Do I still need rock bands for Culture Victory?

[oPunchDrunko]

It’s been a solid year since I’ve played so I’m not really caught up on things. I remember that rock bands were the best way to get a Culture Victory. Has that changed or is it still pretty much the same?

 

[8housesofelixir]

Without Rock Band you still can, but it would probably take 50-100 more turns to get a CV.

 

[Aurelesk]

The Rock Bands are still a great way to generate Tourism, as always. Of course, you do not need them (you can win it sooner or later), but they are extremely potent, even more on smaller maps or at reducing the Domestic Tourism of the civilization with most Culture.

I assume you played Gathering Storm at launch, stopped shortly after, and restarted to play a few days ago.

There are a few recent change:

• Naturalists are cheaper: they start at 600 Faith instead of 1600 (April 2019)
• A new policy is created: Music Censorship. It prevents foreign Rock Bands to enter your territory, but all your cities with 10+ Population has -1 Amenity.
• A new Dark Age policy is created: Flower Power. It increases by 100% the Tourism from Concerts in civilizations not currently at war with you, but prevent Production of units and double their cost. (June 2019)
• Great Works of Writing are weaker: they are giving 2 Culture and 2 Tourism instead of 4 (June 2019)
• Divine Spark pantheon belief is weakened: you need a Library / Amphitheater to enjoy the additionnal Great Scientist / Writer point (June 2019).
• Rock Bands promotions are balanced: (September 2019)
  • Album Covert Art: +1 level on Wonders, instead of 2.
  • Indie: -40 Loyalty, instead of -50.
  • Music Festival: Can perform on Natural Wonders (do not work)
  • Pop Star: 25% Tourism into Gold, instead of 50%.
  • Space Rock: Now also works on Campus
  • Surf Band: Now also works on Harbors.

In the end, the Naturalist might be an alternative if you do not like to gamble, and rather want "global" Tourism instead of "single-target" Tourism. But once you manage to promote some Rock Bands to level 4, they are still those randomly overpowered unit that can make you win the game.

Do not forget: other civilizations can slot the Music Censorship to prevent the use of Rock Bands on their territory, making the strategy "reducing the Domestic Tourism of one specific civilizations" harder. The "priority-target" of Rock Bands (high Culture civilization) are also the civilzation that will unlock that policy the earliest.

 

[iammaxhailme]

They're still quite good, but they made naturalists a lot cheaper recently, so if you have the right kind of land, you could spam them out and win before rock bands are even invented.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Rock bands can provide 8/30 tourism per in average (w/w.o. Hallyu) The calculation is based on the assumption that they only play on wonders. Sure you can play on other places, so the actual tourism is even higher than this.

This means if you buy 25 of them you can generate 200 tourists, or 150 if you limit the time to 10~15 turns. (w.o. Hallyu)

That's enough for victory around T150~180, all you need to do is to get enough faith(30,000~50,000 for standard speed) and the cold war civic.

or you can generate 500+ tourists with Hallyu with these rock bands, which shall be enough at any time.

All others are still unmatching in power, including naturalists. A national park can only provide 5 tourists in 20 turns, assuming everything is slotted and all tech/civic are researched.

 

[Chekko]

I tried to go for a culture victory yesterday but the Rockbands did so very little(?) to give me tourism. Tried them everywhere but the Civs tourists did not change much.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

You want to make your rock bands with Hallyu plugged in. The difference between a rock band with and without the best promotions is enormous. There's still some RNG involved, so you could get unlucky but the expected returns are very high.

 

[oPunchDrunko]

So if i leave rock bands out of the question, what is the best way to win a Culture Victory? I’m guessing just rack up as much culture and tourism as possible?

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

The next easiest way to win a tourism victory is probably to find a city state with a unique improvement that provides tourism on flight and spam that. Alternatively, play a civ like Ethiopia or Persia that has a Unique Improvement like this.

You can also go for a Reliquaries approach. Kandy and Voidsingers can help with this a lot, though Voidsingers relics come pretty late. Mt. St Michel is the classic martyr spam enabler. Cristo Redentor is also a big deal in a religious tourism focus, and it also helps make Seaside Resorts stronger.

Faith is still very useful since national parks are still a solid source of tourism, just generally inferior to rock bands. This has good synergy with Earth Goddess and Eiffel Tower. Naturalists did become cheaper recently.

Other decent sources of tourism include great works (writing has been nerfed but is still decent and can be boosted via printing), careful wonder spamming (wonders all provide a little tourism based on their era, but don't build crappy wonders for the sake of it, it's hammer inefficient), walls.

In general for tourism, getting to Flight and then Computers is always important as this provides huge boosts to your tourism output. Hence, a decent science game is always needed. Additionally, if you're going down the national parks line, a good culture game will help to get to conservation asap. But culture by itself does nothing for a culture victory, it's important to get to key civics but it's purely defensive when it comes to tourism. And of course, the standard rules of making sure you have open borders and trade routes with every civ in the game are important (these provide +25% and +50% tourism respectively towards that civ). Democracy tends to be the best government form for tourism games, though sometimes it's best to just have the same government as the culture leader..

Don't forget that you only earn tourism towards civilizations you have met. Try and meet all the civs as soon as possible.

