Technologies | The gameplay Civilization: Beyond Earth Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

The technology tree is a thing of the past. This is the era of the net, which provides you with many more paths of development. You start in the very center with the technology of Building Houses. The decision which way to go, depends only on your situation, which you have formed while determining the game parameters.

On the net, there are Primary Techs, which are major breakthroughs in a given field. The farther up you go, the more you near biology, downwards - towards technology, to the left - production and nanotechnology, to the right - social development and Aliens. For each major technology, there are two secondary ones, which are detailed researches into one specific issue, in a given field. These technologies, sometimes, allow you to build a new unit, sometimes provide you with unique abilities and bonuses, allow you to obtain a point of a given affinity or provide you with access to a given building. However, a "secondary" research is 30% more expensive than a hub-research.

If you ignore that, however, you will soon notice that some of the secondary ones are required only by certain playing styles - a colony that adheres to the Affinity of Purity is not going to need the units of Supremacy or Harmony, and, for example, only the Harmonious want to learn Adding Miasma, which heals their units later into the game.

Unlike in the previous installments of Civilization, there is no urge to develop all technologies here. You can only follow one direction, or focus on what you currently need. Therefore, of you have no use for a technology, because you are not interested in its bonuses, you do not need to research into it.

Important technologies

In general, you could say that all of them are important, but some are more important than the others. In this chapter, you can find the ones that provide some bonuses, and buildings that are worth having.

In general, all hub technologies are necessary, they do not provide bonuses to affinities, and they allow you to build important units and structures, which can be built, virtually, by every nation. Among them, the most important ones are the nearest technologies:

• Engineering (discovers Titanium and gives you the Thorium Reactor - the basic energy building),
• Genetics (provides you with basic buildings for health and food),
• Ecology (allows you to build the Miasma Miasmic Repulsor and the Ultrasonic Fence that protects you from aliens),
• Physics (provides basis for modern military units and Observatory),
• Chemistry (provides you with the Lab, the Recycler discovers Petroleum and enables you to dig for it).

The important hubs also are:

• Manufacturing (provides you with the ability to build the Magnetic Rail),
• Robotics (Allows you to mine for Firaxite),
• Terraforming (Allows you to mine for the Floatstone),
• Alien sciences (Allows you to mine for the Xenomass).

Additionally, it is worthwhile to develop, at the beginning, several secondary technologies where the most important ones are:

• Pioneering (The most important secondary, allows you to set outposts and trading routes)
• Stellar maps (allows you to cross water fields)
• Geophysics (reveals Geothermal Energy),
• Alien Biology (Provides you with a Harmony point and lets Workers remove miasma).