Paying attention to other civs tourism, and building an army if you are in danger of losing the game, is not playing completely different. This might interfere with your plans (maybe you wanted to turtle for a SV) but you need to be reactive to the events in the game... Getting the capital and maybe 1-2 other core cities is not really changing your strategy completely. I did not say to go for domination, just take a detour in your grand strategy to make sure that you will have a chance to win.
I generally appreciate the time pressure from other AI to win quickly enough. Some of my most entertaining SV games have been when I had to mount a late-game strike to cripple an AI that had a couple more SS parts than I did. That’s fine.
My complaint is that a CV runaway cannot usually be dealt with that way. First, a CV runaway usually has to be dealt with much earlier than a SV runaway. There just are not enough turns and technology to take their cap quickly. Second, even taking three core cities hardly slows down their tourism, so the conquest would have to be much more robust than that.
You may want to predict if a certain civ will be posing a thread in the future and plan accordingly to weaken them.
I find it very hard to predict that there will be a
single tourism run-away until it is too late for contingency plans.
Sometimes is enough to keep them at war the whole game with bribes, but that may not be reliable.
And again, keeping them at war the whole game, requires knowing from the first WC that they will be a problem -- and that no other AI will be tourism oriented.
So you are left with two things to slow down the AI: be faster yourself to surpass the AI and win before he gets a chance, or stop him by conquest. Conquest if the most reliable strategy here.
When this has been a problem for me, I was already finishing the game as quickly as I could. I was also warmongering to the best of my ability.
I am appreciating more the appeal of starting out game looking for a (Tradition-based) domination run. Warmongering helps every victory type and, once you are good at it, conquest is the most reliable strategy for every game.
The Iroquois DCL was fixed, someone had an extra setter (among other modifications).
Fair enough, and it was the tourism runaway (Inca) that had the extra settler. My point is that an AI wining by CV before T300 is not “rare” in my experience. I agree with Athenaeum that having to depend on another AI to keep them in check is extremely unsatisfying -- and I am not reading any really good OT advice in this thread so far. Sorry!
Replaying or rerolling maps is not a strategy.
My hope is that maybe someone can point out some very early signs that a
single tourism runaway is likely?
Even better would be a recipe to have my culture significant enough to reliably delay any AI CV to turn 325 -- while letting me turtle to an SV. At this point, I am skeptical that such a recipe exists.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the OP's question. The issue isn't combatting AI tourism to prevent ideological unhappiness, it's combatting AI tourism to prevent the AI from winning a culture victory.
Yes, exactly.
I would add that burning Great Writers and Artists (Golden Ages boost culture) rather than creating great works and allying with cultural city states are effective ways to boost your culture in a pinch. Declaring war on the AI will keep it form getting trade route and diplomat multipliers to tourism regardless of whether you actually try to invade.
I usually theme Oxford and Hermitage. Should I be burning those GP instead?
Ultimately though, you need to keep in mind that, given enough time, powerful AIs will be able to win the game one way or another, and part of the game's challenge is winning before that happens.
Yes, and I very much appreciate that design. I am of the opinion that it is remarkably well balanced really. I am okay with all the advantages the Deity AI get -- except I think tourism is buffed a little too much.
