How to win with Culture?

[Magnus60]

I need some advise/expertise. How do you win with culture? I've tried several times by building massive numbers of wonders and culture builds but I don't get the requisite 40 or 50k points in three cities? I usually have to get a pretty good sized country so I have other cities to build military units and other key improvements.

I usually try to win with domination and occasionally space race although I hate space race and take that option out very frequently particularly in the higher levels where the AI is advantaged.

[rjmatsleepers]

Decide early on which are your three cities and then build all the culture buildings. Don't forget to acquire and spread religions so that you can build cathedrals (or equivalent).

Build the culture enhancing wonders - Broadway, Hermitage, RocknRoll, etc.

Try to keep your three cities in step and choose where to build wonders to maintain rough equality. (There's no point in getting the total culture you need, but not winning because one city has hogged it all.)

Concentrate on producing great artists - I tend to use them to culture bomb the trailing city, but it may be worth settling the early ones.

Sit back and be bored while you grind out the last few thousand culture points.


RJM

[QuixotesGhost]

I think the 2 most important things to strive for in a culture victory are:

1. Great Artists. You absolutley need a specialized GP city out there cranking out Great Artisits. Think about switching to Pacifisim when you get Philosophy, it helps a LOT in the long run. Philisophical, IMO, is probaly the best trait to have when striving for a culture victory.

2. Cathedrals. The +culture% bonuses are huge. Try to get at least 2 or 3 religions spread in your cities and build all the associated cathedral buildings for each of those religions in your 3 culture cities.

At the right time, you'll probally want to dump all your science spending into culture, generally around the time of the industrial revolution or a little later.

I wouldn't focus TOO much on wonders, they are less important than you would think.

Key techs to strive for:

Anything that founds a religion (if you think that you won't be able to import enough from your neighbors).
Music (for cathedrals)
Liberalism (for Free Speech)
Philosophy (for Pacifism)

[Thedrin]

On getting great artists:

Make the great person farm one of the cities that will be involved in the culture victory. Since you'll usually have at least one city lagging behind the other two it'll probably make more culture by concentrating its excess food on artist specialists than by putting most of its effort in cultural buildings. To this end it needs to be in a high food city and it would be a good idea to put the Globe Theatre there for the artist specialists it provides if you move away from caste system.

On cathedrals:

You can need as much as nine cities to get a cathedral in each of the three cities. Building the temples in each city can take longer than you might expect - especially when you're concentrating other cities on production and commerce. Make sure the cities which are lagging behind in culture get the first choice of building the cathedrals.

Wonders:

Don't worry too much about them - there are no essential wonders (even the Sistine Chapel isn't neccesary). In the early game the only city which will likely be able to get them will be your capital which probably won't need too much help anyway. The most useful wonders would include the Parthenon, the Sistine Chapel and the Pyramids if you're going to concentrate on specialists to attain your goal. Stonehenge if you're not creative and you're not going for an early religion and Priesthood.

Finally, you said in the best leader thread that cultural is one of your favourite traits (mine too). Don't insist on using it. Over the course of an entire game the +2 per turn will make up a very small percentage of the culture a city needs. My preferences for a cultural win would be:
Organised: So that the best sites can be chosen for future high culture cities.
Philosophical: More great artists if you're running a great people farm for artists.
Spiritual: The cheap temples make a big difference if you're using cathedrals or if you don't build Stonehenge

[rah]

At the upper levels, I have problems going for culture because I focus on it and science lags. It's always obvious that I have enough time to get the 3 cities up there but during the last 100 turns I get dogpiled. I can usually handle one or two civs going after me but the 3rd and 4th stretch my resources too greatly and they wear me down.

Good point about creative. Maybe using another trait will help me keep up in science.

[Will9]

Fredrick is probably best for a cultural victory. He gets extra GP and free culture. Also the three culture wonders at the end are very important (Broadway, Rocknroll, and Hollywood) since each one increases culture by 50%. Also the resourses these give you can be traded for large amounts of gold. You can then focus more gold on culture.

[QuixotesGhost]

I perfer Saladin for the cheap temples and the ability to instantly switch to war footing if attacked. I really don't like Creative for cultural. It only seems to help with the early land grab, and you don't need THAT many cities for a cultural win.

Also the three culture wonders at the end are very important (Broadway, Rocknroll, and Hollywood) since each one increases culture by 50%.

