Can someone explain the Culture victory once and for all?

[Promethian]

Something useful I found yesterday is National parks can include mountain tiles. I had a park that was literally 3 mountains with the hex at the top being a forest.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I've had a tourist on a tile with 96 culture. And I guarantee you I didn't have a +36% Tourism bonus with any civ. In the same game I also had a tile with 450+ culture and only 1 Tourist. Best case scenario there would be 1 Tourist per 276 culture, and I guarantee you I didn't have a -84% penalty with any civ, either. So that '150 culture per foreign tourist' isn't the entire picture.

Well that is the tourists from tiles... and I think that is just "flavor"
Add up the total number of foreign tourists you are getting from all civs, and "display" them on your different tiles, roughly proportionately to the lifetime tourism of the tile.

A good way to test it would be....
Apparently eliminating a civ doesn't eliminate the tourists you got from them

What about if you eliminate (trade away or lose in battle) a city that has some high tourism tiles... do you immediately lose those tourists?

or test it by running a hotseat, where one civ makes 0 tourism (no great works, wonders, tourism/culture improvements... doesn't even scout, so as to avoid relics) another civ carefully monitors the tourism.

 

[lamaros]

I just got done with a King large map tourist victory, ended in the modern era around 1600's... here's some stuff I learned:

1. Culture is defense, tourism is offence.
2. The only defense you need to worry about is the civ with the highest culture. As an example I had 150 tourists visiting me one civ had 200 domestic toursits, one civ had 170 domestic tourists and the other 6 or 7 had about 50 domestic tourists each. The game told me I needed 201 tourists to win. I eliminated that civ and then only needed 171 tourists to win... theoretically I could have eliminated that civ and then only needed 51. The flip side is I had about 600+ domestic tourists so every other civ needed 601 tourists to win while I only needed 171.
3. As others have stated appeal is only good for where you can put national parks and resorts
4. I can confirm is takes a lot more than 150 tourism to attract 1 tourist. I was pumping out well in excess of 1500 tourism a turn and won with about 170 tourists. With some of the civs that I had met I had accumulated over 40k or total tourism and only had about 20 tourists from that civ. Granted I was playing on epic speed but even at 1500+ tourism a turn I was only getting 1 new tourist every 2-3 turns.
5. Completely eliminating a civ does not change your total number of tourists you just end up attracting the same number of tourist from the other civs (which seems weird) so the easiest way to win is to be a warmonger and eliminate the civs with the highest culture output
6. Tourism scales HARD with era wen I went from industrial to modern my tourism out almost doubled.
7. Tourism is generated by all wonders... but you can;t find out how much until you build it and then go to the tourism lens... and it does increase as you advance through the era's.
8. The amount of culture you generate is almost worthless, I had maxed out the civics tree and researched the final 2 techs about 15-20 times before I finally won... I received no score bonus or additional benefit from researching the end of the tree techs multiple times. So if you want a culture vicotry don;t worry about cutlure at all you'll have plenty worry about tourism. Which means that...
9. You with need A LOT of faith. You'll need to buy national parks (which costs 1000's of faith each) and great people
10. the great spark belief that gives you +1 gpp per district is super OP if you want a tourism victory, rush religion on turn 1 and grab that. Other wise good luck every getting enough great artist to win this way.

All in all the tourist victory was fun it felt way better than the science victory because there is at least a little bit of counter play in that the others civs could build up their culture to have stopped me from winning unlike a science victory where the only way to stop it is to wipe them off the map. And it confirmed that vanilla balance is borked Won't play another vanilla game without modding slower tech and faster production!

I don't think some of this is right.

Tourism works by being applied to each other civ you're in contact with. Your tourism value is what you generare, but how many tourists you get from that depends on the other civs you're in contact with, your modifiers with them, and how many domestic tourists they have.

I got many many more tourists in my epic game per turn than you did (5-10 per turn), with much less tourism (300-500 tourism).

I suspect this was because there were a lot of other large civs in the game, which I had good modifiers with (open borders, trade route, same government).

I think the post above your is a more accurate summation of how the system works.

Summary:

Culture is for domestic tourists - but we need to confirm if this is relative to the relative to the culture of other civs, or relative to the tourism of other civs.

Tourism is for how you convert the difference in domestic tourists in to tourists in your lands. It is applied per other civ, not globally. Not 100% sure if anything else (such as population size) applies here.

So you get a good tourism game going you need.

1) High culture, preferably far better than anyone else.
2) High tourism.
3) A large number of other civs, with good modifiers through open borders, trade routes, and the same government.

