How much do you care about Culture/Tourism when going for a Sci, Dom, Diplo Victory?

[GKShaman]

Maybe its supposed to be a part of the game, but I notice that if you ignore culture/tourism - you are sorely gonna be second tier.

You have bow down to the best tourist ideology, You will slowly take policies. Also there is the issue of general slowness to the game (later borders, later use of policy trees).

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that this affects your build orders, building new cities, happiness.

Do people going for Diplo Victories go for Opera Houses? Museums? Archaeologists?

What about when going for Science? Need to build the hermitage? All those guilds? (The default seems to prioritize the guilds specialists before the university specialists.

If you're domination I imagine you could care less. With all the awesome cities out there you can just capture culture and destroy the most touristy civ.

Personal Play Style:

I like to build 3-5 cities and just have a tech lead. In my opinion science gives you top choice in units, buildings, wonders, etc. Y build 3 zoos and 3 museums when you can be the first to Radio and build the Eiffel Tower which has more tourism and is maintenance free!

But the problem comes when ideologies come about. I go Freedom (for the specialist love) and find my happiness goes lower. One game I was successful in combating this by getting international games, going for tourism buildings, wonders, archaeologists, AND getting CS Allies to vote Freedom as the World Ideology.

ONLY THEN did public opinion finally go down and I was back in action. Except everybody hated me. And I lost almost 50-100 turns to fix all this. (Deity, India, Standard, Epic).

My point being - how much do you care about culture and tourism when going for something else?? Did BNW make it necessary for people care equally about military, culture, tourism, gold, and science?

 

[Mesix]

Culture yes...tourism no. In fact, often times you need to avoid tourism if you are going for a longer game (especially a Time VC) to prevent an accidental Cultural VC.

 

[wayneb64]

I always 'go' for pretty much everything because it all 'matters' in one way or another. Playing on Immortal you cannot really ignore much of anything because it will be your downfall or at least a major hurdle otherwise.

Whether or not you get your own religion, you need to take advantage of the hand your dealt as happiness is always a good thing to accumulate and the possible gold benefits will also make a difference.

Getting as much culture coming in as possible fends off tourism and increases your social policy benefits. Getting decent tourism coming in means less pain in the end game.

Science is pretty much the main priority. Military needs to be built to maintain the respect of your neighbors.

 

[ShakaKhan]

Culture yes...tourism no. In fact, often times you need to avoid tourism if you are going for a longer game (especially a Time VC) to prevent an accidental Cultural VC.

I agree with Mesix and have factored this into my strategy. I'm often worried about exactly what he said, the "accidental culture victory" particularly when playing an aggressive game when I want the badge to say "domination," not "culture" since you're capturing all those capitals with all those wonders, which brings your tourism up, and leaving them with garbage, meaning they have less culture to defend with, a double-edged sword there.

HOWEVER... at higher difficulty levels this isn't really accurate because, at those levels, if you aren't going for a tourism victory you aren't going to be leading in tourism. Instead it's quite likely that another civ (or two or three...) are ahead of you, WELL ahead of you. This becomes particularly problematic if you're on par with them technologically ( or ahead of them) because you pick the ideology before them. They then pick an opposing ideology and you're up a river of excrement with no means of propulsion. Since ideology unhappiness, resistance waves, city flipping and all that nasty stuff is based on your level of influence (exotic/familiar/etc) on him versus his level of influence on you, it's often beneficial to try to get yourself "exotic" with the people who are making an obvious run at culture/tourism.

My rule of thumb is:
-monuments everywhere (few exceptions, could be skipped if pantheon culture is huge)
-theatres/opera houses everywhere only until hermitage (although if # of cities > 6, skip hermitage and hate myself for it)
-capital is always straight to broadcast tower
-any other city with culture >12 (usually just those with 2 or more landmarks) gets a broadcast tower.
-if you don't want a culture victory, don't build hotels, and be careful with airports

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Culture is always nice, getting a few critical policies faster and getting more policies overall is nice. It is hard to justify a decision not to get the 3 guild up. A single specialist will give you 3 culture (and 2 science with rationalism), that is as much as a amphitheater, a opera house and a museum together and also give your great people points.

