Tourism on non-culture victories

Hey so I know I've been starting quite a few threads on these forums lately, so sorry if you're getting tired of the sound of my voice. I'm just now trying to figure out BNW, so all your tips and advice are much appreciated. I'm about to start a science playthrough, and I'm wondering if I need to worry about tourism.

What purpose does it serve aside from alllowing you to win a CV? Is it worth building tourism buildings/wonders? Should I ignore it completely, use it to some extent, or actively use it to win a SV (can it help at all for other victory conditions, in other words.)

IIRC, for every level of cultural influence you get over other Civ, you get extra +1 science per turn per trade route with them.

I don't think you should ever completely ignore tourism, because building tourism also means building culture which is your defense against other civ's tourism. The safest thing you can ignore in this game is probably religion

IIRC, Tourism also plays defensively : if you influence a civ more than they influence you, then you'll be protected against unhappiness caused by their ideology. Though a strong culture alone should do the job.

And since cultural buildings have been heavily nerved in BNW, the amount of culture you'll get from cities will be meagre. With religious beliefs or cultural CS, you can compensate. But Great Artists/Musician/Writers are here to replace culture from buildings - you shouldn't be ignoring them, especially since the first ones can be produced quite fast.

There are random tiny benefits to having medium tourism in the endgame (if you get at least familiar-lvl tourism (30% of bar) to that civ). The key here is that some civs will not have good culture at all, and even with a modest investment in tourism (no wonders needed, just turn your GAWMs into great works), make ~10 archeologists, you can get some benefits. The key one is that you can lower the unrest time for taking over cities. You can also coup their city states faster at popular (50% of bar), which is useful for diplo victories, and preventing diplo victories. Finally, you'll get a couple token beakers on trade routes (+1 for familiar 30%; +2 for popular 50%).

But, the biggest reason not to ignore tourism is a rather complicated system the game uses to determine ideology pressure. If you're not going to be a part of a popular ideology (e.g. Autocracy or Freedom), not even getting to the first benchmark of tourism (exotic, 10% of the bar) with civs of opposing ideologies can mean a hefty happiness penalty (which increases as you get more populous or have more cities). So, if you don't have decent tourism, a conquering spree can really get de-railed.

You get an extremely small amount of extra science on trade routes with people you're influential with
Your spies perform surveillance (the starting few turns of setup) faster in their cities, and there is less population loss and shorter unrest time after capturing their cities
You pressure them with your ideology, and receive less ideological pressure from them

The bonuses are very small, and defending your ideology by fighting the culture leaders is hard if you're not going for CV. It's much easier to try and get World Ideology voted in (a strong way to defend your ideology) or just defend your happiness than it is to build tourism just for that.

For a science victory tourism is not needed at all, the biggest part of the tourism comes in terms of unhappiness generated by presure, but: With Order is usually the most popular for AI, and freedom on tall empires give you mroe than enough happiness to offset the pressure.

However very little work is needed to get an average culture, just get all guilds in capital with garden and heroic epic, get a fet landmarks and artifacts with a few archeologists and you are done. Definitively low priority but not totally useless, some extra happiness in a growth rampage is always good.

culture yes tourism no i cant realy see anny reason to focus on it for annything other that CV

You get shorter unrest time after conquering a city if you had tourism into that country, so that might make your pause between wars shorter. It might also be useful for diplomatic as your diplomats are ready to work faster and thanks to that you could possibly persuade more civs.

it's unnecessary to invest much in tourism for science or diplo victories, IMO. BUT you do have to invest in regular (defensive) culture, like getting all the cultural city states allied, winning the world fair, and strategic use of GW political treatise (during world fair + golden age). In my experience that should be enough to ensure the AI doesn't get more than 1 level of ideology pressure on you, which is pretty manageable, especially if you went order.

definitely do not ignore the guilds though, artists & writers come in super handy for boosting defensive culture with their special abilities.

and I play on immortal, I imagine it is different on deity where the AI is a bigger culture/tourism threat.

Actually, a small amount of tourism goes a longer way toward preventing ideological unhappiness than going from decent defensive culture to high defensive culture.

There's a breakpoint somewhere. You'll usually hit it if you have just fill one city's slots up, including national wonders.

That is a valid point, but if you are not going for CV, you won't get good multipliers on that tourism so it will always be a pretty small amount. Compared to the amount of culture you can get with golden ages/political treaties, I'm not sure it is really beneficial. Seeing as how culture gets you extra policies, which always come in handy, it's not a simple "which method is more efficient at eliminating ideology pressure" question. Especially since those extra policies can be used to counter the unhappiness quite easily (especially if you go order).

When not going towards Cultural victory, you should still build the guilds, run the slots, and build the standard buildings to house them, but should skip the world wonders.
It's much better to have a bit more protection than you need against AI culture than to suffer from ideological unhappiness. Especally because some of the AIs (ones with high cultural flavor) know how to persure cultural victory and will pick the popular Order ideology which has a tenent that gives a tourism bonus against civs with less happiness.

joncnunn said:

When not going towards Cultural victory, you should still build the guilds, run the slots...and skip the wonders

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definitely agree

joncnunn said:

and build the standard buildings to house them

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here is where I disagree. I have found that strategic use of golden ages/political treatises can have a much better payoff, especially if you are in position to win the world fair.

tourism when you're not going for CV just doesn't scale well compared to culture, where you can just ally the city states, win world fair, and then do political treatise for massive amounts.

the exception being if there aren't many cultural CS or you can't afford to ally them. In that case you might be better off with great works.