the following are (very many) examples of my knowledge about the cultural victory and its aspects. keep in mind i play on huge maps on emperor difficulty (and win the occasional few).
I expect people to understand this article at the point where they have learned to win prince difficulty games, on larger then standard maps with default settings.

some notes:

once you switch your cultural slider to 100%, you will no longer have to worry about happyness, therefor try to maximize the size of your citys for more artist specialists
at 100% culture funding you can choose to trade your happyness resources for health ones or money (to pay for the expenses that force your culture slider down below 100%). try to spread the trades equelly between leaders so all of the suspicious (backstabbing) leaders will loose a trading deal when declaring war against you.
defensive pacts dont appear to increase your diplomatical backup at the point where other civs decide to or not to declare war you, they do however give you some confidence that you wont be alone when facing war.
do not use free religion civic when turning the culture slider to 100%, the happyness bonus is negated by the happyness you get from your theaters (+10 happy faces atleast). i suggest you use pacifism and caste system.
[new]the emancipation civic has a heavy prereq, in addition the "bonus" it gives can be ignored once you flip the culture switch. if you really run low on happyness, build a colosseum.
[new]when facing the choice of building wonders in the 1ad-800ad era you must considder that every turn that it takes longer to finish the wonder will mean that it will take up to 10 turns longer to double its base culture in the future!
the apparantly insignificant cultural structures like obelisks and temples can matter very much, as they double the culture they produce quite quickly (as the years pass quickly in the early game). they will also generate a compareatively large amount of culture for their cost, because they will have generated culture since ancient times.
cultural buildings will generate more culture almost exponantially the earlyer they are build, because they will generate culture for longer and will also double their culture/turn earlyer (compared to turns instead of years)
altough you wont be warmongering (i preassume) you will want a lot of military units, once you turn your cultural slider to over 80% your enemys will get better military techs. discourage them from taking you over. defensive units arent enough, a war of attrition (pillaging of your improvements) can easily ruin you.
altough taking a state religion is usefull, this will negate the effect of other religions (not their buildings). and will also make heathens more likely to attack you
once culture is generated, nothing can multiply it, unlike in civIII. if an enemy takes your city however a portion is lost.
Normal speed requires 3 citys with 50K culture, epic 75K, marathon 150K and quick speed requires 3 with 25K.
you can try to calculate how much more culture/turn you need in a city, by sharing the total of amount of remaining required culture by the remaining amount of turns untill the deadline (2049AD is to late!!!!), i only suggest this method for making raw estimates.
cathedrals are great, build as many as you can but dont let them cost you. they cost 10 times the cost of obelisks and require multiple temples per cathedral
Preserving forests is for the late warmongers or space ship constructors, you want a lot of cottages and the occasional mine for production.
for the cultural victory, there are (usually) 2 phases of your civilization, the development phase and the cocoon phase where ya grow into a butterfly. Phase1: build everything that turns up your culture/turn like wonders cathedrals but also the free speech civic (this generates a small portion of the total culture) and phase2: turn into cocoon, defend your riches and turn your cultural slider 100% generate as much culture as fast as possible, save up the last artists to help your 3rd city over the culture edge,
dont do overkill, divide all of your culture equelly inbetween citys, the group (of 3) is only as fast as its slowest member.


Buildings will double the amount of culture they generate per turn, after 1000 years
Marathon speed:
total turns: 1200

One turn is
20 Years, untill 2000 BC (100 turns)
10 Years, untill 1 AD (200 turns)
5 Years, untill 1000 AD (200 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
2 Years, untill 1700 AD (350 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD (350 turns) -> time victory condition



Epic speed:
Total turns: 660 turns.
One turn is
40 Years, untill 2000 BC (50 turns)
25 Years, untill 1000 BC (40 turns)
20 Years, untill 200 AD (60 turns)
10 Years, untill 1000 AD (80 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
5 Years, untill 1650 AD (130 turns)
2 Years, untill 1850 AD (100 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD, (200 turns) - > time victory condition



Normal speed:
Total turns: 460
One turn is
40 Years, untill 1000 BC (75 turns)
25 Years, untill 500 AD (60 turns)
20 Years, untill 1000 AD (25 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
10 Years, untill 1500 AD (50 turns)
5 Years, untill 1800 AD (60 turns)
2 Years, untill 1920 AD (60 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD (130 turns) -> time victory condition



Quick speed:
Total turns: 320 turns:
One turn is
50 Years, untill 1000 BC (60 turns)
40 Years, untill 1000 AD (50 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
25 Years, untill 1500 AD (20 turns)
10 Years, untill 1650 AD (15 turns)
5 Years, untill 1900 AD (50 turns)
2 Years, untill 1950 AD (25 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD (100 turns) -> time victory condition

The early culture buildings you can build, of which the base culture per turn will be doubled quickly:

note1a: estimated earlyest research moments are estimated, preassumed your civ has no starting techs.
note1b: estimated earlyest research moments are also estimated as such that techs are not neceserrily rushed to (like the drama or music tech)
note2: relative costs are... relatively compared to the sizes of citys and improvements that are available to citys at the time they can be build.
note3: the <religion> techs stands for any religion, a <religion> building can be build for each religion, so if you have a jewish town you can make a jewish temple there and later when taoism spreads to it you can also build a taoist temple there. <religion> buildings do not directly affect eachother.

<Religion> Monastary
Base culture/turn: 2 (and +10% science)
Research prereq: Meditation
Estimated earlyest research moment for prereq tech: 3200BC
Relative cost: expensive

Theatre
Base culture/turn: 3
Research prereq: Drama
Estimated earlyest research moment for prereq tech: 1500BC
Relative cost: Mediocre (or cheap with creative leader trait)
*note: it can be build relatively early, if its build early enough it will have the base culture/turn of a world wonder like the pyramids

<Religion> Temple
Base culture/turn: 1
Research prereq: Priesthood
Estimated earlyest research moment for prereq tech: 3200BC
Relative cost: expensive (or mediocre with spiritual leader trait)
*note: altough the base culture is low, it also adds a happyness face and can also be build early which also means it can generate a significant amount of culture (about 1-3% of total needed for legendary culture status) it can also generate your first great prophet for a <religion> holy shrine. i suggest building it, if you feel confident it does not damage your civs development.
in the end your still gonna build them because you will certainly want the cathedrals.

