Culture win

[Ninot]

Has anyone won by culture?

I try, but can't get anywhere near 3 legendary cities. How can it be done? Tips plz?

[Yyrkroon]

I've done so a few times on noble - haven't even tried on any levels beyond that yet.

The key is stack bonuses. Build as many culture boosting wonders and buildings in your 3 main cities as early as possible.

Even so, I usually depend on a few great artists to help out. Early in the game the +14 culture per turn is nice, late in the game its better to use the one time 4k boost.

[polarnomad]

This thread helped me with cultural victory:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=142602

[Guynemer]

I won my last game as Spain with a cultural victory (Noble). Only managed to build three cities before I was hemmed in by other civs, culture flipped one more.

I built every single culture boosting building, all the wonders I could get my mitts on, and as the game was winding down and it was apparent that there was no way I was going to win any other way, I turned culture up to 100% and built culture in my big three cities. Luckily, I had a triple permanent alliance with France and Mongolia, so they continued to research while I took over the world with my music and art. Won just a few turns before the Rome/Mali alliance finished their spaceship.

Needless to say, I ran caste system and put all available specialists into artists; when Global Emancipation passed, I was limited to four per city, but I still pumped out a couple Great Artists who boosted my one city that was lagging. Luckily for me, Louis built the Eiffel Tower, so the free broadcast towers helped a bunch.

[Azuarc]

Pick 3 cities around 1 AD that seem to be doing best in the culture department. Have them build every building (within reason) and work on wonders in-between. Save up your great artists until the end. Focus your techs on getting drama, then liberalism, then mass media. Controlling a religion or two is also handy.

Once you have mass media, take science to 0% and culture to whatever science was at. When your three main cities are "bored", have them build culture, and of course focus on artists as specialists. As soon as you can culture bomb the city that's lagging behind to 50k, use them to win the game.

Just about every starting trait besides aggressive and *maybe* financial can be used significantly toward a culture victory. It's not at all who you play, but how.

[marvinkosh]

The key things to consider are:

Free Speech: Doubling your Culture output really is a big deal.

Sistine Chapel: Free culture for every specialist including Artists (who already make a shedload). It's not much but it does get multiplied up by civics, buildings, and of course the National Epic.

Commerce: The more money a city makes, the more culture you will get when you crank the Culture slider.

Spread religion: Ideally you want to build three cathedrals (if not more) of different faiths in your winning cities. This means you need at least nine temples to each faith in your Civ.


Figuring out which cities will be the big three is your first major task. You will want to check in with the Domestic Advisor when you have become established and see which cities have the best culture, and focus your efforts on them. Clearly, your capital could be in the big three since it gets a big lead from the get-go with that palace. However, if you pump out some Grea Artists, that could easily be changed to suit your needs i.e. surviving the barbarian hordes and the AI stormtroopers.

[rjwoer]

I too have been trying but not succeeding. I will try some of the advice given here.

BTW, Guynemer, I love your pic and text. Classic! (What a bumbling fool he is.)

[MasterDave]

how to win a culture victory, or die trying

This is a quick summary of how to win a cultural victory that I wrote a couple weeks ago:

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 can 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 mass media 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.

Four more ways to help assure a culture victory:

One is is to be Loius XVI (creative/industrious) or Ghandi (industrious and starts with mysticism- better chance of founding early religions). 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. Third, once you get theaters, max out your artist specialists in each culture city (4 raw culture per artist- plus two more if you have Sistine chapel) Lastly, toward the end of the game you can turn down your science and tech and crank up your culture if you 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.

[Ninot]

Yay, I just won by culture!

was playing as India. Delhi and Bombay reach 50 thousand, and i just need Madras to pull through. Plenty of time left, but my army is quite out of date (100% culture slider) and i have 2 wars going on.

Greeks send 3 galleons full of cavarly at Delhi. Somehow i defend succesfully and still manage to have most of my army left over.

Aztecs send a HUGE stack of Infantry, artillery and SAM infantry at Delhi. Now i'm panicking. I have 3 riflemen and a swordsman left after the Greek attack.

The stack is outside my gates, and I have a Great Artist in Madras to put it over the top. But to register the win, i need to defend against this huge stack.

