Suggested health fixes

[omniclast]

The latest patch brought health a big step forward, and now you have to actually pay attention to it. But it's also clear that getting to neutral health is very difficult, and as a result expansion is penalized far too harshly. Where before TRs and low health penalties encouraged ICS, now we are pretty much forced into playing tall.

The core problem, in my mind, is the way local health is structured and/or the lack of global health modifiers. Because local health is capped at population, the only way to counter the -4 base unhealth from new cities is with global health. The only sources of global health are virtues -- all other sources, including biowells and wonders, are limited by the local cap.

Not only does this make getting to health neutrality extremely difficult, it strongly favours Industry and Prosperity virtue trees for Magnasanti and Eudaimonia respectively. Without these it is nearly impossible to get to or above 0 health. That means Knowledge is basically never worth opening and Might is only worth opening if you plan to go for domination and ignore health.

So all that said, here are my suggestions for fixing the health system:

Fixes to the local/global health problem:
1. Increase the local health cap to city population + 2 OR decrease base city unhealth to -2. Both these options make cities able to reach neutrality by pop 8, rather than pop 16. (I like the former better, since it still requires an investment in structures or biowells to keep expansion going.)
2. Make health from tile improvements global, but still require a citizen to work the tile. This will enable some cities to specialize in health, and generate excess health that can be used for expansion; but it still won't be possible to spam biowells in new cities to recover health.
3. Make wonder health global, so health wonders are actually worth building.

Balance virtue trees:
4. Add a mid-tier virtue to Might that gives -30% unhealth from puppeted cities.
5. Add a late-tier virtue to Might that gives +1h on arrays, nodes or domes (any of them would work since they all give military advantages. I lean towards arrays because they need some love; but nodes could be good since puppets' energy focus will favour them).
6. Add a late-tier virtue to Knowledge that gives -50% unhealth per pop acting as specialist. (similar to Freedom tenet in Civ5 -- there is even a table in the game code for this, but it was not implemented)
7. Buff Community Medicine to 1h per 5 pop.

Make it easier to manage health:
8. Add an avoid growth option in cities.
9. Add a health focus to the city screen. (This would effectively prioritize biowells and specialists after the Knowledge virtue, and de-prioritize manufactories and petrol wells. You can do this manually but it's a pain since it's not obvious what gives health/unhealth.)
10. Clarify in descriptions that Public Security, Profiteering and Magnasanti do not actually give fractional health. Magnasanti is 1 health per 5 buildings in a city, not 0.2 health per building.

Building and bug fixes:
11. Buff the Progenitor Garden to +40% local health OR +3h +20%h. (If you're paying 4 xenomass you really ought to be getting more than you would from a Clinic/Gene Smelter. Note that if Biowells are switched to global health, this buff will be significantly weaker.)
12. Switch the Bionics Lab to +2P and +1h on Resilin. (Same issue as 12)
13. Fix the issue with Profiteering where an unlimited number of trade units can be bought to boost health.

Anyone else have suggestions for fixing health?

 

[FaceUnderMask]

2. Make health from tile improvements global, but still require a citizen to work the tile. This will enable some cities to specialize in health, and generate excess health that can be used for expansion; but it still won't be possible to spam biowells in new cities to recover health.

That's not really different from how it works right now.
Cities past health neutrality point basically get possibility to generate health with biowells.

Balance virtue trees:
4. Add a mid-tier virtue to Might that gives -30% unhealth from puppeted cities.
5. Add a late-tier virtue to Might that gives +1h on arrays, nodes or domes (any of them would work since they all give military advantages. I lean towards arrays because they need some love; but nodes could be good since puppets' energy focus will favour them).
6. Add a late-tier virtue to Knowledge that gives -50% unhealth per pop acting as specialist. (similar to Freedom tenet in Civ5 -- there is even a table in the game code for this, but it was not implemented)
7. Buff Community Medicine to 1h per 5 pop.

