Tourism is a gimmicky addition

[IAMBeefcake]

After playing several games in BNW, I must say that of all the new additions, this makes the least impact on the overall game unless you're specifically going a certain playstyle (the best addition imo being the trade routes and congress). It feels like it's not very well integrated with the rest of the game's features.

For example, when G&K was released with religion, there were sweeping changes to everything to accommodate for it with religious bonuses acting as a tool for way to further customize your civilization from the very beginning of the game, making it important to all civilizations.

Tourism does nothing for you from the start of the game, and only becomes relevant for a non-culture victory in the late game.

I feel like they need to make it easier to get a tourism disparity between civilizations earlier on in the game, that makes a noticable impact earlier on in the game. And for all the developers' talk on it being the offensive equivalent of culture, it really doesn't feel like that. I feel like you should be able to "spend" it like all the other aspects gained per turn in the game for it to be worthwhile (e.g. gold, faith, culture, science all can be actively spent to do something).

Some ideas I thought would make tourism more useful and interesting:
-Using it to purchase enemy lands (akin to purchasing neutral spaces with gold).
-Allow spies to incite unhappiness in enemy lands or speed up technology stealing (spies steal pitifully slower later in the game)

 

[Kwami]

Religion is powerful early in the game, but fades in the Industrial era when costs skyrocket and diplomatic modifiers lessen. Tourism picks up in the Industrial when ideologies kick in. At least, that's the theory. In practice, religion is still powerful after the Industrial era because of reformation beliefs, the World Religion act, and the +25% Tourism modifier given for civilizations that share a religion. :/

 

[Keirador]

It would be nice if you could spend it somehow, but seeing as tourism is just an outgrowth of culture and ideology, I'd say it's basically fine as is if your expectations are low. It's just an element that makes culture and ideology more interesting. It only kicks in late game because the whole point of this expansion was to make the late-game more interesting.

 

[Gamewizard]

I think tourism works well as is. I can dominate any Emperor level game thanks to tourism, but I struggle mightily on Immortal because of it also. I can see how one would dislike it if they were always trying to win the game before the modern era, but I enjoy playing a 300+ turn game where 33% of the game I am constantly checking the tourism UI to see what ideology is "winning" and what civs I need to target so that I don't get culturally dominated.

 

[iggymnrr]

I feel like they need to make it easier to get a tourism disparity between civilizations earlier on in the game, that makes a noticable impact earlier on in the game.

They have, at least as you move from king to prince to warlord etc. Basically the map becomes like the Mongol scenario and stays like that for a long time due to AI passivity. Every civ has like 3ish cities. The way tourism works is that dead civs don't wear blue jeans. The best concert tour is a "21-gun salute." The fewer civs there are the easier it is to out "tour" the culture weakling. Kill like you are in the Mongol scenario and things speed up.

 

[Qoma]

I actually quite like the idea of tourism, but after a few games the problem I've felt is that it's like a passive victory. You build some buildings, you play the "pieces of art/writing/music" metagame in your buildings for a few turns, maybe you'll tour a great musician or two but the game really just does the rest. All you can control is how fast or slow it does it for you through unrelated means (trading, open borders, etc).

It's a great idea, though, and a "pretty good" implementation.

 

[Chiatroll]

I actually quite like the idea of tourism, but after a few games the problem I've felt is that it's like a passive victory. You build some buildings, you play the "pieces of art/writing/music" metagame in your buildings for a few turns, maybe you'll tour a great musician or two but the game really just does the rest. All you can control is how fast or slow it does it for you through unrelated means (trading, open borders, etc).

It's a great idea, though, and a "pretty good" implementation.

great musician concerts and other things work well can be pretty active.

It's not as active as building spaceship parts but it's not like you just wait until you get enough social policies and build the Illuminati anymore. (WTH was that thing)

 

[seasnake]

If Tourism could do more it would be an excellent yield.

 

[tat501]

If Tourism could do more it would be an excellent yield.

This is the only problem I have with Tourism. There should be some benefit to it as a yield. For example, there could be a World Congress resolution to do with border controls - Visa's or something like that where for each 2 tourism generated 1 gold is added. Would be negated by Open Border agreements. This would make for an interesting decision (as you want open borders for tourism purposes but youd like the money from making those tourists pay for a visa).

