Arabia + Tourism + Any advice?

[dadam88]

Hey all,

I have been trying to Arabia as a massive tourism/religion empire. The general idea is....Desert start + Desert Folklore of course. In all gunning for these religion buffs.

This results in +4 tourism from each city. With the reformation,

Pilgrimage + 2 fpt from foreign cities --- Is there anything better I could use here?
Mosques (building)
Pagodas (building)
Holy Order (-30% on Missionaries + -20% from Piety tree = 110 faith purchases)
^ ----- Open to other options but being able to spam missionaries is pretty nice however I haven't weighed all the options yet just trying it out.
Sacred Sites + 2 tourism from all buildings purchased by faith

My idea was to fast expand and buy my buildings to generate tourism which I did great. In general I had a FPT over 130 at around 200 turns, and generating 30 tourism from just the religious buildings I had in my cities.
My main problem was my lack of science and just running into problems with lack of hammers in the dessert. I essentially will get DoWed for spreading my religion which I guess I really don't need to do so I can get rid of holy order but I was looking into spreading for benefits for tourism.

This is a really power strategy but it needs some tweaking and rushing reformation takes a big toll on culture.

Any advice?

Game ended badly, I got run over by a few civilizations by war.

I have also messed around with Holy Order + Science from conversion, it is really strong.

 

[Polemos88]

Personally I like Tithe better than Pilgrimage, and the gold boost can be very handy for overcoming low production. Also you want to make sure you get Machu Picchu and go Mercantilism alongside Piety. It sounds like you're hoping for a culture win, but your civ choice and large emprie are kind of at odds with this goal. Tourism is pretty much useless for a non-cultural win, so this leaves you at a disadvantage.

My advice: Either change your Civ and strategy to make better use of culture/tourism/Sacred sites - or stick with Arabia but go for a Diplomatic win, and change your reformation belief accordingly.

 

[RealHuhn]

Personally I like Tithe better than Pilgrimage, and the gold boost can be very handy for overcoming low production. Also you want to make sure you get Machu Picchu and go Mercantilism alongside Piety. It sounds like you're hoping for a culture win, but your civ choice and large emprie are kind of at odds with this goal. Tourism is pretty much useless for a non-cultural win, so this leaves you at a disadvantage.

My advice: Either change your Civ and strategy to make better use of culture/tourism/Sacred sites - or stick with Arabia but go for a Diplomatic win, and change your reformation belief accordingly.

Actually, tourism isn't useless for non-cultural wins. The earlier you can generate tourism, the more you can hurt other civs who choose different ideologies later on in the game.
In the early game, culture per turn is very low and your influence on other civs can grow very fast if you generate early tourism. The early +2 tourism per purchased religious building almost ensures that every civ who chooses a different ideology immeditately runs into happiness problems.

Most of the tourism is also tied to culture and culture gives you defense against tourism and more social policies.

 

[Heinage]

I agree with the above. I used tourism effectively to help with a diplo vic.
In part due to my massive influence in the world, autocratic civs failed, control over the world Congress was held by the freedom civs, where we helped each other by enacting world ideology and traded delegates to push through resolutions to stop the war mongers.
Was fun

 

[RealHuhn]

I agree with the above. I used tourism effectively to help with a diplo vic.
In part due to my massive influence in the world, autocratic civs failed, control over the world Congress was held by the freedom civs, where we helped each other by enacting world ideology and traded delegates to push through resolutions to stop the war mongers.
Was fun

Yeah, if you ignore tourism, prepare yourself for a rather rough late game.

@topic:
With your strategy, it's pretty obvious that you sacrifice science for early religion. There's always a trade-off.

I haven't played as Arabia but I'd say that you don't need to spam missionaries due to their UA and its natural religious pressure through trade routes.
So try to focus on getting those trade routes up and running fast and let religious texts care for the rest. Petra or Collossus should be a priority for an extra trade route as well as the required techs for additional routes.

Meanwhile you can spam your religious buildings and Pilgrimage also becomes less important. You said you ran into culture problems?

Use world church for +1 culture per 5 foreign citizens. It's actually rather great in BNW because amphitheatres without a filled slot are pretty pathetic now.

 

[NukeAJS]

The tourism from reformation belief resulted in me becoming influential with a rival civ sometime around turn 150ish. I was pretty shocked.

I would like to add getting cathedrals instead of mosques. Yes, the FPT is pretty much unrivaled by mosques, but cathedrals allow you to put great works of art/artifacts in them. Unless you get the Sistine Chapel, you probably are only going to have your palace to put great works of art until museums or Uffizi if you are lucky. This means you will either get a great artist and have no where to house his great work, you'll pop him for a golden age, he'll sit and do nothing (costing you maintenance) until you can get museums, or you'll just stop working the artists slots.

The cathedrals will still give the +2 tourism, which is what you really want. A cathedral with art/artifact (and tourism reform belief) in it gives double the tourism that a mosque would. Alternatively, you could go mosques/cathedrals. You lose the 1 happiness, but gain +1 FPT. If you don't foresee happiness being an issue, this could be the way to go.