That's...quite interesting indeed. I'm still not convinced that giving every virtue path a health booster is a good design. I wrote about that in a different thread:

And personally I think that those health bonuses will be no-brainers. It will just help to balance out, say, prosperity expansion vs might expansion. But in that case you can just make health less scarce, so, say, prosperity had virtues to improve health for extra bang when expanding, and other had none.

But, at least I see that your suggestions for health virtues promote quite different playstyle.

13. Fix the issue with Profiteering where an unlimited number of trade units can be bought to boost health.

What. It is 1h per 2 trade units, not per 2 active traderoutes?

 

[omniclast]

That's not really different from how it works right now.
Cities past health neutrality point basically get possibility to generate health with biowells.

The local cap keeps the excess health they can generate severely limited. 1 extra health from pop 17-20 cities, 2 from size 21-24, isn't a whole lot. You can't cancel a new 1-pop city until 32, which IME is a struggle.

The real benefit from global biowells would come from size 5-15 health specialist cities. As is, it is really easy to hit the pop cap in size 5-15 cities with Pharmalab/clinic/gene garden and several biowell tiles. Those could potentially be generating a lot more excess health past neutrality if biowells were global. I can imagine building a health specialist city surrounded by biowells for this purpose.

Pop 5 with clinic, pharmalab, 5 bws
unhealth = 5 x 0.75 + 4 = 8.25
health = 5 x 1 + 3 + 2 = 10
net = +1.75 (vs -3.25 with bws under local cap)

Pop 15 with clinic, pharmalab, gene garden, gene smelter, 15 bws
unhealth = 15 x 0.75 + 4 = 15.25
health = 15 x 1 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 4 = 27
net = +11.75 (vs -0.25 with bws under local cap)

(not that you would ever build + work 15 biowells, but you get the point...)

What. It is 1h per 2 trade units, not per 2 active traderoutes?

Yes. And since it is global, you can effectively build/buy your way to positive health.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Fixes to the local/global health problem:
1. Increase the local health cap to city population + 2 OR decrease base city unhealth to -2. Both these options make cities able to reach neutrality by pop 8, rather than pop 16. (I like the former better, since it still requires an investment in structures or biowells to keep expansion going.)

I'd rather they just give health to recyclers and trade depots instead of 2 local health out of no where. Those are the first two buildings you're likely to build anyway so you'll get it very soon.
Pop 8 for neutral seems a little low. I like that it takes an investment to get neutral.

2. Make health from tile improvements global, but still require a citizen to work the tile. This will enable some cities to specialize in health, and generate excess health that can be used for expansion; but it still won't be possible to spam biowells in new cities to recover health.

That's not really different from how it works right now.
Cities past health neutrality point basically get possibility to generate health with biowells.

Sure it's different. If it's local then 4 pop working a biowells gives +1 health total. If it's global than 4 population working biowells gives +1 health each from working the wells and +0.25 each if they are also covered by local health. So the same population is giving +5 health vs. +1.
Still not sure it's a good idea though.

3. Make wonder health global, so health wonders are actually worth building.

I don't know why they changed that. Wonders were very important for wide health. Maybe they thought because of the neutral health you can get from going tall it would still help going wide, but I think it should go back to global from wonders.

Balance virtue trees:
4. Add a mid-tier virtue to Might that gives -30% unhealth from puppeted cities.

Everyone hates liberation army. Swap it with Special Service and make this liberation army's effect.

5. Add a late-tier virtue to Might that gives +1h on arrays, nodes or domes (any of them would work since they all give military advantages. I lean towards arrays because they need some love; but nodes could be good since puppets' energy focus will favour them).

I do think arrays are underused for good reason but it seems odd to get health from a satellite dish.

6. Add a late-tier virtue to Knowledge that gives -50% unhealth per pop acting as specialist. (similar to Freedom tenet in Civ5 -- there is even a table in the game code for this, but it was not implemented)

Hells yes.

Make it easier to manage health:
8. Add an avoid growth option in cities.

I've more or less accepted not having avoid growth as the way things are and something to deal with in and of itself.

