[Vanilla] What should I do about culture?

[Jahgro]

First off I'm a beginner.

So when I create a new settler, I send him off to create a new city. He goes off and does his thing. I look at the city and for some reason I'm always shocked to find the city not gaining any culture (I don't usually have creative).

So I panic and start making buildings that add culture to get my city to expand. I'm feeling like I'm doing this wrong. Usually these cities border on other civs so I think I'm afraid their culture may flip my city.

Do you usually add culture right away to your cities? Should I play with creative?

EDIT: I'm sorry, I realized this may not be the best forum for this. Strategy would have been better spot for it.

[Htadus]

It is quite usual for a noncreative civs first building to be a monument in the early game. Specially in border cities and when there is a desirable resource is in the Big Fat Cross (BFC). BFC refer to the entire 21 tiles of a city.

[Ataxerxes]

Originally Posted by Jahgro

First off I'm a beginner.

So when I create a new settler, I send him off to create a new city. He goes off and does his thing. I look at the city and for some reason I'm always shocked to find the city not gaining any culture (I don't usually have creative).

So I panic and start making buildings that add culture to get my city to expand. I'm feeling like I'm doing this wrong. Usually these cities border on other civs so I think I'm afraid their culture may flip my city.

Do you usually add culture right away to your cities? Should I play with creative?

EDIT: I'm sorry, I realized this may not be the best forum for this. Strategy would have been better spot for it.

You could chop out a monument as was suggested. You only need one culture building to pop the borders and monuments are the cheapest. If you have stone or are Industrious, you could build Stonehenge for the automatic monuments in new cities. Monuments go very well with Charismatic.

Later on, if you are running a State Religion, a missionary is a good way to get the border pop. If it's the AP religion it gives you more votes as well.

This is a good forum for this question.

[TheWilltoAct]

A few tips, in response to your statement about settling next to other civilizations.

The more established city will almost always win a culture war, so you should expect to lose some tiles if you settle next to one.

When a city is founded, the initial 3x3 culture block is where influence will be the strongest; even though a monument appears to just expand your borders, it is also exerting an especially strong influence in a tight ring around your city. This is true of all culture buildings, and is the reason why it can be difficult to overcome cultural influence in tiles adjacent to a city.

I would suggest trying a Creative civilization, although this is considered a handicap to some players it will give you a sense for the strength of culture itself. One strategy that works especially well for Creative civilizations, is to settle very close to an enemy city. The first ring of culture should be strong enough to wrest the outer ring of tiles from an opponent's city, and can be useful for grabbing essential resources.

[s.bernbaum]

Originally Posted by TheWilltoAct

A few tips, in response to your statement about settling next to other civilizations.

The more established city will almost always win a culture war, so you should expect to lose some tiles if you settle next to one.

When a city is founded, the initial 3x3 culture block is where influence will be the strongest; even though a monument appears to just expand your borders, it is also exerting an especially strong influence in a tight ring around your city. This is true of all culture buildings, and is the reason why it can be difficult to overcome cultural influence in tiles adjacent to a city.

This is true early on. However, if you build all the buildings that you can that generate culture you will, over time, overwhelm the nearby AI city's culture on those tiles and take them back, along with some of the BFC tiles of the AI city. The AIs do not build buildings in this manner, so it does work. However, if the AI city has a lot of culture (such as the capital) it will take a long time.

[TheWilltoAct]

What we are both omitting is the presence of Wonders, which will surely tilt the balance (towards the builder). On lower levels it should be possible to either build many wonders yourself and thus roll over the AI's with your culture, OR to invade and take enemy wonders thus nullifying their influence.

Above Monarch it may not be cost-effective to invade a culture heavy AI, and their influence may start to creep into your land, capturing some tiles.

[Jahgro]

awesome, thanks for the advice.

[3 EMS]

Plus, a little later, there are buildings that let you assign specialists. For instance, say you build a theater, the building itself adds culture but it also allows you to assign citizens to be artist specialists. They provide even more culture. So if you need a quick border pop (border expansion) or are losing tiles to an AI city you can make an artist specialist or two. Use this when you are producing more food than is required to feed the citizens that are working tiles. This is a good strategy to use with newly conquered cities to fight back the cultural borders of a more established civ.

[jokulmorder]

you can also use your first population point to fuel an artist if you are using caste system, this is a good way to get that first border pop on new cities after researching code of laws. just remember to reassign the artist once the borders pop!

[TheDS]

I have a few tips about getting your first border pop that may interest you. Check out the first link in my sig, which will take you to a page with the border-popping article linked to it. And feel free to like my site if you like it.