Only great muscians should be used for great works.

Save great artist for golden ages in critical moments such as building a project or wonder because that extra production can matter alot, also a single golden age can potentially bring in more culture then a great work would do and the extra advantages of a golden age can't be compensated by a great work not to say all expansive buildings you need for great works.

Save great writers for political treaties. Because treaties give you the culture you produced for the last 8 turns you should atleast save them to the end of a golden age but their is something much better. If you can get a gold medal for the Worlds Fair you will get a 100% culture bonus and add in a golden age for an extra 20% for a total bonus of 120%. If you prepare for this event and make all cultural CS your allies for the finishing time you should get alot of policies during these 20 turns.

You should have atleast 3 if not 4 GW and atleast 2 artist ready, one golden age to produce the fair and one for a golden age during the fair, check your great writer points, it could happen that one will spawn during the fair so it may be good idea to delay the golden age to 8 turns before that writer spawn. If you can faith by GW this will be even stronger but because you are not going cultural this is doubtful.

With this you can maybe get about a policy per writer + maybe an extra during the turns the fair last for maybe 4-6 policies which is quite nice and one way to finish rationalism quickly so you can start faith buying great scientists.

 

[reddishrecue]

Culture is great for all issues but when it comes down to it
culture to culture and etc resource to etc resource..

 

[Amrunril]

You don't need to focus equally on military, culture, tourism, gold, and science, but you can't ignore any of them either. Tourism is important even if you're not going for a cultural victory because ideology unhappiness is based on comparing other civs' influence over you to your influence over them. If you make it to exotic over them, they need to make it to familiar over you to impose a level of pressure.
I'd recommend definitely recommend building hotels in the cities where they'll generate tourism and getting all of your guilds up and running. You don't need them as early as when going for CV, but by mid/late game they should only take a few turns to build, and a tall freedom civ shouldn't have any trouble working the specialist slots (guild slots are prioritized over other specialist slots, but you can reassign workers manually if you need to, and with freedom, you probably want to be working most or all of the slots anyway). Hermitage is definitely worth building in a tall empire, but museums are a waste of hammers unless you have great works/artifacts to put in them or need them to get to radio towers.

 

[Dushku]

Once you hit Renaissance and before you finish Rationalism, culture is science. I would definitely recommend at least working the writer's and artist's guilds even when not going for a CV. Marbozir made a video that pretty well explained why having a little bit of tourism (10%) can offset a civ with a moderate amount of tourism (29%). However, depending on your victory goals, you may not have/want to build great works slots. In which case you can bulb your writers once you hit Renaissance and your artists any time after Renaissance when the production boost would also be helpful.

Me, I try to make some slots available since the CPT will be more culture in the long term. It was pointed out to me that Hermitage is also a good way to get early art slots since Museums come so much later. Finally, working Antiquity Sites prevents the AI from being able to. Remember, you can steal one per civ without taking on a (meaningful) diplo hit.

 

[GenuineRisk]

When I go Diplo, I don't even care about tourism or ideological pressure. Freedom would be my ideology of choice, but it's so much easier just to let yourself get influenced and just go with the ideology that all the cool kids are going with. You pretty much don't need a military if you share ideologies with your neighbours and your ideological buddies will sell you their World Leader votes, which makes the rest of the game a bit of a joke.

For SV, I try to get at least a token amount of tourism because I'm way too fond of Freedom to give it up. For Dom... aren't you supposed to just steal the tourism?

 

[Dushku]

your ideological buddies will sell you their World Leader votes

Is this true? I thought I had read somewhere that the only way to get AI civs to vote for you is to resurrect them.

 

[GenuineRisk]

Is this true? I thought I had read somewhere that the only way to get AI civs to vote for you is to resurrect them.

Yeah, the last 2 times I won by DV, I bought some votes to help bring me over the line because several CS were either wiped out or bought by Venice. Other civs can only sell you 4 votes, and their willingness depends on how much they like you and how much they're playing the DV game. (So Alex and Ram will probably never sell you votes) I found that civs with the same ideologies and no more than 1-2 CS allies will usually do it for a package worth between 25-50 GPT.

