Revisualizing Civ without Happiness

[Big J Money]

I was watching a video, thinking about the cultural video and trying to visualize what the tourisms represent. I thought that international tourism represents how much people in other civs like you, but what does domestic tourism represent? We already have a stat in civilization that represents the happ - oh wait, no we don't anymore.

So without the happiness stat I kind of think domestic tourism is the new way to represent how much your citizens like your country at a national level. Amenities represent how satisfied they are in daily life on a local level. Anyway, I think this is interesting because in Civ V I always ignore tourism if I wasn't going for a cultural victory. In Civ VI we can't ignore it because it's the new defence against tourism victories, and thematically it makes sense to think of it like your people loving their own country more vs. their fondness for some other foreign empire.

Probably a pointless post but felt like making it anyway. Cheers.

 

[Ebrim]

Indeed, it seems like ignoring anything completely is probably a bad strategy in VI. Prioritize, sure, but ignoring can quickly lead to defeat.

 

[playshogi]

In Civ5, I almost never used Great Writers and Artists for Great Works, but in Civ6 it seems that, that is all they are good for. So, you'd really have to try hard to totally ignore tourism.

 

[Big J Money]

Yes, me too. I often didn't build them and it was somewhat viable not to. Since Tourism was a 100% offensive thing, thematically it was slightly weird that your own people never really cared whether you had great works, or interesting sites, etc. Only foreign nations cared.

Now in Civ VI your own people are affected by these things, which I think is a nicer representation of things.

Actually, I think now the weird resource is Culture. What does culture do? Does it make your people happy? No. Does it make other nations like you? No. It makes your borders grow larger and it helps your civilization to understand how to better govern. I doubt this will happen, but in future iterations of Civ, I think Culture should be renamed to something like Political Influence, Dominion, or Sovereignty, and Tourism should be changed to Culture. But that's just a very minor suggestion obviously.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The main way to defend against religion is with religion and the main way to defend against tourism is with tourism. Although it is harder to attack then defending so the attacker need to make a larger investment then the defender.

This mean it can take alot of effort to win if another civs is going for the same victory, the more competetion around a victory the harder it become to win in civilization VI.

 

[Big J Money]

Which opens up to people going for secondary victories. It's interesting. We now no longer have the option to 'shift' a warmongering or religious game into a diplomatic win (which I think is good IMO, but we'll see).

But there is also the chance this will mean Science is once again the safest bet since it's not zero-sum...

Anyway back to the OP about the thematicness of Tourism, I don't think my suggestion above quite works. I think the one holdout in Civ in terms of slightly awkward theming is the term "Tourism".

To me it seems that even the devs think it's slightly awkward because they refuse to call the victory by Tourism a "Tourism Victory", but instead call it a Cultural one. It also seems a bit silly that one dominates the world due to Tourism; although Culture certainly makes sense. Finally, tourism to me means more about commerce and making money than it does about becoming an awe-inspiring civilization that is loved around the world.

So I think Culture can stay the same, but perhaps Tourism could be renamed. What to? "Inspiring Culture?" "Cultural Attraction?" Then Firaxis could still call it a Cultural Victory and it would be consistent.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Science is also based on competition. Many late game techs eurkas can only be recived by great people which mean if there are alot of competition around great scientist may slow down the tech phase allowing a culture civ to win a culture victory before anyone is able to launch the spaceship.

In civilization tourism simply represent how strong feelings they have for other civs culture so it is a culture victory in the sense that other civilizations populations like your own culture more then their own.

 

[Big J Money]

In civilization tourism simply represent how strong feelings they have for other civs culture so it is a culture victory in the sense that other civilizations populations like your own culture more then their own.

Exactly. This is an awkward way to imagine tourism, IMO. It works, but not as well as perhaps "Cultural Attraction", "Cultural Appeal" or perhaps even a more interesting term.

 

[rpgalon]

I think something like,
Culture is how much, well, Culture your civ has, it's how much your civilization can identify itself from others. A cultural victory is when every country lacks it's own ID, they are like clones of your civ and want to be like you.
And Tourism is how much your civ is able to share this Culture.

