JimboOmega
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2013
- Messages
- 10
When I got BNW tourism was one of the things I was most excited about. I really liked the idea of influencing other civilizations with my culture, and possibly even flipping cities again.
But the reality is that it's very hard to use it (at least at the Immortal level). I think there's two reasons for this:
1) It's Driven By Great People (except... it's not). Each great work generates a whopping two tourism, and for the vast majority of the game this is all you get. You can't really do much about it other than try to start generating great people early, building a garden and a national epic, and sitting on your hands. Sure you can pick a policy or two (like aesthetics). You can run around some archaeologists to plunder a few coins.
But in my games the real driver has always turned into airports + hotels generating tourism off of wonders and landmark tiles. The world congress initiative granting culture to all the Great Person tiles always passes, and this quickly eclipses what little the great works are producing. A city with a landmark can easily eclipse another city with several great works.
Still, my biggest problem is that there isn't that much you can do to increase it. You can build museums in all of your cities and watch them sit empty. Other than building Archaeologists and certain wonders, there isn't anything any city that doesn't have the guilds can really do.
Except assist in conquering other cultures and stealing their great works. I've seen other players complain that culture victory often turns into domination victory for this reason, and I definitely agree.
2)Even if you are doing really well at it, it doesn't matter
I think the point of the whole ideology system was to give culture a greater purpose. In practice, it seems, it does matter to me (not to get too much unhappiness) - but not to the AI.
In both of my BNW games I've run through to the end or almost the end, there have been AI empires in "Revolutionary Wave" for long periods of time. Looking at the tab in the view, I see that my biggest rival is sitting on a healthy reserve of 108 happiness. 108! He is content now, but could easily drop several levels without any concern.
Still, I once tried to use a great musician to suddenly up my culture and see if I could force some cities to flip. Instead, they changed their ideology to mine. It's a slight bonus (9%, if you're using your spies as diplomats) to future culture increases, but that's it?
And as far as getting the cultural victory goes, it's extremely difficult. All it takes is one opponent also going culturally, and it becomes very difficult to actually get the 100% influential that you need - without, of course, military intervention. The AI's ability to build wonders so fast in the mid-game, where (in my experience) the human player often lags at high difficulty, all but guarantees they will have a healthy reserve of culture.
Other than (possibly) forcing everyone to one ideology, you could be influential on all but one of the AI empires.... to what effect?
The thing with culture is that it really lets you do meaningful things even if it's not your path to victory - policy trees. But tourism? It's hard to manipulate, and even when you do, to what end?
I'd also argue that the various bonuses you can get should be radically changed. Getting an AI that hates you to give you open borders? Why? It's easy to understand but I'd much rather see a bonus to proximity that encourages (for instance) ideological blocks to form.
There's a lot more that could be done with this system than what ideology does with it. I hope it gets reworked in the future, because I was pretty excited about it.
Here's a few ideas:
1) Defections - If cities are too much to give up, either people could immigrate to high-tourism locations, or military units might occasionally defect. You could tie this to the ideology system, but keep it separate from happiness.
2) Combat Bonuses - a popular culture might be seen as liberators, rather than invaders, and would get a bonus to combat in the foreign lands. Or get a penalty from a hostile populace
3) Tourism suppressing buildings/etc - something besides great firewall and the theoretical "defense" of having a lot of culture. These things (indoctrination centers? I don't know) could go well with ideology - e.g., freedom loving empires could have ways to boost tourism but not defend it, while others could have ways to defend it but not as many options to boost it.
4) Switching Penalties - they really need to be greater; right now the AI does seem to split up among different ideologies, but they tend to collapse on to one... I should get more of a sense of a government trying to hold on even in the face of increasing unrest, rather than saying "Oh, hmm, the people want the new one, let's flip".
But the reality is that it's very hard to use it (at least at the Immortal level). I think there's two reasons for this:
1) It's Driven By Great People (except... it's not). Each great work generates a whopping two tourism, and for the vast majority of the game this is all you get. You can't really do much about it other than try to start generating great people early, building a garden and a national epic, and sitting on your hands. Sure you can pick a policy or two (like aesthetics). You can run around some archaeologists to plunder a few coins.
But in my games the real driver has always turned into airports + hotels generating tourism off of wonders and landmark tiles. The world congress initiative granting culture to all the Great Person tiles always passes, and this quickly eclipses what little the great works are producing. A city with a landmark can easily eclipse another city with several great works.
Still, my biggest problem is that there isn't that much you can do to increase it. You can build museums in all of your cities and watch them sit empty. Other than building Archaeologists and certain wonders, there isn't anything any city that doesn't have the guilds can really do.
Except assist in conquering other cultures and stealing their great works. I've seen other players complain that culture victory often turns into domination victory for this reason, and I definitely agree.
2)Even if you are doing really well at it, it doesn't matter
I think the point of the whole ideology system was to give culture a greater purpose. In practice, it seems, it does matter to me (not to get too much unhappiness) - but not to the AI.
In both of my BNW games I've run through to the end or almost the end, there have been AI empires in "Revolutionary Wave" for long periods of time. Looking at the tab in the view, I see that my biggest rival is sitting on a healthy reserve of 108 happiness. 108! He is content now, but could easily drop several levels without any concern.
Still, I once tried to use a great musician to suddenly up my culture and see if I could force some cities to flip. Instead, they changed their ideology to mine. It's a slight bonus (9%, if you're using your spies as diplomats) to future culture increases, but that's it?
And as far as getting the cultural victory goes, it's extremely difficult. All it takes is one opponent also going culturally, and it becomes very difficult to actually get the 100% influential that you need - without, of course, military intervention. The AI's ability to build wonders so fast in the mid-game, where (in my experience) the human player often lags at high difficulty, all but guarantees they will have a healthy reserve of culture.
Other than (possibly) forcing everyone to one ideology, you could be influential on all but one of the AI empires.... to what effect?
The thing with culture is that it really lets you do meaningful things even if it's not your path to victory - policy trees. But tourism? It's hard to manipulate, and even when you do, to what end?
I'd also argue that the various bonuses you can get should be radically changed. Getting an AI that hates you to give you open borders? Why? It's easy to understand but I'd much rather see a bonus to proximity that encourages (for instance) ideological blocks to form.
There's a lot more that could be done with this system than what ideology does with it. I hope it gets reworked in the future, because I was pretty excited about it.
Here's a few ideas:
1) Defections - If cities are too much to give up, either people could immigrate to high-tourism locations, or military units might occasionally defect. You could tie this to the ideology system, but keep it separate from happiness.
2) Combat Bonuses - a popular culture might be seen as liberators, rather than invaders, and would get a bonus to combat in the foreign lands. Or get a penalty from a hostile populace
3) Tourism suppressing buildings/etc - something besides great firewall and the theoretical "defense" of having a lot of culture. These things (indoctrination centers? I don't know) could go well with ideology - e.g., freedom loving empires could have ways to boost tourism but not defend it, while others could have ways to defend it but not as many options to boost it.
4) Switching Penalties - they really need to be greater; right now the AI does seem to split up among different ideologies, but they tend to collapse on to one... I should get more of a sense of a government trying to hold on even in the face of increasing unrest, rather than saying "Oh, hmm, the people want the new one, let's flip".
