One of the major changes to Civilization: Beyond Earth from its predecessor Civ5 is the wealth of diversity players get in crafting the bonuses they start the game with. Previously your unique abilities, units, and buildings were all tied to your civilization, which can vary significantly in power level (Babylon, I'm looking at you). In Beyond Earth however, you aren't following history, you're creating it! As such, rather than being saddled with a package of unique abilities, players will choose from among a list of starting bonuses, including an augmented spaceship, specialized colonists, and helpful cargo to help them survive the alien planet. Since the release of Beyond Earth is only about two weeks away, I wanted to theorycraft some ideas about how I want my start to look on my ventures into space opening weekend, which I will be streaming on my Twitch Channel.
Sponsors
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| One of the starting screens featuring spaceship augmentation options. |
Sponsors
Sponsors are the eight major earth nations you can get to fund your expedition. Each offers a strong passive ability that will influence your overall strategy throughout the game.
African Union: +10% Food in growing Cities when Healthy
The African Union has a simple but effective buff to growing your cities, increasing your population and the amount of land you can use. This civilization will promote you to play tall, with a few heavily populated, well positioned cities. Ensuring that your cities are well positioned will require careful consideration with you Spacecraft augmentation, such as Retrograde Thrusters or Tectonic Scanners. I plan on picking the African Union for my first play through, just to ensure I can have a strong capital against the often front-settling AI.
American Reclamation Corporation: Covert Operations are 25% faster and cause 25% more Intrigue.
The ARC is all about using spies to gain advantages over their allies. The intrigue level of a city increases the ease of covert ops, in addition to the types of covert ops you can perform, from stealing technology to staging a coup. This seems like it will be a lot of fun in Multiplayer Games where you can just continuously hamper a particular opponent or pick off weak players. While I won't get as much joy from wrecking the computer as I would my friends, the range of bonuses you can get from covert ops can be pretty beneficial in the long game, and the ARC bonuses can get you off the ground that much faster.
Brasilia: Units have +10% Strength in Melee Combat.
Here's the military sponsor, and the guy I will instantly be nervous about landing near me. I typically don't like to play military, especially near the AI in Civ5 because they get bonuses to combat at higher difficulty, which makes up for their fairly bad tactics. Whether the tactical decisions of the AI have improved or not, Brasilia can be very intimidating with the Might virtue bonuses tacked on. Managing your technologies to get strong troops within your affinity will be very interesting for Brasilia, so if I plan on building a gigantic Alien Harmony Militia or a Cyron Supremacy Army I'll probably be rocking Brasilia while I do. Weapon Arsenal & Lifeform Sensors seem like good bonuses if you want to impress your presence on the native aliens in the early game.
Franco-Iberia: Gain a free Technology for every 10 Virtues developed.
Franco-Iberia benefits from churning out heavy culture to get Virtues. The free technology can be very helpful is you time your tenth virtue when your near the edge of an expensive technology you can just claim. The bad part is you will probably only get to use this passive twice per game. Since the Knowledge virtue tree seems to specialize in both Culture and Science, incorporating it seems very beneficial for Franco-Iberia, as is choosing Artists as your Colonists, granting you extra culture and health in every city.
Kavithan Protectorate: Outposts develop into cities 50% faster.
Outposts are 0-Population Cities that your Colonists found, and are very weak initially. Getting these outposts off the ground and running into full-fledged cities is very important, especially in the early game, so the Kavithan's ability to do this quickly is strong for strategies that plan on gobbling up land quickly and spreading the arms of their empire wide. The difficulty here will likely be health, which is the expansion ceiling in Beyond Earth. Picking up Aristocrats or Artists as Colonists will aid the health of every city, while the Laboratory will give you the Pioneering Technology, and with it the ability to build colonists right away
Pan-Asian Cooperative: +10% Production towards Wonders, and 25% Worker Speed.
Because the tech web spreads your options, you might not be in a Wonder Race with other players as much as you would be in Civ5. But since a majority of victory conditions require the building of wonders, this ability can shave precious turns of time away from achieving victory. The bonus to worker improvements is also very valuable for wide civilizations for cultivating the land quickly. I'd probably combine with Engineers in Colonists you can generate a very strong production bonus.
Polystralia: Cities able to send Trade Routes may send one more Trade Route than normal.
Polystralia would probably like to be close to other civilizations, since their ability to generate extra trade routes will become more powerful the more Stations that are around. The downside of this is that you don't always have control over the stations that pop up near you, and in the early game you will want to send your trade routes to these to reap the rewards. This does fit into my general multiplayer strategy of trade my way to victory, so I can definitely see Polystralia becoming one of my favorite choices. Since trade routes cannot go through Miasma, choosing an affinity that deals with that quickly will probably be key. Continental Surveyor is good choice of Spacecraft since knowing how much continent you have to work with for your trade network will be important.
Slavic Federation: Orbital Units stay in orbit 20% longer; First satellite grants a free Technology.
Satellites are an interesting new mechanic of Civilization that can enhance the energy yield of tiles beneath your city, or be used offensively to cripple enemy units. Since Satellites can be found by explorers early in the game, this free tech can come out very quickly, giving the Slavic Federation a powerful early game advantage while also saving them production turns since the satellites that are sent up stay up longer. I haven't looked too much into the orbital options, but this seems like an interesting choice since it compliments many different play styles.
Colonists
Colonists are the type or class of citizens that will be boarding your expedition. They will have great sway in your cities and will grant bonuses to each city. These effects are persistent throughout the game, though they don't vary too much, so I won't go into strategies involving them. I have referenced them in the other categories though as far as combining them to serve overarching strategies, such as PAC Engineers for excellent Production or African Union Refugees for incredible Food growth.
