Thanks for the feedback Legen. Concerns about too much tourism is noted. The problem is to find a good balance between say King and DemiGod/Deity in order for it to be possible to catch up to the AI culture. Note that winning at 291 on King doesn't really shock me
I kind of agree that Artistic Genius may be a bit too strong.
However I don't really have a problem right now that Aesthetics is so important for culture victory. CVs should swim in social policies by the end of the game so in the end they still have a lot of choices to make with policies.
Regarding honor I don't see the problem with general maintenance. The tree already gives a good amount of gold and if your general are useless you should make fortresses. I have noted somewhere that one of the weakness of honor may be happiness but you also have the possibility to get more diverse luxuries through conquest and fortress bombing. Capitals often have 2 luxs for example. Also the tree obviously work very well with autocracy because of happiness through barracks etc and courthouses.
I know a t291 culture win doesn't surprise at King
. What surprised was that it was meant to be a backup win, since I wanted time to experiment the combat changes in your mod. It would have been much quicker if it wasn't for one AI producing twice more culture than all the others and if I actually used musicians to bomb tourism (or if I targeted my army at him). So, it felt like winning by accident.
It may be just that you made culture easier to generate for the player, but the AI isn't beneffiting as much as you'd expect when they need to defend against tourism. They just accept that you're going to win: no competition for cultural CS, no diplomacy penalty against you, etc.
About Honor, I think it mostly struggles about the global unhappiness spikes when you raze useless cities in your way, for which neither fortresses nor the modified tree help. The AI also seemed to settle more cities than usual, maybe it was just my impression. I think Honor mostly needs a way to deal with these spikes when they happen, so it doesn't feel slower than Liberty when expanding through conquest.
About GG, more melee units seeing play means more GG points overall (5XP per attack, instead of 2XP), quite noticeable for China and Japan. My concern was melee units producing more GGs than you can think of good uses for them, GG maintainance ends eating the savings from the 2 free units of Warrior Code. But, on second thought, it might be the "General points are increased by 50%" policy part that is redundant now.
About art slots, it would make sense if museums were available earlier. For instance, the Aesthetics opener could provide early access to museums and remove its requirement of having Opera Houses in the city. Since it also means having access to a theming bonus outside wonders in the Medieval age, as well as an artist work in Classical age besides the Parthenon, this could free Artistic Genius tourism part to have the current opener bonus.
EDIT: rethinking art slots, a free museum as part of the Aesthetics finisher should do. No need to make the policy tree more complicated. 3 art slots from Palace + free museum should be more than enough as the player reaches Archaeology.
. I am impressed. Can't recall the last time I lost a culture victory, and definitely don't think I lost an emperor game in years.
