my routes:

* Land Routes provide ~9 food; ~12 with Industry
* Sea Routes provide ~14 food; ~18 with Industry

It's close to the +8 food bracket in the Trade Yields thread, but the routes yields are more in line with the +9 bracket or higher (I'm fairly confident there is at least a +10 bracket. Again I'll check my numbers on Sat.)

 

[Roxlimn]

You can check whether the routes matter or not by the simple expedient of removing food from the city until it goes food neutral from tile yields, and then see how that affects your TR to another food-neutral city (which I assume you already have as a matter of optimization).

 

[player1 fanatic]

If I need to chose between Biowell and Ecto-boosted farm, to boost my food, I wold always choose farm. The maintenance cost alone is the reason to avoid Biowell, if purpose is just to get more food.

So, what can Biowell also do exempt food?
Add +1 culture (if boosted) and +1health.

Buildings are better maintenance wise to get for health.

So I would only build Biowell if city is so big, that it's health bonus is not capped by city population, after all health buildings are built. And only in case if I actually need health. Otherwise I am just overpaying for some culture, which can also be gained by Domes, in bigger quantity (and less maintenance, if Dome gets +1 energy upgrade).

 

[alpaca]

alpaca:

Whelp, I tried the Biowells. Super-expensive. Expensive in population, Worker time, tiles, and Energy. The best thing about the Biowells is that spamming them really allowed me to basically just expand everywhere. The worst thing about them is that very nearly every other tile that's not a Biowell had to be a Generator in order to cover the costs!

I usually generate enough income from foreign trade routes to cover the cost easily (one or sometimes two when I'm fully expanded of my cities' trade routes usually bring in cash as a side-product while generating science).

Biowells are certainly more expensive in terms of worker turns, but so are most of the other more powerful improvements like academies and the magrails. Prosperity helps, and I always choose the worker speed quest on the recycler for -10% improvement time. I usually end up with 3 or so workers per city and a carpet of workers improving my land. On the other hand, you also don't need to build so many health buildings, so you free up some production there, which can be used for other things, like building workers. You also don't have to build the ecto pod so early, which is alost as expensive as two settlers.

I would also be wary of "spamming" biowells. Their bonus only applies when you work them, but I think you always pay the maintenance. So only build them when you can actually work them.

 

[Roxlimn]

The problem is that I don't want to work Biowells. I don't want to work Farms, either. That's where EctoPod and VertFarms help out - with such powerful food tiles, I onlyt really need one or two cities covered in Farms to power the rest of the colony. The rest of the colony then builds and works - well other things.

A decentralized food economy leverages the Trade Route system a good deal less. It's less efficient that way.

On the other hand, I am needing to build the Pod, then go to VertFarm tech, then go to Health techs and build the Health buildings. I'll see if I can't use the beakers and hammers more efficiently the next time I use Biowells instead of Farms.

 

[Xenotitan]

ARGH I want to test some of this stuff in a game but I'm stuck theorycrafting only until Friday.

 

[Strategist83]

Ectogenesis Pod is almost certainly the strongest Wonder in the game due to its combination of early availability + significant benefit (especially for Purity players). It is one of the few Wonders that actually deserve 'Wonder' classification.

In fact, EP is almost annoyingly good. Getting it strongly encourages going Purity, meaning you end up with far too many Purity playthroughs.

OP asked the question: Is this Wonder worth rushing [for a wide strategy]? The answer is: Definitely yes, especially if your starting area suggested a Purity strategy in the first place (Titanium & Floatstone access, fresh water tiles that can be farmed). Similar to Civ V, Wonders - at least the ones that aren't blatantly broken due to Firaxis' questionable balancing - aren't very costly compared to the immense benefit they provide. EP will indeed be worth going for rather than placing yet another city, especially since you can't place an unlimited amount of cities anyway due to Health restrictions.

EP is one of the odd exceptions to the awkward wonder balancing where it is so good it might in fact need to be nerfed rather than buffed.

 

[War_Pig]

Ectogenesis Pod is almost certainly the strongest Wonder in the game due to its combination of early availability + significant benefit (especially for Purity players). It is one of the few Wonders that actually deserve 'Wonder' classification.

In fact, EP is almost annoyingly good. Getting it strongly encourages going Purity, meaning you end up with far too many Purity playthroughs.

