Culture win

[Shaka II]

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

Originally posted by bugme


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.

You just answered my question about culture. I was getting nervous about Washington across my border with his culture score. I knew it had to be three cities over 50K on normal, but wasn't sure what it was on epic. I guess it's proportional to the number of turns. So, now I don't have to invade to take Boston away, for cultural reasons anyway. Gives me a few more options as to who to attack now, and he has a larger army than me.

[Mergle]

Won by culture for the first time last night, playing Elizabeth (not played English before) on Prince. Got lucky with a scout from a goody hut in my initial city radius that then scooped up 3 goody hut techs before being mauled by a lion but Barbarians and an awkward desert then crippled my early expansion and I found myself with only 4 overlapping cities hemmed in by Washington. Only good bit was got both copper and iron, but general lack of resources (even ocean ones!)

But my flying tech start lead to my scooping both hinduism and judaism, even starting without mysticism, and I thought "what the heck" and plunged on to philosophy via code of laws giving me both confucianism and taoism. Then beeline to liberalism and onwards to electircity/radio/mass media, exchanging the same tech (paper was good) with all the AIs to backfill my techtree. Never done culture before so failed to appreciate value of sistine chapel and didn't get it. Watched my position fall from 3rd to 6th as I gave up on research for the 100% culture after mass media+assembly line (needed production badly - very few hammers anywhere in my terrain), which was unnerving.

Closest call came when Catherine invaded just after I switched to 100% culture and was working up the hit musicals/singles/movies (got all 3+eiffel thanks to my strategy). Quick revolution to nationalism and hasty infantry drafting in my capital saved the day. My capital never really recovered from the battering I gave it to hold on, but it didn't matter as it had enough momentum to glide past 50000. Nottingham and York were up to 500+ per turn by then end - because I was determined to go by culture from an early stage and because all my cities were weak producers, my wonders were spread around. Several early great engineers were crucial in actually being able to get any wonders given my production problems!

Best bit was stealing lots of Washington's resources as my borders expanded (flipped 2 cities - one a weak one Wash was using to get some key resources, a second a major US city captured by Saladin at a time when my borders had already surrounded it)

Culture win in 1977.

[Shaka II]

Nice game.

I wonder if the AI treats an impending cultural victory in a similar way as how they get edgy as a space victory nears. Was Elizabeth in the annoyed category?

[Mergle]

Originally posted by Shaka II
Nice game.

I wonder if the AI treats an impending cultural victory in a similar way as how they get edgy as a space victory nears. Was Elizabeth in the annoyed category?

I hadn't done anything other than trading with her enemies so I think Catherine was still Cautious. She saw an opportunity (my weak standing army) and took it, and it almost worked.

If anything the other AIs really should have thrown more at me as I approached the win, but the good thing about culture as opposed to space race is that I didn't have to tie up my (few) cities building components so by the final few terms I had a very decent defence force that would probably have held my 3 key cities against all comers. But they should have tried! True, Prince isn't a very high level but higher levels have so many bonuses for the AI it's hard to tell what is AI being smart and what is AI simply having lots of resources to spare. I hope Civ4's modding possibilities will allow me to implement a superior AI one day.

[LDiCesare]

I'd like to point out a few things about great artists. If you want to win by culture, use them as super specialists early on (until maybe 18th or 19th century). The total amount of culture they'll grant (with Sistine Chapel) 14 points of culture per turn. Add a pair of cathedrals or other religious buildings, and Free Speech, and you get much more points long term than a culture bomb.
MasterDave is right about religions. They help a lot, so you should try to get some of them, and build missionaries if you can. This may mean delaying research of scientific method until you get a muslim monastery built for instance.