Obelisk
Base culture/turn: 1
Research prereq: Mystikism
Estimated earlyest research moment for prereq tech: 3700BC
Relative cost: cheap (it takes only 1 population+slavery or a forest chop)
*note: altough the base culture is very low, it also doubles very quickly if build early and will for that reason generate culture for a very long time, do not underestimate it.

Library
Base culture/turn: 2 (and +25% to science/turn)
Research prereq: Writing
Estimated earlyest research moment for prereq tech: 3000BC
Relative cost: very expensive
*note: altough it is quite expensive for its time, it can support 2 scientists in a city with a 4 food tile, in a capitol of the <2500BC ages this means double research (and an early great scientist). otherwise you can stick to 1 scientists. Early great scientists are extremely usefull.

Acadamy
Base culture/turn: 4 (and +50% to science/turn)
Research prereq: Writing (this is not the absolute prereq)
Estimated earlyest research moment for prereq tech: 2300BC
cost: 1 great scientist
*note: the acadamy does NOT double its base culture/turn after 1000 years, oddly. it still has a really nice base culture.

<religion> Cathedral
Base culture/turn: +50% to the base culture of the city (doesnt double after 1000 years)
Research prereq: Priesthood & Music
Estimated earlyest research moment for prereq tech: 500BC
Relative cost: Dead expensive (10 forest chops) its build twice as fast if you get the special resource (copper/marble/stone) for it (varys per religion)
*[edit 17 jan '06] note: Cathedrals are great, as noted above they are quite costy, they are however the most powerfull cultural buildings you can build, get as many as you can but dont loose youself to them, they cost quite much.
these cant be build in every city, it takes about 3-4 temples of one specific religion to build a cathedral in one city after that you need to build another 3-4 temples for a 2nd one, that represents this same religion. 3 temples on <standard size maps (i suspect).
on lower difficultys or on smaller maps it is possible to get more then 3-4 religions that allow you to build cathedrals, on higher difficultys it may not be feasible to get more then 2 cathedrals per religion. it all depends, though.

<religion> Holy shrine
Base culture/turn: +4 (This one DOES double after 1000 years)
Research prereq: any tech (mystikism/priesthood) that allows you to generate great prophets
Estimated earlyest research moment for prereq tech: 2000-1000BC, if you build stonehenge early and manage to own a holy city)
Relative cost: 1 great prophet (on higher difficultys, holy shrines arent usually profitable because other religion founders spread theirs much faster)
*note: on lower difficultys holy shrines can be very usefull because they generate a lot of money and a nice bit of culture on top of it, the higher the difficulty the lesser the commerce profit. (shrine commerce cannot go to research/culture, it can however pay for expenses that keep your culture/research rate down)

Univserity
Base culture/turn: +3 (+25% to base science/turn)
Research prereq: Education
Estimated research moment: to late for double base culture
relative cost: expensive (or mediocre with phylosophical)
*note: its a nice structure, not much to say. its probably build to late to get the double base culture significantly early enough

castle
Base culture/turn: +1
Research prereq: engineering
Estimated earlyest research moment for prereq tech: 500AD
Relative cost: mediocre (or cheap with stone)
*note: this structure is hardly noteworthy for culture victorys, it does help you defend your citys but not the improvements that you need for the city to function in the first place. you are also unlikely to build it before its going to double its base culture anytime soon.

World wonders usually grant you a nice culture boost, atleast the early ones. The most famous being the pyramids.
here are my written notes on wonders and their relations to the culture victory. Take into considderation that some wonders can be build up to twice as fast with resources of which they are made, keep this in mind when considdering to or not to build a wonder.
preassumptions: no industrial leader trait/no (strategic) resources
two ** next to a wonders name means it has 10 culture/turn and * means 8culture/turn. no * means 6.
all world wonders double their base culture/turn after 1000 years.
here i mention the wonders that (i think) can be build so early that they will reap double cultural value/turn in a significant part of the timeline, 1000 years later.

The (great) Pyramids
Research tech: Masonry
Emperor difficulty AI build moment: The birth of J christ (some time around then)
Bonus: can pick representation as your civic (all other civics are unpractical, perhaps not police state but thats it)
Relative cost: Dead expensive
altough it looks like a great wonder (and it really is) it costs about the same as 15 obelisks, 7.5 settlers, 5-6 axeman or 15 forest chops.
choose which you want the most. if you do not have stone hooked up, or do not have an industrious leader trait i dont suggest you build it. If you do i advice you to use the representation civic as this makes your artist specialists blow :).
The great pyramids spawns great engineers, which is extremely usefull for building a second world wonder.

*Stonehenge
Research tech: Mystikism
Emp diff AI build moment: 2000BC-1AD
You can discover it quite early or start with it
Bonus: Free obelisks
Relative cost: cheap
for non-creative leaders this is a really nice wonder. The great prophet it spawns in 50 turns can found christianity, if you research writing and the first 5 religion techs. Obelisks constructed by stonehenge will never double their base culture after 1000 years.

The Great Lighthouse
Research tech: Masonry & Sailing
Emp difff AI build moment: 1000BC-1AD
Bonus: +2 trading routes in coastal citys.
Relative cost: Mediocre (a litle less then double that of stonehenge)
unfortunatly it requires you to build a lighthouse as a prerequirement. Fortunatly this also gives you a litle extra time, this is without thinking one of the best wonders for civilizations that build their citys on coasts.

*The Oracle
Research tech: Priesthood
Emp diff AI build moment: 1500-500BC
Bonus: Free tech (one you can otherwise choose to research over time at the time of completion)
Relative cost: mediocre
it can be build early, this seems pretty bad to me, you can use it to discover an expensive tech, usually code of law (among other players), i also suggest this tech as it founds confucianism and gives you the (relatively) unlimited artist civic.

