Yesterday i won the most challenging cultural victory ever. Ok, it was noble only but not a "classical" victory. I played as Khmer on a small shuffle map turned out as two bic continents at epic speed, only trading techs you have researched enabled.
I had no special intention what the game would get like, let's wait and see what happens. Found Dareios and Zara Yaqob on my continent. I beelined to constuction and eliminated my neighbour Zara Yaqob with Ballista-Elefants and catapults, very easy and nothing special.
Four religions had been founded by Zara and Dareios, two in a distant land and the philosophy lightbulb one (choosed buddhism) by me. The whole relgion spread on this continent was a total mess, no religion dominating. So Dareios and me thought: thats a optimal case study for early free religion from the Shewdagonya(?) Pagode. Dareios won by one turn!!!! So that meant another war to conquer this building. Problem was Dareios had also build the Zeus Statue and had a widespread empire. I have never seen such war weariness (+16 average) so early. I won the long war eliminating also Dareios but that was costly i had to push culture up 40%, science didn't happen anymore, infrastucture buildup suffered and i had a huge underdeveloped continent on my own at the end.
Meanwhile there were constantly nice wonders built in a distant land, when i met the remaing two, Ramses and Julius Caesar united in the taoist apostolic palace, they were about 10 techs ahead. My plan for a space race at this moment seemed not very promising anymore. Caesar was a insane military power house. Apart from that it was obvious who had build all those wonders Thebes and Elephantine both had about 6 each. He was directly going for a cultural victory for years and Thebes was already near legendary. Only his third city was far behind (at 16.000 or so).
In this strange situation i decided to compete with Ramses for this cultural win, at 1200 AD or so without having prepared anything.
I only had the Angkor Wat build in Angkor Wat for more or less a flavor feeling. All other wonders lighthouse, Shwedgadony Pagode, Zeus and Oracle were conquered and gave zero culture.
But i had:
- 5 religions
- Angkor Wat planned as perfect Nationalpark city: there were 15 forest tiles in the fat cross!
- lots of gold, silver and gems ressources
So tried a late game cultural win based on free Artist-specialists from the Nationalpark via caste sytem, a late but intense relgion spread and the Civilized jewellers corporation. And it worked! The research beeline to those techs was hard, but then my culture exploded!
The National-Park with 15 Artists and National Epic produced Great Artists and the needed Great Prophets for my two shrines in the culture cities.
And Civilized jewellers gave me 46 base-culture per turn! Absolutely fantastic, these two elements are an ultimate late game culture tool, even if you haven't planned for it in any way! I didn't try the other two cultural corporations (Sushi and creative constructions), because i had only few sea food an a Great Engineer was absolutely out of reach. I didn't even have factories. Later Ramses founded Creative Constructions but it was to late. My three cities Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and ex-Ethiopian Lalibela renamed to Pagan were leaving Heliopolis way behind!
But not enough: I don't know whether it was because of my ridiculously low power rating or because he was aware of his victory in danger i catched Ramses (he was at pleased with me!) with a 5 transport plus 3 destroyers invasion fleet on the ocean and thought: ok, it was only a try, but culture is nothing without power. Last hope was Julius Caesar, whom i was really kissing his ass: maps for free, 900 gold request, yes take it, my hard researched biology? ok if it helps you! I also ran representation which is his fortunately his favorite. So he was willing to sign a defensive pact! And one turn later, i had Ramses SAM infanteries standing on the shore. My musketmen had absolutely no chance and two coastal cities fell soon. But in his homelands Caesar showed his warring abilities to his taoist brother in faith and conquered some cities, but none of the cultural cities. Didn't matter in the end my third city hit 75.000 culture and i won! Meanwhile Thebes was ar 130.000 and Elephantine at 90.000 but Ramses had his Wonders spread badly, Heliopolis was only at 69.000!
Conclusion: One of my most fascinating games ever, the new BtS AI makes those games challenging.
But more important for this strategy forum: the Nationalpark and the three Cultural corporations are so incredibly strong, that you can get cultural victories also if you don't go for it since 400BC. I gained more than the triple the amount of culture from the Corporation-ressources than from the standard buildings (theatre, bibliothek, temple, monasteries, unversity).

Wow, that is impressive. One question, does the culture from corps get the multipliers like catherdrals and free speech or is the culture added on at the end?

