Is cultural victory set too high?

[ghen]

Whatever civic lets you have as many scientists/artists as you want is fantastic. I have 6 artists in my capital, a size 13 city surrounded by flood plains.

[proviisori]

In my first game of cIV (normal, noble, Gandhi) I was 3 turns from cultural victory when Mensa Musa won SS-victory.

I took my lesson..

In my second game of cIV (large, noble, chinese .. not Mao) I founded only one religion, but still I managed to WIN cultural victory in 1980´s

IMO industrial trait is the most important for cultural victory and I don't think that it's too hard to achieve.

[polarnomad]

After having read this thread I decided to give cultural victory a shot on Noble/Pangea/Standard/Normal with Qin Shi Huang. Civics ended up being Universal Suffrage/Free Speech/Caste System/Free Market/Free Religion. Science was set at 80%, culture at 0% for the duration of the game. Occasionally my 3 major cities would produce Culture when there was nothing pertinent to build. Victory came in 1974.

Thanks for all your input! It really helped. I think I'll move up to Prince for my next game.

Thought I'd tack on these shots of my 3 main cultural cities:







How high have you managed to get your culture per turn in your cities?

[Azuarc]

Creative IS a good choice for cultural victory, for a couple simple reasons:

If you want a cultural victory, you're going to have 3 cities lying fallow and/or building wonders for a huge chunk of the game. You'll need a support network of other cities for your units and other miscellany.

Creative is most useful in land grabbing. Maybe it doesn't help with your finances like Organized would, but it ensures you don't HAVE to build your city directly on the tiles you want to use or have a gimp city for 60 turns while you build a theater or temple.

Not only that, but it allows you to build cheap theaters over all. I suppose that too is a drop in the bucket compared to the impact the 2/turn has at endgame, but I find it to be a big draw in the early/mid game.

All the other leader choices help, and I'm sure Philosophical is very popular, but I'll take Creative over Phi personally. It's possible to win cultural without vast swarms of GPs. Not that it doesn't help or anything.

To that effect, you DO want to try to get almost exclusively great artists. Your first GP is usually a Prophet unless you built Pyramids, but after that any GAs you get are an extra 4k (or more if it's still early,) and you can add that to whichever city needs the most bolstering.


Getting a cultural victory, the simple way:

At about 1 AD, isolate 3 cities that seem to be doing best for culture and focus on them. If they can support specalists, great. If not, no big deal, focus on building everything you can in those cities. Otherwise focus on being relatively peaceful and financial, but use your other cities to build up SOME military before Monty comes from three continents over to munch on you.

Make a beeline to Drama. Then hit up Liberalism. And finally Mass Media. You want theaters, Free Speech, and the Eiffel Tower and the +50% culture wonders. (Broadway, Rock'n'roll, Hollywood.) If you can get a +50% wonder and a cathedral, or better two, in your three main cities, you should actually not run your slider on cultural at all until you have the basic tech you need, and then ultimately just forego research altogether. Your culture per turn will look something like this:

early: 0-20/turn
before Liberalism: 20-40/turn
after Liberalism: 40-80/turn
post Eiffel Tower, other wonders, and cathedrals: 200+/turn
full cultural slider and production: 400+/turn

Usually at that point a couple great artists to bolster the one city that isn't keeping up is enough to finish things up ~30 turns after you go all-out. Use your early artists in that city as a super specialist, and anything late in the game should be saved for bombing the low man on the totem.

[Provost Harrison]

I've had a couple of cities go legendary and some others on the way, but by this point I have completed my spaceship so it's just been a matter of reaching space first

[proviisori]

[SIZE=1]
How high have you managed to get your culture per turn in your cities?

I think it was about 870.

[Dis]

anyone know how much culture I need on a small map normal speed game?

I really wish they would show that. I'd like to go for the spaceship if I have no hope of getting it. So farmy cities are only nearing 10,000. I don't know if I'm going to make it or not.

And the damn persians attacked me and took two of my cities. It was my fault for extending my cities so far. I usually try to grab as much land as possible. But I should have known those would be hard to defend. and they were. But I didn't lose my 3 culture cities. But I had to divert and build some horse archers when I should have been building culture stuff.

[polarnomad]

Originally posted by Flamer(fin)
I think it was about 870.

Wow! Is that in one city or in each of the three cities needed for cultural victory?

[ghen]

As Peter the great of the russians on noble difficulty, lakes map I was able to win culturally with 25 turns left.. Thats a little too close concidering I planned cultural from 4000BC. My main culture city actually ended up being in the middle of my best friends territory and I kept taking cities from him during the game I had 2 huge wars against the team of Louie and Genghis, I wiped Louie out and took Genghis down to 2 cities.. but it was extremely touch and go at the beginning of both wars.

Being both philosophical and being in pacifism for almost the whole game was basically the only way I won. Otherwise I'd probably be about 12,000 short between the 3 cities.


All in all, it was nice to win and know it was possible... but its by far way too hard to obtain. Without trading away all my techs for as much gold as I could and putting the culture slider to 100% it would have been even closer.. and 3 countries were building the spaceship at the end to boot.

[Xerxes712]

I had over 50,000 and it did not say I was at Legenary culture. I am playing on Epic. It says 75,000 for it.

Setting is Noble, regular defualt map size. Epic speed.

Says needs 75000 for me??

[polarnomad]

Originally posted by Xerxes712
I had over 50,000 and it did not say I was at Legenary culture. I am playing on Epic. It says 75,000 for it.

Setting is Noble, regular defualt map size. Epic speed.

Says needs 75000 for me??

Yes, it seems the cultural requirements increase from 50000 to 75000 if you play on epic.

[proviisori]

Originally posted by polarnomad


Wow! Is that in one city or in each of the three cities needed for cultural victory?

It was the capital. The other two were about 550.
Cultural victory is easy on noble. I haven't tried it on prince yet.

[samsmithnz]

I think you guys missed one of the most important ways to win a culture victory, that is to get as many different religions in your three cities and develop as many buildings as you can for each one.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by polarnomad Occasionally my 3 major cities would produce Culture when there was nothing pertinent to build.

I found this to be key. My 3 culture cities do NOTHING but either build buildings that provide culture or "build" culture. My other cities concentrate on building units and stuff that improves units, only building culture buildings as needed to keep the population happy.

My only culture win was in 1979 on Noble (it was the "Hello my name is Civ" game in the HoF/SP Tournament forum - http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisp...s=&forumid=264). But I think (having done it once) it should be pretty easy to repeat. Maybe I'll try one on Prince...

[KoBushi]

Originally posted by kimmygibler
I am glad that cultural victory is much harder than in Civ3. It should be a rare victory type in my opinion. Way too easy in Civ3 to the point that you pretty much had to turn it off permanently. (same goes for diplomatic by the way)

I feel the space race victory is that way in Civ4.