How do I compete in Tourism with Immortal AIs?

[wayneb64]

After playing a few Immortal games (Small, Continents) a theme seems to be repeating itself. I have managed to 'win' on my continent OK mostly with military, but somewhat economy based. I can stay within a few techs and policies of the leaders, but I am always WAY behind on tourism and it always turns into a problem about half way through the game when Ideologies are being taken. I have started worrying about it earlier than I normally do, but the top AI has generally had 4X my tourism.

The whole game is about priorities, but I can never seem to spare beakers, shields, or workers to commit to great people until it's too late. What am I missing?

 

[Enginseer]

Not taking over the country which has the hugest tourism output and stealing their great works for you to reap.

 

[wayneb64]

Not taking over the country which has the hugest tourism output and stealing their great works for you to reap.

What if they are on the other continent and out of reach? I usually have to wait until I get battleships to take my military game overseas. On Emperor I would sometimes have a fleet of Frigates to invade with, but on Immortal the local AIs just take way to much effort to subdue that quickly.

 

[Enginseer]

Without regards, they can only win a cultural victory if you let them. Preventing trade routes and open border with the strongest tourism producer by declaring war on the producer lets you do that. If they're on the other continent and out of reach, you will never expect the AI to reach you in time to do some actual damage due to their weird way of pathing around vast bodies of water, while you are increasing your cultural output preventing them from making a huge impact on your people.

 

[wayneb64]

So preventing open borders reduces the affects of their tourism on me, I get that, and declaring war will prevent them from sending trade routes to my cities, but both of those will only prevent about 40-50% tourism bonus for them, but when I am 8-10 and they are 40-50 I would still think I am going to get some degree of unhappiness.

Is there any other 'math' in the UI that I can look at to explain those little symbols that show up on the cultural victory panel indicating where my discontent is coming from? One game I put on more tourism and killed off one of the two lower contributors, but the main one stuck at two symbols keeping the unhappiness at about -14. Another game the AI was at three symbols and I was at -40ish unhappiness.

Or taking a different approach what percentage of the top tourism player do you need to be at to prevent two 'ticks' of discontent. I could handle one 'tick'. I realize it's not really the raw tourism output, but the total accumulated tourism that matters so starting earlier is better, but it seems like it's even more than just comparing the totals.

 

[phillipwyllie]

I assume you don't want to win by CV, but rather want to negate the ideological pressure so I say this: Win the World's Fair.

 

[stormtrooper412]

If push comes to shove, not allowing open borders and/or not being traded with is not gonna help you if your culture is piss. Either remedy the pressure with additional happiness or pick the same ideology as everyone

 

[Acken]

The most efficient way is to just accumulate culture. That's your true defense. Getting a tiny tourism output for defense will at best help you against one level of pressure... at best. And meanwhile you have to take the great work of arts/writing that are terrible for non culture victories.

Explaining the thing:
Everybody produces tourism and culture. You and AIs have the total cumulated culture since turn 0. Each turn, for each civ you know and after modifiers (open borders, diplomat etc), your total tourism against a specific civ is also cumulated.
Then for your tourism, you get a ratio for each opposing civ:
Ratio = Total cumulated tourism against that civ / Total cumulated culture of that civ

This is your influence ratio. When the ratio reaches some thresholds you will gain a level of pressure:
Exotic (≥ 10%)
Familiar (≥ 30%)
Popular (≥ 60%)
Influential (≥ 100%)
Dominant (≥ 200%)

Then for each level of pressure that civ will be influenced by your ideology minus the level of pressure they do against you. So if you are Familiar towards Russia while Russia is only Exotic towards you, Russia will be influenced by 1 level of pressure of your ideology.
This level of pressure are the little symbols you talk about. For each symbol the stronger the pressure.

A civ will get a happiness hit if they are influenced by another ideology more than they are by their own ideology (if another civ has taken the same ideology).

So if Siam has 2 levels of Order pressure on you while Korea has 1 level of Freedom pressure then if your ideology is Freedom you will suffer the consequence of 1 level of pressure from Order (2-1).

 

[wayneb64]

Thanks Acken, that's the best explanation I have seen. So far in my Immortal games I have been restricted to 3 cities and I need to work on making them taller, do I need to spend that extra pop on culture specialists to keep up culturally?

 

[Sayya]

I'm definitely not as good as Acken.

In my normal tradition games (diety), unless something weird happens, I will work the Writer's Guilds 100% asap. A little while after unlocking the Artist's Guild I'll build & work that too. Musician isn't as big of a deal, but I'll still build and work it eventually.

The reason is because it's pretty hard to get culture, and culture is crucial for social policies. Social policies = more science = How you win.

When you consider the fact that a monument = +2 culture, and an amphitheater = +1 culture, you're really looking at doubling your culture output in one city just by working one guild.

I've heard that it's harder to work the guilds on Liberty though

But even with working the guilds asap, you aren't going to "keep up culturally" with a diety / (maybe immortal) AI unless you dominate an enemy that has a million wonders. Their bonuses and wonder spamming is usually way too much for you to keep up with.

 

[wayneb64]

I have been reading up on the Tradition approach and I need to work on that as so far I have stuck to my Emperor ways of spreading my initial policies across Tradition, Liberty and Honor with a very short term approach. Giving up all those juicy Liberty policies is going to be hard and I am especially concerned about not opening Honor.

Actually taking Oligarchy as my second policy will be really tough and waiting for Legalism and NOT building a shrine will also be tough.

 

[Fish Man]

It's very easy to achieve CV on immortal; just make sure to win world's fair and international games. Through turn 230-ish your tourism might seem slow, but once archaeology spam finishes, you get hotels/airports/NVA, and bulb internet, tourism can spike to over 500 to 700 (or even 1000 if Brazil). That's enough to overcome any culture, even without great works of music (you should save GM points for culture bomb unless you have 2500+ faith, in which case buy them).

 

[wayneb64]

I also have had trouble on Immortal winning Worlds Fair as my three cities just don't have the production to compete. On Emperor I usually had four to six cities, but I just can't get that much land so far on Immortal. Hopefully if I master Tradition I can boost my production along with my culture/tourism.

The other problem with only three cities is I just don't have enough production queues to get everything built I want to.

 

[Acken]

Thanks Acken, that's the best explanation I have seen. So far in my Immortal games I have been restricted to 3 cities and I need to work on making them taller, do I need to spend that extra pop on culture specialists to keep up culturally?

You need to work the guilds yes. Only the musician one is rather questionable if you don't have operas.

 

[Redaxe]

The other thing (often not mentioned) you can do with ideologies is to encourage a civ that has your ideology or the ideology that you are going to choose to increase its influence over you.

You can do this by giving them open borders to your lands, sending a trade route, and very rarely you might be able to share them your religion or vice versa. But if you increase the tourism modifier effects of a civ that has your ideology that can be very beneficial.

See if you pick Freedom ideology and your people want Order what that means is that Civs with Order have more tourism over you than civs with Freedom. So try and get the Freedom civs to have more influence over you.