National Parks and you

[Troy Bruckner]

What works best for building many national parks: Earth Goddess, lots of faith generation, Gov. Liang, Nazca Suzerain and of course Conservation. Eifel Tower is fantastic as well, but the game might be over before you can research it. All this works best with Canada, but any of the Civs can do it.

Below is a screenshot of a city that I had no intention of putting a National Park in, but even though it's close to the coast with limited space I was able to put three of them down. I had to bulldoze a few sites of course and most of the terrain was average when I started with a few charming tiles.

The city park tiles from Gov Liang add 2 Appeal to all adjacent tiles. even if you have a -2 disgusting tile you can put 2 parks on the outside of where you want the park and boost it to charming 2. Add a couple forests in its neighboring tiles where the park will be and you have moved a disgusting tile to Breathtaking 4. Even if you do not need to boost the Appeal to make a park you still should since it boosts total tourism bonus. The parks in the picture below are all 17 to 22 total appeal. Between the 5 total parks between both cities that's about 100 base tourism in a small % of your empire.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I wish national parks got adjacency tourism from more national parks

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I wish national parks got adjacency tourism from more national parks

National parks should get a tourism bonus from being connected to cities by railways, as that was the primary means of getting tourists to national parks originally (at least it was in Canada and the U.S.)

Later on, they should get tourism boosts from nearby airports.

Of course, the same is true for markets and industrial zones, etc., whose boosts I would like to see be based not just on immediate adjacency, but on infrastructure and connectivity.

In the absence of a concept of "connection", I'd give national parks tourism adjacency bonuses for city centers, airport districts, and railway tiles.

 

[Tech Osen]

Eifel Tower is fantastic as well, but the game might be over before you can research it.

I don’t mean to single you out but I get really tired of these sort remarks. This retoric that if you haven't won before the modern age you're doing it wrong. I much more prefer to build an empire than to win asap and never see half the game.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Russia is one of the best national park civs since it have faith generation and Culture gameplan from its unique district which in turn encourage building a massive empire which in turn give alot of good locations for national parks as well as other tourism improvements. It can also feed off science from other civilizations which leave more resources to focus on its Culture game.

But generally any civ that have high faith generation or encourage high faith generation can be turned into a national park powerhouse which include civs such as Spain and civs who expand alot tend to gain the most out of national park since the amenties tend to increase in value with the number of cities you have. Staying a theocracy also help with national parks.

I wish national parks got adjacency tourism from more national parks

They kind of do since the stuff that allow for a national park have area of effect appeal.​

 

[kaspergm]

I don’t mean to single you out but I get really tired of these sort remarks. This retoric that if you haven't won before the modern age you're doing it wrong. I much more prefer to build an empire than to win asap and never see half the game.

I overall agree with this, but have to add that I wish I was better at winning a bit faster, because the last 50 turns of each game always feels reeeeally boring and just something I sit through to get the achievement if I play with a new civ.

 

[Troy Bruckner]

In regards to the Eifel Tower:

I don’t mean to single you out but I get really tired of these sort remarks. This retoric that if you haven't won before the modern age you're doing it wrong. I much more prefer to build an empire than to win asap and never see half the game.

I didn't mean it like that really. It's more that the culture victory through tourism is much faster than other victory paths and happens before or soon after one can get the Eifel Tower built if this is your goal. Certainly if one is not trying to win the game fast and the player only wants to build one or two national parks while they are on the path to a different victory condition then the Eifel tower is fantastic.

I should add that if a player is science heavy early and they want to switch to a cultural victory then the Eifel Tower is fantastic and can often be built well before the end of the game, but I was not thinking of this since it is not my style of play.

 

[Victoria]

You can win a CV without ever building a theatre. Rushing Eiffel is not as slow as you imagine. Even in a fast game you can get it in time but regardless it is great.
It’s weird but the Mountie making national parks to me feels like a fairy godmother granting wishes, I have no idea why, it just feels odd.

