Cannot Create Great Work of Art even though I have space

I'm experiencing a strange conundrum where I have several available Great Art slots, but when I go to use my Great Artist to create the great work, the option to do so has mysteriously disappeared. Now the only option that I can see is to start a Golden Age. Is this some kind of bug or is there a limit to how many Great Works of Art I can create? My game is in the year 2044 (yeah, culture victory is taking forever) and I've researched the Internet. I'm kind of confused here, anyone else that's had this happen to them, or do I not understand something?

All the works of art have been made. You're screwed. There's a set limit. Go take a look at the list.

Great Works don't recycle and Firaxis being ever so brilliant, decided only to give us a teeny weeny amount of great works that don't fairly represent the world.

I mean at this point it's just blatant propaganda. How many times do I have to look at that work that comes with Parthenon...

ptoss1 said:

All the works of art have been made. You're screwed. There's a set limit. Go take a look at the list.

Great Works don't recycle and Firaxis being ever so brilliant, decided only to give us a teeny weeny amount of great works that don't fairly represent the world.

I mean at this point it's just blatant propaganda. How many times do I have to look at that work that comes with Parthenon...

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That seems silly, Great Artists are all but useless now then (apart from being able to create Golden Ages). I guess I have to turn towardn generating Great Musicians and Writers from now on then. Morocco is being stubborn as hell with his culture, apparently it's going to take another 1334 turns before he succumbs to my tourism (ouch). I'm guessing Dominant tourism over another civ doesn't really mean much either (200% tourism vs. culture)?

Selereth said:

That seems silly, Great Artists are all but useless now then (apart from being able to create Golden Ages). I guess I have to turn towardn generating Great Musicians and Writers from now on then. Morocco is being stubborn as hell with his culture, apparently it's going to take another 1334 turns before he succumbs to my tourism (ouch). I'm guessing Dominant tourism over another civ doesn't really mean much either (200% tourism vs. culture)?

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And now that you've hit the iron wall, realize this: the best offense is a nuke to the face and the ability to raze all their pop, regardless of whatever victory you're going after. On a huge map it's almost guaranteed another civ will have insane wonder whoring and immense culture stockpiles.

Yes, even if they run out of names and images they should still have the GW option, even if all you get is an exclamation mark bubble saying you've created a great work by the name of Great Work of Art.

u know u can trade them right?
working as intended

iconocast said:

u know u can trade them right?
working as intended

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You can trade one-for-one - another lapse, not including an option to trade diplomatically. If someone else has dug up a surplus of artifacts (and the AI loves its archaeologist spam), there's no way for you to obtain new ones from them. You can swap some for others that better suit your theming bonuses, but you can't fill up any new museums.

Musicians are tourism bombs. In information age, if your tourism is 600+ they're worth 10% to 15% of the opponent's "bar" each.

Adjuvant said:

Musicians are tourism bombs. In information age, if your tourism is 600+ they're worth 10% to 15% of the opponent's "bar" each.

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Wait...explain that to me. I don't get it. I send a musician on tour and I get the tourism?

Selereth said:

I'm experiencing a strange conundrum where I have several available Great Art slots, but when I go to use my Great Artist to create the great work, the option to do so has mysteriously disappeared. Now the only option that I can see is to start a Golden Age. Is this some kind of bug or is there a limit to how many Great Works of Art I can create? My game is in the year 2044 (yeah, culture victory is taking forever) and I've researched the Internet. I'm kind of confused here, anyone else that's had this happen to them, or do I not understand something?

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This has happened to me too. It turns out your Great Artist also has to be used adjacent to one of your cities (the same way that a missionary might spread religion.)

Helmling said:

Wait...explain that to me. I don't get it. I send a musician on tour and I get the tourism?

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You send a musician on the target nation's territory, use the "concert tour" option, and your tourism against that civ is increased by a large amount and your tourism against other civs is increased by a smaller yet still useful amount. Very good when going for a cultural victory, to gain up on that one guy who has a resilient culture.


Trading great works in a diplomatic manner would've been nice, as well as a larger pool of great works so they wouldn't run out. The current trading system is rather poor, one just swaps around works to minmax theming bonuses with no real interaction.

