Culture Victory on King Issues...

Great Musicians are 'born' as powerful as they will ever get...they will NOT gain more tourism by waiting... This is completely different from writers or scientists, who get more powerful as your empire produces more culture or beakers.

As such, the time to use a musician is pretty much as soon as they are born...the only reasons to save them is to ensure a themeing bonus (Broadway, for example, needs three works from the same era...if you are only a few turns from entering a new era, you might wait until you do to make it easier to arrange this).

Crus8r

BTW, regarding internal food routes, as others have said, sending one creates food from nothing instead of taking it from one city and giving it to another... I.E. if X has 15 food and Y has 15 food...if X sends 4 food to Y....then Y has 19...and X still has 15!

rover6695 said:

Yep...I took over a year off from civ and man, there are a lot of details you miss.
No question rationalism helps, as do GMs.

1 Q:

1) Is it better to just save all the GMs and never expend them UNLESS you have a wonder with a theme (like Broadway)?
-When is the time to begin concern tours?

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EDIT:
let me check that out...
I read Crus8r answer and them I doubt of my own. I think he's right...

rover6695 said:

1) Is it better to just save all the GMs and never expend them UNLESS you have a wonder with a theme (like Broadway)?

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This question is not the right question. There is little reason to keep around the GMs to use them later as their concert tour power is fixed at the moment of spawning (it's 10 times the tourism per turn at the moment of birth), unlike the Great Scientists or Great Writer where the power is the total number of science or culture accumulated in the last 8 turns (with some exceptions but that is off topic). Instead of saving the GMs, what you should do is avoid generating any Great Musician until you have a big enough TPT to justify a concert tour. So delay building the musicians guild, and only buy GMs with faith when you want to perform concert tours.

You can theme Broadway but it's not optimal for a CV. You shouldn't be using any of your own musicians to create great works of music as it will only delay the finish time. In fact it's not even recommended to build Broadway because that free great musician win increase the GPP requirement for your natural spawned great musicians, so it is actually not free at all: you are just getting a GM faster, but you don't want that. At least not until you have a decent TPT.

rover6695 said:

-When is the time to begin concern tours?

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Here you just need to do the math. You need to calculate how much tourism is required for you to win, it's usually just one civ that is hard to overcome, but if there are more keep in mind that all civs also get influenced (each gets influenced by 20% of the concert tour power). Then you need to know how many GMs you can realistically afford. The faith ones are easy to calculate (for example you can buy 3 with 5000 faith). Then 3 natural spawned GMS cost 600 GPP, and with the maximum modifiers (158%) you can generate them in ~29 turns on standard speed (this does not consider civ specific GPP generation from Unique Abilities or Unique Buildings). So you need to keep all this in mind and build the musicians guild accordingly.

If you don't want to do the math, the simple answer will be after internet assuming you have hotels in all cities, national visitation center in capital, and museums filled (or at least as filled as possible). Or if you feel like that is not enough research radar and build/buy airports in all cities before you start spawning the GMs.

Also the best thing to do is to have the International Games bonus while you spawn the majority of your GMs so try to time that so that it happens right about when you will perform your concert tours.

KingKong76 said:

I cant see the specifics why its so hard in that King game and lock up that culture vic, but I can tell that indeed if you did not open Rationalism ASAP, its a mistake. There is tons of science available in that tree, no matter what is your vic path, it's needed. In that particular case, it would allowed you to build the hotels and airports, and Wwonders, Nwonders earlier... among other things. Open Internet earlier aswel. All that will make a huge difference in the long run.

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I'd have to disagree with that bolded part. Even at Emperor and Immortal I have not had to dip into Rationalism until after Ideologies for a Cultural Victory. At King level, by the time you even hit the Renaissance Era you should be ahead on tech as long as you've built your Libraries and National College by turn 100.


One Tip for the OP though; Wait to build your Musicians Guild until after you've built Hotels from the Refrigeration Tech in all of your cities. Keep filling all of your Great Art and Great Writing slots until then. Hotels will greatly increase your Tourism and then when your Great Musicians do get generated they'll be much stronger for the Concert Tours due to your increased Tourism. Because you wait till later to build the Guild your GMs will only cost 100/200/300 points so they'll come a LOT quicker.

Alternatively, if you are building broadway, you can build the Guild a little earlier and use the first 2 musicians along with the free one from broadway to get the theme bonus. This works better if your Faith Game is strong and you can make up the difference in the delay of your Guild generated musicians by buying some with Faith.
This step is not necessarily needed just an alternative.

sixty4half said:

I'd have to disagree with that bolded part. Even at Emperor and Immortal I have not had to dip into Rationalism until after Ideologies for a Cultural Victory. At King level, by the time you even hit the Renaissance Era you should be ahead on tech as long as you've built your Libraries and National College by turn 100.


