cultural victory / settler first

[Mrrlyn]

While I usually agree with the popular consensus that building a settler straight out of the gate is a BAD idea, I'm currently playing a game (on Monarch, a challenge for me) that proves that the situation can dictate otherwise.

My strategy, from the get go, was to try for a cultural victory, or, failing that, space race. To pull this off, I play as Louis XIV, with industrious to build wonders and creative to boost culture (2 per city * about 600 turns is only 1200, not much, but there aren't any philosophical and industrious civs.) My strategy is to rush for masonry, to start building pyramids while waiting for my first city to hit size 3 to build a worker, then a settler (Louis starts with agriculture and the wheel, so the worker first is a must if I have corn, rice, or wheat nearby.) Pyramids in turn give me a great engineer after a few turns, which I can trade in for the Parthenon (great artists are a must for cultural victory) or Great Library to help keep on top in tech.

However, this particular game, my first warrior ran into Montezuma not to far off. And between his city and mine, in the untamed wilds, horses and stone next to each other! Stone guarantees pyramids with an industrious civ, even if you wait awhile to start building them, so that's big. Horses are even bigger. allowing an early military push. So I started work on a settler and founded Orleans (the second French city) on the stone and horses. I rearranged my tech goals to get horseback riding, then alphabet. Trading horseback riding to the mongols for Fishing, Hunting, and Mining, researching archery, and my two cities build barracks and start cranking out horse archers. Now, I smash into montezuma and take all but two of his cities (in civ3 on monarch, there would be no WAY to wage a war with only two cities against an opponent with something like 6 or 7.) So, the whole game, I only built one settler, right off the bat, and now it's 1600, I have three cities above 15 000 culture, another 6 or 7 for infrastructure, and about half the game's wonders so far.

Endgame is where I suck, so I'm not sure I'll win, but this shows that, given starting resources, it can be worthwhile to build a settler first.

Speaking of endgame, let me know what you think of my strategy for the future: I have a great engineer sitting around, so I'm going to rush for democracy and build the statue of liberty (copper, industrious, and an engineer should do it), that's a free specialist in every city (and, thanks to sistine chapel, +2 culture all around.)

Next, beeline to electricity to get the three modern culture-beast wonders: broadway, rock and roll, and hollywood, in each of my three culture cities. On monarch, I may not get all three, but the great artists that they generate should compensate in the losing city. Broadcast towers ASAP, then max out culture rate, set the cities to produce culture, and turtle till the end.

[MasterDave]

how to win a culture victory, or die trying

You do not need to use culture bombs to win a cultural victory. The most surefire way is to get four or more religions somewhere in your empire. Make sure you build at least one monastery for each religion you have (they will continue to be able to produce missionaries and culture even after you get scientific method!) . Then, use missionaries from these various monasteries to make sure that you have all four of your religions in your three cities that you have targeted to achieve legendary status.

This should be your priority to get these four (or more) religions into your three main cities as quickly as you can, with a second priority of spreading each religion to six other cities. Being able to build each of those monasteries in each of your three culture cities is key, as they each will produce two culture points (before modifiers, actually more like seven net points with four plus 50% modifiers for the four cathedral level buildings and another 50% for a broadcast tower). Therfore, four monsateries produce a net culture of 28 per turn for a very cheap hammer cost! You also build temples to all of your religions in these towns and enough additional temples to make all of the cathedral level buildings (you will need nine temples total for each religion to make the three cathedrals) . Four religions and all of their buildings should be the minimum you should shoot for, but if you can get five or six than that is ideal. Open borders helps attact foreign missionaries, and I believe trade routes help outside religions spread to you on their own.

It is also a good idea to spread the world wonders you get between the three towns in order to spread the bonus culture around. Great engineers help in this regard. The hermitage national wonder (+100 % culture) should go into the city that has the lowest culture income of the three. Acadamies and holy buildings (Temple of Solomon Etc. are also nice additional culture buildings).

Wonders key to cultural victory:

Stonehenge -- produces 16 cutlure a turn even after becoming obsolete in some cases. It also generates great prophets- important to making a 5 culture holy building that also produces good cash.

