exploration better than aesthetics for CV?

[zukenft]

as I see it, exploration's finisher gives more advantage for getting tourism than aesthetics. extra landmarks and artifacts would give much more tourism than a +2 tourism IF you can get theming. even the 15% multipliers to tourism won't always work all the time. compared to that, the extra coastal city hammers and harbor happiness would help in anything. also the louvre gives 4 GW slot instead of uffizi's 3, and the theming is much easier to get.

Although looking back, the best way to get cultural victory would be warmongering and taking enemies' GW's and wonders, so the best policy for CV is actually autocracy

 

[Milith]

If for some reason you decide to go really wide, Exploration might be better, and it's pretty fun to play too.

But the usual way to win a CV is by having a tall empire, putting most of the tourism in your capital, and building a fast National Visitor Center in it. Aesthetics is way better for this.

 

[Resipsa]

I don't think so 40% bonus earlier is tough to beat although autocracy is probably the best tree for a CV

 

[Ravellion]

Yes, getting the Open borders modifiers etc. active at all can be hard with some enemy civs. But even if it is only the +15% (40% instead of 25%) from the diplomat, that is already better than a few landmarks and artefacts. Add to that the possibility to buy great musicians with faith and that one annoying holdout is quickly listening to your music and buying your blue jeans.

 

[Plumfairy]

The first two policies in Aesthetics are almost required for a CV; pretty much nothing beats those two. After you've taken those, then dabbling in Exploration might be worthwhile, although I suspect that Rationalism would be a better choice in most situations.

 

[chazzycat]

I highly doubt that it is ever better to complete exploration rather than aesthetics. Open it for the Louvre maybe. But in general the number of slots is way more of a limiting factor on tourism than the number of artifacts, so those extra hidden sites don't really contribute much. You should be able to fill all available slots even without exploration. The extra landmarks could be nice, but is luck dependent and not great compared to the solid across-the-board tourism boosts in aesthetics.

 

[sendos]

It's a tough argument for OP to make but at the end of the day, aestethics will help rack up more tourism than exploration finisher. Besides, some of the hidden sites might be in hostile territory. They might not be even worth getting unless you wish to take some diplomatic penalties.

As for ideologies, each of them is effective in CV in different ways. Freedom increases base tourism. Order helps negate ideology differences with T3 culture policy (provided that you have lots and lots of happiness) and has tourism bonuses against other Order civs. Autocracy can turn all new GWAM's into mini-tourism bombs (+250 tourism per GWAM) and you gain big tourism bonus when you have a common foe with another civ.

 

[DarthSheldonPhD]

I don't agree completely with the OP, but there's more merit than people are giving credit for.

I think a lot of people are either stuck in pre-BNW culture habits or mislead by the misnomer of "culture victory." Tourism wins culture victories, not culture. Culture defends against opponents culture victories. Culture is a by-product of culture victories as running artist-class specialists yields culture as do GWs.

As far as aestheics, the opener is probably the most powerful CV tool as far as SP's (except for sacred sites), and the finisher is very powerful if your civ is making a lot of faith(But can be replaced by (GtG). You'll want to open it ASAP and finish it when you hit industrial. All five policies in between help your culture, and consequently policy acquisition, but are otherwise completely ineffective in winning a culture victory:
-Fine Arts: happiness gives bonus culture, none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0
-Cultural centers: helps you make a bunch of empty slots, but they don't add to tourism until they're filled, and this policy in no way helps you fill them Net bonus to TOURISM: almost 0
-Artistic Genius: One...single...GA, which translates to one...single...GW... and it drives up the price of future GAs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 2
-Flourishing: free golden age, which adds more culture, none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports, and all cities with a wonder make a lot more culture, again none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0
-Ethics: cheaper future SPs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0

5 policies for a total of 2 tourism, and the 2 that are there drive up the price of getting the next 2. The opener and finisher make it a good choice for CVs, but hardly a must-have.

 

[budweiser]

Foolishness. Exploration is totally un-necessary for a cultural victory.

 

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Foolishness. Exploration is totally un-necessary for a cultural victory.

