I need cultural defence advice - the AI stomps me with toursim

kb27787 said:

Freedom is a bit stronger for CV in my experience anyway (although Order can sometimes be easier); the fact is that Order only gains two +34% buffs only if the target civ is also Order AND has less happiness (and goodness knows deity AIs who go Order are rarely short of happiness... usually in the 40+ range and because you are of the same ideology, you won't be lowering their happiness from pressure either); so in practice usually you get one or zero of those buffs active (say target is autocratic... and autocracy has TONS of happiness from military buildings that even in revolutionary wave they can still out-happy you... btw proposing world ideology is just asking to be DoW'd and by going for CV you will eventually rid yourself of any pressure anyway late game, so I just tough it out usually)

Also the difference is where the buff applies, for Freedom it applies to your base tourism, enhancing strength of GMs (hence, it works on every target), while Order's bonuses are additive, not multiplicative, with OB, religion, TR etc. someone once did the math on this and Freedom comes out a bit ahead, esp if you already have the other modifiers rolling.

New deal is also pretty good (for CV I tend to plant more than bulb because of historical landmarks).
While I feel Order is the strongest tree for SV by FAR, freedom is great for any VC maybe except domination.

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Well, I'm still not convinced. Especially about "getting DoWed" if you choose Order as World Ideology. There's a ton of ways to avoid war in BnW and the AI is just so passive now, that you can literally cruise your way to any victory if you wish to stay peaceful. Plus, with Order, you will probably have the tech lead anyway, so it's gonna be laughable GW Infantry VS Nukes or something. In that aspect, the AI really makes me yawn on BnW. As you said, it's probably easier to go Order. Not to mention you will already piss them off with Freedom (you will never see a warmonger go Freedom, but they actually might go Order in a cultural game, just to avoid dissidents. I have seen Shaka going Order after I did and he was my neighbor for the whole game). Also, if all else fails, by the time ideologies come, you should have a skeleton army to protect yourself. You can never completely ignore that in any game, no matter what victory type you're going for, otherwise you might regret it.

About happiness, on Deity you might actually be right. But on Immortal I completely disagree (the OP was playing on Immortal). I usually have about 3 Civs -at least- with less happiness that I do towards the end game. And 3 civs is definitely worth having +68% tourism with compared to Freedom. I guess it comes down to personal preference, though. Peace out.

PS. Do you have any links to the topic which showcases that Freedom still comes ahead (by doing the math)? I'd love to take a look! Thanks in advance.

just a quick thanks again. I found time to play a fresh game with morocco over the last two days. I got my culture into a better state. Still not good enough - I was still being pressured by one order follower - but at least it was better than where I was at before and I was able to stick to Freedom to the end.

A quick question - not really related to the original question - but following on - about city growth. In an attempt to try and get the basics right, I stuck to a four city empire, concentrated on growth - put fields on anything flat, and mines on all hills not next to rivers, had my cities on food focus, rush built the buildings but I still didn't pull away from the Ai in the tech race and lost a couple of important wonders.

I was stuck in the money caravan/ cargo ship vs food caravan/cargo ship catch. To get money to rush buy buildings in my cities I had all my trade routes money focused. So the cities were growing but not as fast as they might with food convoys. I was generating roughly 150 gpt but putting money into buying buildings meant less money to buy CS's - which meant less happiness and culture and growth etc. etc. It was like that until the world congress opened and I was able to trade extra goods with the other civs (playing continents -standard -standard) and open up ideologies. Even then though I had a hard time trying to balance money trade routes with food convoys.

So the question is, what kind of balance do better players than I strike between gold and food trade routes in the early to mid game, and mid to late games- playing on a continents map to maximise growth but still allow them to get a decent gpt to rush buy the important stuff.

Personally, I always use the first trade route as an internal one. If only the capital has a Granary (don't forget: you need a Granary to send internal ones), I send it to the 2nd city, so it can focus on building its first important buildings and grow nicely at the same time (Library if playing peaceful and have no time for Granary first, or Monument --> Library if I chose Liberty). There's only one exception to this: if a city state asks for a TR and I'm already at "Friends" status with them, so I can get to "Allies" status easily.

I don't bother getting +2-3 bpt in the beginning (if sent to an AI), simply because within 10-15 turns, I'll have +2 citizens in the city I sent the internal trade route to and I'll get those beakers anyway.

Now, for the most important part. Every two other trade route slots I acquire, I send them to the capital. So, if I have let's say 5 slots, 2 are gold focused and the other 3 go to the capital (especially if you're playing Tradition, since your city is going to stagnate for about 25-30 turns if you build 3 freaking settlers, so you want to get that food back ASAP).

Here's a screenshot of my capital, right on the turn of a peaceful science victory I achieved on Immortal: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=374838&d=1399191611

I had 4 cities. 3 caravans were going to the capital since early in the game (I researched Sailing before Philosophy, and Engineering right before going towards Civil Service). I hit 30 pop on turn 160 and Modern Era on T177 (could have been slightly faster, see the 2nd screenshot). Of course, if you have the option of a nice, coastal capital, and then a nearby coastal 2nd city, don't even bother with Caravans. Go Sailing after your Luxury tech(s) and build up Cargo Ships. They're A LOT better. I cannot stress this enough.

PS. I am nowhere near "world-class level", but I hope I helped.

@Jamescivfan - BTW what's the UI mod you've got running on that screenshot you posted? I've been browsing steam for any half decent UI mods but nothing seems to pop up in the search. I tried installing the communitas UI mod but found it requires the Communitas Ai mod - and I'm not interested in modding the games AI right now.