Sistine Chapel -- two culture per specialist. This one an make or break your chances for a culture victory

Eiffel tower -- More important than the three free broadcast towers in your culture towns is the fact that you can get them quite a bit before you learn radio tech.

Parthenon -- Great Engineers to finish wonders are key, Great Scientists and Prophets also can make nice buildings, and great artists, while not needed, can provide "band-aids" to a lagging culture city.


All of the wonders are helpful for the base cuture they give. Hollywood, Broadway, and Rock n Roll are nice but not essential, and it is hard to get them all without saving up engineers. They are the equivalent as an additional cathedral, but you only get to use them for 150 turns generally, so getting the cathedrals hundreds of years before that has more impact.

Three more ways to help assure a culture victory. One is is to be Loius XVI (creative/industrious). Second is beeline for liberalism (a good idea anyway for the free tech and excellent civic options) and go to free speech ASAP. I also found out that you do not lose culture from your state religion after going to free religion. Lastly, toward the end of the game you can turn down your science and tech and crank up your culture if you are need a boost. You will probably need to use spies to mess up your rival's spaceships, as even under the best circumstances, it is still hard to win a culture victory before 1980 or 2000. The best I ever did was 1965- although I did get a 16000 score for it, which is my best score so far.

[MasterDave]

One other thing. You do not neccessarily need to be a peacenik to win a culture victory. For my strategy to work you obviously need a minimum of nine cities. On a medium map that often means that you will need to take some land focibly from a neighbor. Early wars are not neccessarily crippling to someone endeavoring for a culture victory, as long as you can build your war machine mostly in other towns besides you three culture towns. The goal is to take out your weakest neighbor quickly to assure that you have enough land and cities to mass produce the temples and missionaries you will need to max out the religious buildings in your three legendary cities.

On a medium map game, you will probably not have a huge army in industrial and modern times if following this culture strat (after building 36 or more temples and dozens of missionaries), so using spies to slow down rival spacecraft is probably the more likely strat. The patch may make the space race slower anyhow.

[khumak]

The key to culture victories is cathedrals. You want as many religions as possible in the 3 cities you're trying to get to legendary and you want the cathedrals spread out between those 3 cities in such a way that they all hit legendary status at around the same time. It also works well to focus on pumping out great artists and adding them to those 3 cities because the 12 culture per turn that they provide gets amplified by a huge amount in cities that are specifically focused on maximizing culture. Also make sure to build every single building that adds any culture even if the function it provides isn't something you need. Towards the end of the game you can culture bomb whichever of those 3 cities is furthest behind.

[Mrrlyn]

Well, thanks for the input, i'll have to try to do it that way in another game someday.

However, in the end, my strategy worked quite well. The weaker city was a close call, but with 100% culture rate and set to produce culture it was netting +560 per turn.

I only got one of the late game culture wonders, hollywood, but with broadcast towers and cathedrals, my cities were all pumping out over 500 by 1800, and were already sitting pretty at 30 000+. Three other civs were space-racing, but nobody made it as far as fusion or genetics by the time I won. The culture-bombs definitely helped in this game, as I must have dropped at least 5 or 6 in the weakest city (Teotihuacan, captured early on from the defunct Aztec empire.)

The game ended in 1951, with my score in the high 7000s.

Good point about the late-game wonders being equivalent to cathedrals but more expensive and around for much less time. Game would probably have gone much better if I'd gone for cathedrals early (my cities were generally jewish, but a few were hindu and i could have worked to spread it.)

[Mrrlyn]

Quick addendum:

I probably would have added great artists as super specialists in Teotihuacan early in the game instead of culture-bombing them (12 per turn plus modifiers over a hundred or so turns equals the bomb, plus the artist gives you money, and science with representation.) The reason I didn't was that the city was sitting right next to Thebes, and so only had 6 squares to itself when I captured it. I felt I needed to fight for some breathing space with the Egyptians, but they were already Friendly with me, and great trading partners, so war would have been counter-productive. The culture-bombs gave the city some much-needed breathing space (all the more so because the only shield-producing squares were in Egyptian territory at the time.)