The Culture Bomb

[Squid Meier]

Has anyone tried this seriously. I messed around a little on a small map (on my laptop) with four other civs.

The plan was to get a bare military and functional science but shove every possible investment into cultural improvements. So, having got to 4 cities, I developed all the culture I could and then took 3 cities from the Russians, one from the Romans and one from the Americans.

After all this, I was so far ahead and was able to chase tech and military improvements so it was only me against the, rather far away, French.

OK, this was only at one of the low levels (spare me, I'm a novice) but I wonder has anyone tried anything similar at a higher level?

[Martinus]

I managed to get 4 foreign cities join my Civ when playing as Frederick the Great on Noble. I suppose this is a viable strategy at all levels, as long as you have a military to defend yourself against those who might be pissed off at your "peaceful invasion".

[Datajack Franit]

are you playing civ4 on your laptop?? does it work?

(sorry for threadjacking, I was considering not buying it as I only have a laptop)

[Squid Meier]

Yeah - with an Ati card too (quite a big one with 128MB RAM). I have no problems, although I have not tried a map over small.

[Datajack Franit]

I'll buy it right now

[Saurus]

The culture bomb is perhaps the one thing that really makes the experience of playing civ 4 complete.

The most fun thing to do is to build a city in an area surrounded with foreign cities.
Then drop the bomb and watch your borders expand in every direction. In some cases this has seriously crippled the A.I civs - expecially if the cities affected were valuable to the A.I Suddenly losing some 90% of the working area around the city can render almost any city "obsolote".

[Grumbold]

I've had a lot of fun pushing borders in the late game and I often build cultural wonders in my border cities deliberately for that reason. I don't think its possible to take over the world culturally, but you can definitely pressurize key spots.

[quinalla]

Yup, I love the culture bomb. Even if I don't get cities to flip, it is great to throw it down in a new city to protect my territory or to push borders back to cripple the AI or get me some more resources. I really like it the most for mid/late game cities.

[gerf]

Originally posted by Datajack Franit
are you playing civ4 on your laptop?? does it work?

(sorry for threadjacking, I was considering not buying it as I only have a laptop)

I'm playing on an Averatec 6235, with integrated video (1.8GHz A64, 512MB -128MBvideo RAM). It's kinda choppy though, and I don't reccomend it. I imagine a video card in a new laptop would be spiffy enough

[jdchambe]

i've attempted the cultural domination on warlord and noble as well. on smaller maps you can sometimes get by with just culture and a good defense.

but my experience is that on the larger maps, you really have no choice but to go out on some military expeditions to beat up on the most powerful of the distant civilizations (the ones that are well out of range of your cultural borders) or else one of them might easily slip ahead of you in the end game. sometimes if you have a very solid starting position you can survive with out doing that, but otherwise, some muscling of those more distant opponents seems to be kind of necessary.

[JohnUghrin]

Originally posted by Martinus
I managed to get 4 foreign cities join my Civ when playing as Frederick the Great on Noble. I suppose this is a viable strategy at all levels, as long as you have a military to defend yourself against those who might be pissed off at your "peaceful invasion".

I had a game on Noble recently where I flipped 4-5 cities from China (all but the capital) and 2 from the Americans on my other border.

You just gotta love those Great Artists plopping down their Masterpieces in your border towns.

[akamal]

Originally posted by jdchambe
i've attempted the cultural domination on warlord and noble as well. on smaller maps you can sometimes get by with just culture and a good defense.

See here for a quick summary of a culture victory on Noble. Other than a couple of border skirmishes, and a quick city grab, I didn't fight any real wars. Kept the AI placated with trades and giving into most demands (oh, the shame!). I think that's the only way stay out of wars when your army is the weakest in the world, half the global average!

[Caltone]

Originally posted by gerf


I'm playing on an Averatec 6235, with integrated video (1.8GHz A64, 512MB -128MBvideo RAM). It's kinda choppy though, and I don't reccomend it. I imagine a video card in a new laptop would be spiffy enough

Just to add a little on this side topic: I'm playing it fine on a Dell D800 (Nvidia FxG05200 64mb, Pent 2ghz, and 2gb ram) Plays OK but a little sluggish. I generally take large maps too.

Tonight for the first time in a week, I played on my desktop again (Ati X800Pro 256mb, xp2500+ and 2gb ram) The performance increase is amazing. I even turned on AA and AF. Still its definately playable on a laptop, I think the extra ram makes a big difference.

We now return this thread back to our regularly scheduled culture bomb discussion.

Has anyone seen the AI lay a culture bomb?

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Caltone
Has anyone seen the AI lay a culture bomb?

Yes, the romans did it in one of my early games. They actually did it only to save one of their cities which was already suffocated by one of mine, and basically this move delayed the culture flip to me with good 500-1000 years, I don't remember exactly. It was annoying, what can I say. The city had a revolt a few turns before and I was already preparing to annex it when they plopped their great artist in it. Bleh, annoying

[jdchambe]

Originally posted by akamal


See here for a quick summary of a culture victory on Noble. Other than a couple of border skirmishes, and a quick city grab, I didn't fight any real wars. Kept the AI placated with trades and giving into most demands (oh, the shame!). I think that's the only way stay out of wars when your army is the weakest in the world, half the global average!

you do largely the same thing i do when I win with a culture victory. I notice that you used a pangea map though. Pangea is a little easier to deal with than a continent or island map of the same size. It is much easier to carve out a nice niche for your empire on a pangea map than it is with others. and it is much less likely for the starting positions of the AI players to be unbalanced relative to your own.

What i've discovered is that on larger maps with continents or islands, if you get stuck on a continent with a couple other AI players (which happens often)and an AI player like ganhdi or mansu is on a larger continent with a lot of room to grow and little competition, and you go the full peace route, you will not be able to win. if an AI opponent with a large and stable empire focuses on a space victory and no one wages war to slow them down, I think the culture victory will be impossible.

that is my experience anyway. the ease of the culture victory really depends on the size of the map, the type of map, and upon whether or not the peaceful rulers who like to win via the space victory are in the game, and where they happen to be.

to be prepared for all possibilities, you need some military force, IMO.