In this post (https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...n-june-19th-6-19.659579/page-23#post-15835910 )I mentioned a recent CV victory, and promised a more detailed analysis of tourism in general. Here are some of my notes.
This is going to be a numbers heavy thread. I'll keep things in spoilers for cleanliness but there are numbers a plenty!
The CV "Eras"
So first thing I was curious about, was when I made my tourism. I have made several statements that early game tourism is "worthless", and now its time to use data to see if I'm right.
Below I am showing the specific checkpoints in the game when Tourism tends to undergo a big jump. I will use the amount of tourism gained in that period to highlight its overall contribution to the total. I am going to run the numbers twice, one with and without GM bombs. Also, I am using my numbers for Netherlands for this analysis as that was the culture leader in my game.
I did receive a Travel Ban and Sanctions in the Telecom - Internet era, so that does slow things down a bit. I have the numbers recorded in the raw data at the bottom.
Last note, I am rounding the percentages for ease of use, so they will not perfectly align to 100%.
Without GM Bombs
Total Tourism: 193,774
Before Radio (257 turns): 16,973 (9% of total) - avg 66 tourism/turn
Radio - Computer (28 turns): 28,596 (15% of total) - avg 1021 tourism / turn
Computer - Telecom (9 turns): 11,095 (6% of total) - avg 1233 tourism / turn
Telecom - Internet (27 turns): 52,445 (27% of total) - avg 1942 tourism / turn
Internet - Influenced (34 turns): 84,665 (44% of total) - avg 2490 tourism / turn
With GM Bombs
*A note here. In this game war delayed my use of GMs by about 10 turns, and they were all used at the end of the game. So without a war declare I could have used them sooner, which would shift the results to be more weighted by GM bombs. But as this is a real world analysis, we use the game that was played.
**One more note: A reminder the GM bombs are affected by tourism modifiers like everything else. Though you may be surprised by how little bomb tourism there is, remember that every bomb is heavily penalized by a different ideology and travel ban.
Total Tourism: 250,974
Tourism from Bombs: 57,200 (23% of total)
Before Radio (257 turns): 16,973 (7% of total) - avg 66 tourism/turn
Radio - Computer (28 turns): 28,596 (11% of total) - avg 1021 tourism / turn
Computer - Telecom (9 turns): 11,095 (4% of total) - avg 1233 tourism / turn
Telecom - Internet (27 turns): 52,445 (21% of total) - avg 1942 tourism / turn
Internet - Influenced (34 turns): 141,865 (57% of total) - avg 4172 tourism / turn
Conclusion: So my initial thoughts were spot on. Before Radio (which I consider the real "start" of the CV era) you generate about 7-9% of your total tourism. Everything else occurs after that. I think its also telling that over 70-75% of tourism is generated post telecom. This just goes to show how much tourism ramps up in the late game.
Part of what this suggests is that even small optimizations in the late game can make up for huge tourism "losses" early on. For example, in this game I didn't optimize my musicians quite as well as I wanted to (I missed out on 1 musician I was expecting). If I had managed to do that.... I probably could have ignored tourism completely and utterly for the entire early game until radio and still done just as well in totals.
Overall, this means that good CV players can play more casually early game, but should really really focus and optimize their play later on....theming, diplomats (the spy kind), GM bomb timings, these are critical late game tools that a good CV player should learn to maximize to achieve victories.
Tourism Modifiers
So tourism modifiers change often through the game, and they can really affect a CV game. What I did was take a snapshot of all of the modifiers whenever I recorded tourism numbers. Its not perfect, as modifiers can change rapidly turn to turn, but it can help to paint a picture of how they change with time.
Netherlands
Turn: Total (Breakdown)
Legend: B = Boredom, D = Diplomat, I = Ideology Penalty, TB = Travel Ban, C = Corporation, TR = Trade Route)
257: 13 (10 - TR, 3 - B)
285: 52 (10 - TR, 42 - B)
294: 36 (10 - TR, 24 - B, 2 - C)
301: 15 (10 - TR, 12 - B, 8 - C, -15 - I)
307: 07 (10 - D, 12 - B, -15 - I)
319: -34 (10 - D, 6 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
321: -34 (10 - D, 6 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
333: -37 (10 - D, 3 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
355: -50 (-35 - TB, -15 - I)
In this game, the Netherlands and I had pretty poor relations all game. You'll note that I never got Open Borders with him even once. 301 marks the Telecom kicks off, and Netherlands soured on me more and more, eventually declaring war on me at the very even to stop my musician bombs (this is why I don't have a diplomat bonus anymore).
