Is France's UA not the worst ever?

Athenaeum said:

I don't know how you conclude that nabbing all those wonders is doable on Deity. Maybe you guys are better than me.

On Deity, I find it nearly impossible to get more than a couple wonders, sometimes the only ones I get are the ones I build with faith-purchased engineers.

The tourism wonders seem to go pretty quickly on Deity too. Assuming you get 2 tourism wonders (which I find to be a reasonable expectation), you're getting a doubled theming bonus in 3 buildings - those 2 wonders and a museum. And what's worse is that UA applies to the capital only and not other cities.

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So if your saying you cannot rely on wonders for tourism in Deity all of it has to come from your art/artifacts in Museums, Cathedrals, and Broadcast Towers right? For all the art/artifacts in Museums I would assume you would try and match them to get a theming bonus which is 50% by itself and 100% for France before all the other multipliers. Worst case that must be at least a net 25% boost on your total tourism which is significant.

Maximo the Xth said:

Which is exactly nothing. Keshiks in the game are archer units, not mounted units.

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Either way, Mongolia's UA is still heads and shoulders above Marocco's.

kaspergm said:

Either way, Mongolia's UA is still heads and shoulders above Marocco's.

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I almost thought you said uu which wouldve been way off.

Redaxe said:

So if your capital has a themed Oxford University, Museum and Hermitage that equates to an extra 14 tourism.
Lets say you build the Sistine Chapel, the Louvre and the Sydney Opera House (all doable on Diety)
that is an extra 16 tourism so combined with the National Wonders you should be able to get a minimum of 30 extra tourism per turn.
I guess Hotels, Airports, National Visitors Centre don't add to this as the wiki says they just increase tourism output of Great Works and not the theming bonus.

However that still leaves Internet and other Ideology bonuses. So if you have Internet and Freedoms Broadcast Towers with a +33% bonus your Themed tourism becomes an extra 80 per turn?
And that's not counting modifiers such as Open Borders, Diplomats and Trade Routes. So essentially with those 3 we have a 120% bonus on that so we have an extra 176 tourism per turn when we reach Internet and assuming full Aesthetics. Also assuming my numbers are right
176 extra tourism per turn is certainly significant towards achieving a culture victory.

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The game lies. Internet doesn't actually double tourism. What Internet actually does is give +100% tourism. This is additive in the same layer as International Games (+100% tourism) and Media Culture (+34% tourism). So Internet and Media Culture together are +134% tourism, which would bring a base of 30 up to 70, not 80.

Manpanzee said:

The game lies. Internet doesn't actually double tourism. What Internet actually does is give +100% tourism. This is additive in the same layer as International Games (+100% tourism) and Media Culture (+34% tourism). So Internet and Media Culture together are +134% tourism, which would bring a base of 30 up to 70, not 80.

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Yah, I was all kinds of disappointed when I realized that

Manpanzee said:

The game lies. Internet doesn't actually double tourism. What Internet actually does is give +100% tourism. This is additive in the same layer as International Games (+100% tourism) and Media Culture (+34% tourism). So Internet and Media Culture together are +134% tourism, which would bring a base of 30 up to 70, not 80.

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Who cares, the Internet is basically just a way for the developers to make up for a crappy game design. It's like an emergency break - if you've come this far and haven't managed to win yet, we probably didn't balance the numbers properly, or you played a crappy game, so we'll just give you a huge bonus for free to make sure you win anyway.

The internet and Sydney opera are there if you still havent reached some kind of cultural victory. Its almost like if we're supposed to have a victory by now since so much tourism gets added from these late game technologies.

kaspergm said:

Who cares, the Internet is basically just a way for the developers to make up for a crappy game design. It's like an emergency break - if you've come this far and haven't managed to win yet, we probably didn't balance the numbers properly, or you played a crappy game, so we'll just give you a huge bonus for free to make sure you win anyway.

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Isn't that true of several end techs and the timed "win" itself?

stormtrooper412 said:

That particular bit is really unintuitive, oops there's a clear patch of land here, build one road tile and it will magically work as a natural spiritual highway or something.

It did work well in the DCL but that was because Acken manually added trees around the starting location after the map has been generated

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At least two road tiles, actually: one at the edge of the forest (on the forest tile itself), and one at the clear patch of land. The UA does not recognize a road on the clear patch to be actually connected to the forest-road network (except when considering city-connections), which is why people feel it's hella buggy.

And yeah, sadly it's admittedly unintuitive. Still, it's a lot less things for Iroquois workers to work on, especially if you're lucky enough to find a particularly long stretch of forest or jungle tiles.

Manpanzee said:

The game lies. Internet doesn't actually double tourism. What Internet actually does is give +100% tourism. This is additive in the same layer as International Games (+100% tourism) and Media Culture (+34% tourism). So Internet and Media Culture together are +134% tourism, which would bring a base of 30 up to 70, not 80.

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Ahhh right so in that case we end up with about an extra 154 tourism using that model. Still that's not too bad.

Culture victories are pretty easy to win in all but the highest difficulties so that could be enough extra tourism to win.

