Tourism - What am I doing Wrong?

[QuipCloud]

Hi, I brought Brave New World last week and have been spending every spare moment playing it and greatly enjoying it, but I have yet to win a single game. It's reaching the point where it's beginning to impede on the fun I get out of playing.

Basically, almost every time, no matter what the conditions are or what civilization I play, it is impossible to get any meaningful degree of tourism from my civilization. I've played as France and as Brazil, the two tourism-heavy civs and both have been equally useless seemingly. The problem is no matter how hard I try it's impossible to balance staying ahead scientifically and in terms of my military and find time to produce all the wonders you seemingly need to get one of these new culture victories. It doesn't help that tourism itself does zilch to help you out for the majority of the game - you're basically pouring production into something that does nothing to help you until the very end when you can get techs like 'The Internet'.

And perhaps the worst problem - in every game there seems to be this runaway civ that is good at everything - but worst is that this AI is often obsessed with tourism and will rush nearly every good wonder. The times I have played it has been Catherine (oddly enough), Kamehameha and al-Rashid - who (joy of joys) has now become the most aggressive religious fanatic ever and insists Islam must be the ONLY religion.

In the end I may have a decent amount of tourism, but at that point the year is 2030, Sejong is about to win a space victory and Alexander is about to win a diplomatic victory or something. Please don't just say "The first rule of winning is not to lose" - I know this. My point is I don't get how you are supposed to win in this particular way.

How do you win a cultural victory? Am I meant to be aiming to be a wide civ or a tall civ? Is it essential to have every cultural wonder? What ideologies do I choose?

I'm playing on King difficulty. Previously this was the ideal difficulty for me - enough to offer a challenge but never enough to become frustrating.

 

[Baron2]

Do you have the three guilds on a city with a garden ?

 

[Securion]

Open Borders and Trade routes are very important to get more pressure, as well as getting Great Musicians and rock concert/tourism bomb them with. Use a Great Artist in the late game to bomb yourself with if you are getting heavy tourism from someone else.
If someone hates you and dont want Open Borders so you get Open Border tourism bonus as well as an ability to get Great Musicians into his territory for concerts... then your only option is to go to war.

 

[krozman]

On Emperor i'm getting Great Library about 70% of the time. When talking about tourism you have two dynamics: The ability to produce the great people and the slots to put them in (with associated theming bonuses). So don't focus on the Oracle anymore. It's not important.
Go 1. Great Library.
2. Parthenon (optional, but if you're teching well and didn't have to research the lower half much to get your worker going it's very doable).
3. Globe Theatre and the Leaning tower.

On skill levels below emperor you can get a dominant religion AND all the culture wonders, but on Emperor+ you kinda have to pick one and avoid wonders that are normally very nice but not on your victory path (i.e. hanging gardens, chitzen Itza, Hagia Sophia)

Second part: Producing the great people. Right now i'm getting turn 250-300 culture victories on Emperor with the following. I'm certain it can be done better, but this is a good start.

1. Capital city needs to grow at all times and have decent production. Your capital will produce ALL wonders but NOT the artist/musician/writer producers.
2. 2nd city needs to be high food and "ok" production. This city will produce all 3 of your great people producers. When each building is built, immediately manually delegate 2 pop in the slots to make them spawn faster.
3. Capital and 3rd city EACH send first two trade routes as FOOD to 2nd city. Unless 2nd city is next to lake Victoria (6 food), by the time you build the musician guild your population growth will be abysmal even with a granary. Get 8 food sent there and the city will function fine.
4. 2nd City is the city that builds the national monument (25% to great people), and with the leaning tower and eventually artist production from world congress you will have a city generating great people very quickly.

By the time you research Acoustics and start building your mid game wonders like Sistine chapel, you'll have this 3 city setup working for you.

By the way if you're wondering how you manage military and all that "other stuff," that's what your 3rd city is doing.

This strategy changes obviously if you get shaka next to you, but most of my games don't have a pre turn 100 war most of the time. Just have to have a couple archers that you upgrade as you go.

