Cultural Victory on the Higher Levels

Quick is seriously disadvantaged for finish dates...units just move too slowly and that affects too much.

It's the easiest speed to win non-militarily, but you're not going to set HoF date records that way.

A defensive war is probably irrelevant in HoF - this has been mentioned but players will likely not need it (especially across many games by many players, top times won't). I ran OCCs and am over halfway through EQM on immortal - putting in the right AIs and managing diplomacy makes it pretty easy to avoid defensive war.

IMO marathon would kill other speeds...even for culture...there's too many advantages that help if used correctly. The 50% unit production is probably tops - missionaries just got cheaper, as did workers and settlers. Culture is scaled basic 3x normal, just like # turns. IMO, this blows away quick where things yearwise move very slowly.

Wastintime has already pointed out that normal culture seems to beat quick. I don't see how marathon would be disadvantaged against normal in any way - I'm not a culture expert but my experience with all four speeds tells me marathon would win this...
 
This isn't a HOF strategy guide though. Jesusin always has good advice and ideas for culture anyway, he is almost as godly as Attacko ;)

I'd want his input in any culture game plan.
 
Well they are the top players I guess ;)

Jesusin gave me lots of advice and encouragement in my first and only deity gauntlet (I was 30 turns away from winning in my best attempt! After about 30 attempts ;))

I was also amused to check his game out and see his city names: "1", "2", "3", etc. I told him he should name them something more descriptive like "uno", "dos" "tres".

I was also confused to see his game log on the HOF site was entirely en Espanol ;)
 
An amazing article. Someone needs to sticky it and give it stars. The concepts are even more amazing once I start solving various scenarios in my games using markov chains.

But it's not easy at all. It's a very complicated strategy because half of your major decisions are counter-intuitive, but you don't know which half.

Particularly, there are two points that I find very difficult:
a) How many great scientists, more specifically? You get liberalism sooner if you generate more great scientists, and hence a longer time running under free speech, but at the same time 1 more great scientist means 1 less great artist. Of course in immortal and deity, that's really not a question, as the AI can get liberalism anytime on or after 500AD anyway, so it's "as soon as possible", but still...

b) You "example capital" of 10 grasslands, 3 mines and 1 food source is a very, very good city. You need 3 of these amazing cities, but most of the time I have difficulties even identifying 2, and most of the time your capital is not one of them. What's worse is that oftentimes that "example city" that you are talking about ends up in the jungle. This is troublesome in higher difficulties because:
i) if you grab it early, the maintenance cost kills you, the city does nothing because you don't have iron working yet, your roads get pillaged and your city gets swarmed by barbarians.
ii) if you grab it later, the AI would've grabbed it first because they have iron working.
 
sylvanllewelyn said:
Particularly, there are two points that I find very difficult:
a) How many great scientists, more specifically? You get liberalism sooner if you generate more great scientists, and hence a longer time running under free speech, but at the same time 1 more great scientist means 1 less great artist. Of course in immortal and deity, that's really not a question, as the AI can get liberalism anytime on or after 500AD anyway, so it's "as soon as possible", but still...
Click to expand...
The answer is "as few as possible while getting first to Liberalism anyway". Of course it is a difficult answer since you don't really know when AIs will get Liberalism.
1GS for academy in capital is 95% of the times correct. If you will be doing about 200bpt a turn around 1AD, then you won't need any other GS. If your research is very low, then 2 more GS can be beneficial.

sylvanllewelyn said:
b) You "example capital" of 10 grasslands, 3 mines and 1 food source is a very, very good city. You need 3 of these amazing cities, but most of the time I have difficulties even identifying 2, and most of the time your capital is not one of them. What's worse is that oftentimes that "example city" that you are talking about ends up in the jungle. This is troublesome in higher difficulties because:
i) if you grab it early, the maintenance cost kills you, the city does nothing because you don't have iron working yet, your roads get pillaged and your city gets swarmed by barbarians.
ii) if you grab it later, the AI would've grabbed it first because they have iron working.
Click to expand...

My example is not so good. No FloodPlains, no gold, no gems, only 1 single food resource... I'd say 75% of the starts are equal or better than the example. That's why I chose it as an example.

The GPFarm can often do with a single hill... as long as it gets 2-3 food resources. The second cottage city can do with 1 hill if you abuse the whip a bit. Or with many hills and too few grasslands, by building many buildings. You don't have to find the example cities. Any 3 cities will do. It's only Deity, after all ;)

Settle to grab land or not settle to save maintenance? Hmmm, I'd say in the highest levels you must settle.

Jungle city? Hmmmm, my experience is that I've got better results with a not-so-good-but-quickly-improvable city than with the perfect but buried-in-jungle-that-took-ages-to-get-up-to-speed city.
 
