Any point in acquiring 'a little bit' of tourism

Yep, a bit of tourism helps you fight ideological pressure.
It does NOT help you prevent the opposition's cultural victory.

The game runs two separate checks, one is the "tourism influence v culture" check, which is the advertised Culture = defensive, Tourism = offensive motto. This is how you win the cultural victory, buy beating their culture with your tourism. If you want to defend against a cultural victory, you need CULTURE, tourism does nothing.

The other check is the "influence level v influence level" check, which causes unhappiness if they have a different ideology, potential city rioting, flipping cities. The influence levels used in this check come directly form the check above, so it's a check of (your tourism vs their culture) vs (their tourism vs your culture). HERE, your tourism matters defensively, to maintain happiness.

tl;dr: The only benefit of "a little" tourism is to prevent (or rather, mitigate) unhappiness caused by opposing ideologies. Tourism is USELESS if this isn't a problem in your game, or you will kill those who culturally influence you anyway.

So basically, bulb those mid-game great writers. The cultural output is worth more than a gradual culture/tourism split. And of course, great artists should obviously be bulbed, since you have archeology. Great musicians... well, they're just not all that useful.

adwcta: BTW, there is at least one Wonder (ironically, the Louvre) whose Theme bonus requires both Works of Art AND Archaeology stuff.

Also, Great Artist + Brazil? Something ain't right there.....

Ulthwithian said:

adwcta: BTW, there is at least one Wonder (ironically, the Louvre) whose Theme bonus requires both Works of Art AND Archaeology stuff.

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Why would you build the Louvre if you don't already care about tourism/possible culture victory? =/

I guess if you wanted the culture from landmarks in your territory (at cost of -2 food/hammer/gold opportunity cost) and don't want to upset any city states / other civs by digging up their stuff.... you might want to make some art.... but frankly, museums come too late in the game for +2 culture per turn to make a huge difference when compared to how much culture, production and gold bonus you would get from a 8-turn Golden Age at that point. Great paintings are for tourism only.

If you got an early Great Artist from Freedom/Aesthetics, you might consider making a great work just for the culture and put it in your capital's palace instead of bulbing... but that's the only situation I can think of where you'd make a great work out of an artist while not caring about tourism.

Well, as long as we're clear about 'not caring about Cultural Victory'...

Also, you would build the Louvre to deny it to your opponents who may actually be going after a Cultural Victory. And since it's the Exploration Wonder, not the Aesthetics Wonder, there are reasons to get it. (E.g., you're on a Naval map.)

I liken it to faith. If you're not planning on a playing a religious game, there's not much point in acquiring "just a little bit" of a faith. So you skip shrines in favor of more important buildings/units that suit your strategy. But tourism is a late game version of faith that also suits a victory condition.

I do think the tourism concept might be the weakest point of BNW so far though. It just doesn't feel very intuitive and it needs to correlate better with culture.

bonafide11 said:

I liken it to faith. If you're not planning on a playing a religious game, there's not much point in acquiring "just a little bit" of a faith. So you skip shrines in favor of more important buildings/units that suit your strategy. But tourism is a late game version of faith that also suits a victory condition.

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This much is very true.

I do think the tourism concept might be the weakest point of BNW so far though. It just doesn't feel very intuitive and it needs to correlate better with culture.

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I don't agree with this, though. All Tourism directly correlates to Culture, at least in Production. Maybe better explanation of how Tourism is compounded once it's generated may be useful...

adwcta said:

Why would you build the Louvre if you don't already care about tourism/possible culture victory? =/

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I was responding to the suggestion that it would be good for there to be a wonder, gated on Exploration, that gave you some more slots. Well, there is one.

bonafide11 said:

I liken it to faith. If you're not planning on a playing a religious game, there's not much point in acquiring "just a little bit" of a faith. So you skip shrines in favor of more important buildings/units that suit your strategy. But tourism is a late game version of faith that also suits a victory condition.

I do think the tourism concept might be the weakest point of BNW so far though. It just doesn't feel very intuitive and it needs to correlate better with culture.

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Again, I don't think this is analogous. Religion has side benefits, and it can help you with any victory condition. That's what a game mechanic should do - be something which is adaptable and a basic function if playing the game. Game mechanics which don't have any side benefits, and is just filling up a bucket for its own sake in order to fulfill a victory condition, kind of sucks.

If nothing else, a city's tourism should directly effect how much money it gets from trade routes.

damnyankees said:

Again, I don't think this is analogous. Religion has side benefits, and it can help you with any victory condition. That's what a game mechanic should do - be something which is adaptable and a basic function if playing the game. Game mechanics which don't have any side benefits, and is just filling up a bucket for its own sake in order to fulfill a victory condition, kind of sucks.

If nothing else, a city's tourism should directly effect how much money it gets from trade routes.

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Well, as pointed out, your Tourism helps in alleviating ideological pressure from other Tourism, so it does have a side benefit.

I take your meaning, though, and I think it would be VERY interesting if Tourism increased gold output in its city. I would remove the gold from the Chateau/Moai/Brazilwood Camp, and add a 1% increase in (all) gold income for a city for each Tourism it produces.

If this seems low, you should see Paris in wonderspamming mode. EASILY 2-300 Tourism.

Yeah, if tourism had a +gold component, like +1 gold for 2 tourism as a passive modifier, and to re-balance the trade routes to give less gold overall...

There's so much gold in the late game....

Ulthwithian said:

Well, as pointed out, your Tourism helps in alleviating ideological pressure from other Tourism, so it does have a side benefit.

I take your meaning, though, and I think it would be VERY interesting if Tourism increased gold output in its city. I would remove the gold from the Chateau/Moai/Brazilwood Camp, and add a 1% increase in (all) gold income for a city for each Tourism it produces.

If this seems low, you should see Paris in wonderspamming mode. EASILY 2-300 Tourism.

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Even that seems really low. My first game I played Shoshone and I had 750 tourism by the end.