About the domestic tourism, is how much culture you can share between your cities/population, some cities in a country always have more culture, even in our own world, a small city in the interior of France will never have as much Culture to share as Paris for example, it's important to share Paris with every citizen of France and make them more connected with the country.

 

[Big J Money]

There's no question it's possible to make it work when you want to.

I think to me, civ started out as a game that was simpler, so it was easier for the names of things to more directly represent the gameplay elements.

Now civ is a much more complex game. It's clear developers have take a "gameplay first" approach (which I am glad for) and then they try to make it as thematically appropriate as possible. I think it would be nice though if there was some house-cleaning to make it all more intuitive thematically so it's not necessary to have to think this hard about it to make it fit.

Culture causing your borders to grow sort of works okay. Culture leading to government discoveries is more questionable. Tourism as a reflection of spreading your culture internally an externally is okay except that it doesn't fit in some scenarios. If I'm England and hold a concert in Germany I get a tourism bonus, but that's not Tourism. I think the term is just a bit too specific, and that's why I like Cultural Appeal more as a stat that represents the effective spreading of culture.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Are we sure that culture is not involved in defending against tourism?

It may not generate domestic tourism, but it might minimize foreign tourism coming from you.

Also its interesting that eliminating another civ is now Bad for tourism victory.
Another civ is another source of foreign tourists, but you only have to overcome the greatest domestic tourist source.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Are we sure that culture is not involved in defending against tourism?

I don't think we know yet. It could simply be culture + tourism for your defence while only tourism count for offense.

 

[Big J Money]

We saw the victory screen and it showed internal vs. external tourism. I believe Ed said specifically that the new "internal tourism" is used to defend instead of culture, but I'll look again when I can.

 

[leandrombraz]

I don't think we know yet. It could simply be culture + tourism for your defence while only tourism count for offense.

My guess is that appeal is the main factor to generate domestic tourism. The more appealing your territory is, the more people want to stay there instead of visiting other countries. Culture might have an effect but I think it will be more important for visiting tourists than for domestic.

 

[elitetroops]

Fighting tourism with tourism... bah. Covering your opponent's lands in a healthy layer of nuclear fallout should make it less appealing to tourists, both domestic and foreign. What I want to know is can you win culture by nukes? Or would those ungrateful foreigners not want to visit your glorious nation after you've turned their home into a nuclear wasteland?

On a more serious note, can you somehow control where your tourists are heading with open borders agreements or by other means? I'm assuming a war at least should stop the flow of tourists, so if someone is else is about to win a cultural victory, the last resort would be to declare war of them just to rob them of your tourists.

 

[Big J Money]

I doubt a war stops visiting tourists or that would break the game. "Oh, Spain is about to win?" *declares war*

But perhaps war creates a penalty to tourism influence.

The whole system is still very unclear because we don't know how Tourism converts into either Domestic or Visiting Tourists. Or even how the total number of Tourists are calculated (if they are). In the livestream, they had far more domestic tourists than anyone else's domestic or visiting combined.

So maybe culture does still impact defense, since for all we know, that's the stat that controls Domestic Tourists. You'd think the the stat called Tourism would control all Tourists....

So yeah my whole thread might be pointless because I was assuming that Tourism as a stat is what governed Tourists to begin with.

 

[elitetroops]

I doubt a war stops visiting tourists or that would break the game. "Oh, Spain is about to win?" *declares war*

But perhaps war creates a penalty to tourism influence.

The whole system is still very unclear because we don't know how Tourism converts into either Domestic or Visiting Tourists. Or even how the total number of Tourists are calculated (if they are). In the livestream, they had far more domestic tourists than anyone else's domestic or visiting combined.

So maybe culture does still impact defense, since for all we know, that's the stat that controls Domestic Tourists. You'd think the the stat called Tourism would control all Tourists....

So yeah my whole thread might be pointless because I was assuming that Tourism as a stat is what governed Tourists to begin with.

Hmm... I can see how it totally would break the culture victory in MP, yes. I doubt the AI is as aggressively working against preventing other civs from winning to make it a big deal in single player.

Though it seems tourists don't care at all about states of war. In the Kongo video it looks like they are at war with Scythia, yet the only negative modifier on foreign tourists from Scythia comes from different governments.