How to achieve Culture victory please?

[Polonius]

Dear Wise Ones,

Could anybody out there please give me some tips on how the Culture victory is supposed to work?

I’m new to Civ games and, despite the thick manual, there seems to be a lot left unclear.

I just played my first game, on a small map against only one enemy (the AI randomly selected the Zulu) and I was unable to force a culture victory despite building an impressive array of cultural objects. When the culture bar stopped progressing, and the Zulu kept trying to attack me, I eventually turned round and wiped out most of their cities, leaving only one to keep them in the game. I established peace again and went back to building for a while, but the progress was still negligible.

I finished with 21 cities to their 1 and my settlements were bristling with Universities, Libraries, Temples, Cathedrals, etc.

My list of major achievements included:
The Pyramids
The Colossus
The Great Lighthouse
The Oracle
The Great Library
Sun Tzu’s Art of War
And The Great Wall (the only one that I got by capturing it)

I also had the Sistine Chapel and Leonardo’s Workshop under construction – yet their one poxy little settlement still wasn’t impressed enough to cave in! WHY!!!

After banging away at the turn button and making almost no further progress on the Culture graph, I got tired of the whole business and wiped out their settlement for a conquest victory.

So I totally thrashed them – but my rating at the finish was “Xerxes The Pathetic”. Geez Firaxis, thanks for the insult – what would you have called me if I’d LOST!!!

Any tips please?

[Flinx]

The honorific you are given at the end of the game is based in how well you did versus how difficult your game was. Playing against only one civ is not very much of a challenge. Try playing against a few more civs.

I had a cultural victory in my first game, and I wasn't even going for one. Your cultural value is not just what cultural buildings and wonders you have, but how long you have had them. For my cultural victory, the histograph showed my culture as being almost a much as the combined culture of the other five civs.

I must point out, in previous versions of Civilization you had to play against at least two other civs. I wonder if the game is designed to be played against only one AI.

[Polonius]

Thanks for you help Flinx,

I was rather hoping that the lousy rating was tied in with the easy-peasy difficulty setting. :-) I would have thought that most rank newbies would start with a simple game just to try and get the hang of the rules, so it's an interesting tactic by Firaxis - auto-insult the beginners. But I shall dry my eyes and try a tougher setting!

Initially my culture graph zoomed across, but as the game progressed it got droopier and droopier, and looked less likely to ever close the final gap, despite my list of goodies, and my banging away on the turn button for some considerable time.

I'll try your suggestion of selecting more opponents, but it would still be nice to know exactly what the rules are that I'm trying to play by. Perhaps I should just play Conquest for a while - that's easy enough to understand.

[MisterMuppet]

I have also been trying for a culture victory in all games, yet I have not achieve one so far having either quit, been beaten or achieved a space race victory. I have had similar problems, the histograph for culture shoots ahead at the beginning as I prioritise temples(having choosen a religious civ, and therefore having ceremonial burial to start with.) However as the game goes on the AI opponents build many cities, each containing cultural buildings, and my proportion of the culture pie tails off.
This could be the AI responding to my high culture rating, by trying to boast it's own. If that is the case it would be very impressive indeed.

[Rasbelin]

Just adding some thoughts...

I'm currently playing as the Perisians with a mixed strategy (space-culture) based on "quite peaceful deeds". Just having a "small" war against the neighboring Roman empire. I have used quite much capacity for cultural structures, but the on-going war makes is more dificult. Luckily the war gave me the opportunity to build Heroic Epic and long Golden Age that boosted the wonder production. Currently it still looks like I won't get the cultural victory, but the spacerace will much more easier to achieve. But does this have to do with your question?

Yes, accorging to me and the strategy guide from Prima, a peaceful way in diplomacy and militaristic expansion is one of the keys to cultural victory. I assume it's better to get plenty of land in the early game, so that you can guarantee resources (especially for trading purpose) and to whipe out small competing civs. The danger of course is that you end up in a long war, and that will delay your cultural achievements, unless you have enough cities. The point is that you should get as soon as possible techs that allow Great Wonders and cultural buildings. The older they're, the more culture they produce. Inventing religion related techs soon might be useful, but don't forget to update your defense forces frequently. Geting some great leaders for rush completing Great Wonders would be nice, but it means warfare (geting leaders by hunting barbarian civs is pointless IMHO). The cultural victory strategy easily helps to get the diplomatic victory, because both tend to require peaceful atmosphere. At least it's easier. The selection of your civ has also meaning. Religious and commercial civs apparently give you better keys to cultural victory, because lower corruption means that you don't have to put too much effort on maintaining acceptable corruption levels. Religious civs get cheaper maintenance for they religion related city improvements, what gives you improved culture for a lower price. Industrious civs might also fit for this, but I don't have any experience on that (expect the current Persian game). The goverment form doesn't excatly boost your culture, but speeds up your science research that is needed for new city improvements boosting the culture "production".

Just some thoughts from me...

[Thala]

To achieve cultural victory, you need to have the most culture (duh :P) but that means 2 things really:
Need to have a single city with a culture of 20,000.

OR

Need your whole culture to have a rating of at least 100,000
AND
Need your culture rating to be at least twice that of any other culture. (Or perhaps twice the culture of all of them combined, not sure).

This info is in the civilopedia under game concepts --> victory conditions.

