Overpowered Rock Bands

[Socrates99]

My "lead" Rock Band is normally producing 30-50k Tourism a turn.

30000 to 50000 a turn? I've had some pretty solid bands but 5000 is about the best I've seen. What are you doing to get such productive bands?

 

[Chocolate Pi]

30000 to 50000 a turn? I've had some pretty solid bands but 5000 is about the best I've seen. What are you doing to get such productive bands?

Well, first note that they scale exponentially, since Tourism is based on Album Sales. So you have a few that reroute early after only making a few thousand, and the best ones that are making 10k a turn, then 20k, then 30k...

(A max band has a 4% chance of retirement per performance, so your top band tend to last for awhile.)

Second, Album Cover Art is the alpha dog promotion. Wonders are worth the most tourism, are the most numerous concert site, and tend to be disproportionately concentrated in civs you most need to tourism bomb anyway.

So the most important thing is to level up, and the best promotion is also the best way of enabling that.

Finally, Goes to 11 (50% tourism to civs within 10 tiles) force multiplies your best-case tourism by anywhere from 1.5x to 3.0x, depending on how clustered the enemy junctions are.

So the key is to get as many bands with these 2 promotions as possible, and the n Glam Rock, Arena Rock, or the Spaceport on depending on the map. Cultural Hegemony makes this trivial, but you can game the random promotions just like you would Apostles or Spies; take weak promotions on canaries, then buy a bunch at once hoping to get Album Art as an option on all of them. Only ever take Goes to 11 on a band with Album Cover Art.

 

[Socrates99]

Well, first note that they scale exponentially, since Tourism is based on Album Sales. So you have a few that reroute early after only making a few thousand, and the best ones that are making 10k a turn, then 20k, then 30k...

(A max band has a 4% chance of retirement per performance, so your top band tend to last for awhile.)

Second, Album Cover Art is the alpha dog promotion. Wonders are worth the most tourism, are the most numerous concert site, and tend to be disproportionately concentrated in civs you most need to tourism bomb anyway.

So the most important thing is to level up, and the best promotion is also the best way of enabling that.

Finally, Goes to 11 (50% tourism to civs within 10 tiles) force multiplies your best-case tourism by anywhere from 1.5x to 3.0x, depending on how clustered the enemy junctions are.

So the key is to get as many bands with these 2 promotions as possible, and the n Glam Rock, Arena Rock, or the Spaceport on depending on the map. Cultural Hegemony makes this trivial, but you can game the random promotions just like you would Apostles or Spies; take weak promotions on canaries, then buy a bunch at once hoping to get Album Art as an option on all of them. Only ever take Goes to 11 on a band with Album Cover Art.

Not trying to be a dink but now we're back to that spot where you've had to spam bands or gotten ridiculously lucky with the RNG and have ran at least dozen successful concerts with one band just to get to that level of album sales. What are you going to run with that band at that late stage in the game? 2 maybe 3 concerts? Not helping the OP case...

 

[Chocolate Pi]

Not trying to be a dink but now we're back to that spot where you've had to spam bands or gotten ridiculously lucky with the RNG and have ran at least dozen successful concerts with one band just to get to that level of album sales. What are you going to run with that band at that late stage in the game? 2 maybe 3 concerts? Not helping the OP case...

I normally get about 30% of my bands to level 4. If I had good fath income but am pursuing a cultural victory (so not religion), I normally have enough faith for 8-10 bands by Cold War on Immortal. 4-5 for a low faith game.

A dozen concerts is a whopping 12 turns--maybe ~17 if you decided it was more optimal to tour on a different continent. That's a long time for most things, but very short for a victory condition.


While this is a serious investment of time and late game faith, let's contrast with the other endgame capstone super-unit: GDR.

• GDRs have a base cost of cost 1500p (6000g), as well as 15g + 3 uranium a turn. That is considerably more costly.
• The science requirements for GDRs--particularly with upgrades--are considerably higher than the Culture needed for Cold War.
• The time required for GDRs to methodically capture every capital--even with minimal opposition on a sub-large map--is still going to be considerably longer than the time needed for a band tour.

