Getting the best out of futurism

[Magean]

Hi,

I'm trying to improve at aggressive cultural victory backed by autocracy. I don't know if it's optimal, but I like this playstyle anyway... And I love industrial espionage. Hence autocracy, with industrial espionage and futurism as starting tenets.

With futurism, 250 tourism at once isn't bad if you get an ideology early, with 3 factories. It puts pressure on low culture civs and protects you from the influence of the big cultural players you're going to burn down later.

And, obviously, one wants to get as much GWAM as possible, as soon as possible after futurism is unlocked. The best way to achieve it is to postpone GWAM generation from guilds until this moment, pick aesthetics for the extra GWAM generation, and then churn piles of them.

But the trouble is : with no artists/writers, culture and tourism outputs are very low, to the point that I take harsh pressure when AI go for order or freedom.

Civs with culture generation from improvements (Brazil, France, Polynesia...) can overcome this issue. Religion also helps, and so do city states.

That being said, what would you do ? Still generate 2 or 3 GWAM before futurism ? Focus on cultural city states ? On religion ? On wonders (playing on Immortal, wonders aren't always ensured) ? Is it possible to go for that futurism strategy without any cultural-heavy crush ?

Thanks in advance

 

[Soffacet]

I have also been tinkering with a domination/cultural hybrid strat, where you annihilate the cultural civs while becoming influential over the militaristic civs. I'm also picking Autocracy/Futurism, but I'm not holding back on GWAMs before that point at all. There are just way too many useful SPs for this strategy, to not work those guild slots and hoard GWs.

 

[Magean]

Well, if we do the maths :

A great work produces 2 tourism each turn. With opened borders, shared religion and trade route (the most modifiers you can have early, assuming your spy isn't set as a diplomat), you get +75% modifier. So, for your pre-futurism GWAM to generate more tourism than the one-time 250 you get after futurism, it needs to be turned into a great work 250/3.5=71 turns before a GWAM with futurism.

Of course, you seldom have +75% tourism with every other civ in the early-mid game. As an average, you have only one +25% modifier. The optimality threshold should rather be 250/2.5=100.

So, if you have to choose between a GWAM before or after futurism, the one appearing before is only profitable tourism-wise if you can churn it 100 turns or more before the one appearing after.

Of course, cultural specialists and great works also generate culture and that's a point that must be taken into account. Otherwise, one ends up backward in social policies and is vulnerable to foreign tourism. It just happened to me and was a bad experiment.

Yet. I don't think it's a good idea to generate more than 1 GA and 1 GW before futurism. The second ones would be a waste of tourism.


Maybe a good strategy would be to focus on generating those first GW and GA as soon as possible, then leaving the guild empty, and open aesthetics just before picking futurism. Religion and CS would make up for the loss of culture.

 

[Soffacet]

Well to focus purely on the tourism for a moment, someone working their guilds asap will have a several more great works than someone who waited all the way until ideology. The arithmetic progression of required GPP will allow the latter to catch up eventually, but just off the top of my head I'd say that the former should have at least 2-3 more of each type for most of the game. So for example, when Hotel/Airport/Trade-Route/Open-Border kick in the former is getting 2*(1+(0.5+0.5+0.25+0.25)) = 5 TPT per GW. So then for instance, 5 TPT * [3 GWoW + 3 GWoA + 2 GWoM] = 40 more TPT than the latter should have. So I don't think the Tourism situation is terribly dire if you man guilds right away. Futurism is sort of a fluff policy, it isn't the reason you are going to win, but it might help speed you up by a few turns.

But I really must emphasize that the real reason to work the guilds to generate culture. In addition to the usual Tradition & Rationalism, this strategy significantly benefits from Aesthetics and various parts of Exploration, Patronage, and even Piety. And of course Autocracy. You obviously can't have them all, but the more policies you have, and the faster you acquire them, the better.

 

[Halcyan2]

How about this:

Before Industrial, do not naturally generate your own Writers, Artists, and Musicians. Instead, gain tourism by snatching Great Works from other civs. Maybe building the Parthenon is okay. Also stockpile faith.

As soon as Industrial is here, generate all those Great People. Use Faith to purchase lots of cheap Great People. If possible, maybe save the Liberty finisher or Pisa for this. Might also work well with the Mayans if you postpone the free Writer, Artist, and Musician for awhile.

 

[Calouste]

Well, if we do the maths :

A great work produces 2 tourism each turn. With opened borders, shared religion and trade route (the most modifiers you can have early, assuming your spy isn't set as a diplomat), you get +75% modifier. So, for your pre-futurism GWAM to generate more tourism than the one-time 250 you get after futurism, it needs to be turned into a great work 250/3.5=71 turns before a GWAM with futurism.

Of course, you seldom have +75% tourism with every other civ in the early-mid game. As an average, you have only one +25% modifier. The optimality threshold should rather be 250/2.5=100.

So, if you have to choose between a GWAM before or after futurism, the one appearing before is only profitable tourism-wise if you can churn it 100 turns or more before the one appearing after.

