The Culture Bomb

[vodka_mike]

What are the conditions of a cultural victory?

I thought there was:

1. Military: elimination of all other cultures.
2. Space Race: build the first space craft.
3. something about the UN? I had all the resolutions passed, but the environmental one. the other guys just wouldn't do it.

I was playing as the Indians and I made it through the entire game without acting in anger against anyone except for a few barbarians and lions who were terrorizing my workers. I think I had the largest army though. All defensive city garrisons.

I won with space race though because I had a ton of money and loads of research capability. That was only my second game. The first time I was invaded by the American's, Aztecs and Japanese. The sqwashed me like a bug. Bastards! I was quite put off that the first game of the new version beat me...

anyways....what are the conditions...

[ahsingjai]

I like to culturally attack neighbors and declare war on civs that are one civ land away. Launching attacks across open border territory. From that point, I can hurt the enemy while having open borders and with the possibility that they can't reach me. While my culture is unchallenged and growing.

[Bobby Chicken]

Cultural Bombs are great. You gotta love it when you take a size 7+ city and eliminate its cultural radius.

[Arachnidragon]

Perhaps I'm a genius... or maybe I'm normal But whichever the case I just played civ4 for the first time. It's ungodly slow but the graphics are beautiful. For my first attempt, and the game just crashed in the year 2039 so I'm here looking for tips (already have the spaceship built) when it occurred to me that I have bragging rights. I have not, since beginning the game, employed any military weapons. Through political and economic pressures I have maintained global peace for 3000 years, I founded Taoism and Confucianism and am still giving away education for free to the AIs, and not once in all this time have I left or had any visitors on my glorious economic continental empire.... one of the currently 13 in the world. I haven't even explored so much as the island next to mine. I won without building a military unit for 5000 years, and without advancing military technologies until dead last. I had Rock and Roll before I had archers. Anyway, done bragging. I just thought it was appropriate of me to put this bragging in the "Culture bomb" section. Rather an appropriate means of spreading your influence through a game developed by and for propagandists.

[Arachnidragon]

Forgot to mention, I outlawed nukes in 1410

[Arachnidragon]

Final note, the Three gorges Dam doesn't SEEM like a cultural bomb, but I guarantee you, it very much is. If you combine it with the Eiffel Tower, you control the minds and jobs of the industrial world.Combine that with your pacifism, and what you have is "Radio Free ArmyAnts" rapidly breeding and spreading like a plague of memetic jelly. You can, and probably will, undermine everything you come into contact with. The internet also doesn't SEEM like a culture bomb, however, if you have played Alpha Centauri.... Anyway, Sid's a smart guy, and Norbert Elias isn't as dull as he wants you to believe. Let us not forget that there were two major aspects of world war two. The nuclear weapon, and global broadcast of the nuclear weapon. The first transmission that ever flew into space from earth that was generated by humans as a communication... is one Adolph Hitler giving the first globally televised speech, his state of the nation address. The pen is mightier than the sword.

[Artuero]

I never tried this before, but as Ghandi in a noble terra game, I noticed that my borders were encroaching three of Mansa Musa's cities. I started having the nearby cities produce culture (and went into a golden age at the same time) and it made a huge difference. In pretty short order I had two of the cities and the third is in revolt.

[belladonna]

i am absolutely shocked that no one's mentioned my *favorite* use of culture bombs.

(you can't do this all the time, but when you can, it'll give you a HUGE advantage)

strategic city placement + use of culture bombs (and no open borders) can sometimes allow you to block off sections of land from the other civilizations on your continent early in the game. this will give you time to develop the land at your own pace without competition until your neighbors begin putting settlers on boats. they don't do it as quick as you'd think, the other day i was alone on a fairly large island with spain and was able to block her two cities and put down 8 more of my own before she had a settler on a boat.

it gave me a wee bit of financial trouble at first (research was down to 60% for a while), but when we met the rest of the civilizations who were light years ahead of us, a bit of smart trading soon made me the most advanced civ in the world!

[Arachnidragon]

Okay, I have practiced some more and found several intriguing utilities for culture.

First of all, the tech tree can be climbed from any angle, there are three crisis events in the tech tree that you have to prepare yourself for during a cultural domination game.

Before I explain that, here's a note to anyone that is an avid fan of Alpha Centauri. Pretend you're the fungus.

When you generate military units, and don't by the way unless you can already count the enemy's units at the city pressing your borders, which won't be an issue if you manage your diplomacy well and never make a downtrade on tech (give it away for free, it sounds crazy, but it's the very best tactic at your disposal for a cultural victory except in the case of france, he sucks, treat France like a whining dog, works great.)

You want to pursue any and everything involving books as fast as you can and don't pay any attention to anything else at all. Maybe your 2 standard workers for each town, of course, and try to get a little jumpstart with 2 cities if possible. Only time it isn't possible is during raging barbarians anyway.

