Did they rework Cultural Victory?

[kb27787]

Seems that when you gain a foreign tourist from a civ, it no longer lowers the number of domestic tourists that civ has (prior to the latest patch, it was possible to lower the number of domestic tourists a culture gimp has into the negatives even).
Now it does not matter where you send your trade routes (prior to this, you only want to focus on the civs that have high defensive culture income), civs don't seem to ever run out of domestic tourists for you to gimp off of, and you gain pretty much the same number of tourists from every civ on the map regardless of their culture yield. Also, the number of domestic tourists a civ has never is reduced, never mind that it is being pummeled with tourism powerhouses; the number always goes up the longer the game goes on. Now it is quite possible to have 500+ domestic tourists.

Did they just make CV harder on purpose? Usually once I hit 1000+ tourism I observe that my games end in 10+ turns... now it can be 30+ turns, depending on the civs you face.

 

[EpicWestern]

They did, but its a bit tough to tell how it was reworked exactly since the tourism display screen was buggy before and its still buggy now, but I think I agree with your guess, tourism defense via culture has just been eliminated entirely. Its a bit weird to me that such a huge change to a victory condition wasn't even really mentioned in patch notes. Anyway, I've had a couple of losses now where it seemed like I was cruising to victory with around 10-12 cities, with Theater districts and obscenely high tourism per turn (around 1000), but I really wasn't closing the distance between tourists and tourists needed for victory very fast at all, (only around 5-6 per turn). In one game one of the main problems was being fairly evenly matched tourism-wise with another civ (America (film studios)), and two civs were eliminated so they weren't adding to the tourist count at all.

Just seems much more important to have a significant lead on opponents if you want to win the game before turn ~330 or so when you have to start dealing with mass spaceports. Depending on what civs you're up against a hybrid domination/cultural win will probably be better than just a pure peaceful cultural win.

 

[Victoria]

Are you sure it does not go down? Hmmm
What I understand has changed is the runaway is now getting 300-400 culture per turn on deity earlier because they build more works including relics

 

[Felis Renidens]

Hmm... on the difficulties that I play (the lower ones) just after release I had to do something to win cultural victory (use some policy cards, steal works of art) and I could actually get a science victory. Now I usually get a culture victory before I get to mars (Somehow the engineers that pop up are those that add appeal or housing or district capacity, the scientists are those that give euricas to techs already research etc.). Now I do build as much wonders as I can get, try to have one national park and a museum or two. also many great artists and musician are claimed by the AI and stay idle. Perhaps the AI should prioritize museums when they have idle artists.

 

[Amrunril]

I can't confirm whether this has changed or not, but if it has it's a very good thing.The original mechanic meant that, for a civ not pursuing cultural victory, producing tourism was actively worse than not producing it, as it lowered the target your rivals needed to reach for a cultural victory.

 

[Kyro]

I realized that Cultural Victories did get harder somehow; Civs weren't buckling quickly even against 1.5k tourism per turn and a 100+% tourism modifier. I never did realized that they made such a huge and sneaky change; all under the pretense of a "bug fix" at that.

Just to clarify one thing though, isn't that an insane buff to Cultural Defense since players no longer lose domestic tourists which really makes it harder to get more visiting tourists than domestic tourists from opposing Civs?

 

[Victoria]

I am not sure it has happened but I guess have to treat it like it has until I can check it out
I do know AI's get more culture now and so that is why it has seemed harder but yes, if they have removed that it would be harder.

 

[Halcyan2]

I recently won a game where I won a Cultural Victory before I met all of the civilizations. (Actually, I was avoiding one civilization to try and prolong the game).

Does anyone know if you have always been able to win Culturally without needing to meet everyone?

 

[Victoria]

@Halcyan2
It's weird but the maths works. It's in a graph in the culture guide, if say playing standard size with 8 civs, only the first 3-4 give the best benefit, after that it's not such a benefit.

Simply but the 7th civ only gives you 1/7 th of the total value

Playing with 12 civs it just not worth looking for the last 2. Took a while to get my head around it when the graph showed it.

The real secret is to get an ally that has explored for you, once an ally suddenly you can see all the civs they met and their map. Not only that butballies have open borders always so ... alliances with half of the map give the best value.

I am at this very moment up to turn 116 of a deity game from hell because i am surrounded by 4 strong civs... here is the map on turn 115 and 116 after I formed 2 alliances...

 

[EpicWestern]

Bump. Not sure if its a factor of the latest patch or was just this way all along, but in my last game domestic tourists did in fact decrease at one point for one of my opposing civs. Last game was a peaceful continents cultural loss for me on deity. It was turn 364, my 1460 tourism per turn apparently not good enough. Russia managed to get up to 1050 domestic tourists with some absolutely insane ~600 culture per turn or so midgame. So even with twice as many foreign tourists (my ~770 or so to his ~395) I still lose. My guess is that once you hit 1000 domestic tourists, you start to steal them from other civs (so the tourists needed decreases like back earlier in the year).

Anyway I'm finding it nearly impossible to out-domestic-tourist other civs by peaceful means on deity. You're main hope is that either there just isn't an overpowered culture civ (Kongo, Russia, America) OR there are two or more of them so they must face other high tourism needed numbers in order to win. It might even be worth balancing out your great works thefts to prevent a runaway culture civ. It would be a longer game, but still preferable to losing IMO.

 

[Victoria]

Thanks @EpicWestern , they did not change the conditions, just increased the AI's ability to create culture.
And yes peaceful deity is only possible earlyish without one of many civs getting large. Their cultural output can be in the crazy hundreds. The best way to counter is taking all the seashore with Eiffel.

However being able to currently get their great works for peanuts is a crazy way to reduce this.