**The Parthenon
Research tech: Polytheism
Emp diff AI build moment: a small period before the pyramids (usually)
bonus: +50% great people points
Relative cost: Expensive (litle less then the pyramids)
this wonder can be build early (regardless of cost) and gives a base culture/turn of 10, very usefull!
the +50% great people might sound nice but in truth it might only give you about 15-20% more great people, at least not as much as you might have expected the first day you got CivIV and build the parth. for any non phylosophical civ culture victory fairing this is still a very usefull wonder as it will spawn artists very early. early great artists will generate more culture then an instant culture bomb (great work).

The Colossus
Research tech: Metal Casting
Emp diff AI build moment: 50AD or beyond
Bonus: +1 commerce on water tiles
Relative cost: mediocre to cheap
Its a nice litle wonder but i dont see many high difficulty cultural conquerers get this one, its got a prereq tech that does not help build anything else cultural.

Chichen Itza
Research tech: Code of law
Emp diff AI build moment: 200AD
Bonus: +25% defence for all of your citys
Relative cost: Mediocre to expensive
Nice litle wonder, doesnt have an amazing base culture. Nice wonder. get it if you dont get anything else or have stone.

*The Great library
Research tech: Literature
Emp diff AI build moment: 200AD
Bonus: 2 free scientist specialists.
Relative cost: (not very) expensive
If you dont mind to litter your great people birthline with filthy scientists its okay to build this one, its a very usefull wonder if the cost is cut by 50% or more. you can try to keep your great people birthline clean by having a second city that does not allow the city with the G library to cause accidental scientists (by outbreeding it :)).
if you got stone and an early position on the timeline i'd go for it.

The Hanging gardens
Research tech: Mathematics
Emp diff AI build moment: 500AD
Bonus: +1 health to all citys and +1 pop for each city at completion time.
Relative cost: mediocre to expensive
The relatively low cost makes up for the (in my opinion) small bonus. i dont like to have my whole population boosted by 1 because this usually causes it all to turn red and green (angry & sick). on the higher difficultys each point of health does count, however.

**(The) Notre Dame
Research Tech: Music
Emp diff AI build moment: 800AD
Bonus: +1 happy people in all citys (on the continent)
Relative cost: bloody expensive (133% of the pyramids)
If you build the pyramids, this is the wonder that you want the great engineer for. (+1 happy face and +2 great artist points are vry usefull on high difficultys)

**The sistine chapel
Research tech: Theology
Emp diff AI build moment: 950AD
Bonus: +2 culture/turn per active specialist (including normal and great people)
Relative cost: (very) expensive
For a cultural victor this wonder must have been quite so usefull, as it has a very usefull base culture/turn and usefull bonus, i'd build it for its base cultural value though.

last edit
17 January 2006
i also have notes and tips for the diplomacy victory in this strategy article subforum

Very nice , thank you :)

added some tips (1 to 6 out of the 17 of the first page)

14. cathedrals are great, build as many as you can but dont let them cost you. they cost 10 times the cost of obelisks and require multiple temples per cathedral
This should be in bold and #1. Forget the cost, cathedrals are the best building in the game.


16. for the cultural victory, there are (usually) 2 phases of your civilization, the development phase and the cocoon phase where ya grow into a butterfly. Phase1: build everything that turns up your culture/turn like wonders cathedrals but also the free speech civic (this generates a small portion of the total culture) and phase2: turn into cocoon, defend your riches and turn your cultural slider 100% generate as much culture as fast as possible, save up the last artists to help your 3rd city over the culture edge,
There are actually 3 phases.
1. 100% science. Research all religions and free speech.
2. 100% gold. Spread all religions and build all cathedrals.
3. 100% culture. Generate as much culture as fast as possible. Have your extra cities build artists.


1. the palace is a relatively cheap structure in the later games (1500AD or beyond), if you combine it with bureacracy you can give your weakest city a big boost to bring it back on the race.This is only useful if the other 2 cities reached the limit already. You lose free speech by switching to bureaucracy.


10. altough taking a state religion is usefull, this will negate the effect of other religions (not their buildings). and will also make heathens more likely to attack youPacifism doesn't work if you have no state religion. I recommend you adopt the state religion of your strongest neighbor.

2. 100% gold. Spread all religions and build all cathedrals.

Didnt thought about playing it this way.
If you buy those do you have to pay less if you got the appropriate bonus resource ?

Dace, i have a problem with your point 2, it is very hard to impossible to spread all religions, let alone more then 4 or 5 on higher difficultys on huge maps, last game i tried my missionarys failed to spread the 5th religion very often but it was to late to build more cathedrals then.

There are actually 3 phases.
1. 100% science. Research all religions and free speech.
2. 100% gold. Spread all religions and build all cathedrals.
3. 100% culture. Generate as much culture as fast as possible. Have your extra cities build artists..

Civics to Employ

Phase 1 - Get into Representation asap plus whatever else to build up your empire.

Phase 2 - 100% gold presumes you switch before the end of phase 2 to Universal Suffrage so you can rush those cultural buildings. The Pyramids are essential cos you want to waste time researching Democracy.

I would also switch to Bureaucracy at this time and leave minimum research path to Liberalism.

You might consider Serfdom to finish the land improvements while moving your excess artists into food or commerce for the duration. Obviously revert to Caste System in the final revolution to Free Speech.

If you aren't Spiritual you can stay in Organised Religion initially to get the 25% extra beakers for all state religion cities and then switch to Universal Suffrage in a separate revolution when you have a good pot of gold.

I don't think any of the Economy civics are essential. Mercantilisms 1 free artist per city looks tempting but you don't need to waste research on banking and no foreigh trade routes will cost commerce and make other covs more likely to attack you. Go for free market if you can get the economics in trade or use science to be ist and get a free great Merchant.

