We built this city

In the new expansion for Civ 6 there are all kinds of big features.  They heavily pitched the new disasters system where floods, volcanic eruptions, and other catastrophes change the course of the game, but one small footnote in the expansion seems likely to create huge changes - Rock Bands.  Rock Bands unlock late in the game and require Faith to purchase.  They get promotions of various kinds, and they have to travel to other civilizations to play concerts at Universities, Theatre Squares, Entertainment Complexes, and wonders.

Rock Bands that hold a concert generate a bunch of tourism and have a chance to disband after every concert.  Successful concerts lead to level ups, unsuccessful ones leads to disbands.  The higher level the Rock Band, the more the tourism gains and the lower the chance to disband.

This all sounds fine.  But!

The key to the bit is always the numbers.  How *much* tourism do Rock Bands generate?  Is it worth it?

The answer for my first playthrough was *A LOT* and *YES*.  I build five Rock Bands when they unlocked at an average cost of 800 Faith each.  Four of those bands disbanded quickly, generating a few thousand tourism, which was a weak investment, but no great disaster.  However, that fifth group had some successful concerts, levelled up to maximum, and then started playing gigs for 15,000 tourism each.  Rock Bands move fast around the map, so I was playing a gig every 3 turns or so.  That is 5,000 tourism per turn.  My entire civ generated 1,000 tourism per turn, and I was on my way to a tourism victory at the time.  It seems obvious that if you want a tourism victory you don't need great works, or to worry about tourism from other sources - just make sure to build a ton of holy sites to generate a huge faith bankroll, then make swarms of Rock Bands to rock your way to victory.

Rock Bands do other hilarious things too.  They can get a promotion that gives them 50% of their tourism gains in gold, and so I experimented and was able to easily get bands giving me 2,500 gold per turn each.  You can also cause a -50 loyalty penalty to a city in which they play, and I used that to effortlessly cause the capital city of another civ to leave their civ just by playing three gigs within its territory on three consecutive turns.

So the problem here isn't that Rock Bands are good for tourism victories.  They are *way* too good, and the entire game becomes about getting to them and then just winning, but at least that is what they are supposed to do.  The real problem is that they are absurd at everything else.  It doesn't matter what victory condition you are going for, 2,500 gold / turn will help a ton, so you should spec some Rock Bands for gold generation.  If you want extra cities (and who doesn't?) then you spec them to be rebels and cause enemy cities to flip so you can capture them via loyalty or force.

Civ 6 is already easy in the late game.  The AI just can't handle most of the endgame systems, and this is even more true now than it was before with the new Power Plant system that came in with the expansion.  But Rock Bands feel like cheat mode.  Once you get them, you will just win a tourism victory, no stopping it.  Also you have outrageous cash so you can buy military units or buildings or whatever else you need to keep yourself safe.  Plus you can wreck whole civs by flipping their big cities.  I think Rock Bands were meant to be a fun, thematic add on, and a way to spend faith in the late game to do cultural stuff.  Instead they are a super overpowered feature that totally wrecks the game the moment it shows up.

I am going to spend some time abusing it and laughing at how silly things become, but eventually I am going to have to mod that shit.

I have to give credit for Rock Bands in that they have fun promotions, the graphics work, and overall they are an enjoyable feature from a feel perspective.  But the balance of them is totally off, in a way that you can't ignore.  Somebody really needs to hire me to look at the numbers that get put into fields in games before they get shipped, I think.