12. Switch the Bionics Lab to +2P and +1h on Resilin. (Same issue as 12)

I don't like that as it removes some of the uniqueness of the affinities, which we need more of not less. Supremacy gets more health for every silica so they should have as much of it in one city as they can to conserve firaxite. Purity get's health from resilin but need only one per city so they should have their resilin spread among more cities. Harmony can get health in any city but it costs xenomass so you should chose the best ones for it

I wouldn't want all of these at once since it might swing the pendulum back the other way and make health too easy to get. But the long time it takes to get back to healthy makes the standard healthy bonuses and healthy perks from knowledge. Knowledge especially needs it because it improves culture so getting it early increases the effect but if you can't be healthy early then much of it isn't useful and you have to go somewhere else to get health and by the time you do knowledge loses some of it's snowball appeal.

That's...quite interesting indeed. I'm still not convinced that giving every virtue path a health booster is a good design. I wrote about that in a different thread:

I'm fine with it. Six of nine BNW policy branches and all idiologies had happiness increases but they all functioned differently. With only four branches in this is really does need something in each of them or everyone will have to take the virtue branches that do have it.

 

[FaceUnderMask]

I'm fine with it. Six of nine BNW policy branches and all idiologies had happiness increases but they all functioned differently. With only four branches in this is really does need something in each of them or everyone will have to take the virtue branches that do have it.

Really?
Monarchy was kinda like Community Medicine in CivBE
And some perk in Patronage was like Joy From Variety
There was also a perk that reduced unhappiness from specialists in freedom
Everything else was +happiness from some buildings that don't really give happiness otherwise.
Maybe something else. Don't really remember Civ5 well, it's been a while I played it.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Ok, if you don't want to count local happiness increases then monarchy had less unhappiness in the capital, liberty had happiness from city connections, patronage 50% increased happiness from city state luxuries, and commerce +2 happiness from each luxury. That's 4 of 9 plus the ideology bonuses of which there were many.
My point remains valid that you pretty much have to get a good health virtue or you'll never stay healthy. And right now that means you must go to the end of either prosperity or industry. No might/knowledge games, lots of prosperity/industry games.

 

[omniclast]

I'd rather they just give health to recyclers and trade depots instead of 2 local health out of no where. Those are the first two buildings you're likely to build anyway so you'll get it very soon.
Pop 8 for neutral seems a little low. I like that it takes an investment to get neutral.

Well the first half of the suggestion would still require you to build a clinic or a pharmalab, you wouldn't just get the health out of nowhere. And the trade depot and recycler are both buildings you're going to get anyway so it's not really an extra investment. (But while we're talking about adding flat health to buildings...I'd suggest adding health to Alien Preserves, Biofuel Plants, and/or Mass Digesters. And how about Cytonursery gives +1h on marsh instead of +1f?)

Anyway the problem I see is that the -4 base unhealth is a much bigger penalty than it appears because no matter how many buildings you get you can't counter it before 16 pop. I'd ideally like to see it change so that you have ways to invest to recover that health -- either by raising the pop cap a little, to make it partially recoverable with local health, or creating more sources of global health that could counter it, like with suggestion #2. If #2 was implement #1 might not be neccesssary.

Everyone hates liberation army. Swap it with Special Service and make this liberation army's effect.

This would definitely be my suggested switch. I especially like how this change would open up the right side of the tree, which is totally blocked off by Liberation Army.

For knowledge, my choice would be to do a three-way swap with Information Warfare, Applied Aesthetics and Creative Class. Creative Class becomes to -50% specialists in the bottom left branch of the tree; on the top right you'd have Applied Aesthetics at T1 and Information Warfare at T2.

I do think arrays are underused for good reason but it seems odd to get health from a satellite dish.

True enough. Nodes or Domes make sense to me though, since one heals units and the other boosts city HP. Something like "Quarantine Procedures" for domes or "Autoclinics" for nodes could work. I mainly like this idea paired with making improvement health global, since there'd now be two potential sources of global health.