I don't agree, the game is normally won or lost by the time you get the 3 late game cultural wonders. They're a drop in the bucket as far as culture goes. They'd be a lot more useful for a cultural win if they gave you a big lump sum of culture along with it. A couple thousand.

At the upper levels, I have problems going for culture because I focus on it and science lags. It's always obvious that I have enough time to get the 3 cities up there but during the last 100 turns I get dogpiled. I can usually handle one or two civs going after me but the 3rd and 4th stretch my resources too greatly and they wear me down.

I know that's why a lot of people like Elizabeth for Redcoats, if going cultural.

[Magnus60]

Pacifism and Cathedrals

Excellent advice! Thanks. I have recently discovered the advantages of Pacificism, especially at higher levels while I'm trying (vainly) to keep up in tech. I like pacifism but I have found so far it is only really doable in "peaceful" games where I don't have to be at war all the time. If I'm a different religion with hostile neighbors the extra spend on units gets too high. However, if it's a relatively peaceful game (at least for my civ) then it's kind of a double win in that I can build more improvements and get more leaders.

I have never tried building multiple cathedrals for multiple religions. That's an excellent idea. It also rules out extensive use of Theocracy which stops the infiltration of other religions.

This strategy also makes Saladin a useful leader but I have never been able to bring myself to play the historical muslim leader.

[Snotty]

hermitage with nationalism tech for 100% culture in your trailing city
theatres and culture silder to help with happiness
free speech civic for 100% culture bonus in all cities

just build as much cultural stuff as quickly as you can in your 3 cities, and make sure you have enough troops coming from your other cities

[DrSpike]

Cathedrals and an artist strategy are top priorities for a cultural win. Wonders and other cultural building are secondary to this.

The meat in cultural victories is in deciding whether to delay the path to free speech and cathedrals to pick up more religions. It is also interesting whether to use 6 or 9 cities for cathedrals, and whether or not to press on to demo after free speech and music, so you can buy cathedrals, at the expense of many turns where you could have run 100% culture instead.

[Ming]

The real key is generating great artists. Your capital will have no problem reaching the 50,000. And the second best will get close depending on the game settings. But the third city will need lots of help. I was able to do it by making sure I had some great GP cities, and that they were "Great Artist Pure". I was able to crank out many Great Artists... and was able to win a culture victory in 2009, shortly before I would have been over run. Because rah is right, they will dogpile you. I thought I had lost earlier when I got a Great Scientist from a city that was 90% to generate a Great Artist. I was still short on the third city and the AI was all over me. Fortunately, the next GP was a Great Artist. You really have to pay attention to make sure the cities stay GA pure.

[DrSpike]

Great artists are important sure. But if you care about early victories you need a cathedral/religion strategy. For monarch you should be aiming for around 1850 on normal speed given a reasonable but not great start. For epic quite a lot earlier in the same conditions.

[Thedrin]

I disagree. I reckon the great artist strategy is more powerful but a cathedral strategy is easier to apply since going for GAs depends on having a few cities with lots of excess food. The GA should, of course, be complemented by cathedrals.

I got a 1592 victory on Monarch* - using Mao - by founding one early religion. Two of the culture cities were set as GA farms and over the course of the game they produced 12-14 of them (and another from music). Only 4 religions came my way and I didn't spread them enough to get cathedrals in each city.

But the AI came at me unusually heavily. I played with Random Personalities so I can't determine if it was my strategy or their attitude. But 2 of 4 civs weren't detered by my larger army (I wiped out one of the others without provocation early on to get the land to create a large army).

*Using SmartMap and its more widespread flood plains. Marathon mode as well.

[DrSpike]

Yes complemented, the 2 possibilites aren't mutually exclusive. If you check my first post above I said the most important 2 elements were artists and cathedrals/religion, in response to those talking about wonders and cultural buildings that are less important.

The second post highlighting cathedrals/religion was a response to Ming who highlighted artists. I stand by this - if you want an early time on the majority of maps (and trait combos) artists alone are insufficient.

If you think that isn't true let's play some comparison games and find out.

[Thedrin]

I saw both your posts and doubt that there will be any serious contention to the proposition that great artists and cathedral strategies are the two best ways to get cultural victories. I was mainly saying that I would put artists ahead of cathedrals.

However, I'll retract my position on two points:
1) I was playing as a pacifist (in government name only), philosophical leader and build the Parthenon.
2) I did get two amazing initial cities. The other two culture cities (after the capital) were as good as great people farms can be.