Now lets contrast this with Poland, who was the other culture rival in this game.
257: 10 (10 - TR)
285: 10 (10 - TR, 15 - TR, -15 - I)
294: 00 (10 - TR, 3 - B, 2 - C, -15 - I)
301: 20 (10 - TR, 21 - B, 4 - C, -15 - I)
307: 07 (21 B, -15 I)
319: -16 (10 - D, 24 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
321: 14 (10 - D, 54 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I )
333: 04 (54 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
355: 10 (60 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
,
So again my relations with Poland were pretty rocky most of the game. No open borders again. Poland actually got his ideology much sooner than netherlands, but the major difference is boredom. Whereas with Netherlands my modifiers plumetted by the late game, with Poland his insane boredom kept me in positives.
As a result, even though Poland had the most culture output of all of the civs (which if true seems very strange that he has such high boredom numbers), I was easily able to out tourism him compared to Netherlands (aka I had to use all my bombs on Netherlands, Poland flipped on raw tourism alone).
Conclusion: My worry remains that CV modifiers are too variable...because the timing of them is SO critical. It honestly doesn't really matter what the modifier is the majority of the game, but the fact that for the last 30 turns of the game (the real crunch time for CV), the fact that there was a 40% difference in modifiers between these two civs (who both equally hated me and went to war with me).... completely changes the ending.
That said, one lesson to take from this is around TRs. I have long worried that CV "forced" TRs to be used on the cultural leaders. But for the vast majority of the game that isn't true. Their bonuses are nothing until the late game, and again their modifier doesn't really matter until the late game. This means for the vast majority of the game you should use your TRs how you want...only as you move into crunch time do you need to be more cognizant of what your doing with your TRs for tourism purposes.
Capital vs Satellite Great Works
Another curiosity was where are great works "stored" city wise. This influences things like the power of the CN tower or National Visitor Center. It also informs on how good using thieves on a culture heavy civs satellites might be.
*Note, I use the Swap and Optimize Button exclusively in my games, I don't manually optimize. So this is where the AI algorithm puts the works.
Turn: Total number of Works - Works in the capital
257: (27 - 24)
285: (33 - 28)
294: (34 - 28)
301: (36 - 29)
307: (36 - 27)
319: (40 - 23)
321: (40 - 21)
333: (42 - 21)
355: (48 - 26)
So what we see here is that early on, the vast majority of works go into the capital. This hits its apex around the CN tower time (Turn 301). However, as other cities get their broadcast towers and theming bonuses become more plentiful (and the capital runs out of work space)... works start going to the satelites. During CV "crunch time", its ~50% of works in the capital, 50% elsewhere. This also agrees with my last check on this in my previous game.
This suggests that thieves should have a good number of targets against other tourism focused civs, which also fits my experience in the last several games played. Snagging a few GWs before "crunch time" is a useful play.
Musician Bulb vs Delayed Musician
In my previous CV game I was trying a delayed musician strategy. The idea was to hold off your musicians as long as possible, so that you could generate several of them quickly when it "really mattered". Here is that summary for reference:
*Note, these are the Raw tourism numbers, not yet modified by the current tourism modifier.
Turn 395 - GM (Faith) - 13,396 Tourism
Turn 398 - GM (Capital) - 17,540 Tourism
Turn 401 - GM (Faith) - 20,049 Tourism
Turn 406 - GM (Faith) - 23,090 Tourism
Turn 409 - GM (Capital) - 24,579 Tourism
Turn 409 - GM (International Games) - 25,294 Tourism
Total: 123,948
In my newest game, I bulbed Musicians most of the game. Then as it got close "crunch time", I tried to time my GMs to come out after Internet. The results:
Turn 324 - GM (Faith) - 22,896 tourism
Turn 324 - GM (Capital) - 22,896
Turn 332 - GM (Faith) - 33,666
Turn 333 - GM (IG) - 34,943
Turn 338 - GM (Faith) - 45,358
Turn 340 - GM (Satellite) - 49,547
Total: 209,306 (69% increase)
Conclusion: So I thought this was very telling. Note that I didn't even run the new numbers that optimally. A war distracted me and I didn't faith buy as quickly as I should have. Also I didn't time my satelitte super well, I am confident I could have shaved about 4 turns off. But even so, in almost the same number of turns, the second set generated a tremendous amount more tourism.
I am pleased to say that I don't think delayed musician is a good strat (thank god!). Ultimately even though your musicians are super cheap, the window of opportunity is so small that your not generating more GMs. Therefore its far more efficient to get great works early, and then do a timing with your musicians late for stronger bombs.
