How to increase culture

NomadMan284 said:

I never thought of bulging GAs early in the game, but it would give a boost to culture.

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Just be smart about it. So bulb GAs right after a natural one (so as not to increase the cost of the natural one prematurely). Bulb GW just as a Golden Age is ending. Those bulbs can really help defend against tourism pressure.

consentient said:

As you can see from this guide, the only bonus that really helps with culture directly is the reduced policy cost for the AI, which is set at 75% for all difficulty levels.
But the thing about Civ 5 is that all variables are interconnected, so the reduced unit cost, and the science buffs, etc, etc, means that they can progress faster, build culture buildings faster, and therefore improve their culture more.

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I am familiar with the difficulty settings tables. But something just does not add up! Most Deity games there is one or two AIs who have tourism pressure that is off the hook. Where is that coming from? The culture output already seems inexplicable, like there must be some other undocumented bonus, but I can attribute that well enough to the cheaper earlier buildings, and all the synergy as you say. Fine.

But if the player is not going for a CV, why does the AI producing lots of culture even matter?

Where is the Ideology pressure coming from so early? Sure, the AIs build their guilds early and liberally create GW. When I play that way, I get maybe 50 tourism (prior to NVC and Internet and filling out Aesthetics). I don’t ignore my cultural game, especially since unlocking SP is fun! So how is the AI tourism overcoming my culture so dramatically in most games? The math simply does not seem like it adds up!

The AI pops all their artists/ writers / musicians for great works and they also usually rush for archaeology and with the lower build cost and faster dig times they probably manage to get a good amount of tourism by the time you get your ideology.

So if you aren't allied with cultured city-states, the AI will start generating great works fairly early on and maybe generate 10-20% as much tourism as you're generating culture for the entire game so that when it's time to get your ideology they have enough influence to give you a massive penalty.

They also tend to spam you with trade routes which I believe increases pressure to you, and they often convert you with their great prophet armies which further increases pressure if I'm not mistaken.

Even when I do culture games though the AI pressures me with ideology, which is stupid. I'm generating 300 culture a turn but some random AI wins the international games and I'm back to -10 lol. I think they need to rethink this mechanic.

If you are fast enough, you can reach ideology by second WC and try to pass world ideology.

Maybe there is something fundamental I am not understanding about Tourism?

poxpower said:

...the AI will start generating great works fairly early on and maybe generate 10-20% as much tourism as you're generating culture...

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That number feels about right to me. The AI tourism generation is about a fifth of my culture generation. That is more than the minimum for Exotic (10%), but less than what is needed for Familiar (30%). So why is Influence ever a problem, let alone problematic as soon as the player hits an Ideology?

Culture gets reset for each SP. But is it not accumulated tourism versus accumulated cultured? That is what the CV progress screen seem to show. Yet the AIs catch up...

The AI tourism output, relative to my culture output, is 0% in the very early game. Then 20% in the early game up to Ideologies. Then maybe 50% (less than the 60% needed for popular) at the end. Yet, typically, an AI (or even two) is Influential (100%) over me by the time I hit Atomic Age (and long before they hit Internet). How does that happen?

When I win by CV, it is late game and because I have Internet, NVC, Hotels, Airports, Diplomats, Ideology buffs and my own Tourism is pushing four digits. And even then I need GMu bombs. What rules are the AI playing by?

I don't get the math. Am I underestimating the AI tourism output by a factor of ten? Is the culture defensive total shown not cumulative?

Please help me understand!

You are completely forgetting all the modifiers for tourism in your equation..

You are saying AI tourism output is near 50% in the end game. With modifiers for Open Borders, Trade Route, Religion or Ideology this will boost their tourism output significantly. So no, you are not somehow underetimating the AI tourism output by a factor of 10, it just so happens that with all the modifiers that exist in the game effective tourism (as opposed to raw tourism) can be almost twice as high.

Especially the modifier for TR will be active for almost any AI. They might have a delegate in your capital do, though I don't even know if the AI does that.

By the way: When your tourism is regularily pushing four digits you are just way, way too slow with your CV. I've seen people win with 200 or 250 base Tourism, meaning 400 to 500 after Internet. I've only broken 100 tourism a single time and that was as Brazil in my first CV ever. You don't even need half as much, I played that game very suboptimally.

Yeah I don't know what % the different modifiers boost tourism by.
I can easily imagine though that when the AI adopts their ideology, they can be generating as much as 40-50 base tourism from artifacts, great works and wonder theming bonuses.

The cultural AI's do the trade routes and diplomats thing, and they'll pester you for open borders -- especially once they finish the Aesthetics tree for the extra 15% modifiers. But they don't seem to be very good at using the big multipliers from hotels, airports, and the National Visitor Center.

Quite often civs that outdo you in culture simply have more cities. A wide empire has a lot more culture producing buildings. Add religious beliefs etc into the equation and it adds up.

The other option is the Ai might be allied to all the culture city states. In this case you might want to look at breaking their relationships down.

Typically investing in a religion is a good idea. Its one of the better early sources of culture.
The Oracle is hands down one of the better early game wonders and is useful on every strategy. It provides a modest amount of culture

Religious buildings, some wonders, landmarks, culture buildings, several WC proposals all give culture, and they typically scale with number of cities. Wide empires will always generate more lifetime culture but at the cost of slowing SP rate, but it's usually not a problem. That is why when an AI conquers his entire half of the world, in the process capturing all culture buildings/wonders in his world, they'll be very hard to crack if you want to win culture victory. If you want to prevent AI from increasing their influence over you (for non culture victory), never allow open border, pick a different ideology, don't follow AI's religion. There's nothing you can do to avoid trade routes or AI diplomat, except you can DoW them to shut off that bonus and if you're going science victory, you should out tech them and it's not a problem.

Use your GA and GW together. By starting a golden age you boost your culture output and your gold. Switch all cities to maximising culture during the golden age and invest as heavily as possible in cultural city states then pop your GW with 1 turn left in the golden age. Alternatively save up GWs and 1 GA, make sure you win the worlds fair, start a golden age and you could well manage to get several policies. Using faith to get GAs helps big time. I once managed to get an entire policy tree at the end on a worlds fair and as a bonus a lot of city states loved my culture