 

[Troy Bruckner]

You can win a CV without ever building a theatre. Rushing Eiffel is not as slow as you imagine. Even in a fast game you can get it in time but regardless it is great.
It’s weird but the Mountie making national parks to me feels like a fairy godmother granting wishes, I have no idea why, it just feels odd.

After the Mountie was terminated so quickly on the elimination thread I decided to play Canada and the Mountie is magical indeed. I look at them as super cheap environmentalists that not only create a national park, but they also create a cavalry unit. They do not scale up in cost like the environmentalist and they can be built like a standard unit or with the proper government building with faith. On marathon they are 1200 faith with theology.

 

[Victoria]

And an environmentalist starts at 600? And goes up by 100?
So 6 national parks until they cost the same as a Mountie... and that’s a few rock bands.
However national parks are nice and pretty and suit the Maori too.
Nothing against the wonderful things.

 

[bengalryan9]

After the Mountie was terminated so quickly on the elimination thread I decided to play Canada and the Mountie is magical indeed. I look at them as super cheap environmentalists that not only create a national park, but they also create a cavalry unit. They do not scale up in cost like the environmentalist and they can be built like a standard unit or with the proper government building with faith. On marathon they are 1200 faith with theology.

Honestly I think if you're spending faith to buy Mounties you're not using their biggest advantage (that they don't cost faith to build unlike environmentalists). Buy 'em with gold or build them in your best production cities and use save all that faith for Rock Bands.

 

[Troy Bruckner]

And an environmentalist starts at 600? And goes up by 100?
So 6 national parks until they cost the same as a Mountie... and that’s a few rock bands.
However national parks are nice and pretty and suit the Maori too.
Nothing against the wonderful things.

Environmentalist is like 3600 on marathon to start. Rock Bands start at 1800.

And yes Maori and National Parks are fantastic I am sure.

 

[Troy Bruckner]

Honestly I think if you're spending faith to buy Mounties you're not using their biggest advantage (that they don't cost faith to build unlike environmentalists). Buy 'em with gold or build them in your best production cities and use save all that faith for Rock Bands.

I think their biggest advantage is they are cheaper and they do not increase in cost. Also when you have a huge faith production and Monumentality runs out the faith just stock piles. Yes I could buy a couple more GP, but I wanted to build national parks as fast as possible. I am not a big fan of rock bands until I can choose my promotion as well.

 

[kb27787]

And an environmentalist starts at 600? And goes up by 100?
So 6 national parks until they cost the same as a Mountie... and that’s a few rock bands.
However national parks are nice and pretty and suit the Maori too.
Nothing against the wonderful things.

They start at 1200 on standard speed or so (1020 with theocracy)
It's rock bands that start at 600.

 

[Victoria]

They start at 1200 on standard speed or so (1020 with theocracy)
It's rock bands that start at 600.

As do naturalists, they changed it

 

[local_hero]

I've thought a bit about how cost effective naturalists are. Are they worth it now that rock bands aren't that much later? I understand that it depends on tile appeal and opportunity cost (partially covering natural wonders or only workable tiles etc), but to me it seems naturalists need many turns to break even and exceed the tourism a rock band might produce. Thoughts?

 

[Troy Bruckner]

I decided to see how many national parks I could get into one city and it seems to be 6. The yellow is an outline of the cities borders. Green and blue are for the parks. Before I created the first park I bought all of the southern and most of the northern tiles, but the game would only allow me to build parks where the green outline is even though all of the southern tiles were charming or better. This has to be a bug where the code can only handle a limited area when checking where a park can be made or not. I had to drain some swamp in the north part of the city and built support cities so I could put parks outside of the main city to boost the appeal.

I almost lost this game when Persia backstabbed me, but my walls finished the turn I was down to a sliver of city health and it allowed me to kill his 2 heavy chariots leaving his 4 catapults to sit there and bomb me with no means to capture the city lol.

On marathon Naturalists (I was calling them environmentalists) cost 3600 faith and increase by 600. My last one was around 9K while in democracy as Maori so those Mounties really are nice.

