Ugh, rock bands?

[Dendonker]

Rock bands provide tourism bursts for the civs they perform in/hosts, am I right? I'm trying to get a culture victory on deity and I'm performing concerts in Giant Death Robot Land that leads in every category while I just formed my second infrantry corps and all my band is doing is helping my opponent? This can't be right.

[Exemplar]

You send rock bands to garner foreign tourists from that opponent to your total...

The "burst" seems big, but depending on modifiers, you might not be very efficient. I dunno, can't see your game.

You are very brave to try culture victory on deity without fully understanding all the mechanisms. I "think" that's the word for it. he he.

[Dendonker]

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Rock_Band_(Civ6)

The main result (and the reason for the unit's existence) from each concert is a Tourism6 Tourism burst applied to the host nation.

So it's applied to the civ to whom the rock band belongs, not the "host nation"? And what's this about records sold being a multiplier? Looking at the rankings screen all that is shown are turn rates and a bubble getting filled with no information, lol. So there's a total tourism score that accumulates and you win when the bubble fills? That doesn't seem to make sense with the description for a cultural victory being that you attract a majority of all tourists if I'm not mistaken. Even the tourism screen makes very little sense in giving you a good impression of how you're doing. The big numbers provide foreign tourists attracted without totals of any sort whereas hovering over them you see an abstract tourism score, with no meaning attached to it. At this point (turn 400/750) I've passed the other civs in the tourism and culture rates and my bubble is not that far behind in third but I've little idea how I'm supposed to judge the distance from victory, which eventually will become relevant.

I tend to play by doing what seems logical and trusting that the "mechanics" fit in accordingly, hence why I got a rock band when it became available (fortunately I acquired AI cities with holy sites as that was a district I never build whereas the AI adores it, which turned out to be relevant when the natural park founders popped up). In this deity game I've expanded about as well as I could have, getting lucky along the way and rolling back to earlier saves where I've deemed necessary. I've kept military production to a minimum, producing many of my units when I mistakenly thought I needed to assault a free city that ended up joining me for free fortuitously right before I was invited to an advantageous war against an overextended civ, and then I needed to roll back too as I was introduced to the point of formally making friends and subsequently alliances. My starting location seems to have been very well isolated and no one has started an aggressive war against me despite being able to easily roll me over. You know about the bonuses the AI gets for being badly implemented so you take the good with the bad I suppose. I prey on weakness, which is a good principle to follow in general as the best way to victory seems to be acquisition of more cities given greater production of everything and no penalties. I still don't get how the AI can develop impressively with virtually no tiles being improved due to the close proximity of its cities but anyway. I've been focusing on science and culture districts from early on with culture being emphasized later on, so being able to settle well enough (4 cities, then I got lucky with the way number 5 flipped due to an ill conceived invasion from a third party and my desperation to wedge a city in between two of other civs so I can get a fourth) and expand with a small military is the best I can envision. Twice the AI gifted me relatively developed cities by losing loyalty.

Anyway, largely due to the AI a domination victory on immortal was stupid easy and turned into an enormous drag and waste of time. I was either going to stop playing this game or would have to jump to deity. Given my temporal life/irl is at the opposite end of the spectrum and the gaming industry sucks deity it was. This game has interesting aspects, gets some dopamine out. Turns out my religion game was impossible as perhaps the balanced starting locations option I used backfired and doomed me. It became obvious, along with talking about it here, that you have to try to race the AI hard to the seven religions and my two neighbors would wipe me off the map before I got anywhere close, not to mention how quickly religions were getting snatched. With most civs it may even be impossible to get to a religion. One person used Russia, which gets a bonus, and in order to get a religion he/she ended up being behind like one to seven cities.

Lastly, I think some people who believe understanding everything is crucial are indulging in flights of fancy.

[Dendonker]

By the way, I found that site more helpful in answering questions and providing information than the game, in part due to convenience and in bigger part due to being better written in what and how information is presented. It amuses me how presumptuous developers get in the leeway they expect to be given by players in presenting their games. Going through the bother of making games and not understanding players were not on the development team.

[Rhudda]

Originally posted by Bobby:

Looking at the rankings screen all that is shown are turn rates and a bubble getting filled with no information, lol.

Check that screen again. There are tabs at the top, one of which says "culture". Click that for more information.

I don't have time right now to go through the rest of your post, but I'm sure someone else more competent than me will be along shortly.

[Dendonker]

Cool. :) My fault. Some things still seem pretty random to me or without proper context but at least I know where to look for victory. Nice to have a science chain too. Hopefully two out of five isn't too much progress. How effective would spies be in slowing that down at the eleventh hour? Would I get invaded in retaliation?

