Cultural Victory: Discussing the basics

[OneFootInTheGrave]

more than three cities = shrines (50% culture boost per religion) 9 cities total for a shrine in each of the three culture cities as each shrine requires three temples

[gentle]

Was inspired by your comment that 6 cities were faster =P
Btw, you could also have 3 cities with 3 different religions meaning you would need 3 temples (one for each religion) per city to get 3 cathedrals (1 of each).
So, theoretically no need for more than 3 ^^ but I really need sleep.

... ...

[OneFootInTheGrave]

yep but with 9 cities you get three shrines in each - which is 150% boost (as opposed to 50% each)

[gentle]

[mdbill]

I just had a great time this past week playing in a contest to see who can get cultural victory the fastest on Emperor level, small map, Ancient start, any speed. Everyone quickly figured out Marathon was the best choice. I came in 2nd with 1182 AD. That's 150,000 culture in each city (450,000 total) on marathon speed.

[maxcavsm]

Son of a....

Damn Caesar.

Anyway, I'm chugging along into the 1800s on Noble. My three main cities are about at 50K points, when ass decides to declare war. Now, he's far enough away that I figure that I'm good. So I start cranking out riflemen (as far as I got up the tree before I switched the slider to %100 culture).

He rolls onto my shores with tanks. Damnit damnit damnit. I plead for peace, and he wants one of my cultural cities in return.

Well, I guess that's as far as THIS game goes. RGH.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

tried a few more games with the same settings, normal map & game speed, but not able to get an earlier than 1800's finish yet. Either a war starts, or when I go in early and conquer it does not finish as I wish. I got a 1820 finish, but that means taking out another 10 turns at least from that game, which is like "can't be bothererd".

But it surely is doable.

I have to get three cities to or above 400 culture per turn, about 100 turns before and that is an interesting proposal seeng that 100 turns before 1800 is 1200-1300 AD, I'd say that 1500 is the latest for that level of culture production The GA's help to speed you up for a few turns at the end, but not too much (depenable how much culture are you generating).

[OneFootInTheGrave]

tried a few more times, but it just evades me to finish below 1800's on normal map/ game speed.

All that is with Saladin

At the moment my science goes as follows

Polyteism
Mining
Bronze
Masonery
Monotheism
(maybe kick in an extra science here like pottery, if I can wait)
than execute CS slingshot
Theology
Aphabet
either discover or exchange for pottery (if possible, around this point)
Literacy
Philo
Paper
Education
Liberalism (free Nationalism)
Drama
and last really important
Divine Right

I can than start switching to 100% culutre...

Than I go for the path to education...

That is all assuming that there is no wars that I cannot win with axemen, which skew things negatively so far...

So this looks like optimal speed science wise, and is fairly quick but I fail to do several things until 1800's.

For one this leaves me with 6 religions, but not enough time to build/buy all the shrines

Given this

40 Years, untill 1000 BC (75 turns)
25 Years, untill 500 AD (60 turns)
20 Years, untill 1000 AD (25 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
10 Years, untill 1500 AD (50 turns)
5 Years, untill 1800 AD (60 turns)

There are only 160 turns to get culture to about 400 points per turn average in three cities... a bit more if you can crank up culture production even further later...

Those 160 turns are spent for getting to CS (about 75-85)turns + first 1-2 cities with the remaining 60-100 left to build up other cities and build up the first three to 400+ production of culture.

I find that very hard at the moment... I still think it is doable with better utilization of great people, but I don't think it can be done with "just about any" start. I haven't managed a single time yet, but will try harder :-).

The idea of "oracle nationalism" sounds very tempting though. Get 100% boost for one city early, even though the multipliers only start to work for real when you have converted to 100% culture production, so maybe not.

Overall I think I need to strike a balance between the ability to buy buildings on time, and persueing world wanders which give culture but are almost useless without culture multiplier buildings, the error which I unfortunately scucumbed to in last few games. Great merchants might provide the opportunity to generate enough money for buying without building all the money buildings.