Of course, cultural specialists and great works also generate culture and that's a point that must be taken into account. Otherwise, one ends up backward in social policies and is vulnerable to foreign tourism. It just happened to me and was a bad experiment.

Yet. I don't think it's a good idea to generate more than 1 GA and 1 GW before futurism. The second ones would be a waste of tourism.


Maybe a good strategy would be to focus on generating those first GW and GA as soon as possible, then leaving the guild empty, and open aesthetics just before picking futurism. Religion and CS would make up for the loss of culture.

If you go for a domination/tourism hybrid win, you probably won't have open borders or trade routes with the major culture generating civs that you target, you'll be fighting them.

I think it works well with Brazil, because they have terrain culture and a faster birth rate for GWAM's during Golden Ages. Another civ it should work for is the Aztecs, because you'll be generating culture from kills, and you're planning on fighting anyway. Japan and Songhai also have additional culture sources to make up for building Guilds later while also having warmongering benefits.

In the end, whether it is a good strategy in a particular game or not mostly comes down to where the culture mongers that you want to take out are located relative to your own empire.

 

[Magean]

Well to focus purely on the tourism for a moment, someone working their guilds asap will have a several more great works than someone who waited all the way until ideology. The arithmetic progression of required GPP will allow the latter to catch up eventually, but just off the top of my head I'd say that the former should have at least 2-3 more of each type for most of the game. So for example, when Hotel/Airport/Trade-Route/Open-Border kick in the former is getting 2*(1+(0.5+0.5+0.25+0.25)) = 5 TPT per GW. So then for instance, 5 TPT * [3 GWoW + 3 GWoA + 2 GWoM] = 40 more TPT than the latter should have. So I don't think the Tourism situation is terribly dire if you man guilds right away. Futurism is sort of a fluff policy, it isn't the reason you are going to win, but it might help speed you up by a few turns.

But I really must emphasize that the real reason to work the guilds to generate culture. In addition to the usual Tradition & Rationalism, this strategy significantly benefits from Aesthetics and various parts of Exploration, Patronage, and even Piety. And of course Autocracy. You obviously can't have them all, but the more policies you have, and the faster you acquire them, the better.

Indeed, not working guilds leads to a dangerous backwardness in policies (and defence against foreign ideological pressure). That was actually one of the main points of my first post : figuring ways to overcome that lack of culture in the early-mid game.

And you're right, futurism isn't a decisive policy that will make you win. But it's a policy that can IMO be useful, and this thread is about how to make it useful.

Now, a lump 250 tourism is nothing at all if you get it late. However, the same amount is significant by the early industrial era. If you manage to chain-build enough GWAM right after futurism has been unlocked, you'll build both influence against low culture civs - hence pressuring them towards your ideology - and defence against cultural contenders who may cause unrest in your nation.

That's why futurism needs to be used as soon as possible. You want several 250 tourism bombs, ASAP. If you get them too late, then it's just a wasted policy.

If you've already generated 2 great writers or artists (GWA) of each category, the next one will come a bit too late, and the subsequent ones.. definitely too late. The 250 tourism "bombs" will be worth nothing.

On the other hand, should you have a city ready for GWA chain-production (guilds, garden, national epic...), and if you have produced no GWA for now, then futurism will be of real use.

Besides, it's true that at any given time, you'll have less great works if you postpone GWA. But generating a GWA at the early industrial with futurism era will actually net you more tourism than generating the same GWA less than roughly 100 turns earlier.

Also, by the very late game, having two or three great works less than the average doesn't make that much of a difference.

 

[chazzycat]

On immortal my advice would be to ally the cultural CS and then win the World Fair. You can get a massive amount of defensive culture this way, without using any great people. Depending on the number of cultural CS on the map, it can be quite effective. It should also fit in nicely with your delayed guild strategy, though you might want to consider popping a writer during the world fair bonus and using the political treatise for a huge chunk of culture.

 

[Resipsa]

Even on Deity if you can ally 2 cultural city states from the Renaissance forward you can still get important SPs in Rationalism on a timely basis and delay building guilds. Delaying guilds until say you get Secularism online might be one way to get alot out of futurism but still be safe from AI tourism.

 

[EriktheRead]

If i go for long haul domination with tanks and artillary being my main forces, i find that futurism is meerly a nice stepping stone. Until i get gunboat diplomacy, i dont have control over the world congress and thus cannot control when world fair/games will pop. I like to have a supply of writers ready for the fair, and as such i never plan on getting much out of futurism. I suppose one strat i could use is to time the construction of the artists and musicians guild to hit right when i get my ideology, but that would mean 12 less base culture in the cap till then. (This is a sticking point that i need to get over)

The one thing i found out using a dom/culture game is that once you wipe out the two or three culture leaders, you are swimming in more great works than you can handle and win a culture victory by default. Points if you get the games before you wipe mister culture player.