So how do rock bands help you in attracting tourists? What is the significance of abstract tourism?

[Synavix]

Culture victory is basically a tug-of-war between every civ. A simple explanation is that your total tourism generated over the entire game is your "offense" and your total culture (plus culture inspirations) is your "defense". In the culture victory screen those totals are converted into smaller numbers as foreign tourists (the result of your tourism total) and domestic tourists (the result of your total culture). To win you need to get your foreign tourists to be higher than every other players' domestic tourists.

The actual calculations are a bit different, but essentially that means getting your total tourism higher than their culture. If you use a rock band in a different civ's territory it gives you a boost to your total tourism to that civ only. If you can keep it alive to perform several times it will give you the equivalent of several or dozens of turns worth of tourism every time. They can be a bit tricky because of the randomness but as long as you're careful about using your level up bonuses to reduce the chance of them dying you can keep getting more and more from each performance.

To win without the rock bands you basically just need to keep building up your passive multipliers (also show in the culture victory screen if you mouse over the brown suitcase icons) like the policy cards and +25% from trade routes and open borders. And building more and more high appeal culture/tourism tiles.

I haven't really played the science victory in Gathering Storm yet so I'm not sure about the new stuff, but spies were pretty good about stopping AI science victories before. They won't really go to war with you over it either, even if they do catch you. But it will only delay them for a little while so unless you're close to winning another way your only real safe bet is to capture their cities.

[Dendonker]

That's better. So tourism is not just a per turn value it's a total across the game that is compared to culture totals of other players? Hmm, maybe I shouldn't be ignoring tourism policies until the toward the end although other policies help you grow which may be the best way to go about it, up to a certain point I suppose. Does the appeal of tiles on its own improve tourism? Because when I look at the tourism screen showing foreign tourist numbers those seem to be few and far between and not on ordinary tiles, so I don't get that.

I don't think there's a military option with the Giant Death Robots guy. I actually don't know what happened there. His empire isn't that big, yet he absolutely crushed it in science along with having a very powerful military and leading in everything else most of the time. I can see myself building up against other civs quite fine, civs that have a similar number of cities, at least the ones I've seen, but this guy is in another league.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Bobby:

Does the appeal of tiles on its own improve tourism?

No.

[Synavix]

Generally the earlier you can get the policies or great people bonuses for tourism the better. But of course the bonus is much larger later on so if you don't have room in your policies right away it isn't the end of the world. But you should definitely try to meet every civ as quickly as you can (no tourism generated for that civ until you meet) and start working on open borders/spreading trade routes.

Appeal on its own doesn't generate tourism, but any regular tile that does generate tourism is increased by appeal. So a 6 appeal seaside resort will give more tourism than a 4 appeal resort. After researching "Flight" every tile improvement that gives gives culture (including things like unique civ improvements like great wall, chateau, pairidaeza, etc) will also start generating tourism. An improvement like Liang's City Park is like a double bonus since it provides culture (so it generates tourism on its own after Flight) and also provides bonus appeal to boost neighboring resorts/parks.

[Exemplar]

Originally posted by Bobby:

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Rock_Band_(Civ6)

The main result (and the reason for the unit's existence) from each concert is a Tourism6 Tourism burst applied to the host nation.

It's worded this way because the tourism reward isn't to all opponents, as your tourism value at the top of the screen is. It is an amount of tourism (culture victory offense as stated above) directed at one opponent, netting your foreign tourists from that opponent.

There's a difference between the "value: tourism" and the "amount of foreign tourists". You get tourism per turn from great works, relics, natl parks, resorts. You net foreign tourists, accumulated, over time, from each empire, and the speed at which this happens is related to comparison tourism plus/minus bonus/penalties.

[Prometheus]

Originally posted by Exemplar:

[
There's a difference between the "value: tourism" and the "amount of foreign tourists". You get tourism per turn from great works, relics, natl parks, resorts. You net foreign tourists, accumulated, over time, from each empire, and the speed at which this happens is related to comparison tourism plus/minus bonus/penalties.

This is correct. Think of tourism as Great People Points, and the foreign tourists you get as Great People. It is the same concept.

[Despiser]

I agree, rock is the scourge of civilization. Ugh!

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by Despiser:

I agree, rock is the scourge of civilization. Ugh!

You are speaking of the game music right? You would not have just dropped an insult to all the people around the world who enjoy and prefer rock music in general.

[Dendonker]

O snap.

[Dendonker]

"Civilizations within 10 tiles receive 50% of the Tourism from this concert."

What does this mean? Weird wording if you're the beneficiary.