I don't like that as it removes some of the uniqueness of the affinities, which we need more of not less. Supremacy gets more health for every silica so they should have as much of it in one city as they can to conserve firaxite. Purity get's health from resilin but need only one per city so they should have their resilin spread among more cities. Harmony can get health in any city but it costs xenomass so you should chose the best ones for it

I'm not sure I follow here... the Bionics Lab currently gives +20%h and +1P on Resilin, which still encourages you to build it near multiple sources of Resilin. Optical Surgery meanwhile gives +4h base which is good enough to build anywhere, not just near Silica -- having 1 silica nearby is a nice little bonus if you happen to have some but +4 base definitely makes it worth building anyway. And the Progenitor Garden as is is just a huge waste of strategic resources.

I'm not necessarily attached to a per-Resilin health count, but Bionics Lab definitely needs to give more than +20% health boost to be worthwhile. I figured that since Purity already has GG, and easier access to Gene smelters, it would be better to make it a production building with an added health benefit, than to make it effectively equivalent in health boost to an Optical Surgery.

I wouldn't want all of these at once since it might swing the pendulum back the other way and make health too easy to get. But the long time it takes to get back to healthy makes the standard healthy bonuses and healthy perks from knowledge. Knowledge especially needs it because it improves culture so getting it early increases the effect but if you can't be healthy early then much of it isn't useful and you have to go somewhere else to get health and by the time you do knowledge loses some of it's snowball appeal.

I agree, I don't think all of them should be implemented, but they're all worth testing. And I agree Knowledge really needs a health buff, because all the extra culture and science bonuses really rely on you not having -10% science and culture -- it's not like you can go Knowledge and ignore health like you can with Might.

Really though I'd prefer that there was a way to achieve health without *any* late stage virtues, because I'd like to see it actually worth opening all four trees and going wide rather than deep in the tree. Right now you really have to beeline for Eudaimonia or Magnasanti; but I'd really like to be able to open multiple trees early game, and then focus on what I need at each step, not how quickly I can rush to the bottom. Implementing some of the other changes to make health easier to get might make it unnecessary for Knowledge or Health to have their own big kicker health bonuses.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

...And how about Cytonursery gives +1h on marsh instead of +1f?

I don't understand the food from marsh on Cytonursery. You get the same by draining the marsh which you have to do to build just about anything else. Anyway, forests might be better because I have a hard time seeing a dank swamp as a healthy place to set up shop.

Anyway the problem I see is that the -4 base unhealth is a much bigger penalty than it appears because no matter how many buildings you get you can't counter it before 16 pop.

I'm of two minds on this because the increase of per city health from civ 5 feels right because it should be hard to expand on an alien planet. It should be much healthier to live in one place rather than with the hostile environment between cities. However that disadvantage lasts so long and you have to get 2/3rds of prosperity to counter it.
I'd rather they just have a -1 unhealth somewhere on the affinity levels so it goes away naturally at some point. However then there's the possibility you could get it three times. Maybe a national project to do it would work. I think there should be another generic affinity scale that is just whatever your highest level is. Then there could be things there that you'd want to require affinity, but not a specific affinity and not have to go to a specific area of the tech web to get it. Someone said a problem with the game is you no longer race for as much stuff like in past civ games because everyone is off on their own path. However if some wonders or projects were available to anyone with a affinity level then there we'd all be on the same track for some things.

True enough. Nodes or Domes make sense to me though, since one heals units and the other boosts city HP. Something like "Quarantine Procedures" for domes or "Autoclinics" for nodes could work. I mainly like this idea paired with making improvement health global, since there'd now be two potential sources of global health.

My problem with health from domes is then it's just a purity biowell. I know it doesn't give food but it takes some of the uniqueness from biowells and harmony. Again, I know biowells aren't restricted to harmony. Maybe it's just me that only spams them as harmony.

Here's a weird thought. What if there was a purity building that gave health from city hitpoints? It would give domes a health effect without copying biowells and purity's pre-release description implied they built their cities like fortresses and this would give a reason to live up to that. Keep the alien word at bay so everyone is happy, while harmony is happier living in it. Also if it was the cities current HP then it would create a cool scenario where a siege creates a health panic.

