I had my best game so far last night, but now a question

[Nikolai]

I like the space ship victory, I tend to try winning either that one or the diplomatic victory.

[johnmcd]

For culture cities they either need to be production powerhouses building wonders early or commerce powerhouses building wonders late that can then direct their commerce to huge culture points.

I've had a city do over 900 culture a turn before, wasn't a culture win game though.

[Badtz Maru]

I got my first cultural victory tonight, but it was in a custom game with Diplomatic and Space Race victories disabled. My last two cities had over 800 culture per turn because I made sure that I didn't build cathedrals or culture multiplying buildings in any cities except these. It's easy to get a lot of religions even if you don't found many, and once you do build monasteries for each of them and spread them out. Your goal is to have every religion you have in your empire in every city, though don't stress if it takes you a while to get some of them filled in, it's not a top priority. Not only does this let you build a lot of cathedrals in your future Legendary cities, building multiple temples in all the cities lets you get their happiness high without having to worry so much about getting the luxuries. You can also change your state religion to match those you want to be friendlier with and not effect your religion civic benefits if all your cities have all the religions.

[unamablebuiler]

if you have 6 or 7 religions free religon gives +7 culture before any bonuses and it also raises your happy people higher too. its useful if you have more than 2 but 6 or 7 is best.
go for wonders but go for cultral wonders first such as sistine chapel 2 culture per specialit can really add up

As i run orgrel for a latge chunk of the game i sprea as many religions as far possible while leaving small border towns to aquire the religions i am lacking. chop rushing a few cultural buildings also helps.

by 1650 you want your candidate cities to be above 7500 and preferably above 10k
specailise them for GAs.
GAs can be worth an additional 50+ per turn if you get the bonuses
build cathederals i have had cities with 700 culture running my economy at 60% culture.

It would also pay to have a big army too.

[PrinceBimz]

I hit a nice cultural victory on a noble quick speed game last night. I decided to go for cultural as soon as I started the game. I played for that the entire time, built only 3 cities but ended up with about 8. My culture took over most of them, a couple I took during a short war. Game ended in 1980AD.

[MikeH]

It's a lot easier to get the diplomatic victory if you have most of the worlds population because everyone else has been ground into the dust...

[phooey73]

You need to pick your three cities way before that, but you were very close! You only need 50,000 each for your top three cities and you had two there already.

I find it odd that Russia was nearing a space race victory in 1945 on Warlord. I just won a Cultural victory on Warlord and it was 1978. I don't think the other civs even had all the techs they needed. I'm not familiar with what's required for space victory. They developed Rocketry and I had stopped my research in favor of culture, but they were nowhere near the end techs, and only two of them even had Rocketry available to trade me. I should load the save and check whether they had a spaceship underway or no.

I didn't decide to go for cultural victory until later, but I was setting my three cities up for it. My capital, a city that had founded two religions, and the third that I picked because it bordered on Persia (and I managed to convert one of their cities with my culture).

I realized too late that I should have built monasteries. I got all my culture entirely without monasteries. I had organized religion and had better things to build at the time, so they never got built, not a one.

But six religions with their +50% culture buildings helped a lot.

This was my first "big game" of Civ 4, and I'm looking forward to the next one... on noble this time.