Cultural Victory

[abman]

Just a quick question. I have yet to actually succeed in my quest for a cultural victory, so I was wondering if someone could tell me if it is only 3 cities that need 50,000 or if its 4? The victory screen says 3, but the civilopedia says 4. I'm hoping its the victory screen that is correct. 4 would be a lot tougher.

Also a strategy question for anyone who has successfully done a cultural victory: Is it better to have artists create great works in your target cities or add them as super specialists?

[jeremy885]

It's 3

It determines how late in the game you are using to Great Artist. Do the math and see which would benefit you the most.

[Common Sensei]

In all the games I have played, it has been three cities. However, different game speeds require different values for Legendary status. Epic requires 75000 per city, for example.

Let's look at super-specialist vs. great work mathematically.

As a super-specialist, a Great Artist gives 12 culture per turn, and 14 if you manage to build the Sistine Chapel.

Without any culture amplifying wonders or improvements, it would take 334 turns to equal a Great Work, 286 with SC.

With two cathedral-type improvements, the output doubles. Now we're looking at 167 turns, 143 w/SC.

Two cathedrals and the Hermitage, it's triple. Now it's 112 turns, 96 w/SC.

Finally, a last non-extreme example: Free Speech, two cathedrals, and the Hermitage: 84 turns, and 71 w/SC.

If you're going for a cultural victory, you should at the very least have a 200% cultural bonus through Free Speech and some of the other options in the three cities. To determine whether you should make a Great Work of have him super-specialize, try to estimate how many turns you have until cultural victory. If you're roughly more than 100 turns away, I would super-specialize.

[ghen]

The fun part is purposefully not settling around one of your 3 cities so that another country does.. then as you forge towards legendary you take a couple cities

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by ghen
The fun part is purposefully not settling around one of your 3 cities so that another country does.. then as you forge towards legendary you take a couple cities

It can be dangerous to put your culture cities near the border too. In one game I was playing, the AI came VERY close to taking one of them. When a city changes hands all culture buildings are destroyed except for special buildings like wonders, acadamies, and holy shrines. That would have been an unmitigated disaster.

As it happened, I did wind up assimilating a city from my neighbor in that game.

[ghen]

Hehe, in my one culture victory game my neighbor was my best friend and a great buffer against incoming troops from Louie Late in the game Louie actually took a city I hadn't flipped yet, and I promptly flipped it hehe. One culture city took 3 of my friend's that game, and almost a 4th before I won.

[djpsychonaut]

I'm glad someone's talking about this Cultural Victory business because I'm a real skeptic that's it's possible. Maybe it's just my playing style, but I am a Great Wonder ADDICT and I've still always won through the Space Race Victory. I'd like to have a go at the Cultural Victory, but it seems to never come...

For those of you that have accomplished this feat... have you found building "Culture" later in the game to be helpful at all? What else could I be doing wrong? I horde up the Great Wonders, but the Cultural Victory still isn't happening for me.

[phlucas]

Originally posted by djpsychonaut
I'm glad someone's talking about this Cultural Victory business because I'm a real skeptic that's it's possible. For those of you that have accomplished this feat... have you found building "Culture" later in the game to be helpful at all? What else could I be doing wrong? I horde up the Great Wonders, but the Cultural Victory still isn't happening for me.

I did it once with Ghandi on Noble. The early wonders from an IND civilisation helped much, but I think the key were cathedrals to multiply the effect. I switched to organised religion in a time of peace, built all sorts of temples all over the place, and then each of the designated culture cities got seven cathedrals. With the 50% bonus from each one, each city was pumping out about 700 culture per turn. I think I built "culture" only in the late stage of the game, to speed up the win.

[MoonWolf]

Maybe this can open up for a new challenge, TCC (Three City Challenge). Build only 3 cities and try a cultural victory

BTW, the super artist also adds more than just culture to the city, so this should be considered as well. The culture bomb, I'll try to use in cities close to my enemy, newly captured cities and others that might need it (like getting a resource). If looking for a cultural victory, I would probably place him in one the culture pumps of course...

[Arqane]

Well just for kicks, I tried out a Cultural victory with no World Wonders, only normal buildings and National Wonders (to see how it would work against a high level AI, since they'll probably grab all of them first). Not only that, I did it with the Incan.

It worked pretty well. I grabbed 6 out of the 7 religions, though on higher levels that would probably be quite difficult. 2 of my 3 winning cities only had 5 Cathedrals in them, and I won in 1880.

A Cultural victory with 3 cities would be very difficult at high levels. You could only get 1 of each Cathedral for the religions you manage to get. With 6 cities, you can build them all though, and it would become much easier. It makes a big difference when you're getting +200-350% of your culture in your main cities.