P.S. Theming bonuses are VERY important. Always remember that generally speaking the best and most recent wonder will have the best theming bonus, so don't be afraid to temporarily sacrifice your great library people to make something like the Uffuzi or Louve work out.


Also, it is NOT critical to beeline archeology. By the time you're done with Sistene chapel you are probably going to be involved in some form of war by then, or very soon. You cannot, after going heavy culture for 100-150 turns, ignore getting your crossbowman. Get them done and upgraded, and only AFTER Industrialization do I quickly finish the upper path to Archeology. The Archeology part is very important, but it involves producing the units AND the museums necessary to produce any theming bonus for you at all. It's more work than you think.

Remember that by the time you get to Hotels, your cultural influence will probably (even if you do well) be only 30% on some civs. That significantly changes after you get Hotels, Broadcast towers and the Freedom booster to tourism. You can go from 50 to 150 tourism very quickly and you'll know by then if your victory conditions work.

The thing to watch for at this point, is making sure you don't get screwed by the world congress. I generally am too busy to build the Forbidden palace and I don't "yet" have serious money for buying city states, so a few bad policies will go against you possibility. Remember that the "easier" tourism route is to get civs that are not cultural (like you could get alexander, shaka, rome, etc) BUT that advantage turns into a disadvantage with the world congress, as every AI civ will likely oppose important cultural boosters (and you need open borders, diplomats in their capitals, trade routes, happiness to boost your tourism).

 

[joncnunn]

I suspect the main problem is not enough science output.
Even if you're not after a science victory, more science will allow you a better shot at building those tourism wonders before the AI.

Also, unless you're playing Venice which has no choice; don't put all your Guilds in the same city; they need spread out given how the growth formula works. And I would agree that you don't have to put any guild at all in the capital (if you go 4 city), especially if you're planning on planting several academies in the capital.

And also on trade routes, make them all cargo ships. (I think the nerf bat is going to be applied in the first patch to the internal trade routes given how good 8 food is.)

 

[Yzman]

This advice is very helpful, unfortunately I did not follow it all since I hadn't read this topic and I have all of my guilds in my capital. I am sending food trade routes to it though so my growth isn't hindered. I am doing France. The game is only on prince so maybe I will be OK.

Thanks for the extensive strategy write up though!

 

[godotnut]

Some good advice in this thread. I would add as Brazil, build the Chichen Itza. Use your last 3 or 4 artists on golden ages, and you will get more out of them. Use some of your musicians to balance out the speed by which you achieve influential. Bribe cultural city states away from civs that are taking longer to achieve influential, to slow down their defense.

I like a four or five city empire with wonder spam and production powerhouse in capital, great artist/writer/musician farm in another high food city, a third city in a good location for trade routes focused on gold, and a fourth city that focuses on units. All cities can be hybrid to some extent, but BNW seems to reward city specialization more than G&K.

 

[LiviCar]

P.S. Theming bonuses are VERY important. Always remember that generally speaking the best and most recent wonder will have the best theming bonus, so don't be afraid to temporarily sacrifice your great library people to make something like the Uffuzi or Louve work out.

I've found the theming bonuses to be really underwhelming. +2 basically for each wonder? yes, then double that under certain bonuses. But considering you will be generating like 30-40 tourism points in late game, this does not add up to much. And consider all the effort put into building those wonders that require it in the first place. I just think the bonuses should be worth more or not so wonder-dependent. I think there is one non-wonder building where you can have a bonus? Wish there were more.

By the way, in my Brazil game I have been dominating tourism the entire game but it's still taking me 280+ turns and I still have 2 civs to dominate. No wars until recently, but overcoming other culture is hard even at King level for me, unless you just go to war.

So I'm still finding culture victory only a very late prospect that takes a lot of very specific planning ahead. It seems like culture output is easier to achieve for civs and it's still a long slog to the actual victory condition. It is more fun than the old way, at least. Maybe I'm just lazy, because some of the strategies you guys lay out involve so much pre-planning and thinking

FYI the worst feeling ever is when you send an Archaeologist to a dig and realize too late that you have no slot for the artifact, thus it becomes a worthless landmark in the middle of nowhere! that is just killing me....