Phase 3 -

Leg - Free Speech
Lab - Caste System or (maybe) Emancipation if available
Eco - None or Free Market if available
Rel - Pacifism

Gov - Any
If you still want a little science make it Representation. For war to capture foreigh religions or defend go for Police State. For rushing/building those last few cathedrals Universal Suffrage

If you can get Nationalism then build/chop your Hermitage which is twice as good as a cathedral and needs no religion or temples while your other two cities build culture.

Chops

Reserve these for wonders/buildings you have the bonus resources for. Each chop then gives a 100% multiplier and double the hammers. Chop a mixture on ones outside and inside the fat cross so you can still work some forests until you have enough improvements for your pop to work.

im going to have to ask people to state the difficiculty levels map shapes and map sizes they win games on, before i take their advice without questions. i dont like to take other peoples knowledge for granted.

Hehe yes some statements from this guy really look like he is a pretty average player - No offense meant, if you dont have inside knowledge of the game dont comment like this though Perugia ;) .
e.g. you wont see any expert player advicing to work forest tiles or keep them for far later chopping.
On the other hand you really want to trust DaveMcW, he is a decent player.

This may be obvious for more experienced players, but to maximize the use of cathedrals you are going to want to have at least 12 cities. Since you generaly need to have 4 temples for each cathedral this allows you to build a cathedral to each of your religions, in each of your three culture cities.


I just won a cultural victory on monarch and only had 9 cities for most of the early game. Once is saw the limit this was going to place on me, I had to try to squeeze 3 more cities into very limited territory. Fortunately, just as I was despairing ove where I would put the third city, a neighboring Aztec city revolted and joined my Civ.


Another observation I had was this: I am suprised that the AI do not decide to attack when they can clearly see that you are going to win a cultural victoy in 10-20 turns. It seems like the obvious thing to do. Of course, I was only playing on Monarch, so maybe the AI acts more agressive on the higher levels.

[new]do not use free religion civic when turning the culture slider to 100%, the happyness bonus is negated by the happyness you get from your theaters (+10 happy faces atleast). i suggest you use pacifism and caste system.



I actually do switch to free rel. in the late game. Having no state rel. allows each rel. in a city to contribute 1pt of culture/turn, so say if your almost legendary cities has 5 rel. and 5 cathedrals, each one gets 5 base+5x100% culture slider+5x100% free speech+5x250% cathedral = 32pt/turn. and if any of the cities is also a holy city of some sort, it addes another 5 base pt. if you have a state rel then only the state rel. produces culture, in this example, 5pt/turn.

Pacifism is also good, but I find that it works best if you have a good GPP farm setup, and playing as philosophical leader. and even then it could take a while to produce a GPP in the late games. So I think free religion is worthwhile.

Btw, I play on monarch, huge, continent, epic. usually as Elizabeth or Saladin.

Ok, so Free Religion gives 32cpt in each culture city.

Let's assume you get 14 Great People in the game, making the cost of the next one 3000 GPP. Each Artist gives 6000 culture. Therefore, each GPP in a specialist farm is worth 2 culture. If you have 7 specialists making 21 base GPP, Pacifism gives a bonus of 21 * 2 = 42 cpt in each specialist farm.

So if you have 3 specialist farms, Pacifism is better. If you have 2 specialists farms I would seriously consider Pacifism, due to its lower upkeep.

you fixed time in your analysis, but if you let time vary, it seems the value of free religion can only increase (as you got more bonuses) while the value of pacifism only decrease to 0 (asympt.)
So there has to be a threshold point where Free Religion is better.
If it happens before the end of the game depends on a few factor, I think most important being how many Great Artist you have built up to now...

So there has to be a threshold point where Free Religion is better.
True, but assuming you are non-spiritual, you also have to factor in the cost of a lost turn of culture generation. I suppose at normal speed there are a couple of opportunities to combine free religion with another civics switch, but late single switches or even combo switches at lower speeds can cost you more culture than you gain from the new civic.

But you are correct - at some point you can predict the cost of the switch and also the benefit. It's worth looking at when the great person costs start getting really high.

You have to do the same analysis if you trade for (or are gifted) Economics late in the game. +1 trade route is very nice, but doesn't always make sense if there isn't a lot of time left in the game.

i find founding more then 2 cathedrals (>8 citys) is rather wastefull because of the upkeep it incurs, both in civics and city maint which seems to amplify exponantially, going upward with each difficulty. on lower difficultys its no problem though. in addition you'r going to have to build all the temples in all the tiny squeezed in citys which might also be forcing your borders into neighbouring territory which is not what you want in a peacefull game.
a high % might look good but a high% with medium base culture/turn is the same as medium & with high base culture/turn, except that medium% and high culture/turn is cheaper.

Ok, so Free Religion gives 32cpt in each culture city.

Let's assume you get 14 Great People in the game, making the cost of the next one 3000 GPP. Each Artist gives 6000 culture. Therefore, each GPP in a specialist farm is worth 2 culture. If you have 7 specialists making 21 base GPP, Pacifism gives a bonus of 21 * 2 = 42 cpt in each specialist farm.

So if you have 3 specialist farms, Pacifism is better. If you have 2 specialists farms I would seriously consider Pacifism, due to its lower upkeep.

Under free religion (FR) the same 7 specialists are still producing GPP, so in your analysis, pacifism (PAC) should only give bonus of 21 cpt.

there are too many variables to consider, but basically, PAC gives you extra GP, and FR gives you extra cp. I did a little analysis comparing FR and PAC (it is done with only 1 GPP farm in mind, I am not sure how it will apply to multiple farms):

since each GP is worth 6000 cp, that means under FR, each city need to produce more than extra 2000 cp before PAC produces an extra GP.

in our example, under free religion, 2000 (per city) / 32cppt (per city) = ~60 (the # of turns it takes under FR to produce extra culture point equivalent to an extra GP).

So this means if the extra GPP generated under pacifism can help you get a GP in less than 60 turns, then it's worthwhile to be in pacifism. else no.

in our example, it takes 3000 GPP to get the next GP, so in order for PAC produce a GP in 60 turns, PAC needs to provide 3000/60=50 more GPP than FR. if PAC gives you 50 or more GPP, then PAC is better, else FR is better.

in our example, the difference is only 21 GPP, therefore it is better to be under FR. If however, your GP farm produces 60 base GPP and 120 under PAC, the difference is 60, then PAC will yield more culture.

