New Version - October 17th (10-17)

[Mad Madigan]

Yeah, I was not too surprised to be leading in culture generation as The Netherlands because their UA is so great. It also just struck me that it's even better the bigger the map and more Civs and CSs in play because there are more luxuries and more different Civs to trade with. +3 Gold/ +3 Culture doesn't sound like much, but when you're importing/exporting well over a dozen luxuries by mid-game that can easily translate into hundreds of extra Gold/Culture per turn in the Medieval and Renaissance Eras. By the time I got to Industrial Era my UA was generating 500+ Gold/Culture per turn for me, which was about 33% of my total per turn output for those yields. Perhaps these should be scaled back to +2 Gold/Culture per import/export? Or maybe +4 Gold & +2 Culture? The addition of the the Netherland's ability to "steal" monopoly bonuses also has to be accounted for, as in my game I was able to acquire most of the "+% yield in all cities" monopolies via the UA. Plus, if you make it to Corporations you can essentially take your pick of which Corp to build.

I just wish there was some mechanic in place to prevent culture victories from triggering so early. Science and Diplomatic victories have hard technology requirements that require you to make it through to the Information Age, but Culture is only restricted to having an Ideology. Perhaps it could also be tied to a technology like Radio that you have to research before Cultural victory can trigger? Of course, then you'd run into the situation where you have all Civs Influenced and you're just waiting to until the tech to finish the game. It would be better to focus on balancing tourism yields to prevent early cultural snowballing from making it inconsequential to have nearly every other Civ Influential to you regardless of your focus on making great works, museums, zoos, and other tourism sources.

Just a thought, because so far most attempts I have made at Diplomatic or Scientific victories have just "accidentally" turned into Cultural victories without me even trying to spam Concert Tours or the like. I wish there was some sort of World or National Wonder you had to construct in order to complete the Cultural vic so that you can opt out of it if you'd rather go for another victory condition. I mean, I know I can disable Cultural victories from the advanced game setup menu, but then that means I don't have to worry about other Civs winning that way either.

 

[Txurce]

By the time I got to Industrial Era my UA was generating 500+ Gold/Culture per turn for me, which was about 33% of my total per turn output for those yields. Perhaps these should be scaled back to +2 Gold/Culture per import/export? Or maybe +4 Gold & +2 Culture?

I just wish there was some mechanic in place to prevent culture victories from triggering so early.

I wouldn't conclude the Dutch UA is OP based on one game -- especially one played on Large/Epic.

Interestingly, many recent comments on Cultural Victories is that they're so difficult to achieve that people win SV's without trying.

 

[tu_79]

I wouldn't conclude the Dutch UA is OP based on one game -- especially one played on Large/Epic.

Interestingly, many recent comments on Cultural Victories is that they're so difficult to achieve that people win SV's without trying.

It could be related to map size.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

instead of prorated investing... I always thought that the investments worked by just giving you the first 50% of the hammers in the building. So if you invest in the middle of production, you waste some hammers. This rewards planning, but still has the same effect at any time that it is used.

 

[Mad Madigan]

Interestingly, many recent comments on Cultural Victories is that they're so difficult to achieve that people win SV's without trying.

I thought this was only during the time when tourism from historical events was bugged and giving significantly less than intended? I noticed that as well, but prior to that bug, and in the current un-bugged version, I'm still finding it way too easy to influence other Civs without needing to apply too much effort. Getting influence over China, Brazil, and few other AI Civs obviously requires a little more work (conquering China always helps!), but it could also be because I've never played on any other map size than Large or Huge. But does map size really have that large of an effect? Having more cities doesn't automatically lead to getting more of the triggers for Historical Events (winning wars, great people births, wonder construction, entering new eras), nor does it increase the number of trade routes you can get (which is a hard number tied to tech unlocks and wonders constructed). Also, wasn't there change made in this latest patch to reduce the tourism bonus you get for having small empires? I was surprised how little difference this seemed to make it getting early cultural influence over other Civs just from trade route tourism.

 

[DarkZero]

I thought this was only during the time when tourism from historical events was bugged and giving significantly less than intended? I noticed that as well, but prior to that bug, and in the current un-bugged version, I'm still finding it way too easy to influence other Civs without needing to apply too much effort. Getting influence over China, Brazil, and few other AI Civs obviously requires a little more work (conquering China always helps!), but it could also be because I've never played on any other map size than Large or Huge. But does map size really have that large of an effect? Having more cities doesn't automatically lead to getting more of the triggers for Historical Events (winning wars, great people births, wonder construction, entering new eras), nor does it increase the number of trade routes you can get (which is a hard number tied to tech unlocks and wonders constructed). Also, wasn't there change made in this latest patch to reduce the tourism bonus you get for having small empires? I was surprised how little difference this seemed to make it getting early cultural influence over other Civs just from trade route tourism.