Exactly my thought.
The only times I've gone down that tree is when I've played on sea-dominated maps, as a naval civ. English + Great Lighthouse + Exploration = Extremely fast and flexible navy

For culture victories, I go down Aesthetics

 

[GoodSarmatian]

You'd need to either go ridiculously wide or research Archeaology really late for the hidden sites to make much of a difference, or you won't have any space for the extra artifacts, meaning exploration is only a good choice for a CV if you play in a way that is detrimental to a CV. Exploration is worth opening to get the Louvre. That's it.

I don't agree completely with the OP, but there's more merit than people are giving credit for.

As far as aestheics, the opener is probably the most powerful CV tool as far as SP's (except for sacred sites), and the finisher is very powerful if your civ is making a lot of faith(But can be replaced by (GtG). You'll want to open it ASAP and finish it when you hit industrial. All five policies in between help your culture, and consequently policy acquisition, but are otherwise completely ineffective in winning a culture victory:
-Fine Arts: happiness gives bonus culture, none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0
-Cultural centers: helps you make a bunch of empty slots, but they don't add to tourism until they're filled, and this policy in no way helps you fill them Net bonus to TOURISM: almost 0
-Artistic Genius: One...single...GA, which translates to one...single...GW... and it drives up the price of future GAs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 2
-Flourishing: free golden age, which adds more culture, none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports, and all cities with a wonder make a lot more culture, again none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0
-Ethics: cheaper future SPs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0

5 policies for a total of 2 tourism, and the 2 that are there drive up the price of getting the next 2. The opener and finisher make it a good choice for CVs, but hardly a must-have.

I have to disagree.

First, you mention the opener and finisher but don't include them in your 'calculation'.
Net bonus: hard to quantify, but very likely very significant.

Second, you underestimate Artistic Genius. Yes, it's only one artist, but you can choose when to get it and have an easier time getting works from the right eras for the theming bonus. Net bonus: 2 to 10 (10 in Louvre with Aesthetics finisher, 18 for Louvre in Paris as France)

Third, Ethics was change to increased bonuses from trade, open borders and religions. This can give you a maximum civ specific bonus of 120% instead of 75%, making it the only policy that can increase your tourism more than Media Culture or Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Net bonus: again hard to quantify, but can be the difference between falling and rising.

Then you have the chance to buy GWAM after industrial. This is especially powerful because you can again time your purchases for theming bonuses or very late musicians for concert tours. Piety can be a better choice for a CV if you have a lot of faith, get Sacred Sites and two building tenets, but unless you go rather wider Aesthetics will be better.

 

[Resipsa]

I don't agree completely with the OP, but there's more merit than people are giving credit for.

I think a lot of people are either stuck in pre-BNW culture habits or mislead by the misnomer of "culture victory." Tourism wins culture victories, not culture. Culture defends against opponents culture victories. Culture is a by-product of culture victories as running artist-class specialists yields culture as do GWs.

As far as aestheics, the opener is probably the most powerful CV tool as far as SP's (except for sacred sites), and the finisher is very powerful if your civ is making a lot of faith(But can be replaced by (GtG). You'll want to open it ASAP and finish it when you hit industrial. All five policies in between help your culture, and consequently policy acquisition, but are otherwise completely ineffective in winning a culture victory:
-Fine Arts: happiness gives bonus culture, none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0
-Cultural centers: helps you make a bunch of empty slots, but they don't add to tourism until they're filled, and this policy in no way helps you fill them Net bonus to TOURISM: almost 0
-Artistic Genius: One...single...GA, which translates to one...single...GW... and it drives up the price of future GAs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 2
-Flourishing: free golden age, which adds more culture, none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports, and all cities with a wonder make a lot more culture, again none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0
-Ethics: cheaper future SPs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0

5 policies for a total of 2 tourism, and the 2 that are there drive up the price of getting the next 2. The opener and finisher make it a good choice for CVs, but hardly a must-have.

This is prepatch^, after the fall patch the fifth policy modifies open borders, Shared Religion, and Trades routes from 15% bonus to 40@ bonus.

Net Bonus to Tourism x*1.75% for open borders, shared religion, trade routes.

 

[Resipsa]

Here's where Exploration would beat Aesthetics in a CV;
1) Significant amount of water like Oceania, Small Continents, and Archipelago
2) Opening Piety instead of Tradition and taking GttG to faith buy GMS.
3) Using a Wider approach and killing other civs with Frigates and stealing their great works in the mid game.
4) Adopting Autocracy to keep warring

Exploration is just as much of a warring and commerce policy tree as it is a cultural tree so you need to work those two aspects as well as the tourism game.

