Cultural Victory

[QuestGAV]

In my last game (standard Continents, Prince, Bismarck) I wasn't really trying for a cultural victory but I did get 3 cities up over 35,000 culture. I'm thinking the key to a cultural victory is going to be the cathedral buildings. So you'll need at least 9 cities and as many religions as possible in all of them. I had 4 religions in each city by the end of the game, but I didn't go through the full conversion process until later on. So if each of those 9 cities builds a temple for each religion you can build 3 of each cathedral. That's +50% culture x (# of religions). Get this going early enough and you might have a shot. Obviously you're going to need wonders and multiple other improvements generating culture as well, as +50% of zero is still zero.

Maybe religion isn't just a bit of surplus cash, but also the backbone of a cultural victory.

[ProfRansom]

I tried a culture victory this weekend, and really struggled at it. I got some cities up to around 20,000 by the time I reached the 1950s, but by then it seemed to be too late in the game to make it.

I'm going to make experimenting with cultural victories a pet project for my next few games. Does anyone want to post any suggestions? Anyone successfully won a cultural victory yet?

Probably my biggest question is: do you use great artists to generate the 4000 points or do you use them as specialists? The math I've done seems to suggest that doing the former is a no-brainer if you're wanting to build up to a cultural victory, regardless of where you are in the game.

[QuestGAV]

I think it'd have to be extremely early in the game and you'd have to be counting on some huge cultural multipliers in order for it to make sense to use great artists as specialists. And by the time those multipliers are achievable you've already had a great number of the game's turns elapse.

[MasterDave]

In a game last weekend I managed to get my capital city over 50K culture by around 1870, but that was because it was a wonder Haven (I think I had eight World Wonders, the National Epic, and Hermitage there, and also had every possible culture building including temples, monastaries, and cathedrals for three religions in there. Also, I had two artist specialists in there doing their thing, the Sistene Chapel effect (2 extra culture per specialist), and the "creative" leader trait. I did not use any "culture bombs" on my capital preferring to send my great artists to my border towns instead.

Getting three cities to this level would seem to be extremely difficult under the default game rules, especially on Prince level where I usually play. I suppose with spaceship victories turned off, the additional 50 turns or so that would buy might make it possible, but it still seems like a daunting task. I guess I would take great pride in winning a victory like that.

[xxFlukexx]

Yeah I was gonna start a thread on my experiences with the cultural victory, I've been experimenting with cultural victories since only yesterday so I haven't perfected it yet.

First cultural victory on the books for me is on noble, standard settings, win at 1940 AD.

For one cultural victory is extremely boring and if someone declares war on you it can really jack you up. And secondly, the city AI sometimes feels it's good to make a few citizens science specialists which in turn gives me great scientists instead of artist, arggggh bad AI bad.


Yeah, most of the core cultural techs are in the middle of the tech tree so it's really hard to get 50k in 3 cities. Yeah, definetly use Great Artists for the +4k culture bomb, the great specialist takes over 300 turns to pump out more culture than the 4k instant culture bomb.

I haven't found the perfect leader to use yet. Saladin is pretty good, I founded 5/7 of the religions last game but meh after 4 religions spreading religion is a pain. Ghandi and Frederick are also good choices for a cultural leader.

I'll do a better write up when I perfect my strategy.

[daktaklakpak]

I manage to get 1 city to reach 75k and two near 20k around 1950 in my current noble game.

[Glostakarov]

Fredrick is your man. Philosophical is a must for the great people, and creative is a mild culture boost. If I go into a game planning a culture victory I designate two cities (plus capitol of course) to focus on. Of the three, specialize one of them on artist wonders, one on science, and the third on priests. The important one to keep "pure" is the artists; get too much of a mix and you won't consistently produce great artists from that city. Develop the land so as to maximize production points while still allowing enough food for a couple specialists once they top out. When the cities aren't producing wonders or +hammer buildings, they should be "building" culture.

Early-game great artists should be made into academies/super-specialists but by the middle ages they are better used as culture bombs. Once the holy buildings have been built the great prophets should all be used as super-specialists by one of your culture cities. Super-specialists don't produce culture, but the priests produce 2 hammers, which is 1 culture per turn when building culture. Great merchants are even better, as they make food which can let you support more artists.

[Jcg316]

Creative means nothing for a culture victory. The long term numbers are worth about one Great Artist. Philosophical is best and anything like expansive or aggressive will benefit more than creative.

The trick to culture victories is making sure your great people are Artists, or a few earlier engineers for wonders. A scientist or two for academies could be good as well.

It is easy, important, and practically necessary to maintain 0% culture rate so you do not drop behind other civs in other facets.

