Is Byz tourism broken as all get out?

[shattergod]

With a little bit of luck byzantium can have three tourism producing buildings per city relatively early in the game. +6 tourism per city after producing the hagia sofia can be huge.

Can this even be balanced?

 

[Chiatroll]

with a bunch of luck things do work out.

With a bit of bad luck everyone else gets a religion before you and then Byz has no UA at all.

If you want to play dice tier though you might as well play spain.

Also if anyone gets your religion all over the place they will get your 6 tourism per city. It means you won't want to spread your religion very far outside.

 

[VainoValkea]

It's not as broken as you seem to think. Not only do they have to be very lucky to actually get those three beliefs, they also need to go relatively wide to get really good numbers out of them.

 

[Blitz Spearman]

I was able to get Pagoda+Mosque with Sacred Sites in my last game as Ethiopia (continents/standard size and speed/immortal), and it was really underwhelming. Granted, I got Sacred Sites a bit late, without having to, because I finished liberty before going Piety, but I had not much space anyway. Expanded through war, annexing my puppets as soon as I had enough faith to purchase the two buildings immediately. After beating Monty and the Swedish dude and settling on every little land chunk still available, I had all the lands in my continent (I think it was 13 or 14 cities), and by the Renaissance I already had them all annexed, all producing extra 4 tourism per turn. Seems good, but it is not good enough, because this tourism will not get Hotels/Airports boosts. I still got Culture Victory, but it was at T420. I could have got science or domination earlier than that if I really wanted (...and if the map generator was not a damn troll, putting zero aluminium deposits in my continent. Not even the CSs in the continent had it lol).

 

[Resipsa]

Idk is Babylon broken since you can get to the renaissance by t80

 

[ballingforlife]

Well a way to fix this is only to let civs who choose the "sacred sites" reformation belief only have the bonus in their capital. Possibly the tourism could be up to 4-6 yield per building to compensate because it would be overnerfed I've played the Byzantines this way and was able to win on turn179 with only 7 cities, and this isn't even that remarkable when I here others' stories

 

[ballingforlife]

^and capitals of those sharing

 

[z284pwr]

Idk is Babylon broken since you can get to the renaissance by t80

But it's so fun to have a 20 tech lead once you bulb after plastics/research center

 

[Calouste]

with a bunch of luck things do work out.

With a bit of bad luck everyone else gets a religion before you and then Byz has no UA at all.

If you want to play dice tier though you might as well play spain.

Also if anyone gets your religion all over the place they will get your 6 tourism per city. It means you won't want to spread your religion very far outside.

Or with a bit of bad luck, your nearest neighbor is Napoleon who settles three cities right on your doorstep and declares war at you with a dozen units or so the moment you get your reformation belief (which happened in one of my games).

And of course you need a lot of space to settle cities and even then it only really works on a map type where you can meet all the other civs early on, because tourism doesn't spread to civs you haven't met yet. If you have to wait until your caravels have gone half way around the world, it's probably going to be too late.

 

[tnick777]

Can someone explain what was changed in BNW to allow Byzantium to get this?

 

[Browd]

Byz has always had the ability to select 3 follower beliefs (2 follower and 1 bonus belief), so being able to get 3 types of religious buildings is not particularly remarkable. What makes it powerful are BNW's new Reformation beliefs (specifically Sacred Sites, which gives +2 tourism for every faith-bought religious building) and the tourism/culture victory mechanic, which can combine to yield absurdly early culture victories.

 

[Tinker]

It would make sense to make the tourism be dependent on something - i.e., you can't get more tourism than the population of the city, say. Prevents from the ridiculous ICS with endless 1 pop cities gaining massive tourism.

 

[SolDelta]

I wouldn't say it's broken. Your crazy tourism comes at the cost of tech advancement, particularly if you don't grow your cities, and often you won't be influencing all civs until world congress if you're on Continents. It is a particularly fun way to play, though, your scientific strength is replaced by more faith then you can ever hope to use, allowing you to pump out missionaries and great people with ease. I haven't experimented with this personally, but it might be worth finishing Aesthetics after liberty and piety and become an absolute cultural behemoth. Or make tradition work somewhere in the mix and pick up as many industrial wonders as you can. Rationalism might help get you to parity tech wise, too. By world congress, you can easily vote in a world religion and get even more spread and tourism.