Failed Cultural Victory Attempts

Slashninja1467

Chieftain
Joined
May 31, 2007
Messages
56
I have just made the transition from Prince/Monarch and I've been finding it hard to get this victory. I have never gotten it before and tried three games so far on the level trying to get one. I tried Gandhi for both attempts because I found him to be very well suited to Cultural Victory.

In my first game, I didn't realize that there was a much greater maintenence penalty than that on Prince. It was a fractal, huge map and I had Ramses, Hannibal, and Julius Caesar on my island. Ramses was close and had built Stonehenge and had marble next to his capital. I thought, Sure why not and axe rushed all his cities and made the mistake of capturing all of them and keeping them. By now I was at 10% science barely keeping research up with scientist specialists. I started building libraries in all my cities and once i was able to get code of laws, built courthouses in all of them too. By now, Julius was double my power graph and it was wayy too late to start any cultural victory. Not to mention I was outteched and everyone took all the religions and wonders.

Next game, another fractal, I decided against warring and did the Oracle/MC/Pyramid gambit along with a peaceful REX. I nabbed 3 great engineers and focused the rest of my GPP on Artists (Kept up research as well becuz of Representation). I whipped courthouses blah blah blah, nabbed most wonders (including the Great Wall) , and maintained a REX/Builder strategy. Farmed and mined three cities which i employed artists in and switched to Caste System. Hell, I had a tech lead! Thought the game would go great and then i get attacked by Ragnar. No big deal, though he outnumbers me 2 to 1. His 3 promotion horse archers and swords are no match for my maceman. Bribe for peace, then Julius on my eastern side declared war on me. Nothing I can do against his 20-30 praetorians against my what? 5 maceman?

How do u post saves? I have a save before investing into Artist points and would gladly show to board members.

I need some help. Whenever I attempt to maintain my cost penalties and build wonders, I neglect my military. When I focus on my military, I lose REX, help?

BTW, i'm not using Bhruics. If someone could give me a step-by-step process on how to install it. The ReadMe is just way to vague.
 
Had similar problems when i turned up to emperor, but a tactic i've been using with great success lately is as follow:

When you first meet a new, well known warmonger-civ during the "scouting" part of the first turns, start by declaring war immidiately (to avoid as many "you declared war on our friend" for later).

Then, when you see their about to found their 2nd city, you attack it with axes / chariots. Chop or whip them if need to be, and raze the city.

This will cripple their performance significantly, giving you the upper hand. Taking one city from 2-3 of your closest neighbours almost guarantees a tech lead.
 
I have just made the transition from Prince/Monarch and I've been finding it hard to get this victory. I have never gotten it before and tried three games so far on the level trying to get one. I tried Gandhi for both attempts because I found him to be very well suited to Cultural Victory.

BTW, i'm not using Bhruics. If someone could give me a step-by-step process on how to install it. The ReadMe is just way to vague.

I'm sorry... how is this vague?

"This dll replaces the one located at "C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Assets\CvGameCoreDLL.dll"
It is recommended to backup your current dll file (renaming it will work fine) before installing this version. Simply copy the new version into the same folder, making sure the game isn't currently running. After that, simply play the game!"

1. Exit the game if it's running.

2. Find the CvGameCoreDLL.dll file in the location mentioned above, and rename it to something else (I add the word "old" to the file name) or move it to another location (pick some place you will remember).

3. Copy (extract) the new CvGameCoreDLL.dll from the zip file into that same Assets folder.

4. Close the folder (optional).

5. Start the game.

Best of luck with the cultural victory. I play that way a lot, also with Ghandi. I tend to remove one or two computer players before the start of the game, but not always. I build 4 cities as quickly as possible - the first 3 to be the culture cities, the 4th to build units for defense. I add another city as soon as I can afford it, to also build more units. Don't forget to build workers, too, and get lots of cottages going to help with finances. Try to stay friends with your neighbors so you can trade with them, esp. for techs. Be a little generous at first, so they love you and are less likely to attack later. (Unless you have someone like Monty, who is no one's friend, and will attack for virtually no reason.) It's hard to find the balance of building up the culture and not neglecting your defense... you want to get as many religions as possible, but you still need techs to improve your defensive units.
Maybe go back down to Prince to get a feel for the culture victory before trying Monarch again.
Keep trying - the patch will help!

