Is the Cultural VC the hardest to achieve?

Lot of responses

I completely forgot about extra culture from golden ages

I decided which policy path i will take. It gonna be 3 from Piety for +33% culture form cities with at least 1 wonder then finish Freedom. I will complete Piety, go for Liberty then i will finish with either Commerce or Patronnage.

I will build a wonder in each cities as fast as i can from now. I will surely start Oracle into another city than capital, Pisa for another and PT(from a ge) for last one.

And yes Moriarte i'm pretty sure it's better to settle ALL gr. artists excepted for the last 20-30 turns.

Alright so i continued my game and focused on CI and Oracle in satellite cities while Capital is building HS and other things.

I focused on rush buying almost every culture buildings and running g. art. immediately in them. Also runned 2 gs with universities. Hard built Sistine(took 16 turns) in capital then i went for Pisa--->PT in 4th city.

After all wars the AI suddenly turned friendly I DoFed 5/6 of them(1 died) and focused on some RAs. Focusing on Hermitage here :



I completed Tradition and Piety and took Liberty opener :



With a natural ga the culture rate made a decent jump some turns later :



Built Oxford for Archeology, time to make Freedom our next completed tree :



Some turns later, after all archeology's buildings bought, 4xg. art. everywhere and Taj completed...a pretty massive culture boost appeared I stopped gs production and focusing on raw beakers and RAs only for Radio and Plastics. Time to gather last wave of gold for broadcast towers :





Some bad play/decisions : went into unhappiness for a dozen of turns somewhere around turn 105.

Hard built Sistine...next time i will gather a ge as my first gp. Runned a ge for ''nothing'' into my capital so far.

Rushed 2 broadcast towers. I gained around 100 cpt. Time to get Louvre.



Rushed a 3rd tower after 2 expensive RAs signed. 1 more to go. I settled a lot of g.art.(10) and coupled with Freedom finisher it gives a huge cpt rate. I'm now getting each policies at a rate of 1 per 5-6 turns.

alpaca said:

Is it really better to spread your religion rather than save the points for great prophets and great artists that provide culture? We also have to consider that the AI tends to use a lot of their great prophets for spreading their religions, so you need to allocate a lot of resources for this. Probably not worth the hassle in my opinion.

Click to expand...

That's very true, but I was getting lots of fpt anyways, so none of that mattered in the long run. BTW, the spread bonus from GMOD affects Great Prophets as well! They can spread 5 times instead of four.

I mainly used missionaries, going to prophets in harder to spread cities. At the end though, I simply bought GAs with my faith and used them to pop golden ages. As I said, I had ALOT of Faith to burn. In fact, I had almost 7k faith when Utopia was built. So in that case, the GMOD paid off better than CI did. It's also easier to get. CI is built very quickly by the AI anyways -- you would have to beeline to it if you wanted it and for my game, Petra/Oracle/GMOD were more important than CI.

Last update :

Harun DoWed me for some reason. He's stepping on my landmarks



But he failed. I upgraded everyone and cleared my land.



I reached over 1000 cpt. A very long golden age has begun. In 6 turns i will finally begin construction of Cristo Redentor. Around turn 230 i reached 1167 cpt(highest number).



3 policies to go...



Utopia can be started. 13 turns to go!



And finally on turn 270 Utopia is done! .



Getting Opera houses and Hermitage is certainly the biggest jump for cultural victories. Finishing Freedom as fast as possible is another keystone. And finally finishing Cristo and maybe SOH near the end for some turns shaved. Rushing Sistine with a ge certainly help too.

Getting a lot of landmarks boost a lot these multipliers like Hermitage and golden ages. With Freedom, each landmark produced over 50 cpt each.

Wow, how did you get done so early?

ifinnem said:

Interested in what kind of finish times people are getting?
I just did my first G&K culture victory with Rammy (dropped to Emperor so I could wonder spam)
T273 (Thats very early 1800s for those that count that way) despite a few errors (pretty good dirt)

Click to expand...

From my 270 game, i can tell that Tradition and Liberty are very close together for best finishes.

Liberty is the opposite of Tradition. With Liberty you need to delay your 3rd and 4th city. Get free worker and put a 2nd city before representation. Then build NC in capital and rush 2 more cities for a culture cost reduction. Get finisher for free ge for Sistine.