I have attached the pdf of the article to the first post.

Sorry for the delay.

As usual, comments are welcome.
 
I read it and am looking foreward to applying these strategies (no time yet :().

Oh and thank you for the pdf :D

A question: What about No Espionage (BtS 3.17)? It converts EP -> CP. Does that have a big impact?
 
mystyfly said:
A question: What about No Espionage (BtS 3.17)? It converts EP -> CP. Does that have a big impact?
Click to expand...

Yes, so big an impact that we won't ever see a BOTM or a HOF allowed game with No Espionage option.
The worst part of it is that WW that used to give spy GPP give "joker" GPP so they can be used as whatever you find best.
I hope it will get changed in a future patch.
 
The Capital
It will probably build an early library and immediately hire 2 scientists for an Academy.
Click to expand...

Will it keep the scientists after the Academy??

The GPFarm
It might pop a GS in the early game
Click to expand...
Because in the early game you can only hire scientits, so until you're able to get artists, generate great persons even though they're great scientists?

Thanks

BTW, great article. I'm adapting you're strategies for a Huge/Marathon game. I started with a capital GPfarm, couldn't help it, no other GPFarms around. I'm thinking about changing the Palace to my new Capital
 
Welcome to cvfanatics, icetbr. I feel honoured that you have chosen this thread for your first post!

icetbr said:
The Capital
Will it keep the scientists after the Academy??
Click to expand...

No, usually it won't. Generally there are more important things for the capital to do, like growing cottages or producing more settlers and workers. Also generally you don't want any more GS in your game, unless you are desperate for Taoism or your research is very low and Liberalism is at risk.

icetbr said:
The GPFarm
Because in the early game you can only hire scientits, so until you're able to get artists, generate great persons even though they're great scientists?
Click to expand...
Right. Generally you don't want another GS and generally the GPFarm won't hire any specialist till the NE has been built, well past the early game.

icetbr said:
I'm adapting you're strategies for a Huge/Marathon game. I started with a capital GPfarm, couldn't help it, no other GPFarms around. I'm thinking about changing the Palace to my new Capital
Click to expand...

I think that's a good idea. Sometimes you have to be flexible and adapt to the situation. Generally speaking having to build a Palace is bad, but there was probably nothing better to do in your particular game.
By the way, you haven't got your Academy in the first capital, have you? That would really be a waste!
 
Thanks for the welcome everyone

Code: 
By the way, you haven't got your Academy in the first capital, have you? That would really be a waste!


I sure didn't! :) I thought about it, and although my 1st capital was generating more bpt, soon enough my second capital would surpass it.
 
Shouldn't the Cottage Cities build libraries ASAP as well? All the gold they generate is converted into research, and a 50% bonus is nice.

Also, it wasn't too clear, but I think a monument is in order early on so that you can expand and access better resurces in your fat cross.
 
Thanks for writing the guide.

There wasn't much discussion about leader traits besides that financial, spiritual, and philosophical are best, and all others are bad. I'm much more experienced with non-cultural victories, but my response to this was, "Really?" I can see why financial and philosophical are unquestionably the best, but I can think of a few traits that I would imagine are on par with spiritual: creative and industrious.

Cultural: Double production of theaters and libraries is useful for a cultural victory. Cheap libraries are especially useful for boosting early research which is most important in phase 1. Since your first cities are going to be the ones that reach legendary, the free commerce from creative will add up some, but that's a minor point. The free culture is more important in your auxillary cities that will get their full city radius quickly regardless of other factors, and so can be placed optimally without delaying their ability to support the core cities, and can more easily win close-border culture wars without investing a lot of hammers into it. I play on larger maps, but I would imagine on smaller maps where you need fewer temples, creative would be better than spiritual.

Industrious: I would imagine this would be better on lower difficulties where you can actually build a lot of ancient wonders that will double in culture to 16 or 20 cpt unmodified, but still competitive with spiritual especially if you build oracle and get metal casting. Cheap forges are great for almost all of your cities regardless of what they need to produce. National wonders are also important for many of your cities. Getting hermitage and national epic earlier and more cheaply is not insignificant, especially since your GP farm won't have great production.

So if I'm wrong and spiritual is much much better than creative or industrious, tell me why.

Personally I'd think the trait ranking from ideal to less ideal would be: Philosophical, financial, creative, spiritual, industrious, expansive. All others being mostly useless for a cultural victory.

Edit: Also it seems you really need to begin the game knowing you're going for a cultural victory. Seems to be less the case for other kinds of victories. Suppose I like to play by making everything random. How do I decide if I should go for a cultural victory versus others?
 
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