Gothic_Empire
AKA, Ramen Empire
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2008
- Messages
- 1,502
I feel like I've played enough vanilla BNW now to chime in occasionally on CEP.
In vanilla, the single most overpowered tourism civ is potentially Theodora, but realistically Boadicea or Ethiopia. Rush early religion; get faith from friendly foreign cities. Cherry pick the Tradition tree (perhaps just it's opener), and then fill out both Piety and Aesthetics. Getting two of the three religious buildings (Pagodas and Cathedrals, say) then pick the reformation out of the piety tree that gives tourism with buildings purchased with faith.
Faith production snow-balls, allowing you to easily buy a missionary and then both religious buildings for a new city. In a multiplayer game with my friends, the guy playing Celtia started producing 30+ tourism per turn (tpt) in the classical era, and 100+ tpt going into the renaissance.
Digression:
He has been (and is capable of) infinite city sprawling since the classical era with this strategy, by the way; he needs only to find a source of horses (for the circus) to make his unhappiness not crush him--he's dipped into unhappiness only once, incidentally, with going on 16 cities, turn 180 or so (standard).
End Digression:
Near as we can tell, his absurdly early tourism snowball is not getting him anything, and never well. Compare this to someone who picked Korea and decided from turn one to go for a science victory; every tech gives new benefits that support the win condition. Likewise, a diplomatic victory gives new benefits with each city state you win over--and military victory folk get to straight up steal other players' cities.
Tourism *maybe* gives you cities in the end game, if everything goes a certain way. But filling the tourism bucket against another player does nothing; there's no benefit as in the other methods that ultimately supports the win condition. Even against the AIs, dominating a civ with culture provides no tangible benefit. (And in my experience, the last culture victims to fall are typically the most resilient, and are almost impossible to city-flip.)
Fixing it:
I see two potential fixes to the problem of the tourism bucket filling up for zero reward:
One
Tourism is essentially offensive culture, and I think we need to treat it like a mechanism very similar to war, with tourism leaching or generating gold, as well as potentially causing unhappiness to civs with the wrong ideology.
Two
Tourism is perhaps, as has been discussed, a bad name for the new currency. It represents cultural attractiveness, and is what generated defectors from both sides of the cold war (in real life.) To emulate this, tourism might give random great people who have (aesthetically speaking) defected from another county, rather than GPT or lump sums.
Three
Tourism, if we are literally thinking of it as attracting vacationers from other civs, might make certain buildings or tiles in cities with high tourism begin generating gold or beakers, as these are places that the foreigners are visiting.
I feel strongly that whatever tourism does, it should be somewhat akin to war, where one takes something from another player for their own benefits (Ex: settlers and workers can be captured and enslaved, tiles can be pillaged for money, and cities sacked for gold and then occupied for lasting benefits.) If tourism takes something from its victim civs and gives the tourism generator something in exchange for his or her trouble (other than checking a box next to a victory condition), then I feel it will be a bit more balanced, and perhaps harder to defend against than it currently is.
TL;DR
OP thinks tourism should have benefits aside from late-game potential city flipping and a shot at a cultural victory.
In vanilla, the single most overpowered tourism civ is potentially Theodora, but realistically Boadicea or Ethiopia. Rush early religion; get faith from friendly foreign cities. Cherry pick the Tradition tree (perhaps just it's opener), and then fill out both Piety and Aesthetics. Getting two of the three religious buildings (Pagodas and Cathedrals, say) then pick the reformation out of the piety tree that gives tourism with buildings purchased with faith.
Faith production snow-balls, allowing you to easily buy a missionary and then both religious buildings for a new city. In a multiplayer game with my friends, the guy playing Celtia started producing 30+ tourism per turn (tpt) in the classical era, and 100+ tpt going into the renaissance.
Digression:
He has been (and is capable of) infinite city sprawling since the classical era with this strategy, by the way; he needs only to find a source of horses (for the circus) to make his unhappiness not crush him--he's dipped into unhappiness only once, incidentally, with going on 16 cities, turn 180 or so (standard).
End Digression:
Near as we can tell, his absurdly early tourism snowball is not getting him anything, and never well. Compare this to someone who picked Korea and decided from turn one to go for a science victory; every tech gives new benefits that support the win condition. Likewise, a diplomatic victory gives new benefits with each city state you win over--and military victory folk get to straight up steal other players' cities.
Tourism *maybe* gives you cities in the end game, if everything goes a certain way. But filling the tourism bucket against another player does nothing; there's no benefit as in the other methods that ultimately supports the win condition. Even against the AIs, dominating a civ with culture provides no tangible benefit. (And in my experience, the last culture victims to fall are typically the most resilient, and are almost impossible to city-flip.)
Fixing it:
I see two potential fixes to the problem of the tourism bucket filling up for zero reward:
One
Tourism is essentially offensive culture, and I think we need to treat it like a mechanism very similar to war, with tourism leaching or generating gold, as well as potentially causing unhappiness to civs with the wrong ideology.
Two
Tourism is perhaps, as has been discussed, a bad name for the new currency. It represents cultural attractiveness, and is what generated defectors from both sides of the cold war (in real life.) To emulate this, tourism might give random great people who have (aesthetically speaking) defected from another county, rather than GPT or lump sums.
Three
Tourism, if we are literally thinking of it as attracting vacationers from other civs, might make certain buildings or tiles in cities with high tourism begin generating gold or beakers, as these are places that the foreigners are visiting.
I feel strongly that whatever tourism does, it should be somewhat akin to war, where one takes something from another player for their own benefits (Ex: settlers and workers can be captured and enslaved, tiles can be pillaged for money, and cities sacked for gold and then occupied for lasting benefits.) If tourism takes something from its victim civs and gives the tourism generator something in exchange for his or her trouble (other than checking a box next to a victory condition), then I feel it will be a bit more balanced, and perhaps harder to defend against than it currently is.
TL;DR
OP thinks tourism should have benefits aside from late-game potential city flipping and a shot at a cultural victory.
since it's an illogical yield. Comparatively low yields are enough to start a religion and after a certain point in time, you don't need them anymore leading to large mid-game faith generation. It's too easy to max out faith production if you want to since it's a very volatile yield. We are already thinking of making Religion harder to get (by for example increasing the deltas for prophets (and maybe missionaries and other buildings as well?) or making prophets only pop one belief at a time. But that is a topic for another thread.
(read twice 
).