Or, suppose the difference is still 21 GPP, but FR only produces 10 extra cp per turn, then we need 2000/10=200 turns to match the culture produced by a GP, and therefore PAC only needs to produce 3000/200= 15 extra GPP to beat FR. PAC is also better in this case becasue it produces 21 extra GPP, more than the 15 it needs to beat FR.

also keep in mind that the amount of GPP needed to get a GP grows, to PAC will need to provide more and more GPP as time goes on to match the output of FR.

um, i hope that makes sense. Anyway, my point is that free religion can be better than pacifism, especially in the late game when it takes a long time to get a GP under any civic, and when you have most of the religions spreaded and cathedrals built.

Hi all,
I've been lurking (and playing) for a while and now I'll post some thoughts on cultural victories.

I started playing as Noble (I already played for years civ and civ2) and after a couple of games I switched to Prince.

I am not a warmonger usually and like Cultural victories better than space race (I still have to try diplo victory, though).

It seems that many of you switch to 100% culture quite early in the game while I do that much later, so I try to build wonders like the Kremlin, at least one or two among Rock-n-Roll, Hollywood and Broadway so to get three cities pumping a few hundreds culture per turn. While all the cities are pumping great artists (I try to grow as many cities as I can at around 30) so to get 5 or 6 great artists in the last few turns.

Cathedrals are the most important buildings, I try to get as many religions as I can, I try to found one or two, but then try to make other religions spread to my new cities (e.g. not sending a missionary of mine, but building a road to some foreign city with a religion I need).

I don't get Scientific Method until I build at least one monastery for each religion, so then I can build all the missionaries I need.

I didn't quite understand the rules for spreading religion, but it seems that it is easier to spread a religion to very big cities (above 20), even if they already have several religions, so as my cities grow I send missionaries and build temples everywhere and cathedrals in my three big ones.

I have to build universities and banks almost everywhere in order to build Oxford in my science city and Wall Street in my money city (the one where I found one religion, and with all the cottages).
I send also missionaries from my religion everywhere, so I keep a couple of cities continuously pumping missionaries.
While my "production" city pumps infantry or machine guns to defend all the other cities.
(BTW, It seems that with Pacifism I cannot build the Heroic Epic, or West Point, is that documented anywhere ?)

I usually keep culture to around 20% and science to 80% and switch to culture 100% only towards the end (e.g. after I get mass media or so).

I play random leaders, so things can change a lot with a spiritual leader or a militaristic one, but more or less this is it (I liked a lot financial+organized).

I would say, though, that lots depend on the beginning, having a couple of good resources (e.g. Iron and Horses, or Rocks and Marble) near your first two cities can make a huge difference (in the first case I try to get an early civ after I build my third city, so to have 6 or 7 cities before 1AD, in the other I can go for some wonders instead and slowly build my settlers).

Another lucky factor that can be determining is if there is or not some island at "trireme" distance from yout mainland. This makes a huge difference when the continent gets crowded and you cannot build more cities until you get astronomy.

Happy playing,

Phabi

It seems that many of you switch to 100% culture quite early in the game while I do that much later, so I try to build wonders like the Kremlin, at least one or two among Rock-n-Roll, Hollywood and Broadway so to get three cities pumping a few hundreds culture per turn.
A lot of this has to do with difficulty level. At high difficulty levels, you will often get beat to the media cultural wonders. And if you are good enough to get there first and built the cultural wonders, you would probably still be better off trading tech advancement for culture earlier. You can get 1000 culture/turn in a city with just Liberalism and Music (given enough cottage development). You can get 1500/turn with the media wonders, but 50 turns at 1000 culture/turn is worth just as much as 33 turns at 1500 culture/turn.

i find that going for the late cultural boosters is not a great idea as it causes you to go 100% much later.

1500 c/turn sounds appealing but if its its 1900 or beyond it will have done harm to your score, trying to get to that point. the victory condition is so many K culture and not c/turn, getting it earlyer will generally give you a better score.

getting enough citys to get more then 1 cathedral per religion type (let alone enough for oxford or wall street) will make you very unfriendly to your neighbours and will incur great upkeep (civic&city maint) costs, on monarch and above.
the most important techs are liberalism, the 2 trading techs for +2 trading routes (forgot the name) and printing press. Getting to biology is also great but it requires you to give up the science bonus and may postpone your 100% switch to much. getting rifling is also great to help you discourage offenders. i usually win before enemys begin to invade with modern armor/infantry.

i dislike pacifism in the later part of cultural wins because it makes my military extremely invasive to my budget, it amplify's with inflation, dont forget that.

also please dont fail to tell which difficultys you play and win games on

i find that going for the late cultural boosters is not a great idea as it causes you to go 100% much later.

1500 c/turn sounds appealing but if its its 1900 or beyond it will have done harm to your score, trying to get to that point. the victory condition is so many K culture and not c/turn, getting it earlyer will generally give you a better score.



OK, you're right
BUT (yes there is a but here)
- I play for fun
- I like the late wonders (eiffel tower!)
- I don't feel at ease with the 100% culture because i'm not very good at keeping good relations with your neighbours:blush:
SO
I like winning late cultural victories WITHOUT ANY CULTURE FROM THE SLIDER(I do build every cultural building asap in my first 3 cities, I use Great Artists a lot), with shitty scores at noble level.


This being said, i'm pretty sure that winning at monarch+ levels requires more "play for the winning" strategies, or you'll get caught by a space ship victory.

SO I like winning late cultural victories WITHOUT ANY CULTURE FROM THE SLIDER(I do build every cultural building asap in my first 3 cities, I use Great Artists a lot), with shitty scores at noble level.

I prefer a strategy without 100% culture, too, though I never finished such a game. I simple don't like it that the greatest culture on earth can be beaten easily by force. The cultural victory should be achievable in multiplayer games as well. I cannot believe that it's possible there without important military units.

