Tall Cities

[rtfox68]

I am very new to BE and am having a heck of a time building tall cities. I am playing African Union, Purity, building fams like mad, and my cities never seem to get above a 12... I see screen shots of cities at 23 and so... a couple of questions...

1. How do they grow them so tall?

2. Why doesn't the negative health from the number of citizens make it hard to do anything?

3. What is the best method for growing big cities?

Thanks

 

[Ryika]

The important bit first: Tall cities are currently not very strong and getting tall cities usually requires a lot more investment than you actually get back.

But if you really want tall cities, then spamming a ton of biowells and using internal trade routes is the way to go. You will also need some "Keep Food after growing"-modifiers. The available ones are:

- Nanopasture (Building, 15%, (not 30% as it says in the tooltip))
- Biospheres (Technology, 10%)
- Acclimation (Quest, 5% (I think it's currently disabled in Singleplayer))
- Cloning Plant (Building-Quest, 10%)
- Cel Cradle (Building-Quest, 10%)

 

[nimling]

Trade routes feed food, more cities make each other bigger. It gets really ridic when conquering a world-spanning empire.

If you run into health issues the governor automatically sets cities to avoid growth, so you may have to override the governor (if that's possible - it probably uses legacy Civ5 logic and stifles food even when set to food focus, if it senses the city is "unhappy").

I usually end with several size 20 cities or so, but aside from building a production capital there isn't much point. There are no National College type modifiers until the very late game, and the few unique ones aren't that good. The big one that comes to mind is Daedalus ladder which puts +10% to everything.

The growth curve kinda screws cities out of growing too big, even once health issues are non-existent.

That said, once you have decent health buildings or biowells, tall cities produce less unhealth than a lot of small cities.

Prosperity tree is good for dealing with early unhealth, but long-term Industry and Knowledge have better picks. The Knowledge health policy is pretty early in the tree but you need pop 12 cities before it makes a huge impact.

Mostly comes down to getting a ring of core cities growing early.
Stations that provide food are really useful.

 

[joncnunn]

#2: This is because major penalty doesn't kick in until -20 (unlike Civ V in which it kicked in at -1)

However, that is one of the things in Beyond Earth that encourages more smaller cities.

 

[Halcyon 7]

That -50% global health bit from artifacts is kinda nice for that idea. it's some RNG but should you pull it off you could at least go taller. Alot of the pop. based modifier wonders came down a bit.

Seems you can shoot for taller than BE if you can score the right stuff to make it worth it.

 

[Acken]

? The problem with tall isn'T the health. On the countrary in this game the taller you are the more healthy you end up.

 

[nimling]

yeah unhealth is 0.75 per pop, which gets offset for most cities around transgenics. the promethean is one of the few really good wonders too, but even without it you'll notice that your size 9-12 cities actually improve your health when they grow.

it's harder to focus food though. the really strong food improvements are a ways off and often attached to stuff that isn't immediately useful.

i like to have workers gang-terraform a new outpost and set up 3+ food tiles, so they can grow fast. then again i try to approach the game as if they ai were competent, even though i know they aren't, so i prioritize food and production a lot more. settling pretty tight cities might allow you to divert food tiles from your established cities for growing new ones.

generally, the earlier you can set up food production in your new cities, the better off you will be. rushbuying vivariums is a good first step, presuming you have city sites with good producion tiles.

i like taking nature's bounty in prosperity to set up those early cities, if they can position around 3-4 bonus resources. this is where overlapping city boundaries can be a good thing, as you can manually reassign food tiles from developed cities to your new ones.

later on, weather controller satellites are really awesome, again especially if you took nature's bounty. they only spawn new resources on unimproved tiles, but you will probably have a few plains or desert tiles that aren't worth enhancing. even without the resource spawn, a weather controller is 7 extra food if all of the tiles are worked, and should be good for at least 4-5. i like them better than solar collectors if i'm going down the supremacy or purity path, presuming i have oil.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

? The problem with tall isn'T the health. On the countrary in this game the taller you are the more healthy you end up.

Yeah, pretty much. The biggest problem for tall empires is the lack of powerful specialists and the much higher food curve. Growth slows down significantly as city size increases and there are very few viable carryover mechanics.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Tall was not better in BE, sadly. And neither is in BERT

 

[cord]

Unfortunately, going tall is weak in BE, due to the lack of % bonuses in cities, and the insane amounts of food required to grow at 20+ pop. Wish they'd throw us a bone, like some type of better late-game "Keep food after growing" modifiers buildings.

Anyway, I think 15% of "Keep food" is hidden in one of the Alien quests (cleaning Fungal things).

As for growth, since you're African Union then you can pick up the Student Aid agreement, combined with your trait it makes the Grower specialists become 6 food tiles.

 

[nimling]

One way to get a tall city: Conquer half or more of the known world, and feed a ton of traders to your capital. Make sure you have decent food production and agricultural focus.

