Cultural Victory strategy - best civ for the job and which Social Policy trees

Grotius said:

I'm also puzzling over this. In other thread, a poster indicated that the cost for each policy increases with each new city you own. Is that right? If so, might one do best with just 3-4 cities?

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There is some complex math that goes into it. I haven't figured out the criteria yet. One game mouse scroll-over of the culture counter said each city increases SP cost by 30%, another said 20% another said 15%. Each map was a different size, game speed, and difficulty.

Anyway, if it is 30% per city, then increasing cities means that you must make sure each city increases your culture per turn by 30%. It certainly isn't outside the realm of possibility to get a cultural victory with a lot of your own cities. You'll just have to make sure to build all your monuments/temples/museums/etc early and often. Broadcast towers and various SPs help too. I haven't had time to effectively calculate what the "perfect" number of cities given buildings and SPs is yet, and can't anyway until I figure out exactly when it's 30% and when it's 20% or 15%.

Seems like cultural victory is a lot more difficult in this one than it was in Civ IV or maybe I'm just not good enough yet. I tried doing a one city challenge as gandhi on prince and came up about 6 policies short at 2050AD. I then played again on prince as gandhi using only 3 cities and got it but it still took me until 1982. I had 3 pretty ideal cities, too. The only problem I had is babylon decided to declare and send units at me for like 150 turns without even discussing peace (even though I took 2 of his cities and pretty much killed 10 units of his to every 1 I lost). When he finally did agree to peace he wanted to give me half his cities and stuff, so I don't understand why he wouldn't even consider it before that. Cristo redentor wonder and broadcast towers seems absolutely necessary to me, which means you really need to tech into the modern age, unlike in Civ IV.

I don't find France's ability good for culture victories. It seems like their ability is "You don't suffer from near 0 policies for having a large empire".

Yeah I agree, Franch is great for other victories though, it means for the first half of the game you will have as many policies as if you were going for cultural victory, while having a large empire and focusing on war/money production instead of culture.

If France's Culture Bonus applies to Puppet States as well, that makes them fairly good for the expansion tactic. You can focus on military/city-states for the beginning of the game and not worry about accumulating culture.

I have just tried a cultural victory with India on Prince. I had built Stonehenge, in my only city, and I decided to build a war elephants for protection, though I had to buy a second one a few turns before the first one was done because the barbs didn't want to leave me alone. After leveling them up against barbarians, I went to conquer Harun who had been building my wonders (two elephants and the warrior to take the city), then I captured a city state on the way (to get the friendship of another one), while I unlocked the Honor SP that gives double XP. Now my elephants both have access to the blitz promotion, and one even has mobility. That one can now attack 4x at strength 8, with +60% attack strength if the enemy unit is in rough terrain. It took the two elephants, a swordsman and a horseman (aided by a Great General), and a sacrifice of a scout (to draw out some foolish troops) to annihilate the Romans, who had just built their first legion and ballista, but had something like 15 archers and warriors.

In other words: With India, go Tradition->Aristocracy for Stonehenge, then unlock those Honor SPs and start using your deadly UU! Once you have puppeted/razed your worst enemies, you can turtle to your heart's content.

I also tried Cultural victory with India on Prince, but ended up winning a domination victory because it's so damn fun to go on the offensive after pushing back an unprovoked attack!

DalekDavros said:

It isn't. The increase in policy cost overwhelms the extra culture after just a few cities, plus early game culture mainly comes from city states and from Stonehenge (which can't be built in every city).

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I wasn't suggesting it as the optimal strategy, not by any means, but as a viable strategy.

The French are quite disappointing for culture! On reflection, that isn't very surprising. I'm going to try India.

ALthough not specifically asked, getting the Oracle and Sydney Opera House are very important. It essentially means 2 less policies to research, which means, in effect, that you don't have to research the two final, most expensive ones ("Free" policies don't increment the policy cost counter).

Christo Redentor (reduces policy costs by 33%) and the Sistene Chapel (+33% culture in every city) are also huge when it comes to the culture victory.

I'll have to bear that in mind. Holding off and ending on Free Religion seems like a no brainer, too, since you get to skip the last 2 most expensive policies.

