Health

[Lambiorix_be]

Anyone else also having problems in keeping health positive? I don't seem to be capable of keeping it in the green.
I build/purchase the buildings giving health, try to get the correct virtues. But I do not seem to be able to balance it correctly.

I also just noticed that every city has a positive health indicator so what gives?

How do you keep your health at acceptable levels?

[Proteus_MST]

Nope, no problems.
There are enough health increasing buildings and virtues to stay in the positive even with fast growth ...
especially if you earn enough energy (especially through trade routes) to buy some of these buildings as soon as the outpost turns into a city

[Sava]

How do you keep your health at acceptable levels?

Build health buildings to keep up with city growth. Research the necessary techs if you don't have enough health buildings. Also, make sure you have surplus health before you build new cities.

The two big drags on health are city size and number of cities. Beyond that, there are a few improvements and buildings that can add negative health effects. Stay clear of those if you don't have the surplus.

In the late game, health wasn't an issue for me. I had around 70-100 depending on things.

[Lambiorix_be]

Thanks for the feedback everybody.

[regexcellent]

My health was crap until I hit Eudaimonia in the prosperity virtue tree; then it ceased to be a problem.

[Aeson]

Biowells are awesome ... Get the Culture boost for them too!

[Nikolai]

Why keep health positive?

[Proteus_MST]

Why keep health positive?

Aside from the lack of mali on science and culture you also get boni with certain virtues if you have positive health ...
for example +10% on science with "Foresight".

The effects on normal game speed may not be this extreme ... but on Epic or Marathon (where you need longer to recearch techs) a +20 % difference on science (lack of -10 % malus and +10 % from Foresight) due to positive health is definitely noticeable.
So it is definitely worth the effort to try to keep it positive (especially as it gets easier later in the game, with a few virtues (like the one that gives health for every trade unit), terrain improvements and buildings)

[Nikolai]

When Mad can play well with -40 or whatever health on Deity level, the malus is not important.

[regexcellent]

I'm convinced that the Contact victory is achievable easily on most or all difficulties and faster than any other victory. You grab two techs, build a wonder, build a satellite, build another wonder, then spend 1000 energy. No need to kill off the competition or max out an affinity.

The fact that you can win so fast means I wouldn't be worried about a -10% to research except in a competitive multiplayer game.

[self biased]

yeah, and the penalties aren't exactly crippling at low levels.

[Aeson]

Wiki plug: http://apolyton.net/wiki/CivBE:Health

While the penalties aren't crippling, positive Health (or the playstyle which leads to it) is optimal for most of the game. I'd try to avoid going into -20 Health or lower during the initial expansion up to about 10 cities (standard map), and then hit Biowells and turn to +20. This way you get the expansion benefits of going Troubled Health, don't get hit with the growth penalty, and then the output benefits of Utopian Health from the resulting empire. Then expand at a rate which keeps you as close to 20 without going under. Generally means you need to keep a +40ish Health since you can lose 20 when taking over a big AI City. This will lead to holding back on how fast you press military expansion until you hit Eudaimonia ... but after that you can press just about as hard as you want.

The end result on the Domination time should be similar to if you go Troubled while expanding/growing, and then drop into the Panicked abyss. But you'll have far more Tech, Virtues, and Score with Utopian.

For peaceful victories and capital sniping Domination, positive Health is even more useful. As far as Virtues and Tech are concerned, you don't want more than about 20 (adjust for what Virtues you have) cities on a standard map. The 5% increase to Science/Culture costs means you will necessarily end up with less Tech and Virtues if expanding past that "inflection point" even if keeping Utopian. This before factoring in the time it takes for a city to get up to full speed and Capital bonuses, so the number is actually lower than that.

[Lambiorix_be]

In any case I was able to restore my health to very good positive levels. Thanks for the advice everybody...

[gdijedi7]

10 cities? Wow.

I've played 2 games to completion now, and the most health I've ever had was 13. My first game, I had a total of four cities because of health problems. Maybe it's that I go down the Might tree instead of Prosperity, so I never get Eudimania

[Quillan]

Health in this game is like happiness in Civ 5; the base health of a city cannot be higher than its population. Buying a clinic / pharmalab / gene garden / gene smelter / cytonursery when the city is only population 3 will only result in that city giving a plus 3 health. The health bonuses from virtues and some wonders are global, however, and each virtue tree has one. Might's gives .25 health per military unit, Knowledge gives 1 health per 6 population in a city, and Engineering gives .5 health per trade unit. Start stacking 2-3 of those with biowells and a few wonders like Promethean or the Resurrection Device and you can get ridiculously high health.