Help, eyes about to implode...(newb questions)

[Solomwi]

Follow Dom's prescription and simply build lots of culture. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that in addition to the 100,000 total culture threshold, you have to double the next highest civ's culture. If you leave them alone, this makes a cultural victory somewhat unreliable. If your empire is producing more culture than #2, as it should be, you'll get the victory eventually, but it may take a while.

The bottom line to a cultural win is lots of cities with cultural buildings, an early start on culture-building and snagging as many wonders as possible. Remember that everybody can build temples, libraries, etc., but only one civ can build each wonder, and each one is 2-8 points per turn that none of your enemies can match. Over several wonders and a couple hundred turns, that adds up.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by gotham
While all of this discussion has been great, I am still quite a beginner player. What I was trying to get at is I think is how do I get a culture victory?

Two ways to get a culture win:

1- 20K in any city
2-culture level required for the map settings and at least twice the amount of the 2nd place civs culture.

This could mean 160K while the next have less than 80k on some maps. IIRC std size is 100K.

Culture wins are very hard to come by above emperor level.

To T and Dom, you are correct it was my fault and I was not angry as I was just lazy. I figured I had nothing to worry about on culture at that point, but I had lots of armies that could have been in the city to ensure no flips.

OTOH, it was a snap to take back. I was just a bit surprised to see it at that point. It was size 7 after growing back, but I had put in a temple and a cath and market. I did that because I had lots of units to disband and it had a hospital.

[Dominae]

Winning by 100k Culture is actually really fun, because there's usually at least one civ with 50k or more Culture keeping you away from it. So the end-game becomes exciting: instead of watching your Culture grow as you do in the mid-game, you have to develop a strike force to take out the civ's top cultural cities. Razing is never more fun!

[Jon Shafer]

The best way to improve your play is to better your economic skills. That and military, if you end up fighting a lot.

Economically, there are a few important things to keep in mind, most of which I've summarized in the article in my sig, "Case for Food." A lot of n00bz have a few problems when they start (for example, not building Granaries, building cities too far apart and building far too few Workers) and simply don't know any better until they get more experience. Hopefully that article should help out some though, let me know if it does.

Getting a culture victory is much easier once you learn to play the rest of the game better. You realize what to emphasize and when to build the cultural improvements.

Everything comes with practice, as they say.

[joncnunn]

On going for a cultural victory:

Play as either a Relgious or Scientific civ. (Or even better, both like the Babs.) Those half price structures are so useful getting culture build up that much sooner.

On a map smaller than standard, go for One City CV ith the back up plan being some other mode of victory (usually spaceship.)

On a map larger than standard, go for Empire Wide CV ith a backup plan of one city CV, and check ratios again in when the industrial era comes around to see if you should really be going for the one city version.

The empire wide version often involves military expansion to place that many more half price Temples and/or Libaries, along with building multiple wonders at once for that much more total empire wide culture.

The one city version involves building all your wonders in the same city for that much more single city culture and if your religious. This city is usually either the Palace or Forbiden Palace.

[vmxa1]

I would not recommend doing an OCC on a large map for someone that posed a question as a new player.

[joncnunn]

I've confused, where did OCC come up?

Triguring the one city 20K version cultural victory isn't OCC. In fact it's much easier to have a single city reach 20K culture if there are several towns in your empire to aquire the luxaries to keep that town happy, provide the research to get so far ahead in techs that the AI doesn't beat you to other wonders while waiting for the current project to complete, and provide the military units to protect your city.

Originally posted by vmxa1
I would not recommend doing an OCC on a large map for someone that posed a question as a new player.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by joncnunn
I've confused, where did OCC come up?

Triguring the one city 20K version cultural victory isn't OCC. In fact it's much easier to have a single city reach 20K culture if there are several towns in your empire to aquire the luxaries to keep that town happy, provide the research to get so far ahead in techs that the AI doesn't beat you to other wonders while waiting for the current project to complete, and provide the military units to protect your city.

"On a map smaller than standard, go for One City with the back up plan being some other mode of victory (usually spaceship.)"

[Cort Haus]

I've done some experimenting on high-culture games on Monarch. In one game I got a 20K culture win with the following 4000BC build queue :

Warrior
Warrior
Worker
Pyramids

Crazy, but it worked. I actually built the GLib but got a SGL on dicovering Philosophy and built the Pyramids next turn. I then squeezed about four or five cities, stuffed them with culture and got about four cities in flips.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Theseus
Starve to 3 pop??!! NO WAY... 1 pop or bust!!

Absolutely - and make them work as scientists or taxmen while they starve. It's the only way...

[Arrian]

Or, if you're rich (I play commercial civs a lot), you can rushbuy workers (every other turn, so you're paying 36 gold per slave). I'm doing that in my current game, since I've done what I always end up doing: I turned off my worker pump, added workers to cities and am now short of workers.

Either way, definitely go down to 1 pop.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Arrian
...I turned off my worker pump, added workers to cities and am now short of workers.

Worker pumps 4 EVER!!

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I've done some experimenting on high-culture games on Monarch. In one game I got a 20K culture win with the following 4000BC build queue :

Warrior
Warrior
Worker
Pyramids

Crazy, but it worked. I actually built the GLib but got a SGL on dicovering Philosophy and built the Pyramids next turn. I then squeezed about four or five cities, stuffed them with culture and got about four cities in flips.

Wow. I've done something like that, but typically it's more like warrior, warrior, settler, pyramids.

I think the best city I've had in a while, and one that would have hit 20k if I'd played the game out, had the Pyramids, Great Library, Hanging Gardens, Sistine, Bach and a couple of others in it, plus the normal improvements. Pyramids & GL both SGL rushed early as all hell

One pretty solid way to go for a 20k victory is to pick a religious civ and make the first build a temple, forest-chop assisted if possible. That sucker will double absurdly fast and be pumping 4 cp/turn for the entire game. Add a library ASAP, and you're in great shape. The Babs, of course, rock at that.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Dominae


Worker pumps 4 EVER!!

I know, I know. But in my defense:

The city in question was directly next to my capital (hence, low-corruption "core" city). It had nothing but a granary. It was pumping workers. All was well. But then it came time to trigger my GA. I wanted to use the GA to get the basic improvements built in that city. I actually squeezed in a harbor just prior to the GA, and then built an aqueduct, marketplace, library, temple, university and am finishing up a cathedral... the city is now size 9. The Cathedral was probably a mistake. Once the GA ended, I should've taken it back down to size 6 and kept pumping workers. I may do that still.

The real problem is that my empire could really use a second worker pump. But now almost all of my cities are maxxed out and I'm loathe to "build down" any of them.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Would you also be loathe to build a new temp city in between your maxxed out ones (I assume you're using 4-tile city placement)? By stealing a couple of Food resources that your other cities do not need, it could easily be a 2-turn pump (I assume, without having seeing the exact geography). This would mess up your Corruption a bit, but the "free" two Workers a turn will really come in handy come the Industrial era, where otherwise you would have to build Workers in your maxxed out cities for RRs.

In my first ever Emperor game way back, when I still disliked anything closer than OCP, I bit the bullet and put two temp cities down in the middle of a nice patch of Flood Plains and Hills. To this I attribute my victory (and to Samurai - hey, that's pretty historical: the feudal Japanese peasant/serf and samurai classes).