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More and more info is coming out about CivBE. With the livestream on game settings and load-outs the very early game has been clarified a lot. For the options on what is available (at this point in development) can be found on the CivBE Wiki.
It will be interesting to see what, if any, changes are made from this point until release and how evaluations hold up when more of the mid-late game is exposed. Hopefully player speculation may even prompt some of those changes if anything is seen as "out-of-whack".
Base Economy Analysis
The clearest view of Firaxis's intended balance on the base economy looks to be the Colonist load-out screen. There we have very ratios between Food, Production, Science, Energy, Culture, and Health. F, P, S look like they are assumed to be roughly equal. Culture is viewed as slightly less useful than the F/P/S counters and given a Health bonus. Energy is viewed as even less useful than Culture with a +1 to Energy over the +2 everything else gets and still getting the Health bonus.
What isn't initially clear is how much of a benefit Health is. If past games are any indication, it will be highly difficulty dependent. This is because the limits on expansion (tall or wide) have always been placed on the player and scaled up as difficulty gets harder. Health presumably being this limit, the higher the difficulty the more Health difficulties the player will have and the sooner the soft-caps will approach being hard-caps on expansion/growth.
Learning from the History of Civilization
One thing Civ has always been bad at balancing is rush building. Whipping and chopping have been areas that players heavily abuse in past Civ games. It's been targeted by game mechanics to slow down snowballs, 1UPT to remove massive military action from the table almost entirely, nerfs and patches ... and still come out the winner in many cases.
Cash rushing hasn't always been as big a factor, but that's because it hasn't always been available from day one. It's actually more powerful than the others since there's no negative associated with it. No Happiness hit from whipping (or later Drafting), or Health hit and potential long-term Production loss from chopping. TRush building is very powerful. Since Energy rushing is available from the start in Beyond Earth, rush building seems like it will be a very important aspect of the game.
Focused vs Balanced
In the playthrough both the Firaxians seemed to not want to overload one economic area heavily. In past Civ games though, most powerful strategies involve overloading one area to gain a clear advantage, and then using that advantage to leverage into all the other things you passed up. This lets you do the main focus more efficiently, and then everything else with some additional benefit that was gained. It's targeted imbalance ... sorta like rocking a heavy stone back and forth, placing shims under it on alternating sides, and lifting it when there's no way you could lift that much weight with brute force.
I think many of the Load-Out strategies are going to go for this type of imbalance to start. Identify a crucial target, obtain that target ASAP, and leverage it to obtain all other targets. This doesn't necessarily mean choosing the same bonus in all areas of course, there are synergies to consider. But I think trying to cover all your bases ends up with a jack-of-all-trades, master of none type situation.
Colonist Load-Out
- Scientists look good. They have some flexibility given that the techs you research can affect different areas. A solid option.
- Refugees also have flexibility. Food is the one thing you have to have, so you're more guaranteed growth with Refugees than with any other. This growth can be directed towards generating output towards any of the other counters directly by using tiles with lower F output but higher P/E/C output, or by growing population to work more tiles later.
- Aristocrats would seem a natural match to an Energy rush opening. The Health bonus should also be beneficial towards a rush heavy start. You're going to want to expand quickly both to get more Energy and to spend it ... and Health should give you more headroom there.
- Engineers have flexibility in much the same way Scientists do. You can build things that increase counters in other areas. This is an all around solid option. Too little about the Wonders and Buildings outside of the initial techs are known to really quantify this well yet though.
- Artists are the hardest one to quantify. They look very strong. You basically choose which economic counter(s) your colonists will affect after you start the game. How much sooner the Virtues can be selected isn't quite clear. Sooner to get Frugality might not mean much, probably 10% Food for one or two pop growths before the non-Artists catches up ... but then you're sooner to the next one too. Opening up new tiles is also a nice benefit.
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There's certainly no "bad" options here since they're all nice benefits. But I think the Health kickers on Aristocrats and Artists make them stronger than may initially appear on higher difficulty levels. Refugees look like the other strong option.
Ship Load-Out
- Continental Surveyor shows you the coasts, which is cool. But the key is it doesn't kick in until after you've landed, so much of it's value is already gone. I see this as a "wow" factor without much of substance to back it up.