If you dont't use the cultural slider you should convert your shields into culture. How much culture can you gain from this?

If you dont't use the cultural slider you should convert your shields into culture. How much culture can you gain from this?
1 culture/2 hammers. This is modified by the multipliers, of course, so it can be rather significant. But 7 commerce towns with high culture slider is hard to match.

1 culture/2 hammers. This is modified by the multipliers, of course, so it can be rather significant. But 7 commerce towns with high culture slider is hard to match.

perfectly true
that's why I cannot climb above prince this way:lol:
Even at prince, i had to use the slider in the very late game, but only for a few turns (like 30 or so).

I found out what was the most lacking in my gameplay : too few workers, ending in too slow growth and too much unimproved tiles/lately improved tiles.
You really need the cottage spam!

Already in the 1400s with my Noble game on Standard map. Culture slider is up to 70% already. Any higher and I'll go broke. Anyway, I made the mistake of pissing off Mansa who has cities immediately to my East so he attacks with only a few riflemen and canons and the dozens of Knights, Swordsmen, Longbows and Catapults are pulverized.

What's frustrating is that none of the three other civs I am friendly with could be convinced to help me in the war and I worked so hard to keep them as friends, even allowing myself to get the shallow end of the bargain during trades.

Seems to be two lessons learned here: 1) don't piss off anyone and if possible, avoid going to war even if a friendly civ tries to convince you to; and 2) never let up in your military buildup; you must dedicate cities not in the culture race to do nothing but build up the military. You can't have too much. I'm sure that even with inferior military units, I could have held Mansa off with sheer number.

Oh, yes, just as a footnote: I'm a warmonger so playing the culture game was kinda slow for me since I wasn't actively seeking out new territory or civs to conquer.

My two cents.

A few other points you can learn by bad-play (yes imean I don't play that good):

- you need the full fat cross for your 3 big ones. Overlapping can be done only one way : the big ones get the full fat cross and the new city is doomed to stay "a little one". Since you don't choose in which city you found a religion (if you do), so you just can say goodbye to the culture bonus, if it happens that the overlapping one gets the shrine. :sad:
To avoid this, only one rule : no overlapping.
- you need the cottage spam in all 3 big ones, so wonders built there are the very early ones (forest), or are GI rushed, or cash rushed, if you get to trade techs for big money.
- you need the population to work the cottages! so no pop rush for 3 big ones (unless you have plenty of food bonuses), you need towns and pop working it!
- you won't be able to found all religions, so you need to let other civs' religions get in. This can be done by :
* culture flipping/conquering a city with another religion, then building the monastery and flooding the missionaries.
* open borders with the founders of those missing religions, and trading with them+letting those missionaries doing their job (no theocracy, never).
I found out that the founders' city aren't always connected to mine : work on this! I also found out (did i mention i was slow?) that you can force the trade with the founder's city simply by closing borders with other civs. Thus making it much more likely to get the religion you miss. In other words : choose who you open borders with by looking what religion their cities have!
It's something like shooting in your own foot (making not so good trading routes, not so good relations), but it can get you that precious monastery+temple+cathedral.

Cultural victory without the slider

Like the previous posts, cathedrals are very important in this strategy. I always spawn missionaries to get every religion in at least 9 cities (I usually take out an adjacent civ with swordsman), and then build cathedrals in the three most fertile cities (count the food yields).

Once the religious building are finished, instead of flipping the slider, I replace all the towns with farms in the three cities. Biology is huge. Once you have it, don't work any tile that does not give you at least 4 food units. Everybody else is an artist.

You can get almost as much culture this way as if you used the slider with towns. The difference is that the commerce from all your other cities is still going into research, so you can still build a modern army and pursue other victory conditions.

The only reason I do use the slider is to offset unhappiness from the caste system. But this isn't a significant problem until late in the game, and at that point, research isn't as important.

One other thing - I am not sure this is the case on all game speeds, but playing on epic, I always make great artists into specialists. With cathedrals, hermitage and broadcast towers (usually from the eiffel tower - the only wonder I always go for) you get more culture that way (unless it is late in the game).

Once the religious building are finished, instead of flipping the slider, I replace all the towns with farms in the three cities. Biology is huge. Once you have it, don't work any tile that does not give you at least 4 food units. Everybody else is an artist.

You can get almost as much culture this way as if you used the slider with towns. The difference is that the commerce from all your other cities is still going into research, so you can still build a modern army and pursue other victory conditions.

almost true, but only almost because
* an artist doesn't give you what a town would give you
* only about a half of the population can become an artist, whereas a town still produces food.

yet it's a good alternative,
with good civics (free spech is a must, but with representation your bunch of artists are giving you a lot of research also!:goodjob: )
and the right wonder (sistin chapel ! it can give you the difference between a town and an artist!:king: )

the only drawback is your capital is usually your main culture center and also your main commerce city... switching to farms will be a real loss!

You're right that farms and artists do not equal the commerce from towns. A tile that produces 4 food will support the worker and an artist. That's 4 culture vs 7 (at 100% culture). But food resources and flood plains help. A tile with 5 food gives you 1.5 artists, 6 food gives you 2.

I just don't think that stopping research is a viable strategy on higher difficultly levels. If the AI sees that you are vulnerable, it is almost certainly going to attack. All it takes is a few tanks to raze one of your cultural cities, and the game is over.

Also, I don't understand your reservations about losing the commerce from your capital - when you flip the culture slider, you lose the output of all your cities, including your capital.

Prince, Epic, Pangaea, Catherine, Large, random civs, random map settings

I won using the following strategy:

1. I conquered with an early war the closest aggresive civ near me (Tog)
2. I conquered with a medieval war the civ following my lead in score and the others civs hate the most (incas)
3. At mid game I choose my 3 culture cities (1 is my capital, 1 is my GP/Artist farm, 1 is the other capital i captured early) and built cathedrals, and everything useful to them.
4. My culture slider is at the perentage where I can produce coins, and research at common speed (just behind rousvelt and cyrus let's say). At most was at 40%, then at 50% and only at the end at 80%
5. I rush build every cultural wonder (mostly just for fun)
6. I was producing like hell military (that's why I could not get the culture slider easily above 50% due to the military cost)
7. I even used sometimes the culture production in these 3 cities

FYI, I play just for fun and not for maximizing my score or going for a harder level.