 

[hhhhhh]

Depend on how well you can settle and spam seaside resorts (and/or tile improvement that gives tourism). If done right you can win before you even unlock rock bands.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

If you want to ease yourself back into a culture victory, try an Ethiopia game. Focus on Rock Hewn Churches, Earth Goddess (Voidsingers if playing with Secret Societies) and getting to Flight asap. Build some national parks and use your faith for that and for Jesuit Education (assuming no rock bands). You'll pull off a culture victory fairly easily.

 

[oPunchDrunko]

If you want to ease yourself back into a culture victory, try an Ethiopia game. Focus on Rock Hewn Churches, Earth Goddess (Voidsingers if playing with Secret Societies) and getting to Flight asap. Build some national parks and use your faith for that and for Jesuit Education (assuming no rock bands). You'll pull off a culture victory fairly easily.

But the thing about national parks is you need 4 unimproved tiles to build one, correct? The thing is I like to improve my tiles to get the best out of the land. I’m guessing that’s something I’ll have to sacrifice to go for a cultural victory?

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

But the thing about national parks is you need 4 unimproved tiles to build one, correct? The thing is I like to improve my tiles to get the best out of the land. I’m guessing that’s something I’ll have to sacrifice to go for a cultural victory?

Improve your land, then tear down the improvements and build forests once you hit conservation. You don't need to go the whole game without improved tiles just to save them for national parks. You do need to be careful not to put districts on them though so identify the spots early. Mountains and natural wonders make for good choices, you can't improve them usually.

You can also just settle cities specifically for national parks once you unlock conservation.

 

[hhhhhh]

But the thing about national parks is you need 4 unimproved tiles to build one, correct? The thing is I like to improve my tiles to get the best out of the land. I’m guessing that’s something I’ll have to sacrifice to go for a cultural victory?

Yes and no. If you go culture victory usually your border will expand quickly so you can build NP at 4th and 5th ring of your city. Even when you have to build it on the 3rd ring you can utilize mountain tiles. And if you do it in certain situation the yield on those unimproved tiles are still very powerful, e.g. hill woods tile with St. Basil, or Maori's woods with Marae.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

In any case, if you go Ethiopia, you don't really need National Parks, though it will help. Flight + Rock Hewn Churches will take care of most of your tourism needs.

 

[lotrmith]

Depend on how well you can settle and spam seaside resorts (and/or tile improvement that gives tourism). If done right you can win before you even unlock rock bands.

Pretty much this.

If you make it to Rock Bands and haven't won yet, they are the surest path to victory (culturally).

 

[Miserable Old Git]

Playing on a huge map, I have found it impossible to win culture without Hallyu and strong rock bands. I also find that the program won't let me have too many at one time (they die). Two or three is best, and replace ones who die. Use The +2 promotions where possible (ie for Theatre Squares, Entertainment Complexes, or Water Parks); depending on the prevalence of these in other civs (I can't sensibly use Theatre Squares in my current game as - unusually - nobody bar me has one!). Once they start generating 5-figure tourism routinely, the win comes quickly.

 

[Jandos]

Potato have really nice video on this subject.

 

[HiRezAudio]

But the thing about national parks is you need 4 unimproved tiles to build one, correct? The thing is I like to improve my tiles to get the best out of the land. I’m guessing that’s something I’ll have to sacrifice to go for a cultural victory?

These days you are better off building preserves/Groves/Sanctuaries & NP's than wasting time & effort with Rock Bands.
When the time is ready to re-tool, get a load of builders into position ready to remove improvements, build forests etc to ramp up the appeal ready for the NP rush.
Democracy level 3 government is also the best option, along with lots of international trade routes - one to every Civ in the game - coupled with the right cards.
The Win should come well before Rock Bands, especially if Corporations & Monopolies mode is enabled.

 

[EpicWestern]

Potato have really nice video on this subject.

Fantastic video overall for explaining everything, but I still have to disagree with the conclusion. At 11:45 or so he starts the main mathematical comparison but with rock bands averaging 1000 tourism. At first glance this is a reasonable average since your first few rock bands might seem to either fail and generate ~300 tourism or so, or succeed a few times and do around ~2000 or so. The problem is its really tough to average in the cases rock bands unexpectedly survive for a while and go into absolute bonkers mode. Even without the premium card where you can pick your traits, you can still achieve a level 3+ rock band that can generate 20,000 in a single concert (at deity level anyway). IMO its absolutely worth it to go almost purely rock bands just for these high ceiling cases.

Also, just from experience its frequently the case that there will be a runaway culture civ in deity games (not exactly sure why this is the case). So one civ will have up to almost double the tourism of the next civ. So stealing tourists in this situation is basically twice as important as just creating them on your own. Theoretically, in games where the domestic tourism race is close you should be more inclined to national parks since stealing a lot from one leader just causes someone else to become the new leader, but even then I'm skeptical that its worth it to forgo god-mode rock band possibility for base tourism consistency.

I could be wrong about all this, I'll try and record rock band results next couple culture tries to get an actual tourism average. Also of course this varies a lot by what you're trying to do not just difficulty. If you're speedrunning with the perfect culture civ and rerolling starts and exploiting bugs you might not have any need for rock bands at all, but from random casual peaceful deity games culture victory can be quite tricky, hardest victory condition IMO, and you need to take any edge you can get.