 

[Deau]

I don't agree completely with the OP, but there's more merit than people are giving credit for.

I think a lot of people are either stuck in pre-BNW culture habits or mislead by the misnomer of "culture victory." Tourism wins culture victories, not culture. Culture defends against opponents culture victories. Culture is a by-product of culture victories as running artist-class specialists yields culture as do GWs.

As far as aestheics, the opener is probably the most powerful CV tool as far as SP's (except for sacred sites), and the finisher is very powerful if your civ is making a lot of faith(But can be replaced by (GtG). You'll want to open it ASAP and finish it when you hit industrial. All five policies in between help your culture, and consequently policy acquisition, but are otherwise completely ineffective in winning a culture victory:
-Fine Arts: happiness gives bonus culture, none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0
-Cultural centers: helps you make a bunch of empty slots, but they don't add to tourism until they're filled, and this policy in no way helps you fill them Net bonus to TOURISM: almost 0
-Artistic Genius: One...single...GA, which translates to one...single...GW... and it drives up the price of future GAs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 2
-Flourishing: free golden age, which adds more culture, none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports, and all cities with a wonder make a lot more culture, again none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0
-Ethics: cheaper future SPs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0


5 policies for a total of 2 tourism, and the 2 that are there drive up the price of getting the next 2. The opener and finisher make it a good choice for CVs, but hardly a must-have.

There's absolutely no need to finish Aesthetics before NVC/Internet. Multiplicative yields are only so good as your raw output is which is awfully low until the very late game unless you went aggressive and plundered dozens of great works. Going through rationalism faster, opening explo to still get Louvre and/or commerce for big ben and trade route output and/or going through ideologies faster all have a larger impact on your turn-to-victory or expected chances to win as CV than clearing aesthetics fast.

There are really only 2 essential elements to victory in aesthetics. Opener and finisher. The finisher, sadly, to a much larger extent on higher difficulties so unless a neighbor spreads his religion and provides you with the reformation belief, you simply want to time the last 4-5 SPs of your game before internet in aesthetics.

CC is only good as it helps you survive the extreme hammer requirements of the mid game between wonders, archaeologists and managing to build the museums within the timeframe.

Conversely, the net gain of exploration is a marginal chance at landmarks which typically won't be near your cap anyway as landmarks are typically nearby battles made and odds are there was no barb camp within 3 tiles of cap so the optimal tourism output of a single extra landmark, assuming freedom, enacted resolution hotels AND airports is 14 base TPT.

5 SP is a pricy cost for chances at a few extra 14 TPT. I'd like to say it can be a wise choice if you went with wide CV and need the help to fill out all of your museums but sadly, expansionist wide doesn't scale well for CV. NVC is just too powerful. Wide CV is only as good as the number of great works you plunder from enemies.

10 non-capital cities with each 1 full landmark and a filled museum through exploration will provide 24 base TPT each. It is not to be ignored but realistically you wont be able to manage the happiness of a wide freedom empire, you will get to internet later, any 2 lame non-CV wonders that you could've built through a taller stronger capital by not overexpanding/feeding/faster teching in early game would've provided 16 base TPT further scaling with enacted world religiong to come up extremely close to a themed wide museum.

So anyway - provided that you can get a dozen city up and keep the tech pace, get a neighbor to spread his reformation belief for GM purchase and no AI competes on full explo dig sites, you could turn a liberty+explo game into a decent CV but on higher difficulties, this is near impossible. In all other cases, powering a capital enough to get wonders, even the lamest (since +3 culture per wonder is so easy to enact), will provide you a far better chance to win

 

[bbbt]

As said above, only if you're going really wide, or maybe if you're on a water map and want the bonuses anyways.

I usually go for a cultural victory with 3-6 cities, and start spamming archaeologists as soon as I get the tech. With that size, I really only need 8-14 artifacts, and I can usually get them without a problem.