You're right that farms and artists do not equal the commerce from towns. A tile that produces 4 food will support the worker and an artist. That's 4 culture vs 7 (at 100% culture). But food resources and flood plains help. A tile with 5 food gives you 1.5 artists, 6 food gives you 2.

strange calculations!
If you work one grassland town you get 2 food+7 commerce. ok.
If you work one grassland farm, you get 4 food. ok
If you have two pop, you can either have 2 grasslands worked, or 1 farm worked and one specialist.
So it's not 4 culture against 7, it's 4 against 14:eek: ! Don't tell you have 20 artists in your city, max city size i got is 22 (still growing but it's 1840 already, and unhealthiness is starting).


I just don't think that stopping research is a viable strategy on higher difficultly levels. If the AI sees that you are vulnerable, it is almost certainly going to attack. All it takes is a few tanks to raze one of your
cultural cities, and the game is over.

OK, i'm with you here. Exactly what i said in a faraway post.:thumbsup:


Also, I don't understand your reservations about losing the commerce from your capital - when you flip the culture slider, you lose the output of all your cities, including your capital.

You're right.
I just meant to say that going for farms in your capitol is a big loss for science/production. So you're getting vulnerable again (tanks razing your city, ...).

Still, i didn't mean that this alternative is all bad.
In fact, i never went for cultural through 100%culture slider for more than a few dozen turns. The alternative is pretty good, because you're not too much exposed to sneak attacks.

I just finished a culture victory on a large map, continents, Emperor level, epic speed with Ghandi.

I founded Hinduism as my first religion, used the Oracle to get CoL and my second religion, and the Great Scientist from the Great Library to get Philosophy and religion #3. Buddhism spread to one of my cities (I had 13), so I had 4 religions to work with. I spread Hinduism around to my neighbors to keep them happy and get me some early gold. I used the 100% science phase to research up to Democracy and Rifling and then went into the 100% gold phase to spread my religions to all of my cities. It's not very difficult to get 4 religions in each city, and my missionaries had a very low fail rate. After my cathedrals were built, I turned to the 100% culture phase. I had a small bit of trouble with Cathrine when she sent over some Riflemen and Cossacks. I was forced to go back to the science side and get Assembly Line and Infantry. I fought her off pretty easily and finished in the early 1800's wih my best culture score ever (~28K). I especially liked the fact that the top 5 cities in the world were all mine (my 3 culture cities, my GP farm and my military production center).

I like Spiritual leaders for culture wins because they allow you to change civics whenever you want. I switched a ton between Representation and Pacifism, then to Universal Suffrage and Free Religion, or to Vasslage and Theocracy to build up military.

I was at the tech lead when I switched off research, so it took a while for me to fall behind. My military was certainly not out of date when I won, but if it is, then you just have to build more troops. The AI looks at your power level, not necessarily what kind of troops you have. Also, in a cultural game, you really shouldn't have that many enemies and quite a few good friends. That should keep your enemies off your back long enough to win.

once culture is generated, nothing can multiply it, unlike in civIII. if an enemy takes your city however a portion is lostAny estimate on how much is lost as a percentage after recapture? Does the number of turns in enemy hands before recapture matter? The city will likely not be 100% of your nationality after a recature and the longer the city has stayed in enemy hands the more foreign nationals will be present in the city, right? How will that impact? On happiness or...?

The get gold to buy cathedral phase is optional. You can hand-build them or even whip them. The sooner you go to 100% culture the sooner you start accumulating culture, so delaying some cathedrals can be compensated.

Maybe 2 cottage cities + GPFarm is more efficient than 3 cottage cities. In that case, don't build any cathedral in the GPFarm, get it to legendary by bombing your last GAs.



If you dont't use the cultural slider you should convert your shields into culture.

Just the opposite. Go 100% culture and use your hammers on units to be strong.

The sooner you go 100% culture the least time AI will have to attack you or to win by space.


EDIT: I play my cultural games either in any level in GOTM (only lost the Deity one) or in Deity level with cheesy HOF settings.

I found out that the founders' city aren't always connected to mine : work on this! I also found out (did i mention i was slow?) that you can force the trade with the founder's city simply by closing borders with other civs. Thus making it much more likely to get the religion you miss.

(?)
Trade routes have nothing to do with the probability that a religion spreads naturally. Your OB with other civs doesn't affect it either.

Missionary spread can happen if you have OB with the religion founder. The closer he is and the bigger your cities are (and the less religions they have) the more likely it will be that a missionary comes your way.

Natural spread happens when you are connected to a city that has the religion. It is more likely if you are connected to the foundation city. More likely if there is a shrine there. More likely with OB. Less likely if in another continent.

Any estimate on how much is lost as a percentage after recapture? Does the number of turns in enemy hands before recapture matter? The city will likely not be 100% of your nationality after a recature and the longer the city has stayed in enemy hands the more foreign nationals will be present in the city, right? How will that impact? On happiness or...?

If you recapture a city, it will have exactly the same culture it had before you lost it.

Nationality is the comparison between your culture in the city and other cultures in the city. The more culture the other AI accumulates, the less it will be your nationality.

If you recapture a city, it will have exactly the same culture it had before you lost it.You are saying that spiceant is incorrect in stating at #11 that one will in fact lose some culture? If that is true, better raze a high culture city if you are unsure of defending it and you know your opponent was going for culture victory? Also, it seems that sometimes when I recapture a city of mine the AI has sold off or destroyed city improvements. Is that possible in BTS? Because then it would be sufficient to sell off some culturewonders and such and maybe try to hold the city.
Nationality is the comparison between your culture in the city and other cultures in the city. The more culture the other AI accumulates, the less it will be your nationality.
I fail to see how nationality matters at all. Could it revolt and go to the enemy because of nationality? Isn't that something that only happens cities pushed by enemy culture border under some time?

