Cultural Victory

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by Diadem
Interesting analysis Common Sensei.

However i disagree with the Scientists method. A great scientist produces 6 science. A Great Artist produces 3 gold and 12 culture. Clearly, the game thinks a raw beaker is worth more than a raw culture point. I agree with the game here.

Generating culture with your slider and using Great Scientists to make up for this is a bad strategy. You're better of keeping that slider up and using Great Artists.

It should be adjusted so that it's really only important to have the culture rate high around the turnover from Renaissance to Industrial. This is when your cities' commercial infrastructure is robust, the culture rate of wonders has matured, and when most of the techs you'll need have been researched. At this point, a high culture rate can double a city's culture output if it has the proper culture amplifiers. Once your cultural infrastructure for the three cities are in place, it's a matter of going all culture once you have a serviceable military unit to defend yourself that you can produce in large numbers.

At this point, the science city will still garner research, so that you can kind of glide towards techs that provide better military units even if your regular commerce is all culture. It might help if you're trying for a really early culture victory, so that you can start defending hordes of Tanks with something better than Riflemen.

Admittedly, of the three, this is the one I've tried the least so it's still pretty much in a "theoretical" stage.

[Diadem]

Still I'd rather have Great Artists for the surprise effect. Or you spam cottages everywhere, and run say 30% culture. That ought to be fun

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by Diadem
Still I'd rather have Great Artists for the surprise effect.

I'd call that a Cultural Revolution, but that has a historically opposite connotation

The advantage of such a cultural explosion is that you can potentially get a Cultural Victory before the rivals can get a chance to get mad and attack.

I think the Cultural Engineering approach might let you go about your business in the rest of the empire for the most part without having to go way out of your way to get a cultural victory. However, it's tougher to get Great Engineers early. The fastest you can start generating Great Engineer points is building The Pyramids and/or The Hanging Gardens.

[Diadem]

Well to generate only Great Artists consistently you'd have to skip on most of the good wonders. That's a bit too much to ask. And scientists and Great Prophets aren't bad. Definitely not the first of both, for the Academy and Shrine (we'll be playing a religion heavy game anyway, might as well spread the word all over the planet and reap great profit). As long as the specialists you run are artist, you'll do allright.

[Brinoch]

I've only won with a cultural victory once (last night, in fact). I didn't intend on going for a cultural win until the game itself persuaded me that was the best option.

I played on a standard world on Noble level with Louis XIV. I used Vel's "Settler First" strategy, and my roving warrior uncovered that I had a lot of forests and stone nearby, so I placed Orleans to grab the stone. Unfortunately, I also had Saladin and Alexander *very* close, and I was hemmed in quickly. Saladin also placed a city to grab the nearby marble, so I had to do something about that... I only actually placed 8 French cities, and two of those were *very* late. The Romans took Athens and exposed a lot of available room to expand for Chartres, and Avignon was placed to help Paris push Medina.

Saladin's marble city (Damascus) was close enough for one of my well-forested cities (Rheims) to push back culturally. There was also room on the coast to slip a settler in and culturally flank the city. With Louis's +2 culture creativity, I quickly grabbed the marble and eventually Damascus flipped. Later, I took Corinth from the Greeks and two more cities (Najran and Medina) from Saladin. I also fomented French revolts in Baghdad and Athens, and would likely have gotten those eventually, too.

I founded both Hinduism and Judaism, originally selecting Judaism, but flipping to Hinduism when my neighbors selected that for their state religions. Only Russia -- from clear on the other side of the continent ever attacked me.

Through use of the "chop" strategy, I was able to grab most of the early wonders. In the end -- Stonehenge, the Pyramids, the Great Libary, the Oracle, the Parthenon, The Hanging Gardens, Hagia Sophia, Notre Dame, Angkor Wat, Chichen Itza, Versailles, Broadway, Hollywood, The Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Kremlin, the Pentagon, the Temple of Soloman, and Kashi Vishwanath were located in my three culture cities. (Another city built Rock'n'Roll and the Iron Works because it was a mid/late game production powerhouse with gems, iron, coal, gold all within its fat cross.) The National wonders were likewise distributed to amass culture. As I took my ninth city, I was able to build two cathedrals in each culture city ans ramp up the culture production.

Because I wasn't sure that the AI's wouldn't finish the space race ahead of my cultural win, and my hesitance to put all my eggs in one basket, I kept my science going. I was also building the spaceship, concurrently, and would have beaten my AI competitors down that road, as well.

Time to move up a difficulty level. Sweet!

[Brinoch]

Here's a saved game for the above post... I neglected to include it.

[Arqane]

It should only be 6 cities needed for the Cathedrals, since you need 2 cities for each (one being where the Cathedral will be).

By the end of my game, I had over 800 culture/turn in my cities without any World Wonders. As nice as the bonus is from the Great Artists, it equals about 5 turns in the end-game.

I agree with Sensei that an alternate approach would be good, the Great Engineer. Even an 8 point Wonder is worth 16 after 1000 years (yes, they double in 1000 years), adding in % bonuses, that'll be about 50-75 a turn, which means in 50-80 turns you'll tie the +4000, and you get the benefit of the Wonder the whole time.

Not only that, but generating Great Leaders is much faster with Wonders. One of my main problems was generating any Leaders (I think I had 3-4 total), since only one city could've been used for food.