Giving you the info you're on a small landmass from day one could help you better prepare. However, starting with a Scout means that even in this case, you're likely to have that information rather quickly, and there are good general purposes choices to make in the interim.
- Retrograde Thrusters shows you a wider area where to land. Since you see this before landing, and can't move your first city after this choice is made, it's a very powerful upgrade. It can be the difference between an optimally placed city, and game-long regrets.
Statistically this may be the best option, though there will be games where it doesn't help you at all. There may even be times when it hurts you by luring you out towards the edges, and end up being badly placed for future resources you can't see yet but that the map generator allotted to increase the value of your starting location.
- Tectonic Scanner shows you resources without the techs. It's hard to say how valuable this is given we don't know exactly what the resources are good for, or how long it would take to see them normally. Does it show the resources before landing like Retrograde's bonus ... or is it after landing like Tectonic's? I could see taking it to optimize city location if it's the first scenario ... but it loses much of it's value if the second scenario. In that case Retrograde Thrusters would almost always be better at helping you place your first city.
- Fusion Reactor gives extra Energy. This seems like a bit too small an amount to really make it worth considering except in fringe cases where you have a really specific gambit and need to rush buy a piece of the puzzle ASAP.
- Lifeform Sensor is very interesting. This is the essence of what scouting is about. As we saw in the second live-stream ... stumbling into an Alien Nest could very well mean the end of your Explorer. The main question I have about it is if you can see the terrain the nests are on. Given the way Tectonic Scanner works, I would assume you see the terrain, but after landing. Also I am wondering if nests tend to be on strategic resources as they have been appearing on them in high frequency in the videos?
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I'm torn between Retrograde Thrusters for a better city site, and Lifeform Sensor for early Scouting safety and possibly Alien farming purposes. The gambler in me would take Retrograde Thrusters, as it could make a dramatic impact on your early game. It might fizzle out and provide no benefit though. Lifeform Sensor, if it shows the terrain under nests, could be very useful towards helping you plan the early and mid game, as well as for safely scouting your initial landmass. (Not as important for Purity players.)
If Tectonic Scanner and Continental Surveyor showed before landing then they would be competing with Retrograde Thrusters. I'm more sure of this in regards to Continental Surveyor than Tectonic Scanner. But both seem to not be useful for initial city placement and not much help for Scouting either.
Cargo Load-Out
- Hydroponics is a nice option if you can count on landing on a site with 2+ tiles with 3+ output. If you feel lucky, go with Hydroponics. Otherwise go with Machinery.
- Laboratory looks like a decent option for the REX and rush build start. It gives you more to rush right off. I don't think it can match Machinery.
- Raw Materials can't match Laboratory. You get more Science from Laboratory, and it's not like it's an optional tech that you would skip otherwise. The Health from the Clinic is not a factor in the timeframe involved.
- Weapons Arsenal seems rather outclassed here. Take something else and build the Soldier when you want it. We're talking about ~10 turns of movement lost for one Soldier. That's not much of a load-out option.
- Machinery is a Worker right off. We'll need a spreadsheet to determine whether this or Hydroponics is the right choice for a given starting location. I suspect Machinery will be the most common "right" start. The implementation of Forest chops will weigh heavily in that determination though.
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There are some possible synergies here that might push you off a Hydroponics or Machinery start to Laboratory, but I can't see a point to Raw Materials or Weapons Arsenal.
Obviously Firaxis can't make it too important to have the first military unit, or all the other options become impossible to choose. So we're left with the first military unit not being necessary, and thus likely to be rarely if ever being the right choice.
In regards to Raw Materials, it looks like Laboratory always offers more value. There just isn't a situation I can think of where you'd want to build a Clinic but not get Pioneering relatively quickly as well. There might be situations where you might bypass a Clinic though, and in general could build it faster than you could research Pioneering.
It will be interesting to see what, if any, changes are made from this point until release and how evaluations hold up when more of the mid-late game is exposed. Hopefully player speculation may even prompt some of those changes if anything is seen as "out-of-whack".