You are saying that spiceant is incorrect in stating at #11 that one will in fact lose some culture? If that is true, better raze a high culture city if you are unsure of defending it and you know your opponent was going for culture victory? Also, it seems that sometimes when I recapture a city of mine the AI has sold off or destroyed city improvements. Is that possible in BTS? Because then it would be sufficient to sell off some culturewonders and such and maybe try to hold the city.

I fail to see how nationality matters at all. Could it revolt and go to the enemy because of nationality? Isn't that something that only happens cities pushed by enemy culture border under some time?

- I wouldn't like my statements to look like an attack to @spiceant. But yes, basically I was contradicting him concerning this point. Maybe he was confusing culture and nationality. Or maybe he is right and I am wrong.

- Selling buildings is not possible in Civ4. The capture of a city makes some buildings dissapear. So your culture is still there, but if you have lost all your cathedrals, etc then your cultural victory is greatly delayed.

- Enemy nationality can enter your city through borders as you say or from the inside, because the city was of another player.

- Selling buildings is not possible in Civ4. The capture of a city makes some buildings dissapear. So your culture is still there, but if you have lost all your cathedrals, etc then your cultural victory is greatly delayed.
"Some" buildings? Randomly? Or pre-determined, which might be why you chose to mention cathedrals? So are a number of buildings pre-determined? Do all of the go away?

- Enemy nationality can enter your city through borders as you say or from the inside, because the city was of another player.The thing is that there is a bar showing nationality in the city screen. I assume it is there for a reason. I just don't know what that reason is. Do you?

"Some" buildings? Randomly? Or pre-determined, which might be why you chose to mention cathedrals? So are a number of buildings pre-determined? Do all of the go away?
I don't know. Can someone else help?
I think all buildings that add some culture will disappear, all WW will stay and granaries and the like have a chance of disappearing if it is not a city-recovering.

The thing is that there is a bar showing nationality in the city screen. I assume it is there for a reason. I just don't know what that reason is. Do you?

Maybe to make you know why they don't want to fight that country? Or to show you the flip probabilities? It is just information.

i have memory of loosing culture in a city while i made this article. I was elizabeth and lost my capitol and when i took it back i had lost some culture, so i gave up.

Have you tested wether you loose culture when you loose and retake citys?

i have memory of loosing culture in a city while i made this article. I was elizabeth and lost my capitol and when i took it back i had lost some culture, so i gave up.

Have you tested wether you loose culture when you loose and retake citys?

I have tested it in Vanilla. Not in Warlords or BTS.

Could it be that you remember losing culture per turn?

I dont clearly remember. How recent was this test?

I dont clearly remember. How recent was this test?

Maybe four months ago(?).

You know, I try not to lose my legendary cities, even if they keep all their culture in them :) :p :)


A quick run of WB should give us the answer.

You know, I try not to lose my legendary cities, even if they keep all their culture in them :) :p :) Nice kick in the groin there :)

This article and tips, while great, seems to be about only one of the many culture victory strategies: religion with CE.

What about:
religion with SE
Jewelers/Sushi
wonders with SE
Those are the major ones I can think of just off the top of my head. And, they have very different implementations.

(To be clear, the label just gives the predominant theme. That's not to say there aren't other elements able to be used as a secondary aid to the CV. For example, the article does an admirable job of listing wonders, and pointing out which ones will be helpful to supplement the base Religion/CE strategy. Likewise, for example, a Wonder/SE strategy can utilize religion, it's just not the major element. This is particularly important information because it's not always possible to get enough religions to be able to do a Religion CV, so knowledge of the other strategic options might well be the only alternative to dropping the CV altogether which would cause the player to be at a big disadvantage.)

Wodan

Looking in detail, I see one other thing, as well. The article could do a better job if it more clearly pointed out the value of prioritizing cottages in the big 3 cities.

Of course, I am probably doing the OP a disservice because he didn't set out to clearly indicate he was only talking about the Religion/CE strategy in the first place. Nevertheless, it's clear (to me) that this is what has been done because of all the discussion about the slider.

To contrast, a Religion/SE strategy doesn't care so much about using the slider for culture. In particular, if there is literally no commerce from the big 3 cities because everything is farmed over, then the culture slider is useful only for happiness, really. And, at that level, a 20% on the slider maximizes the benefit from theatre and colosseum, and is usually sufficient. Leaving the rest of the slider available to the player for other purposes (such as research).

Anyway, just my two cents. :)

Wodan

And what would the abbreviations SE and CE stand for?

Specialist Economy and Cottage Economy. Those are shorthand for your game strategy. There are many other such terms that people have coined but these are the two most prevalent.

A SE uses lots of farms (generally) to run a lot of specialists across your whole empire. Your research is generated by scientist specialists primarily, and by other specialsts if you are running Representation. Since your research does not depend on the sliders (upper left of the game screen), you can use the culture slider to generate extra happiness, which lets your cities grow even bigger and you can run even more specialists. (Plus, your trade route income is higher.)

A CE uses cottages everywhere. Most people play this type of game.

In either a SE or CE you can still have "production cities" which are cities specializing in churning out stuff such as units and wonders.

If you want more detail there are many threads discussing these terms and all the different strategies.

Wodan

Culture victory is the ultimate hybrid economy.

Don't bring SE and CE into it.

The only culture strategy is a hybrid economy? How do you figure?

Wodan

Hmm, he's been online since then but didn't bother to reply. Must have realized his usual one-sentence smack down doesn't work when you don't have any supporting evidence. ;)

Wodan

The great prophet it spawns in 50 turns can found christianity, if you research writing and the first 5 religion techs.


Great article, it allowed me to win first time out! On Warlords with Hatty at Monarch.

But I fail to see how a Grt Proph can FOUND a religion. Is this a niche I am unaware of?

Thanks in advance