Cultural Victory: Notes and tips

[spiceant]

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

 

[cabert]

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
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 horsehockey 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.

 

[Pvblivs]

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 horsehockey 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?

 

[walkerjks]

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.

 

[cabert]

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
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!

 

[Darkhrse]

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.

 

[cabert]

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.
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.

 

[mb352525]

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).

 

[cabert]

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! )
and the right wonder (sistin chapel ! it can give you the difference between a town and an artist! )

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!

 

[mb352525]

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.

 

[chipix]

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.

 

[cabert]

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 ! 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.

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.

 

[Orion071]

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.

 

[Alltidxx]

[*]once culture is generated, nothing can multiply it, unlike in civIII. if an enemy takes your city however a portion is lost

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...?

 

[jesusin]

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.

 

[jesusin]

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.

 

[jesusin]

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.

 

[Alltidxx]

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?

 

[jesusin]

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.

 

[Alltidxx]

- 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?