With Tradition you need to rush 4 cities right of the bat(see 4 cities Tradition opening under my sig) and build NC as fast as possible. Then you go for Drama first then Metal Casting. Rush buy a workshop and immediately run a ge for Sistine later(what i didn't do in my last game).

Completing Piety is ok if you go for Tradition. For Liberty starters i suggest to get only 3 policies from Piety(33% culture form wonders, make sure to build at least 1 wonder in each cities) then swith for Tradition and get Legalism for free opera houses(or museums if you have enough gold to rush buy opera houses...just delay legalism a bit). Start Hermitage as soon as possible in both cases.

Liberty is nice because you can get more ''freebies''. But a huge 4 cities Tradition set-up let you rush buy more buildings. Both paths are, i think, pretty equal.

Before G&K I had finished a couple of cultural victories under 300 turns. Now I only finished one with Haile at turn 320. I attempted a peacemonger one with Boudicca for the entire game and still ended up winning a diplomatic one on Immortal. Theodora built the UN and I got the victory as 9 CS voted for me along with Siam. That was probably the most nerve wrecking victory, because Genghis Khan was right beside me and took over 2 civs already, and he JUST denounced me a few turns ago before the vote (luckily I was friends with him for like 100 turns). Tithe was essentially the godsend of the game as I happened to spread my religion to Genghis and Ramy with a total of 30+ cities. I was making like 120GPT at that point with religion alone. But yeah, I will attempt one now with Ramy, see where it goes.

It's definitely a bit civ-specific compared to the other victories. And I often need to devote to it very, very early on. Also have to pick your wonders carefully, while making enough of an army to take over some civs, but not completely destroying them.

@Tabarnak I thought you were gonna blow my 273 turns out of the water...
Then again mine was emperor so nice work!

Interesting game, Tabarnak. And looking at your starting position i would never guess you'd get there in time. It seems that a Deity cultural game would be a real challenge, don't you think? Without ability to spam wonders, how can one do it in under 250 turns .. unless he is Ramkhamhaeng surrounded by five cultural CS's or something.

Very likely, you'll want to grab 2 point in Patronage (Aesthetics) early for a Culture VC.

being auto-friends with all CSs (add the PtP or Papal Primacy as available) gives you far more than you might get otherwise (more Cultural CS = do it earlier).

I'd say that if you have land with abundant resources it's prolly better to go with Tabarnak's 4 city strategy and pick tradition. Picking liberty and then delaying your last cities isn't very good in that situation, since the AI will snatch these tiles from right under your nose and there prolly be a lot of wars too if the land is full of goodies. In need of peace prepare for war.

I just had a cultural victory as Sweden on Emperor. Turn 361, but Im fairly inexperienced so I didnt think it was bad at all. Did shuffle map (with random Civ, Sweden wasnt by choice) and ended up with a small islandsish map. This helped none of the other civs build massive empires, I think there was only one spaceship part completed at the end.

I did Liberty first to get 3 cities up fast. This allowed me to get a religion as well. Then went full tradition to make my 3 cities into monsters. Got lucky and got GL and was actually the tech leader for a while until I beelined Radio, and then after Radio I made a stop to get refrigeration because I was worried about a naval invasion and built a nice sub army.

my takes:
Food/Growth is very, very important. You want your cities producing fast, and the best way to do this is by food. Unless doing OCC, both Tradition and Liberty early are so immensely helpful It makes sense to both before piety IMO.

City states are your friends. Befriend a militaristic one, that saves you from having to train/buy ground troops.

Sweden's role: Probably not the optimal choice for cultural, but the great person boost with DoFs does help, and if you get stuck fighting and spawn a Great General, thats 90 influence to the CS of your choice.

I was in non stop Golden Age for the last 120 turns or so. Since I had specialists in every city in my culture buildings, and usually had an extra 30% great person bonus with the UA I was cranking them out left and right, plus faith ones as well. I had extras that I used to make landmarks.

Moriarte said:

You guys are right about PT. I tried it, but missed by few turns. Would have bulbed Cristo 10+ turns earlier with that. CI would be hard to get on immortal, since there are fundamental things to do when it's unlocked - workshops, amphitheaters, markets, then straight into universities, into operas.

Infinnem, attached screenshot. End game Cpt was 710.

Thinking of playing as Ramkhamhaeng today. Give myself a little edge.

Click to expand...

