Cities in Civilization: Beyond Earth follow similar methods of upkeep and growth found in previous games of the series, but add a few additional features and adjust certain elements to make the entire system feel fresh and new.
For more help on Civilization: Beyond Earth, read our Affinities, Trade Routes and Earth Stations Guide.
Civilization: Beyond Earth City Management Tips
When you start with a new city through an outpost, the earlier citizens will automatically start working on the tiles that surround the town.
As your city grows further, your workers will be separated into tile workers and specialist units, the latter catering to buildings that will give your cities specialized yield and output that is required.
Establishing Cities
The major difference between Beyond Earth and previous Civilization games is that cities are developed much slower.
When you start off, your capital city will have to develop Colonists. These units while being developed will completely halt the growth of your city until their training is finish, so make sure you can afford to have your city not grow for a while.
Once your Colonist is done with the training, have a strong military unit escort them to a location where you would like to build a new city. Choose the area, then build an outpost through the colonist special command.
Your new city will initial be a small outpost without much power or any citizens. It is from here on that you have to work hard to defend your outpost, as it slow starts to take the territory around it.
Outposts are extremely susceptible to enemy and alien attacks, and lack adequate Combat Strength to withstand any assault. For this reason, it is usually a good idea to deploy a couple of extra military units, especially if this is only your second or third city.
The process of the outpost’s expansion can be accelerated through trade convoys and vessels, or certain starting virtues, but overall it is a lengthy enough process for you to have your units defend the vulnerable location. When ready, the outpost will eventually become a small city.
During the early stages of a city, you want to maximum Food and Production to accelerate growth and construction respectively.
It’s a good idea to develop a Trade Depot early on and establish Trade Routes between your more developed city and this new infant city – this will grant you bonus resources and yield, and further accelerate the expansion.
Food will allow you to increase your population, which in turn allows more work to be put into tiles, and ultimately the establishment of specialist units.
Once the city has kick-started and an increase trend in growth is observed, you can then start creating buildings that would improve Culture, Science, and Energy. Before that, make sure you have units training in your young city that would improve Food and Health.
As your City grows, it’s always a good idea to send in additional military units from your larger cities to protect it during its young age. Once the city is self-sufficient, you can establish independent defenses and borders, and repeat the process for a new city.
It’s usually recommended to work with one outpost at a time so you aren’t overwhelmed with responsibilities.
Internal City Affairs
There are certain things you should know about your own city. To get further details about a specific city, click on its banner to show the City Management screen.
Through this screen you can change the city’s Production, purchase troops or buildings, establish a queue to construct several items at the same time, or look at what you’ve already constructed in the past in this city.
You will also get information about the city’s borders and the Cultural progress of the city, and you can spend additional Energy on extra tiles. Though it’s an expensive method of expansion, purchasing tiles through Energy can be worthwhile if there are tiles with valuable resources present around your city.
It is often recommended to ‘specialize’ your city in certain things; you could have a capital city that does everything well, but when branching off and establishing new cities, you should focus on producing specific yields.
While cities automatically assign citizens to tiles, you can customize the choices and shift citizens to other workable tiles. You could have a high-production city if you add more workers to Production tiles, or you could have a fast growing city if you put lots of citizens on Food tiles.
Similarly, you can have an Energy-rich city in the same manner. Once you have more than two or three cities, you’ll notice that having specialized states really helps in your overall yields and bonuses.
You can also do this by clicking Culture, Production, Food, Energy, or Science icons to make the citizens automatically work tiles with the most of that resource, but generally that is a good idea only once a city has grown to the required level and is booming.
If your city is lacking in certain areas, the best way to tackle this is through internal trade routes with other cities. This will help balance things, and should be combined with constructing builds that would improve the necessary areas where your city is facing deficiencies.
External City Affairs
Cities have the capability to defend themselves, which is evident by their Combat Strength. The higher the Combat Strength of a city, the more damage it will do to anyone who tries to invade it, and the less damage it will take from invaders.
The CS of your city is the central number in the city banner. If you have been maintaining your city well, you will have powerful garrison and ranged units to fend off any invasions by other colonies.
It is important to set up good defenses for each of your city, especially if your relations with certain colonies is turning sour.
Similarly, if you are attacking a city, you should expect the same, and make sure you analyze their combat strength and other factors before starting an assault. Once you manage to conquer a city successfully, you have several options at your disposal.
The first thing you can do is completely burn down the city. This will destroy its foundations and absolutely everything. You won’t get any kind of benefit from it, and a lot of colonies will get very upset, accusing you of being a butcher.
However, this can sometimes be a necessary act for the greater good – if you don’t have enough Health to hold a city, or if you’re certain that the enemy will take it back, this is probably an option you will have to take.
The second thing you can do is annex the city. This has a huge Health cost because you are absorbing the city, its population, and also inviting Resistance into your Colony.
The combined penalty on your Health can be quite devastating if you haven’t prepared for it from early on, so if you fancy yourself as a conqueror, you should look to build up as much Health as possible before invading and annexing a city.
Once the city stabilizes and the Resistance has dissipated, the annexed city will act as any other city in your nation, and your Health will ultimately stabilize.
The third option is creating a Puppet city. You won’t have access to the Production menu of this city, but you’ll still get yields from the city and only face a small amount of Health related issues.
The Puppet city option is only useful if your Health is extremely low. You can annex that city once you have sufficient Health to withstand the Resistance and all other problems that come with that process.
Note that in order to make a Puppet city or to annex a city, you need to implement martial law on that city once you take it. During the period of the martial law, you will need be able to access the Production menu or alter certain aspects of the city.
The martial law period usually depends on the size of the city, so the larger the size, the longer the duration. It is not recommended to annex a city during martial law, as you cannot construct anything and (thus) cannot tackle Health issues.
