Great Musicians & Great Works

Am I missing something here?

Great Musicians pop 10*tourism worth of points instantly, or you can settle him for a measly 2 points per turn and culture when the game is hopefully ending before too much longer.

So why would you *ever* settle a great merchant in an opera house?

Do we need a Rule of Thumb for musicians the same way we have one for scientists? Great Work before X, Tourism Bomb after Y? I settled my first three musicians and now that I have my fourth I'm looking at the fine print and going 'wait a minute...'

Andy06r said:

Am I missing something here?

Great Musicians pop 10*tourism worth of points instantly, or you can settle him for a measly 2 points per turn and culture when the game is hopefully ending before too much longer.

So why would you *ever* settle a great merchant in an opera house?

Do we need a Rule of Thumb for musicians the same way we have one for scientists? Great Work before X, Tourism Bomb after Y? I settled my first three musicians and now that I have my fourth I'm looking at the fine print and going 'wait a minute...'

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Yes, if you get them early enough. Don't forget, that +2 Tourism and Culture get multiplied (and the Culture is converted to Tourism), so ultimately it can often produce 10-30 Tourism (depending on theming bonuses and multipliers). I typically pop 2 or 3 Musicians, then wait a while and use the rest (whether spawned naturally or Faith-bought) for Concert Tours.

Not if there is a sizable imbalance in the AI culture accrual (when is there ever not?) and you are going culture. There's always some runaway civ with 35-38k culture by T275, and concert bombs are the answer to them. I keep seeing people saying that you cannot "stock up" on GM's but you most certainly can for this exact purpose. Settling for broadway isn't terrible either if it is more of an even split. You'll get culture this way, at least.

It's really too bad that you need a complete kill to knock the culture ...

Nothing like a bunch of french musketeers hauling off Loot!

I don't have a cultural run away in my game - my current Emperor game has been one never ending world war with two dead civs and now we're setlling into a cold war phase. America conquered his continent and I'm the Iroquis (go figure).

Tourism bomb is pretty worthless until you get up to something like Modern era, where you really start to have a high tourism output. Basically, any Great Person you use for a Great Work will make your subsequent Great Musician stronger, because his strength is 10x your tourism output at the time he was born. So usually I will settle my first musicians, and only in late game use them to go on concert tour.

I initially began settling Great Writers by using their ability because I felt it was worht more, but the fact of the matter is that GWAMs provide a steady influx of Tourism that will eventually overtake their abilities.

kaspergm said:

Tourism bomb is pretty worthless until you get up to something like Modern era, where you really start to have a high tourism output. Basically, any Great Person you use for a Great Work will make your subsequent Great Musician stronger, because his strength is 10x your tourism output at the time he was born. So usually I will settle my first musicians, and only in late game use them to go on concert tour.

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I agrée with this, and I was wondering if delaying the musician guild would be a valid strategy so that all your musicians can be used as post-Internet concert tours, when it's really worth it.

I am not sure delaying the musician guild is more efficient. With a delayed musician guild you would want to build it around the time Internet (or International Games if your going for a pre-internet win) and pop 2 or 3 great musicians over a dozen turns before going on your game winning tour.

The alternative approach is to just build the guild early and staff it, using early great musicians on great works and slowing down great musician production to time it so the last great musician pops right after Internet is complete. At that point you go on your game winning tour.

I think the second method is actually better. The game winning tour happens right after internet finishes, shaving a dozen turns off the finish time since you don't have to wait for multiple great musicians to pop. The tour may include 1 or 2 less great musicians but most of them are going to be faith bought. Putting specialists in the musician guild early also gives you enough culture to fill out Rationalism and Aesthetics in a timely manner, both of which are mandatory when going for culture victory (Aesthetics for faith buying great musicians and Rationalism is needed to tech fast enough to get hotels, visitor center and internet). Lastly, Broadway will be useless unless effort is put into generating great musicians early.

Btw, I read here everywhere about the concert tours being OP etc. While I agree to this, is everyone always getting open borders at the end of the game so he can use it?

As both of my last CV games, because of the ideologies, I was forced to bomb already dominant CIV just so i get 20% to the one I really wanted to target. Ideologies just make ppl crazy and ruin 200 turn long friendships ...

kaspergm said:

Tourism bomb is pretty worthless until you get up to something like Modern era, where you really start to have a high tourism output. Basically, any Great Person you use for a Great Work will make your subsequent Great Musician stronger, because his strength is 10x your tourism output at the time he was born. So usually I will settle my first musicians, and only in late game use them to go on concert tour.

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Yeah, and there aren't that many Great Music slots anyway. It's not hard to fill them up.

My problem is that I can never fill up broadway with same civ, same era before I pass through a whole era. Three musicians in one era!?

apotheoser - its quite easy actually. You produce one and hold on to it till u get broadway. Then you finish broadway and get one free. And till the end of the era you get the third for sure. You can delay the new era by 1-2 turns if you need.

The GM produces music work from the era when you bulb it, not from the era it is born.

Keep in mind that tourism acts against all AIs, whereas the concert tour only gives 2*tourism to civs other than the target. +2 per turn, with a theming bonus, 50% tourism bonuses, and x8 AIs, can easily be like 40 tourism per turn. Obviously there's still a point where the concert tour is better, particularly since later on you're typically influential over all but one or two players, but I find the great work better unless I'm only one or two concert tours away from winning.