My army is getting slaaaaugtered. It comes down to 1 rifleman against a handful of infantry. He somehow manages to defend and keep his life. Madras goes over 50 thousand, I win!

[GeoModder]

Talking about a close call!

[Provost Harrison]

I've been pretty close to a cultural victory, but I have always built the spaceship first...

[siroxo]

Congrats on the victory. I'll try to give a couple more ideas that might help in the future too, though.

I guess the thing is, culture is not a victory that can just "happen". You need to decide by rennaisance, or early industrial if you're doing very well, that you want to win by culture. And that is just me: I am a culture hog. If you dont' generally try to culture-press neighboring civs, you may have to decide even earlier.

One other, less obvious, key to culture victories is Free Religion. It keeps your cities happy enough to have plenty of artist working, but also keeps other civs from being mad at you for having a heathen religion. As you saw, wars are tough for a highly cultured civ, as you will have fallen behind in military techs.

Lastly (although, firstly in game-terms), stonehenge is a very big help, not so much for the obelisks, but because it can be built so early that your capital (where you'll inevitably build it), won't need (m)any great works produced, because of how far ahead it will be in culture compared to others, then you can save the great works for the other two cities. If you can get stonehenge + oracle, you're really set in the capital, if you follow some of the other guidelines.

Surprisingly, I've become so accustomed to setting up culture victories, that I neglect on my techs in general, and can't win space race anymore, on monarch or higher.

[Azuarc]

Culture by religion is probably the easiest way to go, but a secular cultural victory is still not that unreasonable. You'll need to go for drama early, though.

One thing I disagree with though is the importance of the Sistine Chapel. Maybe it's because my high culture cities tend to be productive cities that crank out wonders rather than food cities that can afford to go Caste System and use 4+ specialists, but the Sistine Chapel has very little impact on my culture game.

[MasterDave]

I won again by culture last night. The settings were Prince difficulty on Highlands. I was playing Ghandi, had 75% of the world wonders, and I had five religions in nine of my cities. Despite the production of 45 temples and 12 catherdrals (I did not them all in my capital where most of the wonders were), and countless missionaries I was still able to build a decent modern army and devour the Incan empire to the south (after they foolishly decalred war on me the turn I invented tanks ). Once the Incans were dead, I owned the far western part of the map (the world is flat on highland maps).

The massive French empire (which was ahead of me on points at the time) declared war on me the turn I finished off the last Incan city, and invaded along a broad front that stretched the entire map north to south. Fortunately, their units were a mix of Cavalry, SAM infantry, tanks, and artillery and they did not seem to be mounting any sort of air force. By this time I had about 20 bombers, and I was able to peck away at their stacks, easily finishing them off before they could assualt my cities. They did take one recently captured Incan city on the border, but I took it back with relentless bombing, artillery, and tank attacks. After I recaptured that city in the South, I rolled into his territory and took the anceint city of Tours. In a fit of revenge, I burned the city, although I later regretted it as I was left without an airbase in range of Paris. Without air support, my tanks stood little chance of taking Paris, so we settled for pillaging the fat towns around it instead. The French accepted a white peace shortly thereafter, and my culture put me over the top a few turns later.

By building all of the cultural buildings, temples, and cathedrals I was able to win culturally in the mid 1980's and I did not turn up my culture slider until about 1965. I did get the Eiffel tower, but failed to get Hollywood, Rock n Roll, and Broadway. I did not have to change the slider at all to win, as the AI spaceships were just getting started, but I thought my score would be higher if I won early. With 30% of the pop and map under Indian control, my score was only 8500 something. I guess the patch devalued the culture victory as a score winner. It is still fun, though to actively execute a plan to win a specifc way from the beginning of the game. I also really like the highlands map, there were a few mountain walls that created more choke points and presented some strategic options that you do not get with other maps (such as fortresses in mountain passes, etc.).

[bugme]

Re: how to win a culture victory, or die trying

Originally posted by MasterDave
This is a quick summary of how to win a cultural victory that I wrote a couple weeks ago:

This is the exact strat I am using 4th time around. But I made the mistake of picking epic so by 1890 my three core cities have 50k+ but they need 75k to win :/

Still got a chance but might need to resart on normal speed.