VainoValkea said:

You send a musician on the target nation's territory, use the "concert tour" option, and your tourism against that civ is increased by a large amount and your tourism against other civs is increased by a smaller yet still useful amount. Very good when going for a cultural victory, to gain up on that one guy who has a resilient culture.


Trading great works in a diplomatic manner would've been nice, as well as a larger pool of great works so they wouldn't run out. The current trading system is rather poor, one just swaps around works to minmax theming bonuses with no real interaction.

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Yeah, running out of possible great works is a pain. In the game I'm playing now, I loaded a huge map with 22 civs so we ran out fairly early and I've excavated everything I can find in unclaimed territory so my route to a culture win got a lot rockier. Oh well, concerts and treatises from here on out--oh, and keep the golden ages coming, I guess.

I_qua_I said:

This has happened to me too. It turns out your Great Artist also has to be used adjacent to one of your cities (the same way that a missionary might spread religion.)

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Actually it doesn't matter if your Great Artist is in your city or adjacent to it, he will still have the option to create the Great Work. It looks like there's a limit to how many Great Works of Art you can generate since you can't replicate a Great Work, so once you've hit the limit (that is, however many GW of Art that Firaxis put into the game), at least art-wise you're done. Afterwards your Great Artists are only useful for initiating Golden Ages. My tourism is currently at 522 and it's still not enough to take down stubborn Morocco. I think I might just go Science Victory at this point.

PhilBowles said:

You can trade one-for-one - another lapse, not including an option to trade diplomatically. If someone else has dug up a surplus of artifacts (and the AI loves its archaeologist spam), there's no way for you to obtain new ones from them. You can swap some for others that better suit your theming bonuses, but you can't fill up any new museums.

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now that is something i agree on. tradeing art for cash or something other than 1 for 1 other works of art seems like the way to balance out the limited supply of great artists.

i guess you just have to go to war to steal some great works.

There's approximately 70 of each type of Great Work in the game. You will pretty much never hit this limit unless you have well over the normal amount of civs in a game.

Dux1 said:

There's approximately 70 of each type of Great Work in the game. You will pretty much never hit this limit unless you have well over the normal amount of civs in a game.

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Still it shouldn't be hard to mods about 10-20 of each type.

Ugh. Just experienced this. Have had 3 artists I've used up for golden ages... which are great, but ain't tourism.

Just experienced it too, I'm playing on a huge map with lots of civs. Looks like a bug to me, should be changed asap.

Are your great people near a city? I've noticed that you can only create great works when in or near a city for some reason.

Selereth said:

Actually it doesn't matter if your Great Artist is in your city or adjacent to it, he will still have the option to create the Great Work. It looks like there's a limit to how many Great Works of Art you can generate since you can't replicate a Great Work, so once you've hit the limit (that is, however many GW of Art that Firaxis put into the game), at least art-wise you're done. Afterwards your Great Artists are only useful for initiating Golden Ages. My tourism is currently at 522 and it's still not enough to take down stubborn Morocco. I think I might just go Science Victory at this point.

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If Morocco is a problem send a great musician in. At 522 tourism your great musician will give you 5220 tourism against Morocco and 1044 against every other Civ. If you can boost that tourism (e.g. using Brazil's golden ages, the Internet or the World Games) then you're looking at a huge tourism bomb. I assume you've built Hotels in every city so you should be able to build the national tourism centre in your capital. If you have a religion make it the world religion for another boost in tourism.

If a Civ has a different ideology to you, put a diplomat in their capital to reduce the penalty to -9% (you get -34% for differing ideologies but if you have different ideologies a diplomat will give you a propaganda bonus of +25%).

In my recent Brazil game I used every great artist I generated to have a carnival rather than create a great work. In fact, using them for a Golden Age isn't actually a bad idea, the culture boost and extra bonus towards great person generation is helpful and art slots can be filled with artifacts anyway (unlike music/writing slots), of course in a Golden Age you can produce archaeologists faster as well thanks to the production bonus. The only thing you miss out on by doing this is the theming bonus for world wonders (since they require art rather than artifacts for their bonuses).