All-in-all, the resource and time costs for a GDR-driven conquest is going to be a little higher than that of a Space Victory on most maps.


A Rock Band forced Cultural Victory is considerably faster than most, for all but the most science-biased civs/starts. Since GS, I have won every single-player Emp/Imm/Deity game that made it to late game as a Rock Band CV--even when I was going for another victory. As soon as I hit Cold War, boom--off to the races.

My last game was with Percicles. I had low faith but I ramped to just over 4k culture a turn after Social Media, so I got Cultural Hegemony and brute forced it. I only bought 3 bands--two died early, the other hit over 50k a turn. Before I won (in about 15 turns), it had reduced the two leading opponents to 1 Domestic Tourist.


Rock Bands are very RNG-based, but winning with them does not take luck.

 

[Socrates99]

But how late in the game are you pulling this off? No its absolutely not 12 turns if you're picking your favored venues to increase survival chances. Please dont make false statements to bolster your arguement.

Maybe a better question to ask is what exactly does "OP" mean. For me "x" is OP when it gets me to the victory screen faster than possible with any other VC. Science from mines was OP, Magnus' chop overflow was OP, the original Hungary and Maori designs were OP.

I've had a few games now where I've faith dumped into bands and gotten pretty successful with them. The most they've done is shave some turns off the tail end of the game. A welcome addition to the old slog CVs could be. They aren't game breaking though.

 

[Chocolate Pi]

But how late in the game are you pulling this off? No its absolutely not 12 turns if you're picking your favored venues to increase survival chances. Please dont make false statements to bolster your arguement.

What? Dude, I'm just going from Wonder to Wonder. The high level AI consistently builds every Wonder except a couple, they are everywhere. I hit one every turn and the game ends from the Tourism well before they run out.

Maybe a better question to ask is what exactly does "OP" mean. For me "x" is OP when it gets me to the victory screen faster than possible with any other VC.

Which is exactly the state of Rock Bands.

Sure, religious victory and domination victorys are still always going to be possible earlier against inferior opponents. (Those aren't races.)

But of the endgame "races", where someone is going to win and it's just a matter of who and how fast, Rock Bands are currently faster than Science, Diplomatic (lol), and all other components of CV.

For a striking contrast, take any given endgame situation and compare the turns required to win with Rock Bands to an equivalent amount of National Parks--the other expensive endgame Tourism source. Even if you we kindly grant the National Park player perfect layouts, the Golden Age Dedication, 20+ builder charges for trees, the necessary Reyna promotion, multiple Wonders (!), and the Appeal Engineers...... it's still way, way behind.


I would encourage you to try exactly the same experiement I have:

• Play a game trying to win a CV using only National Parks as your primary Tourism source.
• Play a game trying to win a CV using only Rock Bands.

One will take a very, very long time. The other will easily beat a Science Victory.

 

[Socrates99]

Ok, in your earlier posts you advocated leveling them up on the venues they had the promotion for so, no, you're not just jumping from wonder to wonder. Even then, a dozen all one turn's movement apart with no units blocking their path? I'm not buying it.

Earlier you were claiming they're stronger than works and wonders now the goalpost has moved to stronger than national parks? I won't argue against that. They are definitely the GDR of CV but getting one leveled up that high before you can pull off another VC? Rare, really rare.

 

[Slip de Garcon]

Many, if not most, of my recent games have been decided by rock bands.

I have come from a losing position to winning purely down to them. Equally I have been prevented from what looked like a cakewalk CV by an AI player spamming them.

I've also had 20k plus tourism from a select few bands.

 

[Victoria]

I normally get about 30% of my bands to level 4.