Base Economy Analysis
The clearest view of Firaxis's intended balance on the base economy looks to be the Colonist load-out screen. There we have very ratios between Food, Production, Science, Energy, Culture, and Health. F, P, S look like they are assumed to be roughly equal. Culture is viewed as slightly less useful than the F/P/S counters and given a Health bonus. Energy is viewed as even less useful than Culture with a +1 to Energy over the +2 everything else gets and still getting the Health bonus.
What isn't initially clear is how much of a benefit Health is. If past games are any indication, it will be highly difficulty dependent. This is because the limits on expansion (tall or wide) have always been placed on the player and scaled up as difficulty gets harder. Health presumably being this limit, the higher the difficulty the more Health difficulties the player will have and the sooner the soft-caps will approach being hard-caps on expansion/growth.
Learning from the History of Civilization
One thing Civ has always been bad at balancing is rush building. Whipping and chopping have been areas that players heavily abuse in past Civ games. It's been targeted by game mechanics to slow down snowballs, 1UPT to remove massive military action from the table almost entirely, nerfs and patches ... and still come out the winner in many cases.
Cash rushing hasn't always been as big a factor, but that's because it hasn't always been available from day one. It's actually more powerful than the others since there's no negative associated with it. No Happiness hit from whipping (or later Drafting), or Health hit and potential long-term Production loss from chopping. TRush building is very powerful. Since Energy rushing is available from the start in Beyond Earth, rush building seems like it will be a very important aspect of the game.
Focused vs Balanced
In the playthrough both the Firaxians seemed to not want to overload one economic area heavily. In past Civ games though, most powerful strategies involve overloading one area to gain a clear advantage, and then using that advantage to leverage into all the other things you passed up. This lets you do the main focus more efficiently, and then everything else with some additional benefit that was gained. It's targeted imbalance ... sorta like rocking a heavy stone back and forth, placing shims under it on alternating sides, and lifting it when there's no way you could lift that much weight with brute force.
I think many of the Load-Out strategies are going to go for this type of imbalance to start. Identify a crucial target, obtain that target ASAP, and leverage it to obtain all other targets. This doesn't necessarily mean choosing the same bonus in all areas of course, there are synergies to consider. But I think trying to cover all your bases ends up with a jack-of-all-trades, master of none type situation.
Colonist Load-Out
- 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
- Scientists look good. They have some flexibility given that the techs you research can affect different areas. A solid option.
- Refugees also have flexibility. Food is the one thing you have to have, so you're more guaranteed growth with Refugees than with any other. This growth can be directed towards generating output towards any of the other counters directly by using tiles with lower F output but higher P/E/C output, or by growing population to work more tiles later.
- Aristocrats would seem a natural match to an Energy rush opening. The Health bonus should also be beneficial towards a rush heavy start. You're going to want to expand quickly both to get more Energy and to spend it ... and Health should give you more headroom there.
- Engineers have flexibility in much the same way Scientists do. You can build things that increase counters in other areas. This is an all around solid option. Too little about the Wonders and Buildings outside of the initial techs are known to really quantify this well yet though.
- Artists are the hardest one to quantify. They look very strong. You basically choose which economic counter(s) your colonists will affect after you start the game. How much sooner the Virtues can be selected isn't quite clear. Sooner to get Frugality might not mean much, probably 10% Food for one or two pop growths before the non-Artists catches up ... but then you're sooner to the next one too. Opening up new tiles is also a nice benefit.
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There's certainly no "bad" options here since they're all nice benefits. But I think the Health kickers on Aristocrats and Artists make them stronger than may initially appear on higher difficulty levels. Refugees look like the other strong option.
Ship Load-Out
- Continental Surveyor - Reveal Coasts on Map
- Retrograde Thrusters - Wider area for choosing where to land first City
- Tectonic Scanner - No technology is needed to see Petroleum, Geothermal, and Titanium resources
- Fusion Reactor - Begin with 100 Energy
- Lifeform Sensor - Reveal Alien Nests on Map
- Continental Surveyor shows you the coasts, which is cool. But the key is it doesn't kick in until after you've landed, so much of it's value is already gone. I see this as a "wow" factor without much of substance to back it up.