So in the next game I'd say that a few early great merchants could change that situation, and might be essential to have trully early culture finish, and lots cottages are essential for this strategy, as they seem to be the cheapest route to lots of culture points. Last point is that in 2 out of three cities food resources should be the primary ones, as this gives advantage later, both in number of cottages and few more Artist specialists in the cities at the end.

[gentle]

Interesting that you dont go for Philosophy via the Drama route but CS surely is strong too.
Why is Divine Rights so important ?

I would also be interested in some conversation about culture strategy on deity. I have played several games on deity now and (of course) I had to change early game a lot.
Problems on deity (like gold shortage etc) may be challenged differently by others ( I currently rely on a GProphet spec and trying ORG -> Mao with different tech approach - concerning the first ones at least ^^).

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by gentle
Interesting that you dont go for Philosophy via the Drama route but CS surely is strong too.
Why is Divine Rights so important ?

I would also be interested in some conversation about culture strategy on deity. I have played several games on deity now and (of course) I had to change early game a lot.
Problems on deity (like gold shortage etc) may be challenged differently by others ( I currently rely on a GProphet spec and trying ORG -> Mao with different tech approach - concerning the first ones at least ^^).

I can see that I missed Music up there as it is essential to gain the ability to build the shrine (not to confuse it with >religious shrine world wonder< just the culture boost cathedral type building) . So that would come before divine right.

For Divine Right... well I put it in there, or I like to get it because of extra religion and potential 50% culture boost, but it is far from essential, perhaps the extra science you want to grab, dependable on your progress.

As it stands, I am not playing too many games (maybe 1-2 a week, depends) and I am still bent on trying sub 1800 with the settings above, I guess once I manage that I will start to see what is the deal with higher difficulty levels. But overall I guess for the main wonder I'd advise the Pyramids for ability to buy buildings early, and other than that Sistine Chapel. In other aspects as many religions that you can mange to get, but not sure if you can get many on deity... so whatever you can manage. Probably some strategy pumping out great artists and great merchants would work best on that level, but I highly doubt you can get it to finish pre 1800's, which should be essential unless such archipelago type game where they all finish a bit later, like mentioned in the thread.

Just to add I think that CS coupled with early Great Library is the fastest science development route, thus the fastest route to Liberalism and the time when you could in theory switch from Science production to 100% culture production.

Ideally by that time I would have everything built up, but the only way to achieve this is by have a few great merchants pop up which I have not managed yet. So this is next on my agenda. Will see how much $$$ I need to get the three cities up to speed.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Thinking now I could pretend to try...

Assuming that we can get to 400 culture with 5 shrines, who give 250% boost in total I'll just try to go for an inaccurate projection (from work ) of how much money would be minimal but probably acceptable investment to get up to speed on time.

Usually 1 temple ~100-150
1 cathedral type building ~400 (but i think for different religions the cost is possibly different too)

So in total we need 9 cities*5 temples each, assuming it costs 100, you need at least 5 turns spending 900 per turn = 4500 gold, and than 3 cities with 5 shrines each = 6000 gold, so rougly 10k+, for like maximum speed production when you get to music and have let say 5 religions discovered. That is a lot of money... I guess the offset would be that you could have built up about 10-15 temples already, and that you should wait with buying of the shrine until the cost is 300 for one. That would mean not too much more waiting, but would cut the costs to about 8k ... hmmm... lots of money in any case, so I guess more Great Merchants, as early as possible you get better it is, you can't have too many of those it seems, 5 of them at least would be very very helpful...

It's only at the end that pumping great artists makes sense.

This might mean that going for currency early should pay off well, and getting the "merchant world wonders too"... hmmm it seems that the optimum "culture win" strategy is on those tracks.

[mdbill]

Hey gentle,

My tip for Diety is that city maintenance is such a problem that you need to start with 4 cities and max out at 6 later...maybe getting one free from culture flipping. I know, you want 9 cities so you can have cathedrals in all three culture cities. Cathedrals are expensive and only are useful if the city has a good base culture. I say, put all your wonders/cathedrals into just 2 cities and develop them well with towns. Don't waste any cathedrals on the third city. Plan to use around 10 Great Artists to finish the 3rd culture city.