OP asked the question: Is this Wonder worth rushing [for a wide strategy]? The answer is: Definitely yes, especially if your starting area suggested a Purity strategy in the first place (Titanium & Floatstone access, fresh water tiles that can be farmed). Similar to Civ V, Wonders - at least the ones that aren't blatantly broken due to Firaxis' questionable balancing - aren't very costly compared to the immense benefit they provide. EP will indeed be worth going for rather than placing yet another city, especially since you can't place an unlimited amount of cities anyway due to Health restrictions.

EP is one of the odd exceptions to the awkward wonder balancing where it is so good it might in fact need to be nerfed rather than buffed.

pretty much this. The trick is not to just spam farms but have one real heavy farmed city with mass surplus food to send your trade routes too. In my last game by the end of the game my cap. had food surplus of over 75.

 

[chazzycat]

agree with the previous 2 comments. It's too good. To make it worse, the AI doesn't seem to highly prioritize it. I just built in on like turn 90 on Apollo.

 

[CraigMak]

Ecto is pretty much the only wonder worth rushing for. It is very strong and IMO OP. This is definitely worth making. However the tech is a detour unless you're going purity.

Another reason purity is OP. All the good stuff is in line with purity techs. Ecto, Gene Vault, Institutes. It's a bit absurd where all those things fall on the web.

 

[Carl_Bar]

Ecto is pretty much the definition of trap right now. Same with most of the food sources in game. The vast majority of tiles give, or can be made to give 1 base food, so unless your on snow you only need 1 food per tile your going to work from buildings, ideally you want slightly more for growth purposes. The thing is there's nothing in game right now making it a good idea to spread out, your much better off going for super tight city placement which virtually eliminates the need for highly double digit pop's, their nice if you can get them but not vital.

On it's own this probably wouldn't kill vertical farming, or for that matter the pod since specialists. Except that if you can grab the xenothilium you can get +5 energy yield generators. That's virtually impossible to compete with, with any improvement, especially given how a wide approach lets you pick up a lot of science and culture via city buildings. Sure if you go wide the city penalty will catch up eventually, (or go knowledge), but by then the rest of your economy is doing so well it barely matters.

 

[Roxlimn]

Ecto is pretty much the only wonder worth rushing for. It is very strong and IMO OP. This is definitely worth making. However the tech is a detour unless you're going purity.

Another reason purity is OP. All the good stuff is in line with purity techs. Ecto, Gene Vault, Institutes. It's a bit absurd where all those things fall on the web.

Yeah, the number of Purity stuff is a little over the top. It's not just Ectogenesis Pod. Bionics combines 2 health sources (Biowells, Bionics Lab), free tech, Scientist slots, and Unlocks key Purity tech (Servomachinery). Gene Vault (more surplus!) Vertical Farms. Gene Garden (even more Health!), Titanium (crazy production).

Harmony isn't as bad, but it's still pretty good to snag early Science multipliers (Xenonursery) with super tiles (Xenomass tiles). Supremacy? I'm still trying to figure out what they've got. Just Autoplants and the extra Trade Routes so far. That's pretty much it. It'd be nice if Nodes got buffed a bit more.

The Wonders are generally kind of nice. Drone Sphere is nice. Panopticon is nice. The problem with these military wonders is that the AI is crap at war anyway, so it's not like they make a considerable difference. Maybe you'll save a unit. That's what? 2 turns of production?

The one with Free tech would stand out more if it weren't a 3rd ring Wonder and if Bionics didn't give you the same thing with Institute. It's a multi-level problem with the Wonder balancing, but I think a lot of the problem here is with the Tech Web placements.

Strategist83:

Fresh Water doesn't matter one whit in CivBE. That's a CivV thing where Civil Service allows you to EctoPod your Farms on fresh water. Ecto Pod doesn't even require that. Any flatland is fair game. Vertical Farms don't require fresh water, either.

 

[AlaskA]

OP asked the question: Is this Wonder worth rushing [for a wide strategy]? The answer is: Definitely yes, especially if your starting area suggested a Purity strategy in the first place (Titanium & Floatstone access, fresh water tiles that can be farmed).

I think EP is decent and about third thing u must got, if u try playing wide. The real targets for rushing is:

1) Autoplants;
2) Academy.

I can explain. As for me, difference in a ~10 points of food (u got max. profit from TR from this difference) is much more than enough at early game and u can reach it without EP, just keeping ur satellites always at stagnation.

 

[kingsbury]

Ecto is kind of like a more obtainable Peitra.

 

[Kaigen]

Harmony isn't as bad, but it's still pretty good to snag early Science multipliers (Xenonursery) with super tiles (Xenomass tiles). Supremacy? I'm still trying to figure out what they've got. Just Autoplants and the extra Trade Routes so far. That's pretty much it. It'd be nice if Nodes got buffed a bit more.

