Strategy for Culture Victory?

[Hastus]

Have anyone won a culture victory at regent or higher?
If that is so,what civilization did you play and how did you do it?
I find it pretty hard. Grateful for any hints.

[Travathian]

Twice I've won on cultural victory, both on Regent. I was the Egyptians once and the French the second time.

Here are some keys.

Build cultural buildings early and build them fast. If it means sacrificing population, so be it. When you can build a new city improvement cultural building, build it immediately.

Chose a city with awesome production very close to your capital, or even your capital if you can. This city will be for wonder building. If possible, have two cities like this. Wonders, even after they expire, generate great cutlure. Check out the 'pedia for details.

Make love not war. Kiss everyones arse. Feel free to give away tech and luxaries to other civs, avoid giving away key resources (iron/coal). Make everyone love you and stay even or ahead in the tech race. Your best bet is to beeline straight to the next age, disregarding the oddball techs. Let the computer get these and then trade for them, then immediately build the wonder for these. If you only have 1 wonder to build, your secondary wonder city should be building a palace to switch to the next wonder. Keep an eye on it though, don't let it accidently build a palace. Now, there is some risk involved that if someone else builds the wonder first, you're going to lose a lot of shields. But its worth the risk

No need to expand like mad, get maybe 14-20 good cities, sit in your corner and grow like mad. Short of someone conquering everyone, cultural victory is the first victory condition to come up. If you're not the envy culturally of everyone else, you're doing something wrong.

Lastly, this is unconfirmed, but hopefully I'll know for sure next game but . . . if you're in a culture race with someone else, try razing their capital. I've heard this resets their culture. Even if it doesn't and it just removes the culture from that city, it should be a lot. Granted you might lose some friends doing this, but by this point you should be far enough ahead it wont matter.

[nato]

Sorry for the long post, but I think I have good info here.

I have just finished a game as Babylonians in which I was playing solely for cultural victory, so I have some insights. It was on Monarch level.

I agree with a lot of Travathian's points, he says a lot of it just right.

Building early is key. The first thing all my cities built was a temple, not a warrior. Your first temple ends up being worth almost as much culture as a wonder. Sacrificing population to rush buildings is well worth it, and standard practice for me. Being a religious civ with quick government changes, I would even switch back to despotism for a turn so I could do this.

Picking a city near to your capital with lots of hills to build wonders works well. I had two of those, plus my capitol, just making wonders. I built wonders I didn't want just for culture.

Be friends with everyone ... it is so easy in Civ 3! Even later into the game, almost all of my cities were TOTALLY undefended. Military units just weren't necesary because Civ 3 AIs are so darn nice. My next door neighbors included the Russians, Aztecs, Zulus, and Germans, and they're still nice!

Forget about assimilating enemy cities through culture. I had a huge culture lead. Throughout the whole game I got 4 exceptionally lousy cities, even from civs with puny cultures.

The hardest part is getting 100000 culture points before a space ship is built. Since you are being nice, everyone else is nice, and tech advancement is very fast. The ship may be finished before your inevitable cultural victory happens.

Also, since you are being so nice winning diplomatic victory through the United Nations is super easy, and happens a good 70 years before cultural victory. This was the most boring anticlimatic win I've ever had.

I disagree about expansion ... I think a cultural civ still must be heavy expansionistic. Here is the reason:

Culture comes down to simply temples, libraries, colloseums, and so on. That is ALL culture is. You get ONE per city. Therefore to have a lot of culture, you must have a lot of cities. Playing for culture, I built cities very densly, almost ICS, just so I could make more temples etc. You need land. Build lots of cities!

All in all I have to say: cultural victory sucks badly, at least for me. It was a long boring game with virtually not a single shot fired. It might have been more fun if the AIs gave me trouble, but they are ultra nice now ... 1300 AD my cities are still totally undefended, no problems ... the Aztecs asked for 10 gold once, that was it. It requires nearly zero strategy or decision making to just build temples, libraries, etc ... and that is ALL culture is. Culture victory = SimCity without the interesting decisions.


These last two paragraphs sum it up I think.

[binarystatic]

I think you must have got incredibly lucky (or unlucky) to have a very peaceful game. I too have been trying for a cultural victory and being really nice to everyone. But I'm playing on a huge map with all 16 civs and the more aggressive of them declared war on me anyway. Throw in the effects of several mutual protection pacts and I eventually found myself at war with 6 other civs. . . Now it's niceness be damned.

[nato]

I feel for you; I would have been absolutely unable to go to war.

I didn't need to though. I was on a Large map with 8 civs on Monarch. Like I said they included Russians, Zulus, Germans, and Aztecs ... only the Mongols were missing. But it was one big happy family.

I swear most of my cities were wide open until like 1300 AD. My army consisted of 3 Warriors. Huge armies and navies paraded by me, but I guess they were there as a show of support.

That lone Aztec demand for 10 gold was worrisome I guess, except for my +500 income at 100% science.

Everyone was in a mutual protection agreement that eventually linked everyone else. It was like playing musical chairs with more chairs than people. To go to war with someone, you would be treaty bound to declare war on yourself.

I suppose I should be happy we all learned to set aside our differences and live in peace ... truely we beat our swords unto plowshares! Uplifiting, but I'm never playing for culture again.

[Enigma]

If you want to piss em off build a few nukes and let 'em fly

[HotWot]

Originally posted by nato
Military units just weren't necesary because Civ 3 AIs are so darn nice. My next door neighbors included the Russians, Aztecs, Zulus, and Germans, and they're still nice!

I have a different experience. I was building a nice little empire with lots of cultural improvements. I was way ahead of the other civs in both tech and culture (ok, I was playing warlord, but still..).

But then suddenly, the indians, who are supposedly the friendliest and non-militaristic of all, ignored our peace treaty and wiped away close to half of my (lightly defended) empire.

Can you imagine that in real life, Mahatma Gandhi mobilizing an immense army and taking over half of Asia?

ps. Gandhi's appearance in civ3 kinda reminds me of that giant turtle in "the neverending story"

[Stryfe]

Originally posted by nato
Be friends with everyone ... it is so easy in Civ 3! Even later into the game, almost all of my cities were TOTALLY undefended. Military units just weren't necesary because Civ 3 AIs are so darn nice. My next door neighbors included the Russians, Aztecs, Zulus, and Germans, and they're still nice!

Wow you got lucky...I was going this way (but building more military units) and was friendly with all my neighbors, then suddenly the Germans began moving massive amounts of cavalry and knights into my territory. That concerned me so I surrounded them with some cavalry and swordsmen (!) so they couldn't penetrate further. It then became a game as the Germans kept moving towards the left, and I'd have to surround them again. Finally, once they'd moved all the way left, they declared war on me...because I had an overabundance of workers, I build fortresses along a straight line that aproximated my border with Germany, allowing no possibility for penetration into my territory, all connected by railroad so that unthreated fortresses could supply the others. Luckily this worked and the superior German forces didn't break the line...this might have also been because I was in Mutual Protection Pacts with every civ that bordered Germany. But there was absolutely no warning that it would happen; all of a sudden Germany just decided to attack. They didn't even bother demanding anything, and we were on quite good terms.