My latest two games (germany/emperor/huge/12 civs) had me slated to win a culture victory as soon as the top one or two culture leaders were killed off.

Does anyone know if the usual multiplyers work for lump sum tourism like futurism or musicians?

 

[Resipsa]

Futurism is a flat 250 no multipliers
Musician Bombs are a reflection of your current tourism

 

[ravenmagus]

Try focusing really hard on Faith generation (get Borobodur/etc, Divine Inspiration, maybe even Pilgrimage) and buying a bunch of GWAMs when you get Futurism. It might not be as good as just mass buying Musicians later on ... but it could be really funny.

 

[Vitruvius]

Try focusing really hard on Faith generation (get Borobodur/etc, Divine Inspiration, maybe even Pilgrimage) and buying a bunch of GWAMs when you get Futurism. It might not be as good as just mass buying Musicians later on ... but it could be really funny.

Doesn't the game just automatically buy prophets before industrial if you have a religion? I can never stockpile enough faith before industrial.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[Halcyan2]

Doesn't the game just automatically buy prophets before industrial if you have a religion? I can never stockpile enough faith before industrial.

Each Prophet increases the cost of the next Prophet. Which means that the faith cap you can store (before you are forced to spawn a new Prophet) increases with each one.

 

[GoStu]

I think it's a niche ability, for situations where you've warred so hard that your guild use has suffered. Say you have a nice continent-sweeping war early on (e.g. Genghis cleaning off a continent) and have little time for plays and art, you could later use it with all your guilds to get decent lump-sums of tourism.

If not, just treat it as an extra bonus when your later GWAM are born or bought. I don't think Futurism has enough potential power to build a strategy around, but Autocracy's situational power is the thing I like about it. Most of its policies are very very good in just the right (wrong?) circumstances.

EDIT FOR CLARITY: Autocracy's really all about coming back from behind as an underdog. It's not quite as powerful in 'good' situations to race ahead for a peaceful victory, but that means that if you've been trailing for a bit it'll still be there for a couple free early adopter tenets. Then it has all kinds of catchup tenets like doubling spy stealing rate. Futurism is one of the cultural catchup mechanisms. If you haven't worked your guilds very much early on, it could be a big boost of tourism. If this situation doesn't apply to you, take something else that isn't Futurism.

 

[Calouste]

Each Prophet increases the cost of the next Prophet. Which means that the faith cap you can store (before you are forced to spawn a new Prophet) increases with each one.

And you can just settle the Prophets you spawn, which pretty much allows you to convert Faith generated pre-Industrial into Faith post-Industrial, although not on a 1-1 basis.

 

[Cromagnus]

Futurism is a waste. There are so many policies better-suited to achieving win conditions. If you're taking this policy, you're wasting a policy. If you have policies to waste, you've over-invested in culture. This policy is fail.

 

[Magean]

Assuming you're the first to go autocracy, how will you spend your two free tenets ? What is worth a policy in Tier 1 Autocracy ?

Industrial Espionage, definitely.
Mobilization is quite good.

The rest is meh, but futurism has its use if you plan to go cultural, or to build some tourism defence, while coming from behind in tourism.

So you may take industrial espionage and futurism as free tenets, and later on, mobilization.

That's not a culture overinvestment, is it ?

 

[Calouste]

Futurism has a good use for Autocracy. It gives you some quick influence over civs, specially the ones that are not doing too well, and that influence means that when you conquer their cities you will have less unrest and more population remaining.

 

[Cromagnus]

Futurism has a good use for Autocracy. It gives you some quick influence over civs, specially the ones that are not doing too well, and that influence means that when you conquer their cities you will have less unrest and more population remaining.

It's not useless unless you take into account opportunity cost. Obviously 250 tourism is nice. But compared to what? Building factories 2x as fast w/ 25% bonus science?

It's a very very poor social policy compared to say, completing Rationalism, or Aesthetics, or most other policies. That's why I say it's terrible.

By the time you can even get this policy, 250 tourism is a waste. The max value is gained by holding off on spawning GWAM, which is really bad unless you're talking about musicians, and if you're spawning musicians, you should be doing so when you have a *minimum* of 100 tourism/turn, +100% tourism for the internet, etc. etc.

At that time, 250 tourism is nothing.

Now, if you're using it for defense (to protect your ideology from flipping) it's also a waste. It'll result in *maybe* 20 tourism per turn at most, and if you're taking that instead of all the other juicy policies in autocracy, you're *doing it wrong*.

It may seem tantalizing at first, but it's terrible. And, again, if you have social policies to spare... you're also doing it wrong. If you've tipped the scale so far in favor of culture generation that you've already taken full rationalism, full aesthetics, full commerce, 8 Autocracy policies, etc. etc. and this one is the best on the board, then perhaps next time generate less culture and focus more on science, or building units, or generating gold... See my point?

If you want to manipulate tourism through Autocracy to influence an eventual target, convince that person to DoW someone, then DoW them yourself. +50% tourism every turn is WAY better than +250 once.