JamesCivFan said:

Well, I'm still not convinced. Especially about "getting DoWed" if you choose Order as World Ideology. There's a ton of ways to avoid war in BnW and the AI is just so passive now, that you can literally cruise your way to any victory if you wish to stay peaceful. Plus, with Order, you will probably have the tech lead anyway, so it's gonna be laughable GW Infantry VS Nukes or something. In that aspect, the AI really makes me yawn on BnW. As you said, it's probably easier to go Order. Not to mention you will already piss them off with Freedom (you will never see a warmonger go Freedom, but they actually might go Order in a cultural game, just to avoid dissidents. I have seen Shaka going Order after I did and he was my neighbor for the whole game). Also, if all else fails, by the time ideologies come, you should have a skeleton army to protect yourself. You can never completely ignore that in any game, no matter what victory type you're going for, otherwise you might regret it.

About happiness, on Deity you might actually be right. But on Immortal I completely disagree (the OP was playing on Immortal). I usually have about 3 Civs -at least- with less happiness that I do towards the end game. And 3 civs is definitely worth having +68% tourism with compared to Freedom. I guess it comes down to personal preference, though. Peace out.

PS. Do you have any links to the topic which showcases that Freedom still comes ahead (by doing the math)? I'd love to take a look! Thanks in advance.

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You really need to play deity... (usually you cannot hope to be peaceful, go for CV, and have an army to match the AI in terms of sheer numbers while getting everything built).
It's easy enough to defend yourself, using a fortified position of forts/submarines etc. but the AI doesn't realize that it has no way of beating you and will stay at war with you for 50 turns if it wants; for CV losing those routes and OB are disastrous.

So, to avoid war, I always build landmarks for AI because of that (would you rather spend hammers on an archeologist or on 10 units?), and chances are civs that would be pissed by your proposal would already have a different ideology than you (that's a major red modifier already); you may easily lose friends over that.

Now as for the thread you can probably search the forums, but I'm sure that was before the fall patch (Freedom comes out ahead by a few % pts against other Freedom and Autocratic civs but Order comes out ahead by a few % pts against other less happy Order civs).

Of course, this assumes Order is happier than all of its targets (far from guaranteed)

However, the fall patch would make the impact of Order's policies even further weaker since OB, religion, routes are now buffed by 15% each so I'm thinking Freedom should now be clearly better); if Brazil, then Freedom is MUCH stronger because of the way their UA works.

The way I understand it (someone correct me if I'm wrong) tourism pressure is calculated on 3 levels...

Take the city's base tourism (works, culture improvements, wonders, theming bonus etc)
100% + Hotels (+50%) + Airports (+50%) + NVC (+100%)
x
100% + Internet (+100%, or 0% if target has GFW) + Media culture (+34%) (I'm pretty sure IG's bonus applies at this layer)

Do this for all cities and add up total tourism (your GM's strength will be 10x this number, if in Carnival, double it) So you see how Freedom's policies enhance GMs.
Then modify this number according to different target civs.

x
100% + OB (+40%) - Different ideology if applicable (34% or 9% if diplomat) + routes (+40%) + religion (+40%) + Carnival (+100%) + here is where Order's policies are applied.

The reasoning is straightforward, the more buffs active on the same layer, the less effect your tenet has. Freedom's bonus only has internet to worry about while Order's are applied with a myriad of other modifiers. The better you do at getting routes, OB, religion with your target, the less useful Order's policies are.

I am not sure which layer the Holy City of World Religion's bonus is applied to though.

Maybe I'll try out a Brazil game on Deity to see how many people will DoW me. I'll choose Freedom, after a long time, just to test it. Of course, you have to be lucky with neighbors. If you spawn near Shaka and Attila, chances are you won't make it out alive easily.

Luckily, Brazil has a jungle bias, and that kinda acts like a "natural GW" early in the game. Oh and in every cultural game you need to have the GFW, just so the AI doesn't get it. These late wonders are really easy to get since you should be ahead in tech and have at least 1100 bpt late game. I'll post the results here when I do it. Thanks for the information, though.

One thing I don't think I've seen mentioned is bribing other civs to help you vote in your world ideology. Last game I played I handled culture pressure about as well as I ever have as a deity player, and despite heavy pressure from the Autocratic Celts, mild pressure from the Free Brazilians, and having only 1 other Orderly civ out of 7 total (the Dutch were long dead), I never got more than 13 unhappiness from pressure. When I counted up the delegates from the two Order civs, I realized I only needed Brazil's votes to make it pass. That's 9gpt or whatever well spent. I also tossed in useless horses and iron to lower the gold price. Other than that, I used a faith-bought great engineer to put an Eiffel Tower in my cap, had the majority of my great works there, actually payed attention to theming bonuses for once, and only bothered to build culture/tourism-boosting buildings there (except airports which serve purposes beyond tourism). It was by far the #1 "Place We All Love to Visit" even though I sat at #2 or 3 in total tourism for the majority of the game. Go figure it was the other Order civ (Carthage, with whom I had DoFed from about turn 60 on) who backstabbed me in the end while my entire force was on the other continent wading through carpets of doom from the misguided Autocratic Celts and Huns. It's not like Brazil wasn't right next to you Carthage!

kb27787 said:

Now I'm curious... those 15-pop cities in Modern Era... when exactly did you found them, industrial? (or did you somehow keep your cities small and not growing throughout the game to that point)
12 specialist slots in a 15 pop city is either huge amounts of gold in rush buys or somehow you are Spain and settled KSM. And if you caravan'd in hammers you might as well had done it with food instead.
Usually a standard map means you are probably done expanding LONG, long ago because all the space is taken.

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I want to see an actual 15-pop city using 12 specialist slots. Would be very amused.