[gentle]

mdbill:

Atm I built 4 cities as fast as I can and then later do as you say. Spreading according to economic capability.
The thing I am pondering atm (really only pondering because I cant play civ atm) is how to deal with that period til I have these 4 cities up.
Building the capital means -2 gold/turn from the beginning and after the 2nd city is up science drops to ~50% which recovers when the 1st Prophet shows up and joins my city as a spec (at this stage a shrine is too less money).
I want a shrine anyway so I need another Prophet and this just creates the problem that I am running low on GPs which I want to burn for techs or wonders.
This period is also very very slow regarding tech but I dont feel comfortable with "wasting" a GP to make him a "money spec".
I am thinking about changing to Mao replaceing SPI with ORG - meaning I would start with +0/turn upkeep which would soften that problem. But....Mao's starting techs are ... well,....he doesnt start with Mysticism, which is a really serious drawback.
Actually it is this very very early stage of the game I try to improve.
My prior deity games are playable, thats not really the problem but -as said- I am looking for a way to keep the maintenance impact as low as possible, so I dont have to halt my aggressive spreading til I have these 4-5 cities up.

I might have to add that I am not really into this randomness thing. When testing stuff I play "normal style" just to see if it is realistic but when it comes to twinking I reroll most stuff...so, I once had a "twinked" game where I got out techs I needed from huts (Alphabet and Bronze pre 3000BC oO). This might be taken into consideration when it comes to my "Money Prophet" problem, because it could also be an Engineer = another Wonder or at least a tech like Monotheism/Theology. (sure chance for engineer is sth like 10:90 but ..well...reroll^^).
Ok, where is the prob then with Mao not starting with Mysticism ? Well, of course I could be granted this tech via a hut because Fortuna is my maid, but it still is too slow to research a Religon first (Bud or Poly -doesnt matter, must be researched tech from turn1 - at least my experience on deity) and huts dont grant these ones.
Nevertheless I heavily rely on getting one of these.

*g* post got longer than I expected, was carried away by that stream of consciousness thingy ^^

onefoot....:

This might mean that going for currency early should pay off well, and getting the "merchant world wonders too"... hmmm it seems that the optimum "culture win" strategy is on those tracks.

I really like to get currency "early" because on deity the AIs have money and they give lots of them to me for superfluous resources (gold per turn trade).

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Very interesting thread, I find the cultural victory second most satisifying behind domination.

Is there anyway that Onefoot and Gentle can summarize your build strategy for cities and wonders?

I see some say Pyramids yes.. some no.. Some Oracle as a must to slingshot to CS, some no...

Anywhere from 4-9 cities, but when you do build them?

Have either of you yet tried a quick cultural victory with a ruler other than Saladin?

Great thread, thanks alot!

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Ok.. I tried it, and I even tried it as Saladin, just to follow exactly what you guys have been saying works..

And.. Nope, failed miserably.

In addition to the questions above... such as when do you found your additional cities and when do you start on building the early wonders, I've got additional questions..

Following the science path of : Poly, Min, Bronze, Masonry, Mono, Moving to CS Slingshot (writing and CoL), theology, alphabet, lit, Philo, etc..

Where's agriculture? Where's Animal husbandtry? I tried putting those off since they werent in the 'order' and my cit(ies) were still growing and producing without them.. you still get screwed and I've done much better researching them earlier.

Also and maybe most important, where's meditation on your list? I've managed to pop out two prophets and neither can provide me with Liberalism because they always both want to give me meditation.

Finally, on my last test, I only had one AI in contact by the time I finished the Pyramids, Stonehedge, the Oracle and the Slingshot... and he wouldn't give me JACK. Agriculture? 'We don't want to start trading this yet', Pottery? The same thing.

I couldn't trade alphabet or CoL or CS or anything because all my options were just redded out. ARRRGH!

I'm thinking I need to research meditation earlier in order to remove that from my GP's list of things to 'pop', but its not in you guy's lists anywhere.