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The Tourist City

Dubzilla8

Just Right of Center
Joined
Mar 9, 2006
Messages
89
Hello everybody.

I have never seen this idea on the forums since the game came out, so I thought I'd toss it out there for discussion.

I thought it would be really cool to have certain geographic locations randomly located on the map. Settling by these attractions would allow you to create a tourist city. It would benefit in more culture and gold. Perhaps markets would bring in more than +25% :gold: for example.

So, one location might be Niagara Falls. It might look like a river dropping off into a small lake tile. You could see a ship on the water (Maid(en?) of the Myst). Like I said, markets might bring in more money, acting as souvenir stands. There also might be other types of improvements, like restaurants to bring in more money. Or maybe there could be a Tour Guide specialist or something that could pull in even more gold, etc.

Grand Canyon, Mount Everest, and so on.

Any thoughts?
 
If I'm understanding you correctly, these cities locations are randomly generated? So, would you be aware of the tourist locations on the map prior to settling a city (As in a plot like iron or copper)? Or would there be a chance that a pre-existing city would be selected randomly as a tourist attraction city?

Altogether, it might add some interesting flavor. I'm always for more complexity, though I know not everyone is. I think my main gripe would be settling what I intend to be a production city and finding out after the fact that I settled a tourist attraction or something - but if it was implemented so that you could plan ahead and see - like being able to see the tourist attractions as a plot on the map or something - I wouldn't have a problem with that.
 
It could work similar to the Civ 3 system where after a wonder has been built, (or even perhaps at a certain culture point) a city becomes a tourist attraction.
 
I think there might be an event that does something like that. I remember something where an event occurred and then a building generated gold that didn't before.
 
I suggest a random event based off this idea. Something like below:
"A hot springs has been discovered north of "city name"!"
1) Turn it into a tourist site. (+ 5 commerce on tile, can't build improvements on it)
2) Let the city's people enjoy it (+5 happiness)
3) Ignore it.
 
My idea was for the attraction to be visible on the map as soon as it comes within your field of vision. So, maybe you run a scout off somewhere and 15 turns later he sees a visibly unique tile that could act as Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon or any other dozen or so natural geographic hotspots. Settling a city by the site would then allow you to improve the city in ways that attract tourists to the city.

Maybe there would be different improvements for Workers to build - shops and restaurants for instance. And, like I said before, some city buildings might have different effects - the market multiplying gold by a greater amount than 25%. Perhaps the city would give a small boost to culture in your country as a whole.

Generally, I just thought it would be a unique alternative to cottaging, farming, and mining cities.
 
My idea was for the attraction to be visible on the map as soon as it comes within your field of vision. So, maybe you run a scout off somewhere and 15 turns later he sees a visibly unique tile that could act as Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon or any other dozen or so natural geographic hotspots. Settling a city by the site would then allow you to improve the city in ways that attract tourists to the city.

Maybe there would be different improvements for Workers to build - shops and restaurants for instance. And, like I said before, some city buildings might have different effects - the market multiplying gold by a greater amount than 25%. Perhaps the city would give a small boost to culture in your country as a whole.

Generally, I just thought it would be a unique alternative to cottaging, farming, and mining cities.

I like that idea. The attractions should be rare and unique - for example you could have seven different unique attractions that appear on a given map... maybe variable by map size. If you're going to build improvements on the attractions, the effects of it should only take effect if a pop is working it obviously (maybe +5 gold, + 5 culture if working the tile / nothing if the tile isn't worked). I don't think that the attractions should have effects on the entire civ - just the city that they're in. Overall though, I think it adds another unique aspect to the game.

I'm not a big fan of having it be a random event as I think some had mentioned before. I think Dubzilla's on the right track.
 
I think better would be natural wonders, but don't create a tourist city, they just increase +gold.

Possible natural wonders:
Niagara Falls
Uluru/Ayer's Rock
Grand Canyon
Danube
Nile
Himalayas
Mt. Everest (is in Himalayas to the best of my knowledge, so not sure which one should be in)
Ganges

Great Rivers would also increase health.
 
I think tourism in general is a concept with good potential to be developed in either future expansions or future versions of the game. I would make a tourism an economic component that provides a way for very diplomatic civs to make some money. Of course, I haven't considered a way to balance all of the additional income adding tourism to the game would provide, but I could foresee it working like this:

In the city detail screen, under the trade routes, but above the list of buildings, there should be a screen to indicate income from tourism. There would be no income from domestic tourism, which I know doesn't completely reflect real life, but it allows for the diplomatic aspect of tourism in the game. So, for example, if you build two cities and connect them by a road, you would start to receive a +1 bonus from trade routes, but no change in the tourism income.

To start receiving tourism income, you must enter an open borders agreement with another civilization. Then, you must connect to the other city's infrastructure by road or by water. Once these conditions are met, all cities in your trade network will start receiving a tourism bonus from that civilization. Instead of naming specific cities in the Tourism Income section of the city screen, it would display something like "India +1".

Your tourism income could increase based upon these parameters:

- Additional open borders agreements will increase the number of nations you receive a tourism bonus from.
- City size and economic importance can increase the amount of gold received in a city from a civilization. (Similar to the amount of money in a trade route growing.)
- Having a world wonder in a city could increase all coins generated from tourism by a small percentage. (5% per wonder, for example.)
- New world wonders could be developed and old wonders could be modified to make the tourism aspect more appealling financially.
- New buildings could be developed that could increase tourism income. Buildings that increase accessibility like harbors and airports would increase tourism income by making the city more available to foreign civs. Buildings that increase gold like banks and markets wouldn't need to be modified because they would already be adequate for granting bonuses to tourism income.
- Building railroads or discovering astronomy would drastically increase accessibility of cities and increadse trade route income.
- Natural world wonders could be discovered on the map, settling near these would cause the city to have a built-in 50-100% bonus on tourism. The natural wonder tiles probably shouldn't have any development needed to be done to it, but if a tile is workable it should have a natural economic bonus on the tile. (other than roads, if it isn't a special mountain or special lake or something)

For example, if you find the grand canyon, which would be a tile that I guess looks like a canyon, you probably couldn't work the tile just like if it was a mountain. But settling near the grand canyon would grant that city a tourism bonus that lasts throughout the game.

- Last, but not least, while in WAR, no cities would receive tourism bonuses, making war unprofitable for diplomatic civilizations. If a city has unhappy people in its population, it shouldn't receive any tourism bonus because the city is in unrest. (Of course, just whip those angry citizens and you would get the tourism bonus back.)

- Since tourism would improve diplomacy, game innovations that improve the relationship between diplomacy and tourism should be developed.


And wow, I thought about this way too hard.
 
You thought hard about it, but I like where you're going with this. I think it's definately a great added level of complexity allowing for new strategies.

The only thing I'm not fully in agreement with is the concept of unhappy people eliminating tourism... maybe unhappiness should have some effect on tourism, but I don't think it should eliminate it. Though, obviously if there's an uprising, no tourism would take place that turn.

I'd also like to see a conection made between tourism and culture. You had mentioned wonders giving a bonus to tourism, which I like, but I think there also needs to be a link between cities with high amounts of culture generating more tourism. It would have to be carefully implemented though to keep the Creative trait from becoming the new Financial trait.
 
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