 

[redwings1340]

Culture is always awesome no matter what victory you go for. Monuments in your cities are a big priority, and cultural city states are always good to have if you can get them. Amphitheatres and other cultural building though are only really great if you're going for culture wins in my opinion, since the initial culture isn't that much, and great writers and artists are usually better mid game and for their effects rather than their great works. In fact, I often delay the guilds a lot when playing to go for science and production instead.

Personally, I'm a fan of going for city states and getting the world ideology passed before anyone gets far enough in tech to object to the idea. If you can get that, you don't need any tourism whatsoever and you can still play a good game.

 

[Dushku]

If you can get that, you don't need any tourism whatsoever

In a recent game, a civ chose an ideology other than mine and was instantly really unhappy. A few turns later, he was forced to adopt my ideology. I'm pretty sure this was because of my tourism and influence over him.

Besides, great works aren't just for tourism. They also boost your culture per turn, which has numerous benefits. You'll get more culture overall making great works over bulbing unless you're going for a quick domination victory.

 

[IkM]

Both culture and tourism are important part of any game, no matter what you're going for. Unless you are ok to pick a forced ideology for your civ.

 

[Lord Alexander]

Culture always do my best, Tourism it depends if I'm probably going to threatened by losing to someone else's culture or ideology if going for a peaceful victory myself. If Brazil is in the game and is the only culture focused AI and I don't do something that's bad times.

If there's a bunch of culture spammers whatever I won't try since nobody is going to win that before I win Science. I'll just go Freedom with the crowd.

 

[reddishrecue]

Right, just go with the ideology that the crowd goes with because ideologies can get so complicated but not only that since ideologies can also give you so much unhappiness in exchange for a free social policy or two which is simply not worth it.

 

[mrwho]

Obviously culture is very important, both for Social Policies and to counter ideology unhappiness, but tourism is important too. The net influence an AI has over you (thus ideology unhappiness) is based on the difference between their influence over you and your influence over them; you get way more unhappiness if they're popular and you're unknown than if they're popular but you're familiar. Tourism is an offensive way to defend yourself from other ideologies, and it's pretty useful for this. As an aside, The Eiffel Tower is a great wonder to go for to get a lot of tourism without having to use up specialists - I try to get it no matter my victory condition.

The problem with going with the ideologies the AI picks is that I'm nearly always the first to get an ideology (immortal). Changing your ideology once you've invested into a tree is a really big loss.

 

[cazaderonus]

In Deity, you should go for both as lots of policies will be mandatory to get the win. And tourism will allow you to avoid stacking mass penalties in happiness from AIs tourism by reaching exotic toward them.

For example, no matter the VC i'm going for, i pop all artists\musicians and writer (except for a post world fair writer for culture, or the occasional artist for a golden age) for great works and try to go (i get it 99% of the time) for the Eiffel Tower for the nice +12 tourism.

Inserting a few archeologists to create monuments or dig up sites doesnt require much turns and always pay off as well.

I used to not care at all about culture and tourism, and i have way better result now that i always do.

 

[beetle]

Changing your ideology once you've invested into a tree is a really big loss.

Yes, avoid switching ideologies when you can. But you can set yourself up for win/win by getting the 6 Freedom FLs or two-thirds hammer factories from Order. Hold out until you build SoL or Kremlin. So that is three free tenets and switching only costs two. Plus you keep the WW and the units or the factors. If you don’t have to switch, that is great, but either way you are coming out ahead. So not a loss at all.

 

[mrwho]

Yes, avoid switching ideologies when you can. But you can set yourself up for win/win by getting the 6 Freedom FLs or two-thirds hammer factories from Order. Hold out until you build SoL or Kremlin. So that is three free tenets and switching only costs two. Plus you keep the WW and the units or the factors. If you don’t have to switch, that is great, but either way you are coming out ahead. So not a loss at all.

I find it really unlikely that you'd be able to get the ideology wonder of whatever you switch to before the AI does on higher difficulties. Why three free tenets? One for the wonder of original ideology, one for what you switch to if you get very lucky, where's the third? Also it's really only one free tenet because you'd get the first wonder regardless, so best case scenario it's a loss of a social policy, a pretty big deal. Definitely wouldn't call that a win/win.