Mathematically unlikely, RNG possible over a couple of games.
More to the point, if your bands are making 30,000 tourism per concert you already have won.
Are you sure you did not mean 3000-5000 output per turn

 

[Pietato]

Mathematically unlikely, RNG possible over a couple of games.
More to the point, if your bands are making 30,000 tourism per concert you already have won.
Are you sure you did not mean 3000-5000 output per turn

I have a had a band with Turn it up to 11 make over 10k. Which would be 30k overall, because of the placement, BEFORE other multipliers are factored in. Winning the Nobel Prize for rock bands helps a lot.

 

[Victoria]

I have a had a band with Turn it up to 11 make over 10k. Which would be 30k overall, because of the placement, BEFORE other multipliers are factored in. Winning the Nobel Prize for rock bands helps a lot.

Sure 100% agree, just saying that getting 30% to that level would have created a lot of tourism. A hell of a lot, taking roughly 20 domestic tourists into foreign per concert.
For relevance to the OP then a 30k tourism boost allows you to go quite late into a CV but 30% of your bands is exceeding the curve somewhat so do not expect to get that many every game.
A nice calculation challenge for the maths whizzes out there as to the probability of this.

 

[Socrates99]

I have a had a band with Turn it up to 11 make over 10k. Which would be 30k overall, because of the placement, BEFORE other multipliers are factored in. Winning the Nobel Prize for rock bands helps a lot.

Thays so rare though, it's hard to call that OP. You need to really work or get extremely lucky to get to that point. More often than not by the time you get that output you're already cruising to a CV. In both my Mali and my Sweden playthrough I spammed rockbands but wound up getting a Science and Diplo VC respectively. As awesome as bands can be they just aren't pushing CV over the edge like they would be if they were actually "OP".

I guess maybe part of why I oppose this "rockbands OP" idea Is because I've never seen the AI pull it off. I've only finished 6 games since GS so maybe my sample size is too small.

I'd propose this, if someone posts a choral music holy site with no theater district, no national park, CV going hardcore rockband VC sub 300 turns on standard I'll admit they're OP. It has to be King or above. Might be able to pull it off with Khmer. Lemme know how it turns out. Good luck if you get Russia, Greece or Rome as an opponent.

 

[Victoria]

I ran quite a few tests and played 5 games using them to finish.
I would spend somewhere around 15k faith and if I was lucky would get one band getting about 8k tourism before winning and at the stage of victory I’ll have maybe 2 bands left out of the 14 or so I built.

 

[Socrates99]

I ran quite a few tests and played 5 games using them to finish.
I would spend somewhere around 15k faith and if I was lucky would get one band getting about 8k tourism before winning and at the stage of victory I’ll have maybe 2 bands left out of the 14 or so I built.

that's kinda been my experience too. Usually by that point I'd have won one way or another anyway.

 

[Archon_Wing]

RNG is too ridiclous I think. Maybe the upper limit should be capped.

But I think they should switch faith costs with Naturalists. There is like zero reason to build parks, unless you're Canada which you get them sorta for free. A good park is like what? 30 tourism? When you can get a Rock Band that gets 1000 tourism from a single click?

 

[Socrates99]

RNG is too ridiclous I think. Maybe the upper limit should be capped.

But I think they should switch faith costs with Naturalists. There is like zero reason to build parks, unless you're Canada which you get them sorta for free. A good park is like what? 30 tourism? When you can get a Rock Band that gets 1000 tourism from a single click?

I honestly still dont understand parks and how their tourism is calculated but yeah, considering what a pain they are to even build I'd like a bump. I feel like if I dont plan ahead from like the classical or ancient eras it's hard to even find more than a couple good spots for them.

 

[Pietato]

Parks are even worse now due to mountain improvements which cannot be removed.

As for rock bands, yeah it is all RNG. But like I said earlier, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature helps IMMENSELY.

 

[Socrates99]

For the cheaper purchase rate? Eh, that only happens when Sweden's in game.

 

[Pietato]

The increased albums.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I really wish these things didn't take 30 turns. It'd make diplomatic victory less of a joke too.