One Tip for the OP though; Wait to build your Musicians Guild until after you've built Hotels from the Refrigeration Tech in all of your cities. Keep filling all of your Great Art and Great Writing slots until then. Hotels will greatly increase your Tourism and then when your Great Musicians do get generated they'll be much stronger for the Concert Tours due to your increased Tourism. Because you wait till later to build the Guild your GMs will only cost 100/200/300 points so they'll come a LOT quicker.

Alternatively, if you are building broadway, you can build the Guild a little earlier and use the first 2 musicians along with the free one from broadway to get the theme bonus. This works better if your Faith Game is strong and you can make up the difference in the delay of your Guild generated musicians by buying some with Faith.
This step is not necessarily needed just an alternative.

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I too do not dip into rationalism immediately. Unlike most people on civfanatic, I almost always work musician guilds before maxing tourism output and faith buy 2-3 of them after internet.

You don't need rationalism for a CV on King level. You shouldn't be falling behind in tech, and the bonuses in aesthetics are great for culture.

I agree, you can still win CV on King without opening Rationalism - I've done it plenty of times! On the higher levels you need the extra science to keep up with the AI as you don't want to be going up against Helicopter Gunships with Great War Infantry!!

Thanks guys...I'll definitely delay then the MG until after every city has hotels UNLESS I decide to build Broadway which it sounds like isn't worth it?

Also...when you spawn ANY GP does it make it more expensive to spawn the next GP of any type?

Browd said:

Nope. If X sends a 4-food caravan to Y, X still has 15 food and Y now has 19.

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How is that possible?

What do you mean, how is that possible? Folks at Firaxis programmed the game that way?

rover6695 said:

Thanks guys...I'll definitely delay then the MG until after every city has hotels UNLESS I decide to build Broadway which it sounds like isn't worth it?

Also...when you spawn ANY GP does it make it more expensive to spawn the next GP of any type?

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Not exactly. Scientists, Engineers and Merchants are in the same "Spawn Pool." Which means any of those that you spawn will push the cost of the next GP in that Pool. So, if you spawn a GS first, but want a GE as well, your GS will cost 100, and the GE will cost 200, and the next GS/GE/GM you spawn will be 300.

Musicians, Artists and Writers are each in their own pool. Spawning a GA for 100 points will not affect the cost of the GWs and GMs. Each type will always start at 100, then 200, then 300 and so on.

I wouldn't say that Broadway isn't worth it. With it's theme bonus it provides 9 tourism. With a Hotel, it provides 13 tourism. If you have open borders and a trade route to that civ then it's worth close to 20 tourism a turn. When you spawn your next GM, the 13 tourism from the full bonus plus the Hotel (The bonus from trade routes, ideologies, open borders and spies is not factored into this) is added to the GMs strength. Therefore; if you have a AI that is culturally strong and you don't want to resort to warfare to get your tourism victory, Broadway can be a big help.

rover6695 said:

"Nope. If X sends a 4-food caravan to Y, X still has 15 food and Y now has 19."

How is that possible?

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In the real world, it isn't. In Civ; that's just how it works. Internal Trade Routes only provide a bonus to the receiving city and do not reduce the resources available to the city that the Trade Route is coming from.

rover6695 said:

How is that possible?

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This is the game mechanic. A caravan creates something from nothing, otherwise if won't be a unit you'd want to build. If you send it for gold it creates gold for both the sender and the receiver. Furthermore it can also create science (still from nothing). Why would this be different for internal trade routes? There would be very few scenarios where you would actually want to transfer food from one city to the other.

External trade routes don't steal gold or beakers from one Civ and give it to another. They generate the gold. Internal trade routes generate either food or hammers. An internal caravan generates four food you otherwise would not have and gives it to the destination city.

Quick offshoot Q.....when does it make sense to trade for open borders?
As soon as possible or just near the end, say modern era?
I like to wait until I need it otherwise I see it as wasted cash.

It can only help if you are ahead on culture and tourism, and it's usually pretty cheap, but there may be other reasons to do so. Remember shared religion also gives you a bonus, so trading for open borders and then flooding their cities with missionaries can pay long term dividends.

SoonerJBD said:

It can only help if you are ahead on culture and tourism, and it's usually pretty cheap, but there may be other reasons to do so. Remember shared religion also gives you a bonus, so trading for open borders and then flooding their cities with missionaries can pay long term dividends.

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I'm like at turn 170 right now on standard speed and not planning to send missionaries, so I wonder if it's a waste at 3 GPT?