Although the first option looks easier, it takes a long time to get that much culture in one city, even if you're building just about all your wonders there. The second option is easier especially if you combine some strong military action with culture-building improvements, and has the added benefit of being achievable in a reasonable time frame without having to have all your wonders in a single city. That way each city you take over from your opponents will diminish their culture and add to your own.

[Polonius]

Thanks very much Thala for the tips about the scores for the culture victory. That clarifies things considerably. As you say, I should have checked the Civilopedia more carefully, as that has the scores. Instead I was ploughing through numerous fairly vague references in the manual!

I was also confused by the graph, which is not apparently showing how close your score is to completing the victory, but only some version of how dominant your culture is compared to the rival(s).

Sure enough, when I played on for a few more turns I achieved a domination victory (of which culture was presumably only one of several factors).

My total culture score was still around 30,000 so I had a long way to go for that type of victory yet. Obviously a long haul goal, as I don’t imagine that those numbers can be achieved all that quickly, no matter how you play.

Thanks everybody for your comments.

[ElitePersian]

Originally posted by Rasbelin

Religious and commercial civs apparently give you better keys to cultural victory.
Just some thoughts from me...

I disagree, i believe that Scientific is the best for culture, here's why:

Libraries give you more culture than temples, and with scientific civs, you can build them faster, which means you build them earlier, which means they produce more culture the older they are. Same goes for Universities, as they produce more culture than Cathedrals.

Also, being scientific, you'll have an edge in science, which means cultural buildings and wonders will be made available to you earlier....hence producing more culture the older they are, and with libraries and universities giving you a science bonus, it goes on in a cycle.

[Moraelin]

From my experience with getting a cultural victory:

1) You can forget about that thing about making ONE super-cultural city. There just aren't enough turns in the game for that, even if you were to concentrate all the wonders in one city..

2) From what I understand, the minimum total culture doesn't depend on the map size. You'll need a LOT of cities to get a cultural victory. Think along the lines of a huge map, largest land size, and controlling some 1/3 or so of the world's land surface. You need THAT much culture. On a tiny map, I don't think it's even possible.

3) For that reason, you'll want to grab as much land as early as possible. Expand in all directions, like the plague. Make workers and settlers your top priority early in the game.

4) War is bad, unless you can grab half a continent in the process, so the resulting cities can grow enough temples and libraries to be worth the military effort. Basically my Greeks still scored a cultural victory, in spite of a 500 year war against the Romans, but only because I ended up with twice the empire size in the end. But generally, avoid pointless wars. Those shields are far better spent on cultural improvements.

5) Cultural conquests are GOOD. You can gobble up quite a few enemy cities just because you had a mondo civilization city next to them. (It won't make anyone declare war, even after they've lost half their country.) If you spot a pocket of free land near enemy cities, squeeze a city of your own there, negotiate right of passage for your workers, and start building culture stuff quickly. And whenever a city joins you, your top priority will be to build every single culture generating structure you can there, and FAST. Rush production as much as you can afford, use the workers to terraform around the city. Repeat when it makes one or two other cities join, too.

6) One continent is GOOD for cultural conquest, archipelago is bad. You CAN culturally conquer across 2 or 3 squares of water, but more than that means you can forget about it.

7) Size doesn't matter. Well, not city size anyway. You'll want your core cities large for money making, so you can rush the projects in the border cities, but on the borders you just need lots of culture stuff quickly. A city with 1 population can culturally conquer one with 12 population. Don't worry about making lots of food and shields in your new border cities, and don't bother making your own troops there. Just move some units from the core cities, and build some more there.

8) Science is actually less important. You'll want your science just ahead of the competition, but you'll want a LOT of taxes for rushing cathedrals and universties on the borders. Personally I kept the science rate at 50% when going for cultural conquest, and simply relied on having more cities than each of the opponents, for staying ahead technologically.

9) The Greeks are VERY good for cultural conquest. Their starting defensive units can hold off any attack on your cities. In fact, they stay top of the line until you discover gunpowder, and then you can upgrade them to musketmen. The computer will think twice before attacking if you have twice of those units in every city. The bottomline is: for half the game you'll have all the defense you'll ever need, so you can focus on making lots of culture. Add to that Scientific (cheap libraries) and Commercial (less corruption) and the fact that they favour democracy, and you're set.

[Polonius]

Thanks very much Moraelin for some good info. I'm pleased to hear that to 100,000 point Culture victory probably just isn't possible at the map size I'm on. It certainly looked that way to me, but I thought that I might just be a Newbie trying to rationalise the fact that I'd missed the point in a big way!

I'll keep experimenting along the lines that everyone has suggested - thanks to you all for the input. What an amazing game! I don't feel that I've even got half way with grasping the rules yet and I've already played it for more time than I devoted to some whole games in the past. (And I've been an avid gamer for 17 years). Why did I wait so long to discover CIV?!

Having come straight from Commandos (where I played all 3 in a row and scored the maximum rating of Field Marshall in Beyond The Call of Duty) it was an eye opener to actually win my first (very simple settings) game of Civ 3 and get the rating Xerxes the Pathetic - Uh Oh, I thought, the stakes just got raised rather dramatically! What a game!!

[Moraelin]

Well, mind you, I'm a newbie too. Been a newbie ever since Civ 1 Well, seriously, I could be wrong. I never actually did the maths or anything. It's more or less just a wild guess, based on what happened on the screen.

As for the title, just don't take it too seriously. I got a "the Cruel" when my people were happy and throwing "we love the king" parties all over the place.