I'm not sure I follow here... the Bionics Lab currently gives +20%h and +1P on Resilin, which still encourages you to build it near multiple sources of Resilin. Optical Surgery meanwhile gives +4h base which is good enough to build anywhere, not just near Silica -- having 1 silica nearby is a nice little bonus if you happen to have some but +4 base definitely makes it worth building anyway. And the Progenitor Garden as is is just a huge waste of strategic resources.

I'm not necessarily attached to a per-Resilin health count, but Bionics Lab definitely needs to give more than +20% health boost to be worthwhile. I figured that since Purity already has GG, and easier access to Gene smelters, it would be better to make it a production building with an added health benefit, than to make it effectively equivalent in health boost to an Optical Surgery.

Here's a scenario: You have four 12 population cities and four resilin sources. If you arrange cities so one city gets all the resilin then you'll have one city with a Bionics Lab that gives +20% health allowing it to go from 10 local health to 12 while the other three stay at ten. And each resilin gets the +1p.
If you arrange them so each city gets one resilin then each one can build a Bionics Lab and each can go from 10 to 12 giving you six more local health total than with one city with resilin. The resilin's +1p is the same. It's only 1 energy per building and no resources consumed so building several of them is no big deal. You can have several large cities as long as you distribute your resilin well.
As for silica, maybe it's just my own experience with sparse firaxite, but I've often not built many Optical Surgeries to avoid eating up all the firaxite and having none left for units or Hyper Cores. So I make sure I grab as much silica as I can with one city to get the most bang for my buck and specialize that as my weather controlled population center. Leads you to build one big city where silica is for supremacy and smaller cities elsewhere.
Yes Progenitor Garden is costly. Still like it being different and it pairs so well with harmony spamming biowells. And I like that my high population centers for harmony are where ever the most food resources are rather than where the health resources are like with the other two.
I like that the affinities have lived up to being different at least in the way they get health.

Really though I'd prefer that there was a way to achieve health without *any* late stage virtues, because I'd like to see it actually worth opening all four trees and going wide rather than deep in the tree. Right now you really have to beeline for Eudaimonia or Magnasanti; but I'd really like to be able to open multiple trees early game, and then focus on what I need at each step, not how quickly I can rush to the bottom. Implementing some of the other changes to make health easier to get might make it unnecessary for Knowledge or Health to have their own big kicker health bonuses.

That's why I like my universal affinity scale. If too many key things are on the tech web and virtue trees then the element of choice they are meant to have goes away because you have to get to those things. If everyone can get some things in the same, but different way then you're free to make more choices in other places.

 

[FaceUnderMask]

Sorry to break into your current flow of mind, but what do you think of some unhealth penalties (-%food, -%production) being applied locally per point of city unhealth?
Just a quick check of opinion.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Personally I see that more as the civ 4 model. It works fine but I'd rather try and work with the model we have now rather than always going back to something familiar.

 

[FaceUnderMask]

Ok, another one.
What about sending 50% of excess health with a trade route? This extra health becomes local in the receiving city.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Hmm. That actually sounds cool. Excess health is wasted, and it is hard to get a lot of it anyway so I don't think it would run too rampant. Sounds like a winner.

 

[Stringer1313]

I'm not sure I'm so against the current health model. Negative health doesn't result in overly gigantic penalties. And when you're on a new planet, it feels natural that you would struggle with health for a long period of time.

The only thing I agree with is that each virtue branch should have a way of helping with health in a unique way.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I was thinking again about global health and we did say it would make it much easier to go wide, but I also realized it works well for tall too.
The extra health can let you expand, but it can also put you into those high health bonuses which are great for taller cities.
Also I had forgotten how long it can take to grow tall cities in practice, so that health neutral state at 16 local health is a ways off, and something like the resurrection device giving +8 it's hard to have a city that needs that much local health. Even going tall it would be better to get that extra to push you into higher bonuses and grow into it later.
I really want that lower unhealth from specialists though.

