sonicandfffan
Warlord
Can ending Open Borders agreements buff my culture/tourism defense?
Most civs in my world are Order which is the ideological preference. The most powerful civs are Freedom, and I'm with two oddballs having Autocracy. I have seven cities plus one puppet. My base Revolutionary Wave unhappiness is -32 and my overall unhappiness is -15. I refuse to change my ideology and a large number of luxuries have been banned by the World Congress otherwise I feel I would be fine. I'm building Castles and Arsenals in all my cities with the intention of taking Fortified Borders in 20 turns when I can take a new policy.
Well it's really situational. Open borders gives a 25% boost to tourism towards that civ. Basically if you give them open borders, you're increasing the gap between you and them. If they give you open borders, you're decreasing the gap between them and you.
Most of the time open borders is given as a straight swap for open borders so it depends:
-Are you near a boundary (e.g. 9%, 29%) which would decrease their influence over you
-Are you producing more tourism than them?
If so then open borders is probably benefitting you more than them. If not, then closing your borders can be helpful, as can reassigning your trade routes and changing your religion.
Note that having a different ideology gives a big modifier to tourism anyway. Because of that it's usually better to see if you can boost your CPT (check - have you got specialists who can generate culture? can you take policies to give you a big culture boost? Is there some wonder you can build to give you a percentage bonus to culture?)
Popping a great writer might just push them back under a boundary.