You need:
-Balance in culture between cities, one with 75,000 is an enormous waste.
-Firing off your Great Artists to win, not get around 40,000 in each city and watching almost the entire world attack you.
-A fourth city that is near enough to the third, before using artists, that you can make up for losing the third or to a smaller extent the second most cultural of your cities.
-Massive GPP numbers to break the 1900s and even more to get near the 1850s and better.
-Not to have many extraneous non-artist birthrate wonders in your best GPP city to limit non-artist great people. In general have to spread wonders between cities to avoid wasting 75,000+ in one city.
-Representation civic, Caste System civics.
-About 200-350 culture per turn rates near the mid to end (without culture rate) and at least 20 Great Artists and many more to be able to win in a solid timeframe.

In singleplayer culture victories can be easy, consistent, and effective. It also gets boring very, very, very fast.

Great Artists should always be saved as the logistical benefits far out weighs the slight long term gain to culture. The first one or two being put in a second city though can be worth it if they are your earliest Great People.

[favedave]

I did my first cultural victory win.

I did it with Ghandi, because he's industrious which helps with the wonders that are really helpful.

I went for as many religions as i could get - i got 6 out of 7, so i could contorl the religions, and then with building all the culture enhancing wonders.

This is nice because my neighbors picked up my first religion which meant they were less likely to attack me. Also, I got money from their cities.

I also used my capitol to pump out prophets so I could get the shrines and make the money. I ended up with making 80 gold a turn from thse shrines.

But the main reason to get all the religions is so you can get all the religions in 3 key cities and get the cathedrals. You need at least 9 cities with temples to each religion, since you can buld 1 cathedral per every 3 temples. And cathedrals are +50% culture.

I used my second biggest city to build the wonders that help pump out Great Artists. I had great artist points in all cities that made GP. THroughout the entire game, i only got prophets and artists.
Then, i had the artists sit and wait till the end of the game. I had 10 great artists sitting around by the end! I ended up with 9 Prohpets, and the ones that didn't build their shrines simply were added as permanent specialists in the two other culture building cities.

It's important to have all the artist-making points in one city, and the prophet making points in another.

And spread the wonders around to keep your cities as even as possible in terms of culture producing, although your capitol will always be ahead.

So - that's what worked for me: many religions for culture producing cathedrals, etc., and wonders for the GP and culture points.

Interestingly, I rarely set my culture slider over 0. It didn't make much difference. It's more important to keep your science and money coming in so you can stay ahead of the other civs in terms of units, and use the money to buy the cultural buildings quickly.

Also, with all that money, I could upgrade my bowmen, etc. to modern units when I was invaded.

Kublai Khan was slowly taking over the world, but I kept appeasing him and giving him stuff to not attack me. I even joined his side in a war to take out other players so he'd leave me alone.

Then, when he started making his first spaceship components, my 3 big cities had culture at 38,000+, so I used my great artists that I'd had waiting for centuries and boom! I had three legendary cities over 50,000 in one turn.

The culture route requires very careful city planning for GP production and control of at least 4 religions, and a real emphasis on food.

I really emphasized food production in order to keep a lot of specialists working a lot of the time. They really pump out the culture and GP points.

So Ghandi is the best for this strategy since Industrious gives 50% discount on wonders.

Saladin is also good because he gives +100% GP birth rate, and those Great Artists are crucial to winning this way. Never use Great Artists till the very end "for teh win"!

BTW, I was attacked 4 times during the game, so you have to keep some kind of standing army. Horse archer then Cavalry is best for responding to these threats.

Also,l one of my neighbor's cities flipped to me from culture. And when I took another neighbor's city through combat, my high culture had it becoming productive very quickly.

So, culture is a very long term game.

You need:
religion, GP, lots of specialists (and that means lots of food.)

And wonders that help you get those things.

[Aeson]

Very interesting discussion here.

Spoiler:

The fastest I've gotten a cultural victory is ~1300AD on Quick/Prince with founding all 7 Religions. It will be a later date on Standard due to some scaling discrepancies, but most things scale pretty well. Difficulty is the big difference maker, as the higher you go the fewer religions you can found. I've grabbed all 7 on Monarch a couple times, but it's not a given to even get 5. I find I can always get 4 or more on Monarch. At Deity, it's very tough. Might be better to hope for the AI to spread the religions to you than to try for them and leave yourself economically and militarily so weak early on.

The main thing for Cultural victory is founding religions, getting those Cathedrals up, and then spamming Great Artists for settlement and later Great Works. Start out with heavy production cities until you've built all the Temples, Missionaries, and Cathedrals at least. Prioritize the Cathedrals, and spread them around as they become available. Monasteries and Libraries are great builds too. Then swap over to maxed commerce until you get to Free Speech for +100% Culture. Then max out Food for Artist specialists in all cities and spam Great Artists.

