What are Cultural Victory Strategies?

[steamthunk]

I've been playing Civ3 since it came out (well not continuously; although sometimes it feels that way) and I've never been able to achieve a cultural victory. I also don't see many people mention it in the various strategy discussions. Typically I try to build as many cultural buildings as possible and obtain an early culture lead, but then somewhere around the middle ages other Civs start catching up until the top 3 civs all have about the same culture. If I go to war to reduce other civ's leads sooner or later I just win through military or space race. Any suggestions? I like to play on Monarch/Regent levels usually so I think this is possible.

[Kuciwalker]

Build as many of your wonders as possible in one city.

[DaveMcW]

Play with only one city, if you do win it will definitely be by culture!

Or you could conquer/build hundreds of cities and rush cultural improvements in all of them.

[Jaybe]

Be a builder first, but surely a warmonger second (and at times, FIRST). The trick is to destroy those civs that are at best "impressed" with your culture. Prune early those civs that have build priorities of happiness, science or culture. See their build priorities in the Editor under the Civilizations tab.

[Nor Me]

If you want an empire-wide cultural victory, it helps to play on a larger map. (A smaller map with makes a one city cultural victory much easier.)

To get an empire-wide cultural victory it helps to fight early for more territory and to put your cities closer together. It's not worth building unnecessarily early temples when you have few cities. For these reasons, it not quite the builder-type victory you might expect it to be. I tended to find that the race was more for the hundred thousand culture than for double the other civs.

With one city, a cultural victory is surprisingly easy. Try it.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Building the Oracle as your first wonder is an excellent idea. Those culture points just increase over time, and with all the cp from Temples, Cathedrals etc later on, the city will be making HUGE amounts of cpt.

[steamthunk]

These aren't exactly the responses I thought I'd get, but then again maybe that's why I've never won this way. Questions:

Can you reasonably hope to win with one city in any size map? In any location? How could you ever keep up in science to even get to the wonders you need to get CPs? I've seen OCC threads but I got the impression they were scenario/editor based games.

Why would you try to get more territory and then put your cities close together? How close? Don't your cities have to be farther apart to hold more territory?

I read something in the manual that says that culture production slows down on "wartime footing". Is this just for mobilization vs. normalcy or does this mean ANY war? Do any of you know about this? How does this affect the strategies?

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by steamthunk
These aren't exactly the responses I thought I'd get, but then again maybe that's why I've never won this way. Questions:

Can you reasonably hope to win with one city in any size map? In any location? How could you ever keep up in science to even get to the wonders you need to get CPs? I've seen OCC threads but I got the impression they were scenario/editor based games.

Why would you try to get more territory and then put your cities close together? How close? Don't your cities have to be farther apart to hold more territory?

I read something in the manual that says that culture production slows down on "wartime footing". Is this just for mobilization vs. normalcy or does this mean ANY war? Do any of you know about this? How does this affect the strategies?

1) I have no comment to make about one city challenge games. I do not play them, as I find the game challenging enough!

2) Putting your cities closer together lets you work more tiles earlier. You need a hospital to go over size 12, so if you have "optimum" spacing (ie no overlap between cities) then you will have many tiles than are not worked until Sanitation. Also, closer spacing reduces corruption losses (because your cities are closer to your capital or FP). Building cities closer, then building culture buildings in them, extends your cultural boundaries without having to space cities out.

3) If you are mobilized for war, rather than having a normal level of mobilization, your culture points are indeed halved. Going to war by itself does not affect culture - you have to go to wartime mobilization to halve the culture points (build units quicker but cannot build most improvements).

4) There are actually 2 kinds of culture victory - 20K in one city (which is why people are recommending you build all wonders in one city) and 100K (100,000 culture points across your empire). Note that for 100K victories, you must have at least twice as many culture points as your nearest rival - so if a rival has over half as much culture as you (check with the F8 key) a victory will be delayed until you double them.

Hope that makes things clearer.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by steamthunk

I read something in the manual that says that culture production slows down on "wartime footing". Is this just for mobilization vs. normalcy or does this mean ANY war? Do any of you know about this? How does this affect the strategies?

The halved culture production is only active during mobilization. If you go for a cultural victory, try to avoid mobilization.

[Kuciwalker]

I've NEVER heard that about mobilization. Are you sure? I don't think it's in the civpedia

[wilbill]

I don't know if it's in the 'pedia or not, but it is correct.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by steamthunk
Can you reasonably hope to win with one city in any size map? In any location? How could you ever keep up in science to even get to the wonders you need to get CPs? I've seen OCC threads but I got the impression they were scenario/editor based games.

Not any map & any location, but on a small map with a coastal and river start one city can g-r-o-w without settlers and get lots of shields and techs to get almost as many ancient and middle age wonders as you want. (keys : Great Lib, Colossus)

After that just keep alive into the modern era towards where your city gets to 20k culture. You don't have to OCC - build one settler early on then use that to build a few more. Keep your first city on wonders & culture with the others supporting it economically and militarily.

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by skywalker
I've NEVER heard that about mobilization. Are you sure? I don't think it's in the civpedia

As stated above, its definitely in the manual.

[Mr Waffleberry]

Culture is ment to be stoped...

A.I's will often times build up the culture wonders very fast. If you want to win a culture victory, consider finding the cities where the A.I's made the cultural wonder and DESTROY or CAPTURE it.

The culture wonders can give an A.I. a big lead in stoping a cultural victory for you. In games above emporer, the A.I. will quickly take every wonder it can while you are trying to expand. And this can really hurt your chances of a quick culture victory being the 20k in one city cultural victory.

So, in all, deprive the A.I. of its cultural hubs (i.e. wonders). Also, going for an empire wider cultural victory is a massive waste of time considering all the temples, libraries, colloseums, and cathedrals you will have to build and rush. By the time you end up paying for all those buildings, you won't have much left for military funding or scientific advancement.

-ronnie

[nbarclay]

Keep in mind that controlling a larger land area makes no real difference to a cultural victory in and of itself. With the same cultural improvements, a size six city generates just as much culture as a size twenty one. I wouldn't advocate going too crazy with lots of small towns because corruption gets problematic, but there's certainly no reason to plan on cities' growing much if any beyond size 12 when going for a cultural victory. (For that matter, the size 12 principle tends to work well for any type of game, since it maximizes use of available land until Sanitation and costs relatively little efficiency after that.)

My recipe would be:

1) Play a huge map with 16 civs. (The 16 civs angle is so no one AI will have as much land to build culture in.)

2) Try to balance building and warmongering (preferably alternating between the two, fighting at the times when you have the biggest advantage). You need cultural improvements in your cities, but you also need lots of land/cities to build cultural improvements in. Also, make sure you get your palace and forbidden palace positioned well to make your entire continent at least somewhat productive once you own most or all of the continent.

3) If you get near 100K accumulated culture and someone has more than half your culture, wipe them out or at least clobber them. Cities they don't own can't add to their culture, and dead civs have no culture.

(No, 100K civ-wide cultural victory is not a path for wimps or peaceniks.)