Also regarding how viable those wonders are to get in Diety and the need for Great Artists
-Well Sistine Chapel I'd argue is the most essential of the Culture/Tourism Wonders.
Because the +25% culture will help you get extra social policies which you'll need to fill out both Rationalism and Aesthetics.
Also as culture defends against tourism you absolutely do not want to take the chance of this ending up in the hands of a runaway AI.

-Louvre is pretty easy to get. Has the best theme bonus (provides a Great Artist). It requires Exploration to unlock so that reduces the probability for the AI to get to it first. It's Industrial so if you can rush it with an Engineer.

-Sydney Opera House - This comes pretty late but the extra social policies and culture can help you fill out any remaining social policies you need. It should be achievable if you've bulbed some great scientists to get to this specifically.


Regarding Artists. I've never had issues with getting enough of them but it can be an issue in swapping Great Works. Generally the first 2 don't take too long to produce so I get 2 renaissance Artists to theme the Sistine Chapel. After that I'd swap them with the AI while they are still available and add to the Hermitage and Louvre as required. Louvre and Aesthetics both give you an Artist and if you're still short you can always buy one with Faith.
Sometimes I've had issues where the AI doesn't have any art to swap but that seems to be a late game issue - if you remember to swap art early enough you shouldn't have this problem.

kaspergm said:

Who cares, the Internet is basically just a way for the developers to make up for a crappy game design. It's like an emergency break - if you've come this far and haven't managed to win yet, we probably didn't balance the numbers properly, or you played a crappy game, so we'll just give you a huge bonus for free to make sure you win anyway.

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Same goes for Globalization and the Hubble Space Telescope wonder

Aenthin said:

At least two road tiles, actually: one at the edge of the forest (on the forest tile itself), and one at the clear patch of land. The UA does not recognize a road on the clear patch to be actually connected to the forest-road network (except when considering city-connections), which is why people feel it's hella buggy.

And yeah, sadly it's admittedly unintuitive. Still, it's a lot less things for Iroquois workers to work on, especially if you're lucky enough to find a particularly long stretch of forest or jungle tiles.

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Yeah, you had me confused for a bit because I was only referring to city connections, in which case forest = road regardless of where it is as long as it's within borders (another unintuitive bit)

Dushku said:

Isn't that true of several end techs and the timed "win" itself?

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Certainly, but that doesn't make this part of the game's design less aggravating. I think the whole tourism system is a great idea, but they designed it in a way so that you can more or less completely ignore it until Archaeology and Hotels come into game which is sort of bad design. Great Writings are essentially never worth it, because the amount of Tourism they'll earn you over the entire game will amount to something like 1 extra turn in the endgame when you get massive tourism bonus from tiles, wonders, etc. Anyway I'm drifting way off topic here.

stormtrooper412 said:

Yeah, you had me confused for a bit because I was only referring to city connections, in which case forest = road regardless of where it is as long as it's within borders (another unintuitive bit)

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Yeah. Part of the problem with the Iroquois is that you really need to expand your borders to benefit their UA despite not having Shoshone's UA, America's UA, or Russia's UB. You either need to buy tiles, rush Angkor Wat (which the AI loves to get, for some reason), get a culture-generating pantheon/social policy, or simply settle cities close to each other. Though admittedly, I did have fun with the latter...

wayneb64 said:

So if your saying you cannot rely on wonders for tourism in Deity all of it has to come from your art/artifacts in Museums, Cathedrals, and Broadcast Towers right? For all the art/artifacts in Museums I would assume you would try and match them to get a theming bonus which is 50% by itself and 100% for France before all the other multipliers. Worst case that must be at least a net 25% boost on your total tourism which is significant.

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The theming bonuses only apply to your capital. That means you have one museum, one broadcast tower, one hermitage, and one of whatever else I'm forgetting that can store multiple great works.

If the theming bonus applied to all of France's cities I would change my mind.

At worst you have Museum, Hermitage and Oxford, but with a few Chateaux and Landmarks you can make it work like you stored some wonders already. A Sistine/Uffizi is also really really good

stormtrooper412 said:

At worst you have Museum, Hermitage and Oxford, but with a few Chateaux and Landmarks you can make it work like you stored some wonders already. A Sistine/Uffizi is also really really good

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That's is taking into account of France's other abilities, however. On its own, the UA still seems lackluster unless you get a few key wonders. Still, I wouldn't call it the worst, Athenaeum, because unlike some other UAs, this actually works regardless of what strategy you're employing.

Take a look at Byzantium, for example. They can't get a religion, they can't get a UA. It is powerful, don't get me wrong, but with so many contenders in Deity for a religion, plus RNG screwing you over that you can't get a faith ruin, meet up and befriend with faith CSes, or run out of faith-based pantheons, you'll be stuck with a UA that does absolutely nothing.

With France, the minimum optimized build (Museum, Hermitage and Oxford) only grants you a minimum of 14 culture/tourism per turn. Even then, it still works and it still gives you the culture you might need for the next social policy or ideological tenet earlier than other civs. (Plus considering the fact that because of Hermitage, you'll actually be getting 21 culture per turn from the theming bonus only, compared to other civ's 10 culture per turn).