Map size has absolutely nothing to do whit it, while game speed has absolutely to do whit it, the difference between standard and epic has the least amount of effect in the overall balance, compared to marathon and quick speeds, but the game is significantly easier on epic, even arguably impossible to lose on marathon, because the slow the game speed is the more the long term strategy matters, and that is sadly the worst aspect of the ai, nothing gazebo can do about it, or any other developer for that matter,as the long term planing is a core concept of the human mind and its what make us the dominant species in the planet, the current culture victory has been the easiest and fastest to achieve for a long time mostly because of the historic events mechanic, another thin you may notice is that the run away ais usually are also very influential whit other civs despite most of them not focusing on tourism, mostly because they wonder spam and get massive tourism from it.

I would guess we did not receive many reports from it because that tourism from city states is recently new, but i have in the past and will always advocate for the fact that unless it is a civ ability, historic events should never be the main way to win a culture victory and that the per turn tourism should be the main source of tourism.

 

[Mad Madigan]

The handy new UI tool that gives you the last 10 turns of instant yields and estimates the per-turn yields they equate to was very handy for seeing just how much tourism I was getting from historic events and trade route completion. I was taking samples from it every 15-20 turns and comparing to my listed per-turn yields to see how much "extra" per-turn yields I was averaging as compared to my known per-turn yields. Using the strategy I explained in my long post, I was getting almost an order of magnitude more tourism per turn from instant yields than from list per-turn yields. For example, in the Renaissance Era I had about 15-20 listed tourism per turn from wonders and great works, and I was getting on average about another 100-150 tourism per turn from instant yields. In the Industrial Era my listed per-turn tourism increased to about 40-ish and then to 80-90 when I hit Modern Era, but my instant yeilds per-turn average for Industrial was about 250 and then 500+ for Modern. In fact, the instant tourism from hitting the Modern Era, birthing a Great Engineer to build the Brandenburg Gate, the free Great General from that, and then a birthed Great Admiral the turn after from my naval war with Carthage all combined into a monstrous tourism bomb that ended the game. I mean, that's great and all, but it led to a very anti-climatic out-of-nowhere victory. I really feel that these instant tourism yields need to be toned down a fair bit.

 

[CrazyG]

The handy new UI tool that gives you the last 10 turns of instant yields and estimates the per-turn yields they equate to was very handy for seeing just how much tourism I was getting from historic events and trade route completion. I was taking samples from it every 15-20 turns and comparing to my listed per-turn yields to see how much "extra" per-turn yields I was averaging as compared to my known per-turn yields. Using the strategy I explained in my long post, I was getting almost an order of magnitude more tourism per turn from instant yields than from list per-turn yields. For example, in the Renaissance Era I had about 15-20 listed tourism per turn from wonders and great works, and I was getting on average about another 100-150 tourism per turn from instant yields. In the Industrial Era my listed per-turn tourism increased to about 40-ish and then to 80-90 when I hit Modern Era, but my instant yeilds per-turn average for Industrial was about 250 and then 500+ for Modern. In fact, the instant tourism from hitting the Modern Era, birthing a Great Engineer to build the Brandenburg Gate, the free Great General from that, and then a birthed Great Admiral the turn after from my naval war with Carthage all combined into a monstrous tourism bomb that ended the game. I mean, that's great and all, but it led to a very anti-climatic out-of-nowhere victory. I really feel that these instant tourism yields need to be toned down a fair bit.

Now that we have the tooltip its much easier to math out how much of tourism is bonus yields. If more people post a similar experience to yours there should be enough support to further tone down historic events.

 

[Legen]

Are these instant tourism from Historic Events and trade route buildings/policies affected by that negative modifier from number of cities? I didn't pay attention to that in my games. I'll check my instant tourism next time.

 

[Gazebo]

Are these instant tourism from Historic Events and trade route buildings/policies affected by that negative modifier from number of cities? I didn't pay attention to that in my games. I'll check my instant tourism next time.

It gets your overall tourism over x past turns, so yes, as your overall tourism reduces from stuff.

G

 

[bigcat88]

Finished game on immortal. Venice need tourism penalty for puppet cities. I am sure for that.

 

[Owlbebach]

It gets your overall tourism over x past turns, so yes, as your overall tourism reduces from stuff.

G

How does it calculate Tourism towards all civs (Great Person born) compared to Tourism boost towards one particular civ (Trade Route ended)?