:)
Amy
 
Ah thanks a lot aslindy. I'm afraid I didn't know how to install the patch and was startled by the 50 word description on how to install it. ;)

Going to try this victory again but w/ Bhruics and see how it differs.
 
In my culture games, I devote 1 city to building military. At least every other build is military. (I also build missionaries from this city). This way, it keeps the military up to date and numbers good.

In my last culture game, I had Monte right next to me. The map was shaped so that there was one city that would obviously be attacked first if he decided to attack. I kept pumping defenders out of that city and fortifying them there while also giving into most of Monte's demands. Strangely, as the win drew near, he didn't attack a city on a hill with 20 CG2 riflemen.
 
You cant say 'blah blah blah' if you want help. What you say there could be messed up and no one on the boards will catch it it. A culteral victory is also one of the more difficult ones to get.

For the final game, it sounds like you just used existing forces without replacing the losses from fighting Ragnar. If he is killing your units, you need to make up the losses + some to maintain a = power level ratio with the other civs.

Julius just saw a chance for a pret attack and took it. Pret v Maceman aint too bad of a deal compared to some of the fights possible during that age.
 
...which is why I'd love to learn how to post saves. Usually, there are WAY too many factors in why I could possibly be losing. I'm pretty sure I added this bit in the first post.
 
I won a monarch cultural w/ Louis XIV with Hammurabi, Montezuma, and Augustus on my continent (1832 date, normal speed, standard size). I didn't start any wars, but I got "friendly" w/ Hammurabi after a lot of tech trading...no one attacked me until after I got liberalism and took gunpowder as my free tech. I built up a bunch of musketeers and was massing them on the border with Montezuma (who was already at war with Hammurabi) to try to steal a city or two when all of the sudden Augustus attacked. The 2 movement musketeers got down to the Roman border just in time to defeat his praetorians, and I ended up snagging a city from Augustus instead.
I also just won a Elizabeth monarch/normal/standard cultural game (1806 date, I think) without ever fighting a war. Plenty of tech trading and the fact that everyone on the pangea was confucian kept everybody at "pleased" or better. I also pre-selected my opponents for no warmongers on that one. I turned off my research and went 90-100% cultural after liberalism, which I guess gave me a quicker victory, but it was a bit scary to see all my opponents walking around w/ infantry and artillery while I was still on musketmen, which I only had because somebody traded it to me for liberalism.
I was at 4 or 5 cities most of the game on both of them, which hurt my win date, because I couldn't build enough cathedrals, but kept my maintenance down.
 
The way you post a save is by going to the quick reply window below the forum and clicking on the red up arrow icon near the middle in the menu bar. Then you can upload your last save from C/mydocuments/mygames/BTS/single/saves (or something like that, I can't remember the whole pathway).

I got my first cultural win with Ragnar of all civs! I had an island continent all to myself after a warrior rush on Isabella. This was only on Noble difficulty, and still the maintenance penalty was a killer at first.

http://www.simphoni.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=15303

I love Izzy, she founded two religions for me! From there is was tech and wonder build like crazy, and my military suffered greatly in the beginning. Being isolated really helped and no one could be a serious threat until naval power came to dominate. With cultural wins, having multiple religions is VERY helpful because you can spread them through your empire, build the required temples, then build the cathedrals in your culture cities. The +50% really adds up, and with caste system and as many artists specialists as you can support, it's possilbe to get a city producing 1,000 culture per turn in the later game.
 
Top Bottom