I went recently with the French, as their +2/city boost in the early game is fantastic.

I stayed at 3 cities. I have finished 4 trees at the start of the industrial era. I live on city states. I keep allied with all Maritime and all Cultural states, I ignore the military ones. I ran our of time to finish the game, and hope to get back to it later, but a few choices I'd have made differently.

(I'm on a continent with the romans, and russians. King difficulty.)

a) Make sure to build (at least) 1 wonder per city. There's a policy to increase cultural output by 100% in any city with a wonder.

b) Next time I will save the 2 free policies for later in the game.

c) I may even refrain from buying most policies which I don't super-duper need (anything not in the "keep city states happy" tree) until after buying the cost reducing one in the Freedom tree. I dunno how badly you can abuse this though.

I build anything which produces +gold. I build anything which makes +culture. I built most things which increase general or building production, because I'm impatient.

I focus on generating as much gold as possible to keep up the gifting to the cities, as much happiness as it goes to culture too, and of course culture. Small military, with just enough to fend off the attackers.

It feels like it's working, I generally get a new policy every 10 to 12 turns.

I just tried a culture approach with Persia (on Prince level) -- admittedly not the best choice of Civ for this strategy, heh. But I started on an island in a pretty big archipelago world, with no civs anywhere nearby, so I figured I'd give it a try.

I stayed at one city for quite a while -- maybe too long? -- to try to keep social policies cheap. When I finally did make my second city, my policy-production decreased, as I feared it would -- the second city was slow to get culture buildings up. And while my first city was doing OK with production, it was never a great cash machine. I think I need a tutorial on how to build efficient cities, what tiles to develop how, etc.

Anyway, I befriended and eventually allied with several maritime city-states, but no cultural ones til later -- perhaps I should've made cultural city-states a higher priority? I built several Wonders, but by the time I'd filled out two social policy trees in the Renaissance, I was getting one policy every 30 turns or so. Kinda slow.

I was working on the Sistine Chapel when France declared war on me, even though I had defensive pacts with everyone else on the globe (not to mention several city-state allies). I actually had better-quality units than France, but Napoleon just overwhelmed me with sheer numbers, and I gave up.

So, going forward, I guess my questions about a culture game are: how soon do you build that second city? The third city? What sort of terrain should one look for? Luxuries? Hills? Grassland/river? Since you build only 3 (maybe 4?) cities in a culture game, it seems you really have to nail their timing, location, and development. I'm sorta stumped.

I just finished a Prince culture victory as Siam. I started pretty boxed in and with very few happiness resources, so I was only able to get 3 cities built before I was completely border pushed from all sides, I got another one from Suleiman after he war dec'd me. Since there is no direct way to improve culture, I decided to focus all cities on gold production minus one which focused on hammers (wonder construction and the Utopia project at the end, it takes a lot of hammers and can't be rushed).

I did quests for city states as I could, and otherwise paid them off, grabbing some culture ones early (to get some social policies out) and then maritime as well. I went with liberty as my first social policy tree, although in retrospect tradition would have been much more beneficial. Patronage after that, followed by freedom and piety. I did order last, mostly because at that point tradition was largely meaningless to me.

I beelined to culture buildings first and built them asap, rush if it was viable (usually wasn't because of gold spent on city states). As soon as I could enter the ocean, I went around trying to find all the other city states and donated gold as available. By mid-late game every single city state that was not militaristic was my ally. I kept a bunch of units around just to gift to city states under attack if I couldn't negotiate peace on their behalf.

The strategy worked fairly well, even with all culture buildings available to me at the time, around 40% of my culture usually came from city states. With the patronage ability that shares city state research, about 30-40% of my research came from city states as well. I was ahead of the AI by a few techs at first, and 8+ by the end.

Overall, culture victory feels slow. I won after 375 turns. I could have done a UN victory at least 50 turns before I won diplo (and yes I'm accounting for the UN build time and vote countdown). I'm not sure how I could have sped up my culture gain for a faster victory short of puppets. I was the highest in research by far, I beelined culture techs, I got culture buildings up ASAP, I had a ton of culture from city states, I secured every culture wonder besides the oracle, and it still took a good while.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I also had artist specialists everywhere, and used all my great artists to build landmarks around the city with all the stacked culture bonuses (my capital, it was at something like 250/turn by the end, with 700/turn total).