This is going to be a numbers heavy thread. I'll keep things in spoilers for cleanliness but there are numbers a plenty!
The CV "Eras"
Spoiler :
So first thing I was curious about, was when I made my tourism. I have made several statements that early game tourism is "worthless", and now its time to use data to see if I'm right.
Below I am showing the specific checkpoints in the game when Tourism tends to undergo a big jump. I will use the amount of tourism gained in that period to highlight its overall contribution to the total. I am going to run the numbers twice, one with and without GM bombs. Also, I am using my numbers for Netherlands for this analysis as that was the culture leader in my game.
I did receive a Travel Ban and Sanctions in the Telecom - Internet era, so that does slow things down a bit. I have the numbers recorded in the raw data at the bottom.
Last note, I am rounding the percentages for ease of use, so they will not perfectly align to 100%.
Without GM Bombs
Total Tourism: 193,774
Before Radio (257 turns): 16,973 (9% of total) - avg 66 tourism/turn
Radio - Computer (28 turns): 28,596 (15% of total) - avg 1021 tourism / turn
Computer - Telecom (9 turns): 11,095 (6% of total) - avg 1233 tourism / turn
Telecom - Internet (27 turns): 52,445 (27% of total) - avg 1942 tourism / turn
Internet - Influenced (34 turns): 84,665 (44% of total) - avg 2490 tourism / turn
With GM Bombs
*A note here. In this game war delayed my use of GMs by about 10 turns, and they were all used at the end of the game. So without a war declare I could have used them sooner, which would shift the results to be more weighted by GM bombs. But as this is a real world analysis, we use the game that was played.
**One more note: A reminder the GM bombs are affected by tourism modifiers like everything else. Though you may be surprised by how little bomb tourism there is, remember that every bomb is heavily penalized by a different ideology and travel ban.
Total Tourism: 250,974
Tourism from Bombs: 57,200 (23% of total)
Before Radio (257 turns): 16,973 (7% of total) - avg 66 tourism/turn
Radio - Computer (28 turns): 28,596 (11% of total) - avg 1021 tourism / turn
Computer - Telecom (9 turns): 11,095 (4% of total) - avg 1233 tourism / turn
Telecom - Internet (27 turns): 52,445 (21% of total) - avg 1942 tourism / turn
Internet - Influenced (34 turns): 141,865 (57% of total) - avg 4172 tourism / turn
Conclusion: So my initial thoughts were spot on. Before Radio (which I consider the real "start" of the CV era) you generate about 7-9% of your total tourism. Everything else occurs after that. I think its also telling that over 70-75% of tourism is generated post telecom. This just goes to show how much tourism ramps up in the late game.
Part of what this suggests is that even small optimizations in the late game can make up for huge tourism "losses" early on. For example, in this game I didn't optimize my musicians quite as well as I wanted to (I missed out on 1 musician I was expecting). If I had managed to do that.... I probably could have ignored tourism completely and utterly for the entire early game until radio and still done just as well in totals.
Overall, this means that good CV players can play more casually early game, but should really really focus and optimize their play later on....theming, diplomats (the spy kind), GM bomb timings, these are critical late game tools that a good CV player should learn to maximize to achieve victories.
Tourism Modifiers
Spoiler :
So tourism modifiers change often through the game, and they can really affect a CV game. What I did was take a snapshot of all of the modifiers whenever I recorded tourism numbers. Its not perfect, as modifiers can change rapidly turn to turn, but it can help to paint a picture of how they change with time.
Netherlands
Turn: Total (Breakdown)
Legend: B = Boredom, D = Diplomat, I = Ideology Penalty, TB = Travel Ban, C = Corporation, TR = Trade Route)
257: 13 (10 - TR, 3 - B)
285: 52 (10 - TR, 42 - B)
294: 36 (10 - TR, 24 - B, 2 - C)
301: 15 (10 - TR, 12 - B, 8 - C, -15 - I)
307: 07 (10 - D, 12 - B, -15 - I)
319: -34 (10 - D, 6 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
321: -34 (10 - D, 6 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
333: -37 (10 - D, 3 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
355: -50 (-35 - TB, -15 - I)
In this game, the Netherlands and I had pretty poor relations all game. You'll note that I never got Open Borders with him even once. 301 marks the Telecom kicks off, and Netherlands soured on me more and more, eventually declaring war on me at the very even to stop my musician bombs (this is why I don't have a diplomat bonus anymore).
Now lets contrast this with Poland, who was the other culture rival in this game.
