OK, so I recently started playing Civilization: Beyond Earth. I like the game a lot, but I'll say that as a new player to Civ as a whole, I have a hard time figuring some things out. The "tutorial" isn't very helpful at explaining things TBH. My main issues are with yields, as they all seem to behave differently.
This is my understanding of them, please help me out with them if you can:
Energy:
It's basically "money" you can use to buy things instantly without waiting out their production times. These can be units, tiles, etc. You can accumulate it, over turns, check out exactly how much you "have".
Culture:
Money used to purchase Virtues. It stacks like Energy. Maybe not, not too sure about this one.
Science:
It's an ever-increasing value, the higher the value, the less turns it takes to research new technologies
Food:
This seems to determine how fast your colony grows. More food=more rapid expansion. If you produce a surplus, your colony grows, if you run a deficit...I don't know what happens. It's not a stock like Energy, you just see how much you're producing, so I suppose the excess goes into growth. Yet there is this thing when your city levels up, you can keep some "reserves" and you lose others? The game seems to treat it like a stock in this case, yet you can't see how much you "have".
Production:
Completely lost on this one. Supposedly, it tells you how quickly you produce units, build buildings, etc. BUT the game obviously treats it like you have a stock of it. For example, you can excavate ruins and it may give you "+60 production", but what does that even mean? I thought this was an indicator, not something you "store".
Some clarification would be greatly appreciated.