I am quite sure the corporation culture gets those benefits too, like other sources (buildings, specialists). I don't have the game on this computer, so i can't have a look.
One thing to add. This approach combines culture with conquest, because the essential prerequesite are the resources. The corporation itself is nothing, but i had about four gems, two gold and two silver sources. It should be difficult to get so many ressources without conquest or as alternative very intelligent trades.

If that is the case then the chinese Pagoda is even more powerful. Qin may be the master of hunkering down for wonder building and looking for a culture victory.

The chinese are definetely strong for cultural victories. The Pagode is half a cathedral and comes early. Qin as industrial has good chances for a traditional approach with many wonders, like Ramses did in my game.
The point is that you really don't need wonders if you can have a good corporation, so industrial doesn't matter. I only build one wonder, the Angkor Wat. The two shrines and the corporation need Great People. This is doable with every trait and every leader i think. Surayavarman is creative, thats nice for cultural victories but not the gamebreaker.

Congratulations on the victory! That's a great story. In my first games I saw how powerful the corporations could be and I wondered about using them for culture victory. That's cool to see that Firaxis has made cultural victories more feasible even late in the game.

One other point, I am not convinced Ramses was trying for the cultural victory in your. I did see him try is once in BTS and he had all three cities lined up at the same culture level. I guess other civc saw that and Cyrus took over two of the three culture cities.

Given your experience with this strategy, how on-point does this post read to you (I'd love some constructive feedback from somebody else who has noticed the Corporate Culture strategy for late-game Cultural Victories):

:culture: The Fantastic Four (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5701209#post5701209) :culture:

But more important for this strategy forum: the Nationalpark and the three Cultural corporations are so incredibly strong, that you can get cultural victories also if you don't go for it since 400BC. I gained more than the triple the amount of culture from the Corporation-ressources than from the standard buildings (theatre, bibliothek, temple, monasteries, unversity).

There are actually 4!

Even though Aluminum Co. does not directly yield :culture:, if it's present in a city with Creative Constructions, then the Aluminum it yields is then used by CC to generate :culture:!

The presence of AC in a city with CC essentially adds "Coal" to CC's resource list by way of synergy. (Of course, this doesn't really apply if with the National Park, but worth mentioning, I think.)

Wow, that is impressive. One question, does the culture from corps get the multipliers like catherdrals and free speech or is the culture added on at the end?

All Corporate Benefits are treated as raw yields. Thus they are all subject to the appropriate multipliers!

This was my max per turn culture in a recent culture win as Pericles on Emperor:

http://home.nc.rr.com/fragamemnon/culture.jpg

leet-speak jokes aside, the two culture corporations I used (Sid's Sushi, Civilized Jewelers) delivered a simply astonishing amount of per-turn "base" culture after I traded off the Broadway/Rock'n'roll/Hollywood trade goods to the AIs for raw materials.

If I'm going for a culture win, I will beeline economics to stash away the Great Merchant for the Sushi corporation if I have a lot of seafood resources, even to the point of jeopardizing winning the liberalism race.

Given your experience with this strategy, how on-point does this post read to you (I'd love some constructive feedback from somebody else who has noticed the Corporate Culture strategy for late-game Cultural Victories)

If I go for a cultural victory, this is usually what I do. Saving some GP for corporations and GE's for the late game cultural wonders for the 50% bonus and trading away those extra resources for corporation resources. I prioritize resources for Sid's Sushi because you get http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/civ4/culture.gif and http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/civ4/food.gif which means more artists in every city. If you run Representation, Caste System, and Pacifism, Sid's Sushi effectively becomes +3http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/civ4/culture.gif +0.25http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/civ4/science.gif +1.50http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/civ4/greatperson.gif so you end up with great artists like mad.

If you manage to pull all of this off, 1500 http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/civ4/culture.gif- 2000 http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/civ4/culture.gif per turn in each culture city (with no or few wonders) can be typical near the end of the game. An added bonus is with creative constructions these cities become production powerhouses as well, so you can end up grabbing a lot of those late game wonders easily.

I think a good general strategy is early warmongering/expansion to ensure you will have a lot of resources to trade away but by mid game you should switch focus to teching so you can reach corporations/mass media quickly. After that, hunker down and wait it out.