As you pursue the book path up the tech tree, you'll notice that the developers were nice enough to make that pathway readily apparent by the fact that it's usually the most expensive tech available to you until you have the Eiffel Tower anyway. It seems like a setback until you start seeing the cumulative stacked effect of an educated culture. Other cultures will often trade multiple lesser techs for one greater tech, and that just means they're handing you all the cards anyway.

By the time your national population hits about 40, usually in the beginning of the AD timescale, you are two ages beyond anyone not on the same path. Cultures on the same path are not a threat, and cultures on a military path are TOOLS for you to manipulate like dumb AI puppets in exchange for technologies, you can often get england to wage all your wars for you.

When using another culture as a Lenny (George and Lenny, Of Mice and Men) you have to make sure that you're also using two other cultures similarly. Find the tech-focused culture that is allied with your Lenny's greatest enemy, and disseminate only peaceful technologies to them. They will disseminate those peaceful technologies to THEIR Lenny, and you can trade out those very same peaceful techs to your own Lenny in exchange for military tech, which you can then dump all of at once onto the other George when your own Lenny is growing too fast. The other George will immediately dump all those military techs on their Lenny and even the score, giving both you and the other George time to tech up again while the Lenny's fight. This will happen 2 or 3 times, depending on how many cultures you are playing against.

By the time you're ready to race the other George to finish wonders, you will have successfully befriended every other culture on the planet, and will have full access to any unused map space. By this time it's probably good to have at least a national population of 100, just before you turn over to the modern era.

In the modern era, culture bomb the living hell out of ALL the major cities on the map that you can reach. Many of them will be at 11 and 12 population. Don't worry about it, by now you already have free religion, and usually nobody else does yet if you played the George and Lenny system correctly. This means that your culture bombs are unrestrained by religious boundaries, and the religions you are in contact with will instantly spread to your cities, giving you more than ample happy boosts that, in a few turns when you get medicine, will have you obviously winning the game.

By now an AI has decided to hate you unless you already built the UN. Defensive pacts are your only weapon by now, as, you have probably never built more than one military unit per city if you are teching as fast as you can.

This is the critical stage, right here. You'll have to go through revolutions just to fake out your enemy and keep them from attacking. Choose your otherwise meaningless revolutions wisely, and if you are in contact with multiple cultures, keep an eye on which revolutions affect what... the next game you play will be a guaranteed win once you see how that works. It's boring and technical and I don't feel like writing it down.

UN: Nukes first. This sends the militaristic types into a frenzy that results in any but your chosen George getting wiped out. The newly enlarged military empire that you do not control will become the enemy of everyone left in the map. It's your job to make peace with them and turn them into an economic regime by, yes, giving away technolgies strategically. I usually save all my great artists for this moment, having used suffrage to buy lots of buildings already. Except in the case where I have a great prophet or great engineer that makes buildings. I use those up pretty fast defending border towns from encroaching culture, which usually wins me luxuries to boot.

With your great artists, rip a path down the middle of something really really populated. When that finger is far enough into enemy territory that you run out of steam, turn OFF your tech and turn culture up to 90%, set any "pump" towns to build money, and steal whole continents out from under whole armies of AI. I managed to get a cultural victory on noble this morning without a single battle at all, even with barbarians, by doing these things.

Maybe I'm just lucky. Maybe I'm a genius. Perhaps I'm normal and have too much free time.

No matter what, the Eiffel Tower and Three Gorges Dam ... MUST belong to you. Those two wonders = win, no matter what your style. The fastest path to them is through books and related tech. Open your mind, Quaid. Open your MIIIINNNNNDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!

[SerapisIV]

Arachnidragon, what difficulty level are you playing on?

[Arachnidragon]

I've tried several different ones. It doesn't seem to matter actually, if you perform this process correctly nobody attacks you. I know that sounds odd for the higher difficulties, because the tendency is that the strong simply eat the weak, but if you are too much asset to consume you can even get away with stealing cities from allies in the early game.

It makes them work harder against your "mutual enemies" heh.

[KillerNuts]

I noticed that this strategy gave you a win at noble. I'd like to hear your experiences on monarch before I pass any judgement.

[AgentTBC]

This strategy would be incredibly dependent on starting position on Monarch or higher. I do not suggest trying it if you start next to Montezuma, for example. He'll attack you at the first hint of weakness even if you're his best buddy.

[fed1943]

Well,Arachnidragon called it culture.I think it is not a culture´thing:it´s the path of diplomacy.
A interesting strategy (I guess alone will fail,as any other)but mixed correctly with others,is one of the ways to victory.Not to forget (to follow or defend against).
Best regards,

[Shogun Gunner]

Re: New term

Originally posted by piotrr
What you need is a new term for the Great Artist effect.

A culture bomb is any way to explosively expand your cultural borders, right? So a Great Artist-assisted cultural expansion - judging by its area of effect - must be a Culture Nuke.

No need to thank me.

Move along.

Oh yes, I would like to thank you. That made me laugh