Interesting. So what kind of tiles did you choose for your landmarks? Anything open? And how big were your 3-4 cities by the end of the game?

I did a one city challenge with Gandhi and got a cultural win. That was quite a bit of acheivements I got for that one!

Does the cost of social policies go down if your number cities drops? If so, then one cheesy strategy would be to stop buying SP's once you've got all the good ones. Continue accumulating culture with a large number of cities, then, when you've accumulated enough to complete 5 trees, trade away most of your cities and then make a mass purchase.

Last night I completed the one city challenge with Persia on Prince, getting a culture victory. I won by the skin of my teeth.

I was aiming to spam golden ages, but found it too difficult to keep them going while still maintaining my production/economy. So for the record, I'd probably recommend to NOT play as Persia for one city culture challenges.

I think the key to a cultural victory is city states. Next to that would be puppet states. This makes Greece the best candidate for the job. His relations with city states are unparalleled and his early military units are fairly dominant.

French is a terrible idea for cultural victory. More Cities = 33% more culture required (additive from what I've heard). OBVIOUSLY the +2 per turn can't possibly make up for that. Quite honestly I rather be the Romans so I can build my monuments 25% faster. That's how useless France is in a cultural victory. France is good at having high culture, but it could never even out. I will say this however. If it counts for puppet states then maybe I'm wrong.

As far as number of cities. I think 3-4 is the "sweet spot" with the rest being puppet states with trading post spam. I'd recommend more production-focus for your capital and more trading post heavy for all other cities. Farms are typically useless if they just add food. You'll get all the food you need from city states.

For social policies. I'd get the 1st two in Tradition for wonder production. Then get a few from patronage to help your city state relations. Then max out Piety. go back and finish patronage. Then either grab the rest of tradition or move on to commerce to help pay for your puppet state's urge to have the highest maintenance possible. And finally. The last one doesn't really matter. Rationalism, Freedom, Liberty. doesn't really matter.

Wonders:
Highly Recommended
The Oracle - Effects: 1 Free Social Policy
Cristo Redentor - Effects: Culture cost of adopting new Policies reduced by 33%.
Sistine Chapel - Effects: An additional +33% Culture is produced in all Cities.
Stonehenge - Effects: +8 Culture
Sydney Opera House - Effects: Choose one free Social Policy.
Hermitage - Effects: Doubles output of Culture in this City. (Build in Capital)

Recommended
Chichen Itza - Effects: Length of Golden Ages increased by 50%.
I think golden ages are the key to pumping out wonders and massing money for purchases, trades, research agreements, and keeping city states happy.

Himeji Castle & The Kremlin - 4 Culture each with no maintenance. They help with defending your empire

Taj Mahal - Effects: Civilization enters a golden age
This causes a 22+ turn golden age with Chichen Itza

Optional (Since you need the extra culture anyway)
Big Ben - Effects: Cost of Gold purchasing in all Cities is reduced by 25%
Helps you in emergencies and to boost production. Not necessary at all, but a decent luxury.

Angkor Wat - Effects: Culture cost of acquiring new tiles reduced by 75% in every city.
Bigger city boarders for less gold spending. Not a bad perk for getting more useful tiles

The Louvre - Effects: 2 free Great Artists appear near the Capital.
2 Free Golden Ages

The Porcelain Tower -Effects: A Great Scientist appears near the city where the Wonder is built.
The only reason I get this is because I typically don't have other wonders I want to build when this is available.

The Great Library - Effects - 1 Free Technology
This is pretty standard

The Hagia Sophia - Effects: Great People generate 33% faster.
More Great People = More Golden Ages


Well. That's just my 2 cents

i'm currently trying with germany. my strategy is to have my starting warrior clone himself forever so i can spend all city resources on building culture and helping city-states. no clue if it works though because my computer can't run a "huge" map with all territory explored . . .