Alternatively, you can go heavy Towns to increase your Culture slider effect in your cultural centers. You'll have fewer Artists in those cities, so it would be important to have at least a few other high food cities that could spit out the Artists.

The Parthenon and Heroic epic are very key wonders. Build the Heroic Epic in the city that can support the most Specialists. The Parthenon can be built in any of your 3 Culture cities. The Hermitage should be built in the city with the least cultural potential. Pick up what you can of course, but not at the expense of founding Religions or impacting your Great Artist production.

Then build Culture, spamming Great Artists (settle at least several of them to even things out) and using the Culture slider as high as you feel safe doing after getting to Nationalism. If you're lucky and have grabbed all the religions, that's 7x50% from Cathedrals, for +350% culture rate. The city with the Hermitage will be getting +450%, and with Nationhood, your 3 cities will be at +450%, +450%, and +550%.

Settling a Great Artist will give a bit of coin (helps run higher Culture rate at least) and 12cpt * 6.5 = 78cpt, which will only take 52 turns to beat out the Great Work at 4000 up front. In a city without the Hermitage, settling the Great Artist will give 12 * 5.5 = 66, which will take 61 turns to beat out the Great Work. So if you do have all these Cathedrals, until you are within that range of triggering Cultural victory, it's best to settle. Then use Great Works to even up at the end.

PHI is probably the best for this. IND is good too, but you can't mix it with PHI, and if you build too many wonders it actually hurts you because you end up getting non-Artist specialists more often. FIN is great when you're running a high Culture rate. SPI is probably what you want with PHI though, as you need to start with Mysticism to have the best chances at all 7 of the religions.

Civics are pretty straightforward. Representation to get the most out of all those Artist Specialists and allow you to still tech a bit after going high on the Cultural rate. Free Speech for the +100% bonus to Culture and for the +2 from Towns, which you should have some of at least. Caste System so you can run unlimited Artist Specialists. Mercantilism/Free Market is the only real question. The extra Trade Route does increase Commerce, and thus Culture from the slider. The free Artist can make up some of that, and the GP points increase Great Artist production. Generally I'd say go with Mercantilism. Pacifism is a given of course.

Quick is a bit different than normal, as you get more out of a Great Work in relation to number of turns in the game. Same with Epic (in the other direction).

[Dis]

see my thread in general. I was playing a large terran world and couldn't get it .

I had all 3 of my cities over 65,000 points. I guess I need 75,000 points or higher. I'm not sure what the number is.

It sucks. the only way I can beat this game is spaceship victory.

edit: I think I can do it now after reading this thread though. The problem is I didn't decide to do a culture victory until the middle of the game when I looked at my cities and thought they had a lot of culture, and thus, the potential of doing it. But it does seem to take some micro management from the very beginning.

[Aeson]

Was it an Epic speed game? The requirement scales by speed.

[Dis]

yep it was epic. I'm gussing I needed 75,000.

[Jcg316]

For multiplayer in general the only thing you can rely on is Great Artists. In MP you need to maintain 0% culture rate to not be damaged in other facets. You need to hide Great Artists, even to the extreme of near/under the icecaps in subs, otherwise you will get cities razed when you're seen with the culture + great artists. If they take your capitol you were putting a ton of culture into and hit the raze button, you're toast.

Religions can be very, very dangerous, besides you having no better shot of founding them than any other players going after them, you'll be very vulnerable and letting them see into your cities is terrible.

As a whole letting other players have any idea what you're doing is a good way to get the whole world after you, falling behind in science is a great way to get killed by anyone wanting easy land and building more wonders is much harder in that situation.

In SP you can use three cathedral buildings per religion or two if you will fire off Great Artists for city 3/4 (fourth to protect in case third or maybe second most cultural is razed), though that isn't nearly as necessary without aggressive AI and certain specific civs next to you. Six temples would work don't have to have nine. Some maps will be tough to stretch out and expand quick enough to grab that much land.

In quick games the ability to generate close enough Great Artist numbers to normal let you hit the 25,000 marks far quicker, especially since their numbers aren't even halved to match city numbers. Diminishing returns for GPP have more of an effect as games stretch out over more turns in normal/epic. At 2680 instead of 4000 at 53 GPP then 107 GPP for the second and so on.

[QuestGAV]

I've been too busy with school and work the past few days to try implementing any of this myself, I should get at least a couple hours to play tonight. Does the AI make a concerted effort to take you down a peg in if you approach a cultural victory in SP, or can you blindside it?