So the best way to win a tourism game is to go hard on culture, get lots of wonders and works and relics, and not wipe out any other civs, and keep good relations and trade with them all.

 

[lamaros]

Something useful I found yesterday is National parks can include mountain tiles. I had a park that was literally 3 mountains with the hex at the top being a forest.

That's how all my national parks have been. Absolutely the most efficient way of making them. Especially good in campus towns.

 

[lamaros]

You can get closer to winning if you eliminate civs with a lot of domestic tourists, or at least remove their sources of culture so they don't gain domestic tourists as quickly.
You can actually make other civs LOSE domestic tourists if your tourism is attracting at a greater rate than their culture is generating.

Eliminating them will also lower your tourism generation, so this is only necessary if they're going to win before you, either because they have a head start, or because you can't catch up to them in culture or tourism.

If you lose control of a tile that has tourists visiting, I assume you lose the tourists. But I'm not sure if another player takes them, they disappear, or they go home. In any case, if another civ is close to winning tourist victory, taking their tourist sites away from them is a way to stop or slow them.

Yep I'm not sure how this works either. This should be easy to test though, I'll just give away a high tourism city to an enemy civ.

I'm not 100% sure about the above but it's consistent with what I've seen in game.

Everything else you've said I agree with.

I also don't know exactly how much culture you need to make a tourist, how much tourism you need to steal a tourist, or how the incoming tourists decide what site to visit.

I'm not sure on the culture to domestic tourism values, but given it's relative to external civs I think it will take a while to be worked out. Tourists moving from domestic to external I'm also not sure about.

Tourists don't decide on a site, it is just accrues in every site evenly depending on their tourism value and all the other modifiers. There are no bonuses for proximity or anything else. Differences in values just relates to the start dates and changing tourism values of sites over time.

There are the following rows in the GlobalParameters XML:
<Row Value="100" Name="TOURISM_CULTURE_PER_CITIZEN"/>
<Row Value="150" Name="TOURISM_TOURISM_TO_MOVE_CITIZEN"/>

I assume "citizen" means tourist. If so, this would imply a civ generates a domestic tourist for every 100 culture they generate, and a civ steals 1 attracts one tourist from another civ for every 150 tourism exerted against them. I'll try to keep an eye out in my next game and see if the numbers add up.

I'm not sure, maybe there is a population element to this. This should be easily tested so I will look at it again. I do note that in my past game where I tested it rapidly dropping population, tourism and culture didn't change the domestic tourism numbers in the short term.

However I have seen them decrease rapidly in over civs when I've boosted my culture and tourism significantly, so they do go up and down.

However a basic idea here might be - if your tourism is more than 50% greater than a civs culture you will move their domestic tourists down, and if it is less than 50% greater than their culture it will move up.

Except that doesn't seem right...

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I'm not sure, maybe there is a population element to this. This should be easily tested so I will look at it again. I do note that in my past game where I tested it rapidly dropping population, tourism and culture didn't change the domestic tourism numbers in the short term.

However I have seen them decrease rapidly in over civs when I've boosted my culture and tourism significantly, so they do go up and down.

However a basic idea here might be - if your tourism is more than 50% greater than a civs culture you will move their domestic tourists down, and if it is less than 50% greater than their culture it will move up.

Except that doesn't seem right...

That would fit with

Culture Creates tourists (domestic)

Tourism changes
Domestic tourists into Foreign tourists (visiting the civ with tourism)
OR
Foreign tourists (from the civ with tourism) back into Domestic tourists

[and Tourists visiting you from a civ that got eliminated are changed into Tourists visiting you from other civs]



Which would mean it would be
(My Tourism v. A - A's tourism v. Me) for all civs
must be greater than the biggest
Civ X culture -(Tourism v. them from other civs-Their tourism against those civs)

 

[lamaros]

That would fit with

Culture Creates tourists (domestic)

Tourism changes
Domestic tourists into Foreign tourists (visiting the civ with tourism)
OR
Foreign tourists (from the civ with tourism) back into Domestic tourists

[and Tourists visiting you from a civ that got eliminated are changed into Tourists visiting you from other civs]

Hmm, something to test anyhow.

I think the tourism lens is misleading. I'm not sure if tourists can actually go down, I think the tourism lens just shows a history of tourism and summarizes the current values. It's not as interactive at that level that it might look.

If I civ gets eliminated I think you just lose the tourists all-together.

So this might mean that cultural victories are harder on lower civ count maps. Hmm, something to test there too.