 

[BazaarJack]

The handy new UI tool that gives you the last 10 turns of instant yields and estimates the per-turn yields they equate to was very handy for seeing just how much tourism I was getting from historic events and trade route completion. I was taking samples from it every 15-20 turns and comparing to my listed per-turn yields to see how much "extra" per-turn yields I was averaging as compared to my known per-turn yields. Using the strategy I explained in my long post, I was getting almost an order of magnitude more tourism per turn from instant yields than from list per-turn yields. For example, in the Renaissance Era I had about 15-20 listed tourism per turn from wonders and great works, and I was getting on average about another 100-150 tourism per turn from instant yields. In the Industrial Era my listed per-turn tourism increased to about 40-ish and then to 80-90 when I hit Modern Era, but my instant yeilds per-turn average for Industrial was about 250 and then 500+ for Modern. In fact, the instant tourism from hitting the Modern Era, birthing a Great Engineer to build the Brandenburg Gate, the free Great General from that, and then a birthed Great Admiral the turn after from my naval war with Carthage all combined into a monstrous tourism bomb that ended the game. I mean, that's great and all, but it led to a very anti-climatic out-of-nowhere victory. I really feel that these instant tourism yields need to be toned down a fair bit.

I agree in general, but I'd presume most of your tourism came from the completion of trade routes with City States, what do you think? I've often thought this mechanic was overpowered and silly (why would completing trade routes with City States have any influence on world tourism). Also, if you end up relying on this mechanic it can easily get shut down through WC with CS sanctions. CS trade routes are already good for maintaining influence, why do we need to have it contribute to a 2nd win condition.

=Proposal=
Would it be possible to receive the equivalent reward from heavy tribute (food, production, culture, etc) when completing the route with this policy instead?

 

[matlajs]

=Proposal=
Would it be possible to receive the equivalent reward from heavy tribute (food, production, culture, etc) when completing the route with this policy instead?

+1 by Suleiman

 

[Mad Madigan]

I agree in general, but I'd presume most of your tourism came from the completion of trade routes with City States, what do you think? I've often thought this mechanic was overpowered and silly (why would completing trade routes with City States have any influence on world tourism). Also, if you end up relying on this mechanic it can easily get shut down through WC with CS sanctions. CS trade routes are already good for maintaining influence, why do we need to have it contribute to a 2nd win condition.

Yes, that was also the case, as I mentioned in my original post. The Consulates policy in Statecraft generates a huge amount of global tourism, especially if all/most of your trade routes are going to CSs due to the other bonuses Statecraft gives for doing so. I'd go so far as to suggest that the global tourism from completing a CS trade route with Consulates in place be cut in half. I don't think it's necessary to completely change the mechanic, just tone down the tourism yields. Although your proposal is quite interesting!

 

[Gazebo]

How does it calculate Tourism towards all civs (Great Person born) compared to Tourism boost towards one particular civ (Trade Route ended)?

Same method, one just loops through all players instead of just one. Gets modifiers (trade routes, religion, WC, etc.).

G

 

[Gazebo]

Yes, that was also the case, as I mentioned in my original post. The Consulates policy in Statecraft generates a huge amount of global tourism, especially if all/most of your trade routes are going to CSs due to the other bonuses Statecraft gives for doing so. I'd go so far as to suggest that the global tourism from completing a CS trade route with Consulates in place be cut in half. I don't think it's necessary to completely change the mechanic, just tone down the tourism yields. Although your proposal is quite interesting!

This is not unexpected - after the bugfix the algorithm was completely thrown out of whack compared to the old numbers. Finding the sweet spot will take some time.

G

 

[Owlbebach]

Same method, one just loops through all players instead of just one. Gets modifiers (trade routes, religion, WC, etc.).

No, I meant the new Star thing in the UI (which is a great idea!). If I get 400 from Archeologist - it can be divided by a past x turns and i can see that i have (for example) 40 per turn for the last 10 turns.

Now what do i see if i just got 4000 towards Civ1 from trade route and 2000 towards Civ2? Clearly it is different from having 600 per turn for the past 10 turns

 

[Gazebo]

No, I meant the new Star thing in the UI (which is a great idea!). If I get 400 from Archeologist - it can be divided by a past x turns and i can see that i have (for example) 40 per turn for the last 10 turns.

Now what do i see if i just got 4000 towards Civ1 from trade route and 2000 towards Civ2? Clearly it is different from having 600 per turn for the past 10 turns

It adds the blast for each player specifically to the total amount of tourism earned. Like I said, it's an estimate, not a precise tool. I could have it divide the value of a targeted tourism blast by the # of known players, though.

G

 

[Owlbebach]

It adds the blast for each player specifically to the total amount of tourism earned. Like I said, it's an estimate, not a precise tool. I could have it divide the value of a targeted tourism blast by the # of known players, though.

G

Ok got it, just didn't have time to try myself. Dividing it would be better, cause right now if i got 100 towards everyone from digging a site and 1000 vs Civ1 from trade route then the Star returns 110 per turn which misleading. Another idea is to add targeted tourism as a separate line there or just do not add it to the total. The latter is also fine i think