Supremacy gets Master Control (which is pretty great) and Nodes (which would matter more if the AI was any good at war) off of Autonomous Systems. They also get the terraforming satellites, which are interesting, but generally too slow and too random to be useful. Perhaps the most significant thing Supremacy gets are Feedsite Hubs and CEL Cradles, which are significant culture boosters and both have building quests that can provide additional covert agents. Feedsite Hubs are on Communications which also provides Command Centers (more covert agents) and access to Orbital Networks for the Lasercom Satellite and Memetwork. I suppose they've also got Neurolabs and Holosuites on Cognition with Academies, but both of those require Firaxite (now if you could reliably make Firaxite with Orbital Fabricators, we'd be cooking with gas). Holosuites do have a building quest for a free virtue, though.

Fresh Water doesn't matter one whit in CivBE. That's a CivV thing where Civil Service allows you to EctoPod your Farms on fresh water. Ecto Pod doesn't even require that. Any flatland is fair game. Vertical Farms don't require fresh water, either.

Fresh water is still required to place farms on certain plots, namely hills, tundra, and snow. Kind of a corner case, but if you're going EP+Vertical Farms, then farms might be preferable to mines in your breadbasket cities, and being able to farm a few tundra/snow tiles can help when you expand into less than ideal terrain.

 

[Carl_Bar]

Harmony isn't as bad, but it's still pretty good to snag early Science multipliers (Xenonursery) with super tiles (Xenomass tiles). Supremacy? I'm still trying to figure out what they've got. Just Autoplants and the extra Trade Routes so far.

Nothing. Ok actually they do have a bunch of nice stuff, but it's all in bad places tech tree wise. Aside from computing and Magrails the only other thing you might ever want from the bottom section of the tree really bad as a general tech is lasercom sats. Supremacy has a lot of good stuff down there, but they also have stuff in the mid left and upper right and everyone needs to go upper left for econ reasons. Harmony gets all it's really good must have when going harmony main stuff in the right, mostly mid right side of the tree, and purity's is spread over the left but biased towards the upper and mid left with only floatstone really mucking things up on the lower right, (easily the single worst part of the tree bar none).

TDLR; Supremecy has a lot of nice thing's, but they're spread all over the tree and don;t gel well with economic upgrades, like at all.

Harmony is the least spread with only econ dragging their attention away from their part of the tree.

Purity has slightly more spread than harmony but much better affinity units IMO.

 

[Roxlimn]

Kaigen:

Supremacy gets Master Control (which is pretty great) and Nodes (which would matter more if the AI was any good at war) off of Autonomous Systems. They also get the terraforming satellites, which are interesting, but generally too slow and too random to be useful. Perhaps the most significant thing Supremacy gets are Feedsite Hubs and CEL Cradles, which are significant culture boosters and both have building quests that can provide additional covert agents. Feedsite Hubs are on Communications which also provides Command Centers (more covert agents) and access to Orbital Networks for the Lasercom Satellite and Memetwork. I suppose they've also got Neurolabs and Holosuites on Cognition with Academies, but both of those require Firaxite (now if you could reliably make Firaxite with Orbital Fabricators, we'd be cooking with gas). Holosuites do have a building quest for a free virtue, though.

Yeah. I know all that, of course. It's just that they don't really seem to play into each other, and Supremacy doesn't seem to have an econ game. Both Harmony and Purity have Econ games.

I think Weather Satellites could be a good mechanic to promote for Supremacy players, but it needs to be Petroleum-free (require only Titanium), and easier to access. It should be easier to get up than Ecto Pod and Vert Farms, given how it takes up hammers and Orbital Space. The Resource Generation function also highly suggests that it ought to be easier to send up.

I keep getting this feeling that Supremacy lands ought to be heavy with Nodes, Generators, and Arrays, but the need for food to grow cities and the lack of Health for wide spam really makes it hard to do that, so I keep falling back to Biowells and Farms, which is kinda boring.

 

[Carl_Bar]

@Roxlimm:

[IMG=http://postimg.org/image/bv5zp7s4z/full/]http://postimg.org/image/bv5zp7s4z/full/[/IMG]

Not a single food generating resource outside of Xenomass wells and basic resources and the xenomass only went up within the last 30 turns or so.

You just don't need food sources besides buildings if you make the right quest choices and keep your cities tightly packed. Also the health was +1 before i grabbed that slav city, not that health is especially important in BE unless you go -20 or more, (which i did briefly getting this up).

Hmmm, image seems broken for some reason. Direct linky.