 

[kb27787]

I decided to see how many national parks I could get into one city and it seems to be 6. The yellow is an outline of the cities borders. Green and blue are for the parks. Before I created the first park I bought all of the southern and most of the northern tiles, but the game would only allow me to build parks where the green outline is even though all of the southern tiles were charming or better. This has to be a bug where the code can only handle a limited area when checking where a park can be made or not. I had to drain some swamp in the north part of the city and built support cities so I could put parks outside of the main city to boost the appeal.

I almost lost this game when Persia backstabbed me, but my walls finished the turn I was down to a sliver of city health and it allowed me to kill his 2 heavy chariots leaving his 4 catapults to sit there and bomb me with no means to capture the city lol.

On marathon Naturalists (I was calling them environmentalists) cost 3600 faith and increase by 600. My last one was around 9K while in democracy as Maori so those Mounties really are nice.


View attachment 531319

Theoretically a city can have up to 5th ring tiles so you can create a lot.

There is no bug here, if the land is such that two overlapping tile combinations are possible the combination with the highest total appeal will be highlighted. Only way to bypass this is with a builder to improve a tile or switch the tile to another city to make it such that only one option is possible

 

[Victoria]

There was a thread a couple of years back when someone covered an entire continent in national parks.

I've thought a bit about how cost effective naturalists are. Are they worth it now that rock bands aren't that much later?

Like many things the answer is it depends.
Summary
If you are near victory then Rock bands are better, the further off victory seems, the better off you are getting national parks early and rock bands later. The key with rock bands is they reduce your main opponent (the one with the most domestic tourism) and you want to do this as you near victory because if you do it later that opposition civ may have huge culture per turn values you may not be able to overcome otherwise.

Detail
So if we take 5 parks as described by @Troy Bruckner at the beginning of the post as having 100 base tourism. Lets not assume this base is modified by golden gate or wish you were here and we will not assume great things happen to the rock bands.
This means in a standard map game you are gaining 700 base tourism from them. but this is modified in ways that rock bands are not and so we have to overall, realistically double the value to 1400 tourism per turn with 200 being taken from your main opposition. For simplification lets make it 1600 tourism which = 1 foreign tourism per turn.

Now we take 5 rock bands. Taking my approach for massive simplicity of playing them all at wonders and let us assume 3 break up due to creative differences and on the next turn the other 2 break up due to creative differences. This is undervaluing rock bands but I am just using it to make the point simple and safe (not being accused of over egging values)
This means that in 2 turns there was 7 wonder concerts which will generate 14000 tourism against your main enemy. 14000 / 1600 (each foreign tourist) = 8.75, lets call it 9. This means I have reduced my main enemies domestic tourists by 9. This means my target is 9 less and also I got 9 points toward my goal. .... so if my tourism was 46/63 I would have either won or be damn close to winning. This is how rock bands should be used really, a really fast spurt against the main opposition near the end.
If I did not target my main opposition then I would only be 9 points closer not 18.

If I was at say 30/63 before using the rock bands I would now be 39/54, still a long way to go and my rock bands gone while my 5 national parks would be chugging along at 1 foreign tourist per turn which is pretty strong as it would counter 100 culture per turn from my main opposition, probably a lot of what they make at this stage of the game...

Basically both are good, it just depends on how close your are to victory.

If you understood what I was going through then you get that making 200 tourism per turn at the top of your screen counters a civ making 100 culture per turn and helps with general rough estimates. - and that is without the benefits of route modifiers. (open borders, trade routes, different government, religion)

 

[Troy Bruckner]

If you are near victory then Rock bands are better, the further off victory seems, the better off you are getting national parks early and rock bands later. The key with rock bands is they reduce your main opponent (the one with the most domestic tourism) and you want to do this as you near victory because if you do it later that opposition civ may have huge culture per turn values you may not be able to overcome otherwise.

I got the impression people were trying to win without rock bands as well. In this game I had just finished the cultural advancement (or was about to) for rock bands and the game ended the turn after this screenshot.