In Civ V, everybody knew the bonuses of settling on the coast. You were free to produce naval units and, starting in the Brave New World expansion, you were able to trade across the map with lucrative ocean trade routes. Unless you happened to settle near sea resources like pearls, whales or a bunch of fish, however, you were then stuck with a wide collection of lackluster sea tiles to work. In Civilization: Beyond Earth, however, sea tiles can be manipulated to become an incredible advantage.
Perfect Your Beyond Earth Science Strategy With The Interactive Tech Web
This handy tip comes from a Reddit user, whose strategy happened to then be shared by the official Civilization Facebook page. With strategic use of the game's new Orbital Layer, this user shows how coastal cities can become more valuable than just the sea trade routes they open up. The sea tiles themselves can begin to produce unreal resource yields.
To begin this strategy, you'll need to make your way over to Terraforming on the Tech Web, which is opened up by researching the early game tech Ecology. Under Terraforming there's a leaf tech called Climate Control, which unlocks an orbital unit called the weather controller. Not only will this satellite increase your ocean yields by adding +1 food to them when launched over sea, but it'll also generate basic resources on one or two of these tiles over its 60-turn lifespan. The result is a collection of ocean resource tiles that look something like this when worked.
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These satellites can spawn algae, which grants players extra food; coral, which provides extra culture; and even petroleum, the resource that can be used to make even more satellites. If you want to go deeper into this strategy, the Terraforming tech leads into another tech called Planetary Engineering, which includes the leaf tech Geoscaping. Researching Geoscaping will unlock the orbital fabricator, an orbital unit that accomplishes the same resource spawning as the weather controller only while adding extra production to the tiles it affects.
This strategy works even better for players pursuing Supremacy, as both Climate Control and Geoscaping earn the player Supremacy points.
Throw up one of these satellites, and watch your dinky coastal town turn into a resource-heavy power player. If you want to get started on this gambit early (which you might want to do since these satellites generate resources very slowly), consider using any free tech bonuses you get in the early game to move toward the expensive Climate Control tech.
Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth is available now for PCs. Mac and Linux versions are coming later this year.