Some usage for tourism for non-culture games

[ViterboKnight]

I start with an example:
At the moment, faith is still useful even if the player is not actually caring about religions: e.g., even if I don't need missionaries or inquisitors, I could BUY great persons or military units, with the right policy, so it's a good way to allow a player to USE faith even with different play styles.


Now, same thing about tourism.
It could be nice to give tourism some other use. In fact, if I'm NOT going for culture victory, it seems that, at the moment, tourism is completely useless.
What about the possibility to USE some tourism for some diplomatic effect with the corresponding leader? Examples, "buy" some diplomatic points that help improve relations, or to ease an agreement, or to persuade him to accept my request, etc.

 

[VainoValkea]

Buying diplomatic points? Say, how would you respond if the game sprung up a pop-up "Hey the Greeks gave you 1000 tourism points! You must like him now!" I wouldn't really care, I don't think the AI should either.

Now, you're also mistaken. Tourism isn't useless when not playing culturally, like having an army isn't useless when not playing domination. It protects you from ideological pressure and pressures other ideologies. Also, almost every source of tourism also provides culture which is still useful for social policies.

 

[TomKQT]

If you're not going for culture victory, then yes the tourism number is useless. But the main source of tourism - great works - can still be interesting for you, because they add also culture. So in fact you could still care about making your tourism better. But this doesn't apply to buildings like hotel or airport, they increase just the final tourism number.

I'm not really sure tourism need another use. Money seems logical, but we don't need another way how to make money in CivV

 

[Vohbo]

I think you always want to at least hit the 10 % mark with every other ideology, so it's still very good to have some.

 

[VainoValkea]

If you're not going for culture victory, then yes the tourism number is useless.

This is false, like I said in my last message. It serves as ideological defense against culture-heavy players with different ideologies.

 

[TomKQT]

It protects you from ideological pressure

Is this true? Isn't it culture what protects you? I honestly don't know, but I though that what matters is how big influence has the enemy on you - and influence is tourism (attack) against culture (defence).

... and pressures other ideologies.

Yep.

 

[SicklyAlbatross]

Generally there's always a few low culture civs, even having a mediocre tourism output can make their lives a misery by the time ideologies become a factor.

 

[VainoValkea]

Is this true? Isn't it culture what protects you? I honestly don't know, but I though that what matters is how big influence has the enemy on you - and influence is tourism (attack) against culture (defence).

As far as I know (you can find threads discussing this in this forum) the pressure is not just "their tourism vs our culture". What matters is which party is more influential over the other: the Maya culture may be popular among your people, but if your culture is dominant over the Maya, they can't pressure you. I can try to find the threads where they checked this to make sure it works this way. However, I'm sure tourism is both offense and defense, not just the former, when it comes to pressure.

 

[SicklyAlbatross]

Is this true? Isn't it culture what protects you? I honestly don't know, but I though that what matters is how big influence has the enemy on you - and influence is tourism (attack) against culture (defence).

Yes it's true, if you focus on purely culture you'll have an unpleasant time later on.

 

[TomKQT]

As far as I know (you can find threads discussing this in this forum) the pressure is not just "their tourism vs our culture". What matters is which party is more influential over the other: the Maya culture may be popular among your people, but if your culture is dominant over the Maya, they can't pressure you. I can try to find the threads where they checked this to make sure it works this way. However, I'm sure tourism is both offense and defense, not just the former, when it comes to pressure.

OK, that makes sense. Thanks for making it clear.

I've never ignored tourism anyway

 

[sherbz]

I always thought culture was your defense, and the higher tourism you have creates more unhappiness in foreign civs with a different ideology. Or is this wrong?

 

[Dragonmaster83]

Culture is pure defense to Ideological Pressure since it will take more tourism for each influence level.
Tourism is mostly offense for Ideological Pressure. The more of it you have the higher your influence levels will be.

HOWEVER, there is some defense with tourism to ideological pressure. A little bit of tourism can easily get you to the exotic level with every civ and that will lower ALL ideological pressure on you by 1. Non-culture civs prob wont pass the familiar mark so at most, you'll get 1 ideological pressure point from other ideology civs. If you completely ignored tourism, you would be unknown to all civs and those that got to the familiar level will put 2 pressure points on you.

 

[RealHuhn]

I always thought culture was your defense, and the higher tourism you have creates more unhappiness in foreign civs with a different ideology. Or is this wrong?

It's true but not the complete story.

Like VainoValkea already said,

What matters is which party is more influential over the other: the Maya culture may be popular among your people, but if your culture is dominant over the Maya, they can't pressure you.

High culture output makes it harder for other AIs to influence you with their tourism. However, as soon as an AI reaches 10% of your culture and gains "exotic" influence, you will get pressured by their ideology.
You can counter that by being 10% influential as well. Exotic counters exotic.

Therefore, it's beneficial to have at least a decent amount of tourism to get to exotic influence and avoid happiness issues in late game.

Of course, if you have the same ideology as the tourism leader, it becomes a lot easier because his tourism can also counter the influence of other ideologies on your civ.
But if you aren't influential on anyone and adopt freedom vs 4 order civs, you will be in deep trouble. Because now, you have to counter the combination of their influence on you.

 

[The QC]

Tourism has a big impact on cultural defense, not a minor one. It's pretty much impossible to avoid influence from the tourism of all other civs via culture alone. The decrease that comes from the influence of your tourism over their culture is significant in defending you.

With so many "tourism is useless if not going for a cultural victory" threads, no wonder we also have so many "I'm at minus 50 hapiness from ideology pressure!! " threads.

 

[sherbz]

See I think im playing on too easy a difficulty, because i usually win before the game gets to this stage. My most recent game I won space as poland in 1918. Tourism was pretty much a non entity by this point because the AI was only in the modern era. Think i should move up to immortal. I only ever have problems on emperor when im next to an ass hole like Atilla who moves 3 battering rams into my territory in the BC's.

 

[RealHuhn]

See I think im playing on too easy a difficulty, because i usually win before the game gets to this stage. My most recent game I won space as poland in 1918. Tourism was pretty much a non entity by this point because the AI was only in the modern era. Think i should move up to immortal. I only ever have problems on emperor when im next to an ass hole like Atilla who moves 3 battering rams into my territory in the BC's.

Yeah, you should definately do that.

The whole tourism mechanic is pointless when your tech rate is too fast and none of the AIs get an ideology before you win the game.

 

[VainoValkea]

A lot of mechanics are pointless when ahead in tech by a huge margin. That applies, for example, to fighter planes - no use in having them before the opponent has planes of their own.

 

[TomKQT]

A lot of mechanics are pointless when ahead in tech by a huge margin. That applies, for example, to fighter planes - no use in having them before the opponent has planes of their own.

They are still great for the scouting feature (they reveal quite a large area around the city which they are stationed in). And they can be used in fight, especially against units. Useless are just the airsweep and intercept functions.

 

[Obark]

Tourism is far from useless, even for non-culture victory !
If you completely ignore it you may start to run into some serious troubles when come the time of ideologies...

 

[VainoValkea]

They are still great for the scouting feature (they reveal quite a large area around the city which they are stationed in). And they can be used in fight, especially against units. Useless are just the airsweep and intercept functions.

So in other words: they are useless because a bomber does all that better.