How to win with Culture?

[DrSpike]

Well I think the question of which is best is kinda moot as you can do both. To the extent it isn't moot the question should be: to what extent do you have to give up the other possibility to focus on one, rather than the question posed.

The thing is (aside from certain leaders you can leverage - you can't use your philosophical example as indicative of most games) the difference between someone that tries to get artists and someone that *TRIES* to get artists isn't that great. The difference between someone that works to get cathedrals and someone that just wants them is huge, and there is more strategic depth in the decisions you have to make.

You can also pick up parthenon and the epic without compromising your acquisition of cathedrals that much, so there isn't a real trade-off. There is with extreme artists strategies, as this compromises your ability to get cathedrals. The only times this is irrelevant is when leveraging makes it so, i.e with philo leaders, though even then they need a suitable map to make the all out artist strategy the best.

At the end of the day in competitive comparison games what separates the men from the boys most often is how well the religions/cathedrals are managed.

So I stand by my posts.

[Ming]

I don't discount the value of religions/cathedrals. They were a core part of my strategy. But even doing that, I was still way short in my third city. The difference was my single focus on getting GA's. Without them, all the rest wasn't nearly enough.

I also built the parthenon, any wonder that seriously enhanced culture, but more importantly, led to a higher percentage of GA's... Took a leader with the best traits, and selected my civics to maximize culture

The first time I tried, I failed miserably... the second time, it was the numerous GA's that made it possible.

[DrSpike]

Yeah the third city is the one that needs the most artists for sure. With 9 cities and 3 religions you can get 3 cathedrals in each city, which doesn't allow for catchup. With other configurations you can stagger towards the third city, but it's not usually enough to offset the deficiency. Of course, you can help by not waiting too long to get the third city down.

The hermitage is also often best built in the 3rd city.

[Ming]

Yeah... I only needed a couple of GA's to get the second city over the hump... I needed a bunch to get my third city done before the cities were over run by the AI

With such a single focus, you don't rank well on the power graph, and your military just isn't as good as it should be... and the AI's DO target you.