I'm playing at Monarch at the moment, but I still have serious problems in trying a cultural victory!! :)
I'd like some hints and guidelines about what to do and what not to do.

I played my last game with Kublai Khan: I think that Creative is a good option for a cultural victory.
I prioritize culture since the beginning, and rush for Notre Dame.
I build cottages all around my main three cities (assumed they have enough food to grow).
I adopt a neighbor religion to improve relations with other civs, and build a lot of libraries, temples, monasteries and cathedrals in the 3 core cities.
I look for liberalism to adopt free speech.
I build hermitage in the core city that produces less culture, and cathedrals in the other two cities.
When I don't need other techs, I set 100% culture.

It seems it's not enough! Am I missing anything? Does anybody have any hint?

What about:
- expanding, and having the other cities to produce great artists
- declaring war on my cultural enemies (who are also trying a cultural victory)
- building lot of wonders

Try to generate great artists for settling in big 3 cities (and later for great works).

The way you're doing it, your 'big 3' cities are surrounded by cottages and get their culture that way.

However, city #4 doesn't need cottages. City #4 can be somewhere with lots and lots of food, helped by lots and lots of farms. Then city#4 can have lots of artist specialists (as many as you can manage... caste system might help). That way, it'll make great artists for you, which you can use to tip your big 3 over the edge.

By the way, how many religions are there in your cities? There should be three or four, if you can manage it, so that each of your big 3 can have three or four cathedrals instead of just the one.

By the way, how many religions are there in your cities? There should be three or four, if you can manage it, so that each of your big 3 can have three or four cathedrals instead of just the one.


This is good! More cathedrals allow a great culture boost for sure!
Four cathedrals in each city: +200% culture!!
Maybe, that's the main point I was missing!



Then city#4 can have lots of artist specialists (as many as you can manage... caste system might help). That way, it'll make great artists for you, which you can use to tip your big 3 over the edge.


Is this valid for Philosophical leaders only, or can it work with anyone?
Maybe, non-philosophical leaders should have another ways to increase their culture, because great persons production becomes weaker, and then a secondary factor.
E.g., aggressive leaders could conquest enemy cities and gain more religions, to build more temples (in every city) and more cathedrals (in the core cities). I need a certain number of cities, to be able to build more Cathedrals for a given religion. I need three cathedrals for each religion, so I need 9 temples.
Aggressive leaders should "obtain" (found/conquer/assimilate) 9 cities very easily.

Is it right?

do you really mean Notre Dame? if you're running the slider, i wouldn't expect happiness to be an issue. so i'd go for Sistine Chapel. even if you don't run a state religion to get that new bonus out of it, it's really nice for the artists that you run in your big 3 cities. doesn't suck for culturally-grabbing extra resources (extra health never hurt anybody) near any temple cities that are doubling as mini GA farms ;). the building itself has artist GPPs too. i loved it in warlords even before the SR building boost.

consider parthenon too. more GPs in every city, and GA points where you build it. you can't start building it as soon as you could pre-BtS of course, but the techs are ones you want anyway iirc. i think that mathwise the general opinion is that it's more bang for your hammers if you're not philo? i'm going by what i kinda remember reading, i don't do that sort of math myself. anyway, it's a wonder i adored for cultural in warlords.

good luck :)

And don't forget corps, especially the sushi one.... with a suitable map, corps can give you +/- 100 raw :culture: ( suitable of being multiplied by Hermitage, catedrals, the "hits" wonders and broadcast towers ), far more than the rest of the culture bringers ( except the GA farms )

do you really mean Notre Dame? if you're running the slider, i wouldn't expect happiness to be an issue. so i'd go for Sistine Chapel.


Of course, I meant Sistine Chapel!!! Sorry!! :)

I haven't tried on monarch, but I've found cultural victories pretty easy through noble (where I'm currently practicing warmongering), and I actually think there are some better traits than creative for a cultural victory. In particular, industrious (for wonder building) and philosophical (for great artists). (Too bad you can't get these two traits together.) The key is having one of your cultural cities be a great-artist-factory. It can send out great artists to do great works in the other cities. For national wonders, some combo of globe theatre/hermitage/national epic. For world wonders, statute of zeus (can't go wrong with this one!), and parthenon are the absolute best. Also, sistine chapel and notre dame are good. Plus, make sure you have cathedrals in each of your three cities, preferably multiple cathedrals in each.

As for the culture slider, I almost never use it until about the last 1/4 of the game, because tech and money are needed. But whenever they aren't building wonders, my 3 cultural cities are set to producing culture.

I think the easiest way to win a cultural victory on monarch and below is to use an industrious leader. I prefer ind/spi (Raamses?) or ind/fin (HC). You have 2 primary goals ... build all the wonders you can in your 3 culture cities, and get 3 or 4 religions. I usually skip the early religions, make a stab for Judaism as monotheism is useful for Organized Religion even if an AI beats me to it, and after worker techs, beeline to CoL and Phi. If you get the Oracle, make sure you have the techs to take theology to found Christianity. You should be able to found Confucianism, Taoism and Christianity, and probably Islam as well.