Giving you the info you're on a small landmass from day one could help you better prepare. However, starting with a Scout means that even in this case, you're likely to have that information rather quickly, and there are good general purposes choices to make in the interim.
- Retrograde Thrusters shows you a wider area where to land. Since you see this before landing, and can't move your first city after this choice is made, it's a very powerful upgrade. It can be the difference between an optimally placed city, and game-long regrets.
Statistically this may be the best option, though there will be games where it doesn't help you at all. There may even be times when it hurts you by luring you out towards the edges, and end up being badly placed for future resources you can't see yet but that the map generator allotted to increase the value of your starting location.
- Tectonic Scanner shows you resources without the techs. It's hard to say how valuable this is given we don't know exactly what the resources are good for, or how long it would take to see them normally. Does it show the resources before landing like Retrograde's bonus ... or is it after landing like Tectonic's? I could see taking it to optimize city location if it's the first scenario ... but it loses much of it's value if the second scenario. In that case Retrograde Thrusters would almost always be better at helping you place your first city.
- Fusion Reactor gives extra Energy. This seems like a bit too small an amount to really make it worth considering except in fringe cases where you have a really specific gambit and need to rush buy a piece of the puzzle ASAP.
- Lifeform Sensor is very interesting. This is the essence of what scouting is about. As we saw in the second live-stream ... stumbling into an Alien Nest could very well mean the end of your Explorer. The main question I have about it is if you can see the terrain the nests are on. Given the way Tectonic Scanner works, I would assume you see the terrain, but after landing. Also I am wondering if nests tend to be on strategic resources as they have been appearing on them in high frequency in the videos?
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I'm torn between Retrograde Thrusters for a better city site, and Lifeform Sensor for early Scouting safety and possibly Alien farming purposes. The gambler in me would take Retrograde Thrusters, as it could make a dramatic impact on your early game. It might fizzle out and provide no benefit though. Lifeform Sensor, if it shows the terrain under nests, could be very useful towards helping you plan the early and mid game, as well as for safely scouting your initial landmass. (Not as important for Purity players.)
If Tectonic Scanner and Continental Surveyor showed before landing then they would be competing with Retrograde Thrusters. I'm more sure of this in regards to Continental Surveyor than Tectonic Scanner. But both seem to not be useful for initial city placement and not much help for Scouting either.
Cargo Load-Out
- Hydroponics: Begin with an extra Population in your first City
- Laboratory: Begin with the Pioneering technology
- Raw Materials: Begin with a Clinic building in your first City
- Weapons Arsenal: Begin with a Soldier unit
- Machinery: Begin with a Worker unit
- Hydroponics is a nice option if you can count on landing on a site with 2+ tiles with 3+ output. If you feel lucky, go with Hydroponics. Otherwise go with Machinery.
- Laboratory looks like a decent option for the REX and rush build start. It gives you more to rush right off. I don't think it can match Machinery.
- Raw Materials can't match Laboratory. You get more Science from Laboratory, and it's not like it's an optional tech that you would skip otherwise. The Health from the Clinic is not a factor in the timeframe involved.
- Weapons Arsenal seems rather outclassed here. Take something else and build the Soldier when you want it. We're talking about ~10 turns of movement lost for one Soldier. That's not much of a load-out option.
- Machinery is a Worker right off. We'll need a spreadsheet to determine whether this or Hydroponics is the right choice for a given starting location. I suspect Machinery will be the most common "right" start. The implementation of Forest chops will weigh heavily in that determination though.
--------------------
There are some possible synergies here that might push you off a Hydroponics or Machinery start to Laboratory, but I can't see a point to Raw Materials or Weapons Arsenal.
Obviously Firaxis can't make it too important to have the first military unit, or all the other options become impossible to choose. So we're left with the first military unit not being necessary, and thus likely to be rarely if ever being the right choice.
In regards to Raw Materials, it looks like Laboratory always offers more value. There just isn't a situation I can think of where you'd want to build a Clinic but not get Pioneering relatively quickly as well. There might be situations where you might bypass a Clinic though, and in general could build it faster than you could research Pioneering.
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