Is there any reason not to burn Great Writers if not going for culture victory?

Peng Qi

Peng Qi

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Thread title. Is there any reason to bother accumulating tourism if you're unconcerned with cultural victory? Great Writers almost always give more +:c5culture: when you burn them than they could possibly have generated through the end of the game, often even taking into account all possible +%:c5culture: bonuses. So...any reason not to burn 'em? I can't think of one.
 
tourism is useful for fending off ideology unhappiness. I like using one, two, very seldom three for great works and after that I try saving them for an important social policy or for a golden age in order to get more out of them when I burn em.
 
I used to save Great People for late game bulbs, especially Great Scientists (especially on Vanilla). The problem with this is that you are spending GPT to maintain these units. So when comparing options, you also have to account for the GPT that you are losing in having them hang around.

Like the first respondent said, I like to have tourism regardless of what victory I'm pursuing to fend off unhappiness from ideology. If I can get my tourism to be good enough, I really like to force other people to change ideologies so they lose all the tenets they previously acquired. Even if this isn't possible, there are still some other benefits of tourism - most of which I think are either petty, situational or obscure, but still valuable nonetheless.
 
Peng Qi said:
Thread title. Is there any reason to bother accumulating tourism if you're unconcerned with cultural victory? Great Writers almost always give more +:c5culture: when you burn them than they could possibly have generated through the end of the game, often even taking into account all possible +%:c5culture: bonuses. So...any reason not to burn 'em? I can't think of one.
Click to expand...

1. In very early game (if you built the Writing Guild as soon as reaching that tech and immediately filled both spots) you'd get more culture + tourism via making the first one into a Great Work of Writing than if you instantly bulbed it.
If you are instead saving it for the Worlds Fair in a golden age, you need to subtract from the output the maintenance cost of the Writer which will average between 1 & 2 GPT if playing peaceful. (With a large army, actually more due to how the formula works.)

2. It is a whole lot easier for you to reach exotic over an AI to counter balance their tourism over you than to keep them at unknown over you unless you are winning before most of the AIs reach ideologies.
To reach exotic over them, you only need 1/10th their culture.
To prevent them from reaching exotic over you, you need to keep your culture 10X larger than their tourism.
 
I always use the first 3 or sometimes 4 to create Great Works. The culture often works out even or slightly better in the long run and it is good to have a bit of tourism output.
You can also move Great Works to cities where you want to speed up tile acquisition
 
Peng Qi said:
Thread title. Is there any reason to bother accumulating tourism if you're unconcerned with cultural victory? Great Writers almost always give more +:c5culture: when you burn them than they could possibly have generated through the end of the game, often even taking into account all possible +%:c5culture: bonuses. So...any reason not to burn 'em? I can't think of one.
Click to expand...

Thank you for raising this question and thanks to those who shared their insights. I am just back to Civ after bring away so long that BNW is new to me. It was not clear to me whether how to best use Great Writers. Now I have something of a strategy for them.
 
If I'm not going for a Cultural Victory, I usually bulb my GW's for culture and use my GMu's and GAr's for Great Works. The burst of culture from the Political Treatises usually helps fend off the gung-ho Tourism spreaders.

As far as optimum output is concerned, that requires a little bit of benchmarking. If, hypothetically, your games tend to last ~400 turns and you pop a GW on turn 100, then it's easy to calculate that, if bulbing the GW will give you 600 (2 cpt for the Great Work x 300 turns left) or more culture, do so. Otherwise, use it for a Great Work if you have the room.
 
It depends on the amount of culture those early GWs will generate if you bulb them. I like to compare that to the culture cost of the next policy. If you are lucky enough or skilled enough to get the GW late in a Golden Age, then by my understanding of the mechanics, you get a lot more culture in that bulb. I find that if the culture gained is a significant fraction of the policy cost, I bulb the Writer. Otherwise, I go for the Great Work. I am not convinced it is worth the maintenance and opportunity loss to keep Great People hanging around for extended periods. But I will go for the Golden Age trick if I can.
 
In the same vein as the tip on Golden Ages, 8 turns before bulbing a GW is an excellent time to acquire some cultural CS allies, even if you can't hold on to them for long...

Crus8r
 
Use Great artist, Great musician, Great writer for Great Works until you get 10-12 (maybe even more, depends on your opponents) tourism then burn them freely. Because, in late game, you gonna need tourism so badly or you will be forced to choose the ideology of other civs.
 
I almost always make them great works. I found out how horrible it is to have low culture... ack.
 
Zaimejs said:
I almost always make them great works. I found out how horrible it is to have low culture... ack.
Click to expand...

In late game, using them for Great Work is useless. You can get several thousands culture boost, if you burn Great Writer. Far more higher that you can get from Great Work.
 
joncnunn said:
If you are instead saving it for the Worlds Fair in a golden age, you need to subtract from the output the maintenance cost of the Writer which will average between 1 & 2 GPT if playing peaceful. (With a large army, actually more due to how the formula works.)
Click to expand...
I always thought unit upkeep was fixed per unit but increased when entering new eras. Is there anywhere I can read the details on how unit upkeep works?
 
I make maybe 3 great works of writing because until your culture is at least in the 80s range, bulbing writers is all kinds of useless
 
If you're into the aesthetics of the game, then make them into great works. I like to listen to the narration of their excerpts. same thing with artists and musicians.

Purely from a gameplay perspective then making 2 for oxford is reasonable. you can get a bunch of works if you go on a campaign and take them from the AI.
 
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