Scientists: +2 Science in every city.
Refugees: +2 Food in every city.
Aristocrats: +3 Energy and +1 Health in every city.
Engineers: +2 Production in every city.
Artists: +2 Culture and +1 Health in every city.
Spacecraft
Augmentations to your spacecraft will grant you a strategic advantage related to the map. These will impact where you expand and how quickly you expand by giving you greater information or agency over the map.
Continental Surveyor: Reveals coasts on the map.
Knowing where all the coastlines are gives you early access to knowledge involving how much space you have to spread out to and in which directions there will likely be contested borders. Coastal cities will also let you know if a city can be attacked from the coast or if you can establish sea trade routes. Polystralia is a Sponsor that I think pairs particularly well with this augmentation, since they can spam trade routes, and will probably benefit from coastal cities.
Retrograde Thrusters: Wider area for choosing where to land your first city.
First impressions make Thursters seem like a very strong augmentation. Normally when you start the game you have a space plus a single ring of space to choose where to land (7 hexes). Thrusters gives you two rings worth of space to choose where to land, which I believe ups the total to 19 hexes, barring canyons or impassible terrain. As much as I enjoy it, you're still working with limited information if you take one of the outer ones. More often than not you're only identifying terrain you don't want to work in your city when positioning with Thrusters an positioning away from it. If the prime capital is central to your plan, Thrusters is worth it, but I'm not totally sold on this being strictly better than other options.
Tectonic Scanners: Reveals Petroleum, Geothermal, and Titanium resources.
These are strategic resources that requires Ring 1 Technologies to reveal. Finding them on the map from the outset can give you a pretty strong advantage in early scouting and colonization, knowing which areas you need to prioritize above others and giving you a jump start on your tech path. It should be noted that you still need to respective technologies to build the Geothermal Wells and Petroleum Wells, but knowing what is nearby can let you prioritize them. I actually like this augment a lot more than I should, and I'll probably end up starting with this the most often, just because I think it gives you the most important information early on.
Fusion Reactor: Start with 100 Energy.
This is pretty bland. Most people will use early gold to either get a jump start on a building purchase or to buy some early land grabs. Maybe this is good at high level play when you are micromanaging, but for most of my games I probably won't even consider it unless there's a particular building I want to rush.
Lifeform Sensor: Reveals Alien Nests on map.
This is pretty good for knowing which areas on the map to avoid, or at the very least which ones you'll need to send the army in to pacify. I could see myself picking it up when I want to go military and shove the aliens out of the way, or to check which borders I need to worry about. I want to mess around with the aliens a bit and how best to exploit them before I weigh in on this heavily, but it seems up there with Tectonic Scanners for important information.
Cargo
Cargo will impact your start by giving you a straight up advantage over your opponents.
Hydroponics: Begin with one extra population in your first city.
Extra population is good, and this might actually be a reason to start Fusion Reactor since you'll want to make sure you have two good tiles for your citizens to work. This can really help you jump-start a gigantic capital if you plan on going tall of just give you a head start.
Laboratory: Begin with Pioneering Technology.
Pioneering if the initial leaf tech that lets you produce colonists and trade convoys. If you plan on going wide, or expanding early, this is a pretty solid choice since you'll save quite a bit of time on the tech investment. Balancing health and aliens with early expansion will likely be difficult early games, so getting the full benefit will require some practice on my part.
Raw Materials: Begin with a Clinic in your first city.
The Clinic provides Health and Science, which will let you get through techs more quickly early on while also granting health to offset early growth. Since you'll probably be building the Clinic early on anyways, this will mostly just save you the 60 Production Cost early on.
Weapon Arsenal: Begin with a Soldier unit.
Soldiers have a lower production cost than Workers or Clinics, but the additional man power will help you deal with aggressive aliens, or escort colonists and explorers outside you borders. Aristocrats would help you fund an early army, which in turn will give you greater control over the map.
Machinery: Begin with a Worker unit.
This is another 60 Production saved, but you'll get to start cultivating the land immediately. If you can defend the worker he'll probably be better than the Clinic since the bonuses you get from improved tiles will greatly outweigh the static benefits of the Clinic.
Potential Starting Strategies
Miracle Grow: African Union, Refugees, Retrograde Thursters, Hydroponics
This is the start for Hyper-Magan, a giant AU capital. Depending on Health options early on, selecting the Clinic or Artists might be more prudent, but the ability to grow the city as quickly as possible is too tempting to avoid, particularly if you get a strong start.
Super PAC: Pan-Asian Cooperative, Engineers, Tectonic Scanners, Machinery
This start focuses on improving the map as quickly as possible, abusing the PAC's increased Worker speed with a starting worker and increases to production to out-hammer your opponents.
Amazon Army: Brasilia, Aristocrats, Lifeform Sensor, Weapon Arsenal
Get your army off the ground quickly with funding from your aristocrats, find the aliens, and eviscerate them! Can be combined with Prosperity/Might virtue trees for added growth and military power for a particularly scary early game foe.
Kavithan Sprawl: Kavithan Protectorate, Artists, Continental Surveyor, Laboratory
This start will probably let you spam out Colonists as quickly as possible, starting with the Lab and Artists to give you extra health to offset early expansion. The artists will also increase your culture output so you can acquire free colonists and growth from Prosperity, or increased production bonuses from Industry.
There's a bunch of cool strategies I can't wait to try out against the AI, and once I get a few games under my belt I'll share some of my starts and strategies, incorporating Techs, Virtues, and Affinities as well. Next week I will try to sit down and write up a Hex article. Hopefully tournaments will be back up for me to stream also. If you have a starting combo you're looking to try out, share it in the comments. Until then.
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