I don't understand what you're saying here.
I can only go by what you wrote. Which was:
We can't really balance for multiplayer, because in multiplayer there is nothing to stop human player A from invading human player B.
It's a non-sequitur. Nothing about multiplayer prevents balance. Yes, I can declare war. So can AIs. Manipulating a human is different than manipulating an AI, but still do-able; if you get them economically dependent on you, for example, war becomes undesirable. I'd go so far as to say that diplomacy in multiplayer is more effective, not less, because it's real.
You absolutely can balance multiplayer games. Your assertion that it's impossible because of AI behavior is a complete non-sequitur. Peace treaties are still a hard 10 turns, for instance, and open borders doesn't go away just because you realize he had an escorted prophet hiding behind the hills.
Humans play to win. AIs don't.
AI scripts are clearly bent toward certain victory conditions. What are you trying to say?
Hence, a tourism mechanic that was balanced in multiplayer would almost certainly be too powerful in single player.
Non-sequitur.
I just don't see why we would want a mechanic like this. Effectively you are making tourism provide gold, in addition to its current benefits. But as far as I can tell tourism is not underpowered in single player; it doesn't need additional buffs.
Now if the effect is trivial in game terms, just a few gold, then it probably doesn't effect balance much. But in that case, why bother?
For the same reason you might pick a pantheon in the ancient era, tourism should have a benefit mid-game. It currently has none.
The game should be balanced around the victory conditions that exist, not against some hypothetical game that has different victory conditions.
No one said this. There are pre-game check boxes that allow you to turn off victory conditions.
Otherwise it's like saying "if we turn off the spaceship victory, then what do I get for my spaceship parts?"
No, but the international space station still has value, as does the tech path leading up to what would be a space victory in a game with space victories enabled. Science is intrinsically valuable regardless of enabled victory conditions (as is every other currency). Tourism is worthless with a cultural victory disabled.
There's no reason to give spaceship parts extra bonuses, because the spaceship victory condition is in the game.
Right, but getting to the point where you could win a space race has benefits aside from that victory condition. Getting to the point where I could win a cultural victory has no benefit aside from the possibility of winning.
The game is about immersion and fun, and then about winning later. There'd be more fanfare when we won if winning was the entire goal of playing. Winning currently throws up a splash screen and says "Grats bro."
I'd like to think I'm being entertained by something deeper than the climb to that screen.
With immersion and fun in mind, and a close look at what makes the other currencies fun--the fact that they convert into bigger, better toys--it's really easy to look at tourism and go, "Well, I'd rather skip the wonder with three great work slots and focus on getting my Oxford U. built."
If the choice is between "Free tech of your choice" and "eight more tourism per turn" -- explain to me why you would ever pick the tourism. The balancing act of whether or not tourism is too easy to win with (and I'd argue that this is situational) is unimportant if tourism is the boring treadmill and science is the treadmill that gives me more things to do.
We already have an interaction between espionage and tourism; diplomats increase your tourism influence.
Yes. They give you a bonus to generic victory points that can never be cashed in for anything except the victory splash screen. But Civ is clearly not about the victory splash screen.
I am one of the many people who think that espionage in BTS was not very fun. I much prefer the Civ5 system, which is much simpler and more elegant.
Fair enough.
But I do not think this should be a design goal. Tourism is designed to be something that makes the late game interesting, it is not designed to be something that allows city flipping in the Renaissance era.
Point accumulation without reward is less interesting than point accumulation with reward. Science rewards you for tweaking and maximizing science output. Culture does too, and gold, and military experience points, and production.
Tourism does not. There is never a reward for choosing tourism over anything else, unless the dice roll gives you someone with an unhappy empire of the wrong ideology.
Espionage in BTS mostly consisted of moving workers around constantly and playing whack everyone over the head to keep them from blowing up your mines and pastures (either through war or through sending spies to do counter-espionage constantly). I would prefer not to have that flavor back. It was annoying rather than interesting. Blowing up a key building (happiness or production) or a spaceship part had strategic uses, but was rarely that useful.
It was absurd and frustrating. Inciting unhappiness, though, seems like a decent and realistic use of spies in BNW, and would tie into multiple aspects of the game. I was mostly just generating ideas about how to make tourism less dull. Tying it into existing systems seems like the most logical approach.