The game is usually over before this sort of city really snowballs, but once a city hits pop 34 or so the snowballing goes out of control and the city grows like mad, especially with food-boosting buildings and wonders. It helps to be in range of Xenomass, and for the city to NOT be your capital (Capitals don't get the magrail bonus, which is pretty useful for ramping up production - besides, your other cities have more freedom in where they are placed and can be specialized for rapid growth.)

It is still much better to have a lot of fairly large cities than one massive city, but having lots of good cities will help feed the massive city once the snowball really gets going. If I settle new cities late-game, I want them to grow to pop 10 pretty quickly.

The Desert-Terrascape exploit is pretty strong for building a supercity, if you took Ecoscaping and set up Weather Controllers. 5food/3prod/3culture is really strong, but it does chew up money. The culture yield here is pretty important for getting virtues, and even before Ecoscaping is a thing, 2 culture per terrascape can add significant culture at a time when it's pretty hard to acquire.

 

[ggmoyang]

The important bit first: Tall cities are currently not very strong and getting tall cities usually requires a lot more investment than you actually get back.

But if you really want tall cities, then spamming a ton of biowells and using internal trade routes is the way to go. You will also need some "Keep Food after growing"-modifiers. The available ones are:

- Nanopasture (Building, 15%, (not 30% as it says in the tooltip))
- Biospheres (Technology, 10%)
- Acclimation (Quest, 5% (I think it's currently disabled in Singleplayer))
- Cloning Plant (Building-Quest, 10%)
- Cel Cradle (Building-Quest, 10%)

This, plus getting +% food bonus is good.

 

[sugerdady87]

One way to get a tall city: Conquer half or more of the known world, and feed a ton of traders to your capital. Make sure you have decent food production and agricultural focus.

The game is usually over before this sort of city really snowballs, but once a city hits pop 34 or so the snowballing goes out of control and the city grows like mad, especially with food-boosting buildings and wonders. It helps to be in range of Xenomass, and for the city to NOT be your capital (Capitals don't get the magrail bonus, which is pretty useful for ramping up production - besides, your other cities have more freedom in where they are placed and can be specialized for rapid growth.)

It is still much better to have a lot of fairly large cities than one massive city, but having lots of good cities will help feed the massive city once the snowball really gets going. If I settle new cities late-game, I want them to grow to pop 10 pretty quickly.

The Desert-Terrascape exploit is pretty strong for building a supercity, if you took Ecoscaping and set up Weather Controllers. 5food/3prod/3culture is really strong, but it does chew up money. The culture yield here is pretty important for getting virtues, and even before Ecoscaping is a thing, 2 culture per terrascape can add significant culture at a time when it's pretty hard to acquire.

"Desert-Terrascape exploit"? Care to elaborate?

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I assume he is talking about the fact that desert Terrascapes get an extra food yield from the Vivarium (because the building effect is applied after the Improvement change).

Not so much an exploit, more like an oddity related to the engine.

 

[Roxlimn]

The basic Frugality Virtue from Prosperity also gives a 10% carryover from city Growth.

There's no real bonus to growing really, really big - no unique huge percent bonus or anything. Later on, concentrating your cities can be useful. Lasercoms can boost science-focused cities, Solars can boost energy cities, but you'd have to be delaying the game end intentionally to get both. Solar, in particular, is on Photosystems - which isn't necessary or very necessary to get most times.

The main benefit to having fewer, larger cities is to centralize production and routes so you get less player fatigue. I'd hate having to manage trade routes for 20 small cities.

 

[MAMoob]

Playing on fungal gives you another +15% carryover, plus building a city next to a smaller giant fungi gives you a lot of super high food tiles.

I'd say there's no significant benefit in building more than 10 cities as science/culture penalties become noticeable and you probably won't be able to make the new cities super useful before you win anyway. At which point you want tall(er) cities because more pop = more worked tiles = more production and science = faster victory wonder/whatever. I had ~25 pop cities by t140 on fungal with 2 fungi cities on agriculture development.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The basic Frugality Virtue from Prosperity also gives a 10% carryover from city Growth.

There's no real bonus to growing really, really big - no unique huge percent bonus or anything[...]

But all these small mods are actually more important than one might think. The more modifiers you can stack on each other, the stronger every extra % gets, because the relative effect increases.

 

[Olodune]

I'd say there's no significant benefit in building more than 10 cities as science/culture penalties become noticeable and you probably won't be able to make the new cities super useful before you win anyway..

I agree. The science penalties are easy to overcome - but it does take a little time. For a peaceful (non Harmony) game starting with Victory Wonder construction around ~130, placing cities after t80 likely won't pay off. Certainly t100 is too late. Building significantly more than 10 cities before turn 80 can leave a bit of a health deficit, even in BERT.

I haven't been able to win a Harmony game before t150 yet, but more cities are part of the requirements here. You want to add cities until the marginal tech slowdown is equal to the marginal timer gain from extra Xeno Sancs + Mind Stems.