257: 10 (10 - TR)
285: 10 (10 - TR, 15 - TR, -15 - I)
294: 00 (10 - TR, 3 - B, 2 - C, -15 - I)
301: 20 (10 - TR, 21 - B, 4 - C, -15 - I)
307: 07 (21 B, -15 I)
319: -16 (10 - D, 24 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
321: 14 (10 - D, 54 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I )
333: 04 (54 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
355: 10 (60 - B, -35 - TB, -15 - I)
,
So again my relations with Poland were pretty rocky most of the game. No open borders again. Poland actually got his ideology much sooner than netherlands, but the major difference is boredom. Whereas with Netherlands my modifiers plumetted by the late game, with Poland his insane boredom kept me in positives.
As a result, even though Poland had the most culture output of all of the civs (which if true seems very strange that he has such high boredom numbers), I was easily able to out tourism him compared to Netherlands (aka I had to use all my bombs on Netherlands, Poland flipped on raw tourism alone).
Conclusion: My worry remains that CV modifiers are too variable...because the timing of them is SO critical. It honestly doesn't really matter what the modifier is the majority of the game, but the fact that for the last 30 turns of the game (the real crunch time for CV), the fact that there was a 40% difference in modifiers between these two civs (who both equally hated me and went to war with me).... completely changes the ending.
That said, one lesson to take from this is around TRs. I have long worried that CV "forced" TRs to be used on the cultural leaders. But for the vast majority of the game that isn't true. Their bonuses are nothing until the late game, and again their modifier doesn't really matter until the late game. This means for the vast majority of the game you should use your TRs how you want...only as you move into crunch time do you need to be more cognizant of what your doing with your TRs for tourism purposes.
Capital vs Satellite Great Works
Spoiler :
Another curiosity was where are great works "stored" city wise. This influences things like the power of the CN tower or National Visitor Center. It also informs on how good using thieves on a culture heavy civs satellites might be.
*Note, I use the Swap and Optimize Button exclusively in my games, I don't manually optimize. So this is where the AI algorithm puts the works.
Turn: Total number of Works - Works in the capital
257: (27 - 24)
285: (33 - 28)
294: (34 - 28)
301: (36 - 29)
307: (36 - 27)
319: (40 - 23)
321: (40 - 21)
333: (42 - 21)
355: (48 - 26)
So what we see here is that early on, the vast majority of works go into the capital. This hits its apex around the CN tower time (Turn 301). However, as other cities get their broadcast towers and theming bonuses become more plentiful (and the capital runs out of work space)... works start going to the satelites. During CV "crunch time", its ~50% of works in the capital, 50% elsewhere. This also agrees with my last check on this in my previous game.
This suggests that thieves should have a good number of targets against other tourism focused civs, which also fits my experience in the last several games played. Snagging a few GWs before "crunch time" is a useful play.
Musician Bulb vs Delayed Musician
Spoiler :
In my previous CV game I was trying a delayed musician strategy. The idea was to hold off your musicians as long as possible, so that you could generate several of them quickly when it "really mattered". Here is that summary for reference:
*Note, these are the Raw tourism numbers, not yet modified by the current tourism modifier.
Turn 395 - GM (Faith) - 13,396 Tourism
Turn 398 - GM (Capital) - 17,540 Tourism
Turn 401 - GM (Faith) - 20,049 Tourism
Turn 406 - GM (Faith) - 23,090 Tourism
Turn 409 - GM (Capital) - 24,579 Tourism
Turn 409 - GM (International Games) - 25,294 Tourism
Total: 123,948
In my newest game, I bulbed Musicians most of the game. Then as it got close "crunch time", I tried to time my GMs to come out after Internet. The results:
Turn 324 - GM (Faith) - 22,896 tourism
Turn 324 - GM (Capital) - 22,896
Turn 332 - GM (Faith) - 33,666
Turn 333 - GM (IG) - 34,943
Turn 338 - GM (Faith) - 45,358
Turn 340 - GM (Satellite) - 49,547
Total: 209,306 (69% increase)
Conclusion: So I thought this was very telling. Note that I didn't even run the new numbers that optimally. A war distracted me and I didn't faith buy as quickly as I should have. Also I didn't time my satelitte super well, I am confident I could have shaved about 4 turns off. But even so, in almost the same number of turns, the second set generated a tremendous amount more tourism.
I am pleased to say that I don't think delayed musician is a good strat (thank god!). Ultimately even though your musicians are super cheap, the window of opportunity is so small that your not generating more GMs. Therefore its far more efficient to get great works early, and then do a timing with your musicians late for stronger bombs.
