Quote:That's an interesting path. I'm still not seeing mathematically where early tourism matters. Even 20 tourism from a bunch of faith buildings that way shouldn't be keeping up with AIs that should be at something like 100 culture/turn around the renaissance. It really seems like you need the later tourism multipliers to catch up tourism to culture. But I'll give it a shot at some point.
To be fair, I haven't played a Sacred Sites game on this latest patch (that nerfed Tradition). It worked well enough on the last one, though; I remember in particular a GOTM over on Civfanatics that seemed tailor-made for it, with Polynesia. (Can't find the link, unfortunately, as their website is down.)
But 100 culture/turn by the Renaissance? How would the AI manage that? Prior to Acoustics, you can get only 3/city from buildings (Monument, Amphitheatre). Most Wonders produce +1. There's up to 12 culture available from specialists and maybe 4-8 more from Great Works, but I'm not sure how much the AI prioritizes them. Beyond that, you have the Tradition/Honour openers, +1/city from Liberty, a few pantheons and... city-states. A major source of culture for the human player who monopolizes them, not so much for the AI. Culture does start to ramp up in the Renaissance but it's fairly low early on, enough that 20 tourism together with the open borders/shared religion/trade route multipliers is competitive. Civs that don't open with Tradition get steamrolled; those that do make fine targets for Great Musicians.
Quote:I like this thought, but how do you get enough diplomats to negotiate with them all? You only get one in the Renaissance.
Rotate the diplomat through AI capitals as fast as you can. It takes 1 turn to move and 5 turns to settle in, after which you can conduct negotiations and move on to the next target. The first Congress doesn't meet for 30 turns after the resolutions are submitted, so you can buy the votes of 4 civs, maybe 5. On a standard-sized map with 7 opponents, your vote plus 4 others is an absolute majority.
Note that if you founded the Congress, you get 1 extra vote, and need to secure just 3 more. If you founded the Congress and converted 2 other civs, you might need to buy only 1 leader's vote. (You should still rotate the diplomat through the capitals of your co-religionists, to confirm that they will be voting the right way.) The important thing is to set this up at the FIRST Congress. Later in the game, civs get more votes based on era, city-state allies, the Forbidden Palace, etc.. But you can still only buy 1 vote per civ, and you have fewer turns to do so.