Well, I finally thought I'd have a go at this culture victory malarky. I have mixed feelings about it, however, but mostly good ones.

It started when I drew Saladin on a random leader start. I played Big n Small, Standard size, Epic Speed, Monarch difficulty. No tech brokering. Choose religions. Random everything else.

Saladin starts with Mysticism, so early religion is a poss. He is protective and so is good for turtling for culture and his UB has +4 culture on the Madrassa. What the hell, I thought, and decided to go the culture route. I missed the first two religions :crazyeye: due to having no decent commerce tiles in my start but got the next three from a mad tech bee-line! On the way I grabbed the mids and the Great Wall (stone in my capital). I made sure I had 3 cities by the time I got the religions, so I could found one in each and use a GPr in each for the Holy building jobbies. Add to that some cathedrals and the culture's ticking along nicely. I only ceated 3 more cities in the whole game. Two for pure cottage spamming and one to hook up resources. When I had all the relevant techs, I farmed over my 3 holy cities for extra Specialists and farmed over on of the other cottage spam cities to try to bang out Great Artists with the National Epic thingy.

However, I did find that once I was all turtled up that the game was extraordinarily boring! I just kept hitting end turn 100 times in a row without doing anything, punctuated only be trade and annoyances from the AI.

By the time I hit modern times, however, things really started hotting up. A few AIs were racing ahead in the Space Race and Hayuna Makka Pakka was in with a good chance of stealing the culture win. This wasn't helped by the UN gonig all "Emancipation is good" on me and forcing me away from Caste for my extra artists. I tried the whole "Never!" approach for one term but that hit my happiness so much it was worse. "We demand emancipation" AND "the world considers you a villain" are just too much together! :rolleyes:

I won in the 1940s, only 5 turns before Augustus finished his space ship and only 10 turns from Makka Pakka's Culture win!

Overall, an intersting game up to the turtle and an exciting and very challenging finish to try to beat the other guys. But what a boring middle few hundred turns! Still, it's another victory type done......

The best thing? I only created 5 military units the whole game!!!! I started with a warrior, obviously, built one more, three archers and a longbow. Never needed any more!

tee hee :lol:

Heyena Makka Pakka :lol:

How did you manage to stay safe and not have any other civs bully you? How many opponents did you have?

I always wind up getting Monty as my next door neighbor. So you can imagine how I'm not able to neglect my military. :p

Good job! :cool: I've only set out to win a cultural victory one time, and didn't make it. You've inspired me to try again.

Heyena Makka Pakka :lol:

How did you manage to stay safe and not have any other civs bully you? How many opponents did you have?

I always wind up getting Monty as my next door neighbor. So you can imagine how I'm not able to neglect my military. :p

Ditto this question. I'm going for a cultural victory right now, myself, and have a sizeable, but not huge military (I'm the weakest civ). Napoleon decided to take an island city from me a few turns ago, and did so with zero losses. He couldn't make the move to my mainland, but the ease at which he stomped me left me feeling pretty edgy. I still think I'll pull off the win, though.

5 military total sounds a bit suspect. I usually have atleast 4 soilders per city and a few gaurding strategic resources. This can be a handicap when runnign pacifism though. I am suprised the AI did not stomp you.

In my experience you need to maintain a pretty big, largely modernized army to keep the AI from attacking you. Focus the big garrisons on your outer cities, but be sure to leave 2-3 units in your inner cities too. If push comes to shove you can always move some troops from the core of your empire to the frontiers, as you see where the attacks are coming from. The big thing I think is really keeping the troops up to date... If the AI is on Macemen and Knights then you have got to get those archers upgraded to longbows in a hurry. If you're in a tight cash spot and are running pacifism it may be more effective to delete your archers and build new longbows. Obviously, get the longbows in place before deleting the archers though. But yeah, try and keep balanced defensive stacks... At a minimum your cities should field 1 general purpose city garrison archery/gunpowder unit, 1 anti-melee unit and 1 anti-mounted unit. I'd use this in all my core cities, and on the frontiers or very important cities (like the 3 being groomed for legendary status, or ones that give me access to crucial resources) I'll double or triple those numbers.

I learned the hard way on my first culture win (that I won by the hair of my chinny chin chin, as stupid Napoleon almost wiped out my 3rd culture city one turn before it went legendary) that you really should heed the advice to have a primary military city, and pretty much never stop spitting troops out of it. And when it comes time to flip the culture switch and stop all research, well, you better have a pile of riflemen everywhere cause by the time you win the enemy will have infantry at least, and likely tanks and aircraft as well.

Catan Settler has great advice about specializing your defenders. Often I am lazy and load in 3 bows (long bows). You really should have 1 (or 2) longbow(s), 1 pike, and 1 maceman. This allows you to weather the storm easier. As well, you can attack out of your city with macemen to kill the survivors.

I often will keep 3 longbows in each city then in teh central most city keep 4 catapolts and 4-10 knights. This allows me to mobilize my defence to where the attack comes from and to counter-attack if I feel I can. I usually have one city almost constantly producing military units if I can (money limits when running Pacifism). As a side, I often have one city just produce monks to spread my state religion(s) to protect myself and raise profits from religious buildings. As well, I can spread non-founded religions to my cities so I can build more temples and therefore cathedrals in the cities going for a cultural victory.

You can get by a whole game with 1 warrior per city. You just need to get lucky. It's obviously impossible to keep all AIs at friendly, so it's basically just luck. He could have been dowed and had his game ruined at any moment.

Congratulations! I am 7 turns from my first culture victory but at the beginning of the game I thought I would win by domination or spaceship. I have described it here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6537200&postcount=95

S.

lol was it always peace by any chance ;D