I like to use a specialist economy, focusing on science to get the later religious techs first. A coastal colossus/Great Lighthouse economy can work well too.

With this strategy, in the early game you want to focus on getting 2 high production cities founded. If you can build at least 2 wonders in each city by 500 AD, those wonders will have double culture for most of the game. Say you get 14 culture from the 2 wonders. That doubles after 1000 yrs to 28. Add in free speech and 4 cathedrals, and that's 112 culture per turn.

As you have time, settle your other 6 cities. Try to build the Apostolic Palace, and have a missionary ready for each new city. Then build a monastery and temple in the new city first and you will have a nice base of 4 hammers from those buildings. The sistine chapel is huge. it will give you 15 culture/turn from buildings, plus 2 for every specialist. With later game multipliers, that's 60+ culture per turn.

I usually try to build the Pyramids in my second city, hopefully a spot with quite a few forests to chop it.

If possible try to have theatres, libraries, and your state religion's temple and monastery built before 500 AD so you get good benefit from the 1000 yr doubling. These 4 building with late game multipliers will eventually get you 64 culture per turn. Spreading your other religions is a goal, but you don't have to worry about getting those cathedrals up super fast. By building wonders and other culture buildings before 500 AD, you set up very high culture later in the game from the culture doubling. This is more important than prioritizing expensive cathedrals. This type of culture game is all about setting up a huge late game (1500AD or so) culture rate. Rates of 500 culture per turn are pretty easy to attain.

A couple other things:

Make sure you have enough military to keep the AIs off your back. Building the AP and making sure all your neighbors have at least one city with that religion is nice because you should be able to stop any war fairly quickly.

Rather than occupy your 3 core cities with building missionaries, try to have a 4th city with decent production to be a missionary factory. Spread all the religions there, and have that city spread them around. If you don't have wonders or culture buildings to build, build military, or if military isn't needed, run artist specialists and build wealth. Building wealth to store gold for later in the game when you can use the culture slider is better than building culture. you are basically 'storing' commerce to use it better when you have more culture modifiers.

Other wonders that will vastly help your economy are the spiral minaret and U of Sankore. With 9 cities, you should have 21 state religion buildings giving 42 base beakers and 42 base gold.

One thing I forgot to add ...

When spreading religions and building temples, prioritize your state religion first (AP bonus, U of Sankore, Spiral Minaret, civic bonuses). After that, prioritize relgions for which you have the resource to build the cathedral quicker. If you have all the resources, it doesn't really matter.

I think that Creative is a good option for a cultural victory.

This is actually a common misconception. The amount of culture that you get from the Creative trait is pretty minimal compared to the amount that you end up needing. Far better traits are Philosophical, for the faster Great Artists, and Industrious for the faster Wonder building. Spiritual is a controversial third pick, as it allows for faster temple building, as well as penalty-free civic changes.

Since you can't get Philosophical + Industrious, which would be best, Philosophical + Spiritual or Industrious + Spiritual are two very good choices.

Bh

A little late chiming in. Here is some input

You order of things to do is pretty good, I will talk about other things/

1) Leader: Although Kublai is creative I am not sure he's the best for a cultural win. Phil, Ind, ORG, FIN are good combos with each other and Creative.
2) Pick an AI with a useful UB. Ger is great for war-mongering but no culture. The romans, chinese, ethiopians are some
3) How far are you going into tech? I tend to tech through Mass Media and INdustrialization.
4) You cannot lose a cultural victory if you beat the opposition into a bloody pulp. Hence why I go to the industrial era, flight is good to for airports and the ectra trade route.
5) Build some sonders and spreas them between the cities. The faster you build an ancient wonder, the faster it starts doubling culture points after 1000 years.
6) You really want to sisten chapel, not Notre Dam (although it is good unto itself.
7) Try to build all the great artist wonders in your GP farm, and pump out great artists.
8) Civics: best are representation (science and happiness), free speech (self explanatory), caste system (unlimited artists), free market (extra trade route), Free religion or better yet pacifism.
9) Found the culture producing corps (Sid's and Creative Construction) but do not waste a GA on the Jewelers.
10) Have one of your big three as a forrest rich city so you can build the national Park and globe theater there. 6 free artists without concern for population growth. This is a little toughbut if you start early and stay with it you'll have the infrastructure in place.

Best leaders: Roosevelt, Mansa, Qin, HC, Pericles, Zara, Elizabeth.

Hope this helps.

one note... If you have Sistine Chapel, you Want a state religion(the 3 religious buildings give you +10-15 base culture that you can't get in Free Religion)

so Pacifism, OR, or even Theocracy is usually better than Free Religion

Free Speech is really the only mandatory civic for a culture win.
otherwise
US for rushing culture buildings.. Rep for keeping up in tech
Caste for multiple Artists.. highly favored
Free Market if using the culture Slider, Mercantilism if focusing on specialists.