Was playing a marathon game (Arabia, Noble) and was pursuing a cultural victory. I realized about 50 turns from the end of the game I could not win a cultural victory. As well, I was behind in techs and score. Washington had the only tech lead and was up by ~200 pnts. As well, Washington was getting dangerously close to completing a space ship. I was not sure what to do, realizing I would lose. I ended up builing 5 transports of tanks and 10 nukes. 12 turns from the end of the game I nuked 8 cities, captured and razed 4. Washington attacked the remaining units with modern armors and if I had nto been on a different continent I would have been toast. In the end I won a time victory. Kind of a hollow victory.

Do other people find they are just going to be shy from a cultural victory? If so, what do they do? Does anyone use nukes to beat back an uber strong opponent. As well, the other civs did not declare war on me when I nuked US. I thought it was standard for the world to gang up on you if you use nukes. The US did not nuke back. Does the AI build nukes? Do they use them?

I don't go for cultural victories, so can't answer that question. With regards to nukes, I don't think the AI gives them a high priority as they are expensive to build, if i was to see an AI build them then its a fair bet they would be prepared to use them which most AIs won't do.

Some AIs may declare war on you although generally its just heavy negative diplo modifiers with everyone that is the downside to using nukes, as well as the global warming.

Was not too concerned about global warming with only a few turns left.

You can basically plan out your culture per turn, and should aim to win long before time runs out. On higher difficulties, the aim is to win before the AI launches the ship, or flattens you, or gets their own culture.

Culture multipliers and artists are a good mix. You want the artists early and to settle as many as possible (until it yields more culture to bomb later on...just calculate it but ideally you want them ASAP), then apply culture multipliers (some UB's, religious buildings that require 6 temples, some wonders) and the slider to ramp up culture. You should be able to win long before the ship gets launched in a noble game, although you do have to be careful not to get smacked down by monty or something.

Well if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say if you had shut off your research properly you wouldn't have been even close to having the tech to make nukes, but that would have given you a shot at winning the game via culture by setting the culture slider to 100%. Honestly I don't know if it's even possible to win culturally without going all out with the slider... Typically I suspend all research as soon as I get radio and massmedia, and according to some of the strats I've read on these forums, you can actually shut it off way sooner if you have managed to collect 5 or 6 of the religions in your 3 culture cities and can get cathedrals in them, winning culturally long before industrialization.

Well if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say if you had shut off your research properly you wouldn't have been even close to having the tech to make nukes, but that would have given you a shot at winning the game via culture by setting the culture slider to 100%. Honestly I don't know if it's even possible to win culturally without going all out with the slider... Typically I suspend all research as soon as I get radio and massmedia, and according to some of the strats I've read on these forums, you can actually shut it off way sooner if you have managed to collect 5 or 6 of the religions in your 3 culture cities and can get cathedrals in them, winning culturally long before industrialization.

My understanding is that a lot of people shut it off after nationalism (for the hermitage), and mass great artists and whatever religions they can get.

Also, keep one of your late-game GA's to balance out the culture cities. Ideally you hit legendary with all 3 at almost the same time.

You don't need 5 or 6 religions; you can only build 2 cathedrals per city anyway.

I've never actually won a culture victory, and will have to try it again some time, but here are some (theoretical) suggestions.

1) Pick two culture cities. Your capital will be your third. I've never played a game in which the capital didn't hit legendary even when I wasn't trying for culture. That's where most of your wonders will end up being built, so it will accumulate a lot of culture anyway.

2) Your two other culture cities should be ones with lots of food, because you will be making lots and lots of specialists in them. For me, this will require a huge change in play style, because I normally make two cities like that my GP farms, one for scientists and the other for merchants, and in this case they will still be GP farms but both for artists, which I normally never go after. Because of that, I think going CE in the rest of the cities is a good plan.

3) Wonder priorities: the Parthenon, the Sistine Chapel, and any other wonders that generate Great Artists.

4) Civic priorities: Free Speech, Caste System, Pacifism. You want to avoid Emancipation as long as possible (and since you'll probably be pushing the culture slider up anyway it should be doable), because there aren't that many buildings that allow Artist specialists. Just two I can see, the Theatre and the Broadcast Tower, allowing 4 in all, and the BT is quite late in the game. If you're playing the Greeks or French, that's less important as the Greeks get two more from their UB and the French get 1 free Artist from theirs. Avoid Free Religion as well, because it would lose you the culture boost from Sistine, but you still want to beeline Liberalism for Free Speech, which is vital. If the game lasts that long, Environmentalism is a good civic when your culture cities get big enough to run into health problems. You want to keep them growing. The more Artists you can have in them, the better.

5) Military considerations: I think pursuing a culture victory isn't necessarily a 100% peacemonger strategy, although obviously it's going to be less bellicose than domination. I think a limited amount of military expansion may still be a good thing, as it will help you secure health and happiness resources and a solid research base. You need a good pool of resources as trade goods to keep your culture cities happy and growing. Obviously, you also need to maintain a strong military for deterrence purposes.

6) The culture slider: I see some people advocating setting the slider to 100% culture once you get Radio. I'm not convinced about this. You need to maintain a certain degree of tech and military parity to avoid getting clobbered by cultural philistines with bigger guns than you have. (Barbarians - the world is, alas, full of them.) (And I mean the barbarians that think they're civilized, not the ones that have no pretenses.)

Much of this is theory, I've never actually won a culture victory. Some of it, though, consists of lessons from the mistakes I made when I tried to. Take it for what it's worth.

Thanks for the feed back. Fairly helpful, but I think that I have done most of the suggested advice. I think the problem was i got too many GS and GE, and not enough GA. I bulbed most of them or used them to construct wonders, perhaps I should have settled them.

At Hammurbabble:
1/2- I did have 2 cities "producing" culture with 5 specialty citizens as artists plus my capitol.
3- I completely messed up my wonder assignments. I poorly placed them and missed out on Sistine Chaple.
4-I ran caste system, pacifism and free speech (built pyrimides) as soon as I got them. Never switched to emancipation.
5-Had two great production cities which produced all of my units. I was able to have 2 great wars as well as the last great nuclear bombardment
6-Ran the cultural slider at 50% after the first 1/2 and 80% after 1875 I think.


Addressing religion: I founded three. I built 3 cathedrials in the two cities. Maintained closed borders the whole game, so I probably missed out on a few more cathedrals (I had never tried an isolationist strategy).

I have won cultural victories before with Arabia. I guess I just messed up priorities, GP, and wonders this game.

I was wondering what other people did if they found they could not win their targeted goals. IE-going for UN victory but cannot end up getting it.

I did just go for a diplomatic victory once I built the UN and had 10 out of 12 votes for me to be Secratary General. One of those descenders was Ceasar who I was still at war with from him backstabbing me. He begged for peace but I never gave it to him and had Catherine (who was the other descender and 2nd to me on the power chart) whom I'm friendly with beat him down too. But the after I passed the sanction for everybody to switch to free religion, all I finished off Ceasar (who nobody really cared for), all the other civs abstained.

So I'm not sure what to do from here. I do know that time is running out though. Frederick already has several pieces of the space ship built and I'm still waiting for my Alpha Centuri wonder to be completed before I can even begin building parts.


I've always wanted a culture victory now that they've added Religion into Civilization. I was going to try for it in my next game because like you, but even more than you, I have mess up my placements and my wonders and I don't generate enough GP or even know how to use them properly yet. So a cultural victory wouldn't work for me this game.

Hopefully the suggestions here can help me win a cultural victory in my next game though. :D