 

[LORD ORION]

This is why "Luxury Resource" health needs to be implemented.

I'm not saying there should be resources that provide health bonuses.

I'm saying you should have a choice to make on development at the start of the game.

As an example

Petrol Well?
Hell no, Oil Pipeline. You get the Petrol, and +health instead of +production from the tile. (like it's a luxury resource)

 

[Minor Annoyance]

6. Add a late-tier virtue to Knowledge that gives -50% unhealth per pop acting as specialist. (similar to Freedom tenet in Civ5 -- there is even a table in the game code for this, but it was not implemented)

I have done this. Shifted Applied Aesthetics and Learning Centers up and made Creative Class the unhealth reducer and moved it down.
It works. The tooltip for Creative class says nothing but it does function. Also the tooltip for your health seems to round to the highest multiple of 0.75 so if you have an odd number of specialists it wouldn't read correct, but you still get the unhealth reduction from the one specialist.

I should have it online tomorrow. Trying to think of a name. I like 'Creative Health Class' but while that is clever, I don't think anyone would know what it means. So I'll have to be more literal. Like 'Healthier Specialists'.

 

[LORD ORION]

I've given this alot of thought now.

My 1st idea to smoothing out the health curve is.
1) Remove the Level 2 Purity requirement from Gene gardens
2) Replace the +Health choice of Pharmalab with +1 food. (think of it as chemical food, like Soylent)
3) Move Cytonursery to ecology
4) Add Harmony 4, Xenomass cost 1 to Gene Smelter in Transgenics
5) Add a path on the Tech Web from Alien Science to Transgenics

The point is
1) Everyone picks between Genetics and Ecology 1st depending on their starting position (this does not mean it is there first research pick, it means at some point you need to chose one over the other, do you need health for growth from Pharmalab, or do you need other +output for tiles)
2) Harmony picks between going Genetic Design or Alien Sciences 1st (Are you on the verge of Harmony level 2?)
3) Decision for Harmony that went Alien Sciences 1st, do you have the health (+5 from buildings and whatever Virtues) to power through to Alien Biology, Alien Adaption and then Transgenics while you expand cities carefully and then reap the rewards? (you get a stronger +health with +science building to power through Genetic Design after, and grow your low pop many cities wide empire population rapidly, while being in striking range of many techs that require harmony 4)
No?
4) You do like everyone else, you decide when you need Genetic Design to go from +5 health to +8 health from buildings.

This does 2 things
1) it enables Tall empires to avoid going from -10 health quickly from early population growth by getting Genetic Design earlier (so there is a point to things like +2 food colonists and picking the changed +1 food from Pharmalab)
2) It reduces how fast someone can expand like a plague by limiting +5 health from buildings instead of +6 as normal, until you get Genetic Design (so you need to make a trade off in research before you can ramp up never ending expansion) [most likely you pick up +1 science from Pharmalab quest instead of changed +1 food to contain population growth)

Edit: Also forgot the totally derp Purity Affinity choice for the Solid State Citizen quest that is locked behind building a Gene Garden. (umm, I need +2 Purity to complete my purity quest, thanks) This quest could also be dropped down from +24 affinity to +14.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I don't think you need to remove the 2 purity requirement from Gene gardens. I don't know about everyone else, but I always get level 2 in the other two affinities because by mid game you can pick up those early affinity techs quickly and those level 2 buildings are plenty useful.

 

[LORD ORION]

I don't think you need to remove the 2 purity requirement from Gene gardens. I don't know about everyone else, but I always get level 2 in the other two affinities because by mid game you can pick up those early affinity techs quickly and those level 2 buildings are plenty useful.

Same limitation I've complained about before, the level 2 purity requirement renders early +food and +growth choices as worthless, as you can easily outgrow your health.

Or, you luck in and get some free affinities from excavations, and you gain an overwhelming early advantage getting an extra +3 health per city (That's a 50% advantage)