 

[Theruss]

great musician concerts and other things work well can be pretty active.

It's not as active as building spaceship parts but it's not like you just wait until you get enough social policies and build the Illuminati anymore. (WTH was that thing)

A creepy looking pyramid with a big eye ball on top...

I think it was a massive worldwide mind control contraption.

 

[Tchuli]

I like tourism... It has a big impact on how I play the game (trying to go for a tourism victory or not).

Right now I'm playing a game and I just met Brasil... while they were having a Carnival...
It's was pretty scary to see them RISING so early in the game and made me focus on culture buildings to try to "fight" that...
Since they're in another continent and I have those damn Zulus by my side in my own continent... it'll be hard to really fight them now.

To me, it feels more interactive than the science victory.

 

[Tachii]

Tourism -> Have AI civs flip cities to you and their happiness finally sink to the negatives. You don't even have to go with a culture victory to have this occur. Just make the guilds and put the Great Arts at work. Then later use World Ideology at Congress and see enemy cities get flipped for the lols.

Proceed to sell said city back to the AI or give it away to another civ and have them wage war with each other. It's pretty fun to use actually, lol.
Since flipped cities usually belong to warmongers anyways, this is almost guaranteed to happen.

 

[Council 13]

It wouldn't make much sense to have tourism have a big impact early in the game, as in reality there wasn't much real tourism going on at 2000 BC. I think it is a solid implementation that it really starts to kick in around the medieval/renaissance era as religion starts fading. Thats pretty spot on. I think you are forgetting that Tourism spreads more or less if given you have open borders with another nation and trade routes. Your tourism score is only part of the equation. Its like a quiet "war" when you focus your tourism (via open borders, trade routes, etc) to civilizations with poor culture (defense). Its a cool aspect if you realize all the nuances associated with it. Just takes time to really master.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

I like the idea of tourism, but it certainly needs more involving into the game besides winning a cultural victory. I know that there is city flipping in the late game, but it should do more and also much earlier.

 

[Bakspatel]

I feel like they need to make it easier to get a tourism disparity between civilizations earlier on in the game, that makes a noticable impact earlier on in the game.

No, not really. What was pretty much the case for the people until late after the events of WWII was living in poverty. That's why education was enforced ending 19th/begin 20th century because children were working in factories to contribute to the family. Let alone that people were able to go on a holiday. Tourism was an expensive luxury for the biggest part of human history.

 

[SolDelta]

I kind of like it. It interacts really nicely with ideologies and culture, plus there are a wealth of ways to get benefits out of it. Hell, with Sacred Sites, non-dedicated tourism civs can get crazy amounts of tourism very early in the game, which adds up. Add on a couple of tourism multipliers, or say, being Brazil, and you can find yourself pretty actively dominating the world from about the Renaissance onwards. It's pretty satisfying watching everyone choose the same Ideology right off the bat, because they just can't hope to compete with anything else.

 

[redwings1340]

Tourism also influences ideology happiness for non-culture victories, so if I don't want to follow the rest of the world ideologically, I either need quite a bit of tourism of my own, or need to pass a world ideology in the world congress. Still though, I'm thinking maybe it should do something with trade routes or something. Maybe if you have more influence on a certain culture, you get more money from trade routes with them? I feel like that wouldn't be too game breaking a change, and would give you some use for it if you have the world ideology and are not going for a cultural victory.

 

[OmniPotent42]

I proposed an idea in this thread to make tourism less one dimensional:

 

[cakes]

none of your ideas have anything to do with 'tourism' though. having more tourists in your land doesn't prompt other people to sell their land to you.

 

[Callonia]

Unmentioned aspect of tourism in this thread is that if there's plenty of minor but major civs as in not city states. And they have poor cultural defenses, they almost always have poor culture cuz they're tiny. Which makes getting to familiar really easy for you.

Done right, you will have several minions accompanying you all the time cuz they picked your ideology due to your level of tourism over them xD

I went autocracy, byzantines went autocracy, then in following turn, tons of minor civs went autocracy cuz otherwise they'll be fighting rebellions lol. 3 points of autocracy vs 1 point of order :O