I think CI should be a very high priority as the extra golden age length combined with a happiness bonus are vastly useful for a cultural victory. I tried a 4-cities game plus a puppet capital for luxuries with Pacal, finished on turn 296, who can get an engineer early enough to rush CI courtesy of The Long Count (theology is only one additional tech as you want Drama and Philosophy anyways). The game was a very food-poor one, which meant my science wasn't so great, but I was able to muddle through. Didn't get Sydney because I was missing a GE at the time, that might have saved me a couple more turns.

I found I really like The Mayans. The pyramid gets you the pantheon and religion you want (choose one providing culture depending on which resources you have, or faith to buy GA later) and a little science, The Long Count allows you to pop an early engineer for CI and a Great Prophet to enhance your religion, a Great General later on to cherry-pick coal or aluminum, etc. They also have the Atlatl, which saves you a couple of early research turns usually spent on archery and a fair amount of production.

I finished tradition, then went for Piety. I'm wondering, though, if it wouldn't make sense to finish piety first. On the other hand, every single one of the tradition policies is very useful for a peaceful cultural game.

alpaca said:

I think CI should be a very high priority as the extra golden age length combined with a happiness bonus are vastly useful for a cultural victory. I tried a 4-cities game plus a puppet capital for luxuries with Pacal, finished on turn 296, who can get an engineer early enough to rush CI courtesy of The Long Count (theology is only one additional tech as you want Drama and Philosophy anyways). The game was a very food-poor one, which meant my science wasn't so great, but I was able to muddle through. Didn't get Sydney because I was missing a GE at the time, that might have saved me a couple more turns.

I found I really like The Mayans. The pyramid gets you the pantheon and religion you want (choose one providing culture depending on which resources you have, or faith to buy GA later) and a little science, The Long Count allows you to pop an early engineer for CI and a Great Prophet to enhance your religion, a Great General later on to cherry-pick coal or aluminum, etc. They also have the Atlatl, which saves you a couple of early research turns usually spent on archery and a fair amount of production.

I finished tradition, then went for Piety. I'm wondering, though, if it wouldn't make sense to finish piety first. On the other hand, every single one of the tradition policies is very useful for a peaceful cultural game.

Click to expand...

I am a culture player and I like to role play. Up until now, I have been neglecting CI (figured it was over kill). But, I will be playing a few Maya games to test out the effect it has on culture. Along with that, settling more GAs.

budweiser said:

I am a culture player and I like to role play. Up until now, I have been neglecting CI (figured it was over kill). But, I will be playing a few Maya games to test out the effect it has on culture. Along with that, settling more GAs.

Click to expand...

Yep, I'm gonna try the CI strategy as well next culutral game I get a chance to play.

I tried a start with the liberty approach (William, Immortal difficulty) and I have to say, getting four museums for free the day you pop the tech is pretty awesome. I set up five cities and conquered three puppets from Monty. The game in sum is probably not going to be that great as I was struggling a bit to balance everything and my science is fairly low as a result - still need practice. William's ability is pretty awesome for a tall game but his other things are a crapshot. Other civs are probably better.

One thing that may or may not have been mentioned, but certainly bears repeating: if you go cultural, take a religion and get Cathedrals. The additional fairly early artist slots really help.

I fired up a Maya game and took the first start it gave me. At first, I didnt like the position, it was a danger close start next to England who can beat you with long bows. Luckily there were the Iriquios and the Mongols nearby to keep her busy. I held her off by spreading my religion to her cities. I took the +1 happiness per city bonus in my religion for synergy with CI.

I did Sacred Waters, hard built 2 more cities and took a Great Prophet and then a GE from Long Count to rush CI. I made sure to run artists as much as possible and I can see the difference now. I have already had a 20+ turn Golden Age and am now in the middle of a second extended GA: Happiness/Representation/Taj combo. I'm getting 10 turn and in some cases 8 or 9 turn culture. I think its arund turn 220 and I just opened Freedeom.

As long as England doesnt kill me, I should get a decent finish time.

Rammy is tough to beat for Culture extra food for Tall and extra culture. Faith is also useful for cathedrals and artists

alpaca said:

One thing that may or may not have been mentioned, but certainly bears repeating: if you go cultural, take a religion and get Cathedrals. The additional fairly early artist slots really help.

Click to expand...

Great tip thanks!