 

[lamaros]

I've had a tourist on a tile with 96 culture. And I guarantee you I didn't have a +36% Tourism bonus with any civ. In the same game I also had a tile with 450+ culture and only 1 Tourist. Best case scenario there would be 1 Tourist per 276 culture, and I guarantee you I didn't have a -84% penalty with any civ, either. So that '150 culture per foreign tourist' isn't the entire picture.

Yes it's absolutely relative, not fixed.

 

[lamaros]

Ok, something testing.

I have 85 tourism, I have 119.5 culture. I have 158 domestic tourists and 4 tourists towards the goal of 58.

Spain has 11 tourism per turn and 9.1 culture per turn. It has 28 domestic tourists and 2/159 towards the goal.

I'm giving away 1 town to Spain that provide 9 tourism, has to date collected one tourist.

Next turn I gained another foreign tourist (looks like normal accumulation from a civ that went from 0-1), and went up one in domestic tourism. Spain also went up 1 in domestic tourism but didn't gain any tourists.

Turn after I gained another domestic tourist (160), no other change.

My old city still shows up under the tourism lens as a place I collected tourism.

I suspect from this that it's as I expected, that the tourism lens just shows a history, and changing stuff doesn't change the past.

I further tank things by giving every great work and city I can to Spain, and give the others away also. I drop down to 75 culture and 21 tourism.

My figures don't change, but Spain jumps up to 36 domestic tourists.

Next turn and my domestic tourism goes up again, to 162. Spain's also jumps up, to 37. Spain has more tourism than I now, but I have more culture still (75 to 65).

Next turn my domestic tourism jumps up again, to 163. Nothing else change.

Also, Arabia has 48 domestic tourists still - the second most, despite it having only 2 tourism and the lowest culture (8 per turn) in the game...

 

[lamaros]

And... checked my other game.

What happened there was my domestic tourists were going up, but Greece was going down, slowly, and China going down, more quickly.

I had way my tourism than both - about double both.
Greece had more culture than me - about 25% more.
China had just a little bit more tourism than Greece, but less than half the culture.

So it looks like Domestic Tourism is not just a factor of Culture, but both Culture and Tourism. and is relative to other players.

 

[Big J Money]

So that would mean one's foreign tourists can never go down, correct? Of course the target # can go up. And domestic can go down as they become foreign elsewhere.

So ultimately would this be a true summary: Tourists are a representation of the ratio of accumulated culture and Tourism, in comparison with each other Civ.

So winning the game essentially means to get these ratios to a certain weight.

 

[sresk]

I know a few of you don't believe me but eliminating a civ from the map does not effect your total number of tourists. Save the game before you capture a civ last city check your number of tourists, capture it and press next turn. Then reload... your total number of tourists will be the same but where those tourist come from will be different. I checked this twice with two different civs.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I won my Culture Victory last night by focusing primarily on National Parks and Seaside Resorts. I got some Wonders and Great Works too, but they were not the biggest contributors of Tourism.

Eiffel Tower and Cristo Redentor helped tremendously with making Parks and Resorts.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

OK new Theory (based on foreign tourists never go down but domestic tourists do)

The game keeps track of
"Your Domestic Tourists"
and
"Your Foreign tourists"
for each civ for gameplay purposes

It also keeps track of "Your Total Lifetime Tourism v. each civ", and "Your total lifetime tourism foe each tile" but for 'flavor purposes'

"your domestic tourists" go up as you accumulate culture?and tourism?...they go down as other civs change them into their "foreign tourists"

"your foreign tourists" somehow goes up as you apply tourism to different civs...but each "foreign tourist" you gain is taken from a civs "domestic tourist" pile

The game displays your foreign tourists as coming from particular civs (based on your total tourism against them) or as visiting particular tiles (based on your total tourism from that tile)...but the # of visiting tourists is a separate stored value.

 

[lamaros]

I know a few of you don't believe me but eliminating a civ from the map does not effect your total number of tourists. Save the game before you capture a civ last city check your number of tourists, capture it and press next turn. Then reload... your total number of tourists will be the same but where those tourist come from will be different. I checked this twice with two different civs.

It's not that it goes down, tourists to date NEVER goes down. It's just that you won't accrue any from them in the future, so your future rate of collection goes down.

Now, the former is true, we know this - this displays are just counter intuitive in the culture victory screen and the tourism lens - the latter is just likely to be true, given how quickly I and others have reported to collect tourists depending on the number of enemy civs we're in contact with.