[Diadem]

With 6 cities a cultural victory is easy

Limiting yourself to 3 cities makes cultural victory a real challenge.

[Jamski]

Build Culture
Culture Slider
Free Speech
Eiffel Tower
Artist Specialists
Cultural Buildings
Cultural Multiplier Buildings/Wonders
Wonders
Great Artists
Religion

That's 10 easy ways to get more culture. I think the cultural win is the most straightforward of the victory conditions. You can even skip half the tech tree.

[Arqane]

But at the same time, it's separate from the rest. If you're ahead in technology, you can win with Space Race, or fight with superior technology, and you'll have a good score and Wonders around your nation.

To win with a Cultural victory usually takes planning ahead. It's easy to get 1 or even 2 cities with high culture, but planning for 3 usually takes a few thousand years (literally).

[Jamski]

I disagree. Its all too easy to simply set your three best cities to "Build Culture" and to slap the Culture Slider to 100% once you have Radio (and therefore the Eiffel Tower) at about 1800 or something, and then hit "End Turn" about 50 times.

[Strollen]

In my experience the hard thing about getting a cultural victory is getting the 3rd city to the 50/75K level. The capital is a no brainer several early wonders, a cathedral, and building all of the other late wonders and you are there once you switch to full cultural mode. I generally have a 2nd wonder city and getting to 50K isn't to hard although it definitely requires +200% or more cultural bonus. However, the 3rd city is the tough one.
I am reluctant to build wonders in more than 2 cities because it is pretty inefficient from a GPP to do so not to mention my later cities are often behind in production/infrastructure etc.

I then found the trick, which involves great artists. Three or four great artist as a super specialist + Hermitage and the normal assortment of cathedrals, Effiel Tower etc is every bit as good as Wonders for creating culture. As an added benefit, in one game the city with GAs was in the center of a continent and managed to culturally flip 3 other cities from 2 others Civs.

To me the one scary thing about a cultural victory is having to switch to 90-100% culture once you get radio/Mass media. However, it is very fast end game cause you literally just need to stay out of wars and hit the next turn button 40 or 50 times.

[johnmcd]

Cultural wins are deffo the way to go if you find the late game dull. I know people are saying wait for broadcast towers and the like, but for me, once you’ve got the cathedrals in you may as well just go for 100% culture. You never do get your broadcast towers or Kremlins or the like, but you start really driving culture much earlier.

If you are in a geographically weak position defensively it can be worth holding out for assembly line so you can produce troops that remain relevant for a while and have factories to make the ‘build culture’ option more potent but you can avoid playing most of the end game if you’re so inclined. Also, because you step out of the traditional victory race you can afford to make deals you wouldn’t normally consider, you can trade coal, iron or oil to the enemy without worrying too much. Unlike the space race wins I’ve not noticed the AI has an awareness that it has to crush me or lose. It would be interesting if you got a message similar to the ‘X has completed SS Thrusters’ for ‘X has achieved legendary culture’ so you had an idea that a cultural victory was on the cards for someone.

I think the reason people find the cultural win difficult is because they play for it while trying to keep a card up their sleeve in case they need to swap to a space win at the last minute or whatever. If you’re going for a cultural win it’s more important to have lots of religion than lots of tech, it’s more important to have lots of temples than lots of barracks and it’s more important to produce GP than work a mine. I know I always used to hedge but if you are single minded in your build orders it’s really not that tough.

[abman]

I really got spanked by the AI on my last attempt at cultural victory. I had turned off science so my only defense was to try and be super-friends with all the AIs, which I did by gifting them all cities. However I guess there was still just enough emnity because two of them attacked me and went straight for my legendary cities. I was far behind on tech and wouldn't be able to compete in the space race for them so I really had to give up at that point. Lesson learned: don't go for cultural victory if you don't have sufficient tech to defend yourself because they WILL attack. I think next time I will try and stay somewhat competitive on research by making one research super city with lots of scientist super specialists in order to offset the 100% culture a bit.

[Cort Haus]

I played my first culture win last night, (Prince, Standard, Fast, Ice-Map) and was suprised to be able to balance the three cities to legendary within a few turns of each other, without needing to use my 'balancing' Gt Artist that I'd kept in reserve.

I only went for the culture win because I ended up with the first three religions - there were no Mysticism-starting rivals, and when I saw that Buddhism was untaken I went for it. Space was tight and my only three decent cities were the culture ones, so my capital had to build all the units too. Hence, I never got out of Bureaucracy and got my win without using Free Speech.

I got loads of cathedrals, though, and it was a good exercise in forcing myself to build wonders outside the capital. Saladin (SPI + PHI) with Mysticism seems a good leader for culture.

I didn't get many Gt Artists - only about four as my wonders were specialised - Prophets, Scientists, Artists. Prophets got me 5 shrines plus Theology & Divine Right for two more religions, and Great Scientists and Academies got me to Radio faster. The huge shrine income helped to maintain a tech-rate. The Artistic Wonders were in a low-food city so I couldn't add many entertainers.

I prefered to shut up shop after Radio than Rifling. I don't mind a quick dash for the line but without the last culture-rush that's a looong wait with old tech. At least Radio gives a chance to trade up towards infantry if needed.

I was also helped by an nice choke-point to defend my empire, so less units were needed. Amazingly I had Alexander Friendly - largely thanks to Religion and Hereditary Rule, and Montezuma Pleased.