 

[joncnunn]

-Artistic Genius: One...single...GA, which translates to one...single...GW... and it drives up the price of future GAs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 2

2 tourism per turn until whatever turn you would have had the next GA spawn naturally; so don't select this policy one turn before you would have gotten one.
(At some point you will again be ahead by 1 Great Artist, and will basically spend the rest of the game between periods that you are 1 Great Artist ahead and periods that you are even.)

 

[Silverman6083]

Exploration for Wide empires seeking Culture Victory
Aesthetics for Tall empires seeking Culture Victory (assuming they got the necessary Wonders)

 

[DarthSheldonPhD]

you mention the opener and finisher but don't include them in your 'calculation'.

wow, I love how some people on this forum think their argument holds additional merit if they act like a condescending, sarcastic jerk...

Please re-read the first and last lines of my post. I can't agree with the OP, implying that I can't agree that exploration is better than aesthetics. However aesthetics is not a must-have for CVs, because more than half of the policies deal with culture without tourism, and tourism is what wins CVs, not culture, which may be misleading some players due to the misnomer as well as pre-BNW CV strategies (based on high culture output) that don't carry over.

Your counter-argument regarding artistic genius is unjustified . You've credited this policy with the theming bonus for the Louvre, but SP is not neciers essary for achieving the bonus. The only way it would significantly help would be if the Gartist was a time traveller and you could pick the era it came from. Sure, you could delay the acquisition of the policy, but it's even easier to time a faith-purchase within a specific era and you'd be delaying your ability to faith purchase by delaying this policy, for substantial negative sum.

And yes, I'm still playing pre-patch and the patch changes things. Increasing the multipliers has a massive effect on turn2victory. Deau kind of has a point that the multipliers are less substantial if the base yields are low, but if you're going for a CV, having these yields be AMAP from very early on is the highest priority so the point is effectively nullified. The effect of increasing the multipliers is so high that I probably won't get the patch for that reason. Playing pre-patch now, there's several different SP paths that are viable (standard approach is tradition/aesthics, or piety for sacred sites, or standard tradition/rationalism for fast hotels/NVC/internet, as well as passive building in a corner vs. aggressively taking GWAs and eradicating high culture civs) but having aesthetics increase the multipliers really only leaves one choice to rinse/repeat.

 

[sendos]

Artistic genius is useful if you're finishing aestethics and you want to get that third GA to theme the Uffizi. Then you get the industrial artists to theme the Sistine Chapel. Then you use all Great Artists for golden ages and use the archaeologists to theme the museums.

Aestethics is a more solid tree for CV, both for wide and tall civs, than exploration. For exploration, if most of your empire is inland, the tree is not worth getting just for the sake of a cultural victory. Although, it could make an ideal challenge: win a cultural victory using exploration and avoiding aestethics.

 

[sufficiency]

I don't agree completely with the OP, but there's more merit than people are giving credit for.

I think a lot of people are either stuck in pre-BNW culture habits or mislead by the misnomer of "culture victory." Tourism wins culture victories, not culture. Culture defends against opponents culture victories. Culture is a by-product of culture victories as running artist-class specialists yields culture as do GWs.

As far as aestheics, the opener is probably the most powerful CV tool as far as SP's (except for sacred sites), and the finisher is very powerful if your civ is making a lot of faith(But can be replaced by (GtG). You'll want to open it ASAP and finish it when you hit industrial. All five policies in between help your culture, and consequently policy acquisition, but are otherwise completely ineffective in winning a culture victory:
-Fine Arts: happiness gives bonus culture, none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0
-Cultural centers: helps you make a bunch of empty slots, but they don't add to tourism until they're filled, and this policy in no way helps you fill them Net bonus to TOURISM: almost 0
-Artistic Genius: One...single...GA, which translates to one...single...GW... and it drives up the price of future GAs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 2
-Flourishing: free golden age, which adds more culture, none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports, and all cities with a wonder make a lot more culture, again none of which is ever added to tourism, even with hotels/airports. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0
-Ethics: cheaper future SPs. Net bonus to TOURISM: 0

5 policies for a total of 2 tourism, and the 2 that are there drive up the price of getting the next 2. The opener and finisher make it a good choice for CVs, but hardly a must-have.

Have you even played CV before?

Aestheics finisher doubles your theme bonus AND ALLOWS YOU TO BUY GWAM WITH FAITH.