[Diadem]

I think it must be possible with 3 cities. You have to settle at least one on a premium food location, and focus on generating Great Artists. You can easily get 20 during a game. That's already 2 cities at legendary. The third shouldn't be a problem. Hermitage, 1 cathedral in each city. Then there's broadcast towers and free speech. Plenty of culture output there.

It should be easier than OCC. 3 cities can produce a lot more military

[Diadem]

Let's see, with 3 cities you get to have 6 national wonders.

No access to Globe Theatre, Oxford University, Wall Street, Iron Works or Red Cross or Forbidden Palace, because of not enough cities. That sucks a bit. But you will have: Hermitage, National Epic, Heroic Epic, Mount Rushmore, Scotland Yard and Westpoint.

It's fairly obvious which should go where. National Epic in your GP city, westpoint in your best production city, heroic epic in your worst production city (your best production city should already produce any unit in 1 turn :P), etc.

You miss out on some of the very best national wonders. Still, with three cities victory shouldn't be hard.

[Common Sensei]

By coincidence, I've been experimenting with cultural victories as it relates to Great People lately. Below are my observations so far.

There are three ways Great People can assist in a cultural victory. The first is obvious and has been discussed before, concentrating on generating Great Artists and using them as super-specialists or creating Great Works.

The second is Cultural Engineering. Concentrate on creating Great Engineers and rush build wonders, especially those with high culture per turn ratings and can be built by 700 AD or so. Although I haven't crunched the numbers, a wonder's culture per turn gets a culture bonus with time up to around a 100% bonus after a 1000 years. So if the Parthenon is built around 100 AD, it will generate 20cpt by the modern era.

10 cpt Wonders: Notre Dame (+Artist), The Parthenon (+Artist), The Sistine Chapel (+Artist), The Taj Mahal (+Artist), Versailles (+Merchant)

8 cpt: Angkor Wat (+Prophet), Stonehenge (+Prophet), The Great Library (+Scientist), The Hagia Sophia (+Engineer), The Oracle (+Prophet), The Spiral Minaret (+Prophet)

Culture Magnifier Wonders: Broadway (w/Electricity), The Eiffel Tower (w/Radio), Rock n' Roll (w/Radio), Hollywood (w/Mas s Media).

With Great Engineers, you can spread out where you build high culture wonders among your three target cities to supplement the Hermitage and cathedrals. An Industrious leader has a bit of an advantage is that he (since there are no female Industrious leaders ) has a good chance at building some of the wonders in his target cities without Great Engineers rushing them and can generate more Great Artists instead.

With Cultural Engineering, beeline to Radio as soon as feasible so that you can build The Eiffel Tower and Rock n' Roll. The Eiffel Tower means free Broadcast Towers before Mass Media, which add a 50% culture bonus. Once you get Radio, slide the Culture Rate to 100% and mobilize your production for a sizeable defense force. Rivals WILL attack you as you get close to winning with culture, but you can nip this in the bud somewhat by signing Defensive Pacts with friendly civs. If you think a Diplomatic Victory might be a possibility for a backup plan, go ahead and get Mass Media before going 100% culture.

The third method is unorthodox, but it has intrigued me despite having some tax rate management. Cultural Victory through SCIENCE. As a side note, SCIENCE in this instance should be pronounced like the Science Advisor in Civ 2 ("We're number one in SCIENCE!").

Focus on generating nothing but Great Scientists. Pick one city to be a Superscience city. Make an academy, and put all of your Great Scientists into this city as super-specialists, and run Representation as soon as possible for the research bonus to all specialists. Build all of the research boosting buildings in the city. This city will be responsible for the vast majority of your research, as once you get Drama, your goal is to run a high Culture Rate (at least over 50%) and still be competitive with research. The micromanagement comes in with boosting the Culture Rate with each tech so that you can squeeze out some extra culture without adding turns to getting the tech. Once you hit Radio, beeline for Fiber Optics, start building The Internet, and then keep the Culture Rate at 100% and let The Internet get you the rest of the techs you shot past. Again, Mass Media is a backup victory plan if culture falls through and you have enough friends.

Philosophical leaders have a bit of an edge here with increased Great Person rate and the cheap University.

I've used the last two methods with success for cultural victories. They may not be the methods that will get you 19th century culture victories, but I have come to enjoy finding unorthodox ways of winning in this game.

[MasterDave]

I think it would be very hard to get a culture win with only three cities because you would only have the ability to build one of each religion's cathedral level buildings. Those are the key to culture victory, and having at least nine cities to build nine temples to each religion is key.

You do not need to be the founder of all of your religions, some foreign ones will spread to your cities, especially if you have lots of open borders. In other cases you can conquer nearby heathen cities to grab new religions and start pumping out missionaries to spread them amongst your native empire.

[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.

Besides, if you keep all Great Artists as culture bombs, you can surprise everyone in the game by suddenly jumping up 60K culture. Now that's cool.