City (CivBE)

A city is the basic unit of a Colony, and easily its most valuable asset. Cities do most of the advancement in your civilization, generating Food, Production, Energy (replacement of gold), Science, Culture, and Health. Cities are used as the launching point for orbital units and exert a launch range in all directions. All cities start with a road (or magrail if unlocked). In Civilization: Beyond Earth, Cities have four appearances, based on what affinity the civilization that owns them chooses to advance furthest into; hybrid affinities with be visible in hybrid city architecture.

Outposts

Main article: Outpost (CivBE)

Newly founded cities begin as 0-population outposts, which can't produce anything and are vulnerable. An Outpost grows into a full City over time, once it has acquired all adjacent tiles. Establishing Trade Routes with an Outpost accelerates this process. If an Outpost is captured by a rival faction, it is destroyed (it becomes a Derelict Settlement); it is not converted (unless that faction has purchased the Might virtue Liberation Army). Outposts cannot be attacked without declaring war on the owner.

In Rising Tide several new character traits have been added to allow players to skip the outpost phase.

Aquatic Cities

See also: Aquatic gameplay (Rising Tide)

Cities built on the water

An aquatic city, shown in a Rising Tide loadscreen

In the Beyond Earth expansion Rising Tide, players can build aquatic cities.

The North Sea Alliance and the Chungsu are the only civilizations by default that are allowed to build their capitals in the oceans. There is, however, an option making all civilizations start on the ocean.

Culture does not expand the borders of floating cities. Instead, players earn 50% more Culture yield for virtues. To expand the borders of a city players must either purchase tiles or move the city using Production.

Aquatic cities must be founded on coastal tiles, even if the player has researched Planetary Survey (CivBE).

Aquatic cities only have half the defensive capacity that a land city will have. Aquatic cities, however, do have access to upgrades that can enhance their number of hit points, city strength and strike damage, namely the Mosaic Hull (HP), Sonar Net (city strength) and Torpedo Battery (strike damage).

Aquatic cities produce only half the Unhealth a land city would have.

Aquatic cities build naval units at double the rate a land city would, but land and air unit Production is reduced by 50%.

Aquatic city trade routes yield 50% more than those originating from land cities.

Moving floating cities

Move city icon

• Cities initially can only move on coastal water titles. The technology Planetary Survey allows players to move their cities to the normal ocean tiles.
• Cities are moved by selecting the 'Move city' option in the production list. Players will not be able to build anything else during the move.
• Cities will destroy the improvement on the tile they move onto
• The more buildings in a city, the longer it will take to move the city.
• Building the Thermohaline Rudder allows for faster city movement. The North Sea Alliance also has bonuses for faster city movement
• If a player's city is moved adjacent to different civilization's territory (0 tiles), the territory will switch to the moving player's side. Note that the minimum distance of three tiles between cities still applies.

Bugs

• If the player has units in a non-warring city through an open borders agreement and declares war through the negotiation screen rather than attacking, possibly for the purposes of starting an attack through a unit that cannot initiate war such as artillery, the game will delete the units in the borders of the now warring city. An explanation for this could be that the game revokes the open borders first. Because the open borders are now revoked the game will delete the units as they are not allowed without an agreement. The game only activates war, allowing units to be in other cities without open borders, after the units are deleted. This open border deletion seems to exist in specific instances, and not others most likely due to the creators forgetting to make exceptions for some instances but not others such as the one shown here. An instance of an exception can be seen when a peace treaty is made with units inside enemy borders as they are not deleted. This bug should be tested more in order to see if it can be recreated.

Starting city

Purity city

Supremacy city

Harmony city

See also

Introduced in the Rising Tide expansion pack.