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

Was fairly disappointed in how easy it was to achieve a cultural victory.

Played Gandhi on the Immortal diff. level, though I give a lot of credit to the map choice, a large ice age island map with low water levels and max city states and 18 ai opponents. The island map means you will most likely start in a very easily defended position, that is until the enemy start arriving in destroyers and other late game naval vessels, but you should have won by then anyway.

Anyway I found the main focus of my cities were not to produce wonders, I mean most of them don't even add anything useful and only 1 culture and 1 great person point. No what I did was focus on gold and food, you can keep a city state at allied for less than 10 gpt, if you pick them right, they will provide you with all the resources you will ever need, and any extra you had in your own lands can just be sold on to other civs to pay for more city states.

In this particular game I allied myself with 9 different city states located in my proximity either on my island or nearby islands, 4 maritime, 2 military and 3 cultural. Now I know the logical choice is to go mainly for the cultural states, but those 2 military states meant I had the largest military in the world without ever even building a single unit. The maritime provides an amazing 5 extra food for the capital and 3 extra food for any other city you own, which in my case was 1 extra. 20 extra food meant extremely fast growth rate, think Delphi ended up size 42 or something by the end, which in turn gives you a huge science advantage, meaning you get to those juicy later social polices earlier as well as gaining access to the few cultural important wonders and buildings.

My two cities produces about 300 culture in total each turn, the 20 extra culture per cultural city state is nothing compared to that number really.

As for which policies to pick. Starting out with tradition is pretty much a no brainer, the extra growth in your capital is really needed, the extra wonder production can be okay if your capital got some early production so you actually got a shot at getting stone henge and or the oracle, if you don't got any early production don't count on getting any of the early wonders.

Next up would be Piety and Patronage, I would recommend getting Patronage if you got the money to bribe city states, if you don't go for Piety first. The extra culture gained through Piety is nothing compared to the bonuses you get from even a single cultural city state, add in the extra science, great persons, and other bonuses (extra food and free units) really makes this the better choice, if that is you got some city states you can bribe.

Now I know Patronage unlocks later than piety, but the classic age is so ridiculous short you can easily just beeline up to it skipping some classical techs, for example why would we need mathematics or iron working? Not like we are going to conquer the world, so we don't need either catapults or swordsmen, and that is presuming we even got iron available. As for defense, we are playing India, we got elephants! Nothing those babies can't handle.

Another good tip is save your culture, once you have gotten the absolutely needed social polices, there is no reason buy the useless stuff till you have gotten the reduced pricing through Freedom policy and The Cristo Redentor.
 
No what I did was focus on gold and food, you can keep a city state at allied for less than 10 gpt, if you pick them right, they will provide you with all the resources you will ever need, and any extra you had in your own lands can just be sold on to other civs to pay for more city states.

If you didn't focus on wonders, and your city states only gave you about 30 culture per turn then how were you making 300 culture per turn in just 2 cities? Even focusing on wonders...I don't see how that is even remotely possible (especially if iIm supposed to have won before destroyers can even hit my shores). In my current game I have 2 culture city states, and 8 cities all with at least a monument, some with more than that, and my capital has all culture buildings up to the beginning of the modern era. I also have Stonehenge and the Sistine chapel. My culture is only 200 per turn.
 
I've done 2 prince culturals both on fractal (basically twisty pangea).

I start with tradition, and pick up piety, freedom, commerce. Patronage if you're leverageing city states (the culture boosts from them can be helpful) or whatever else you need if not. Freedom flat out kills for cultural.

One as Ghandi with 3 cities and a puppet. Very easily won and built a TON of wonders. Ghandi is good for cultural since you wanna go with few cities and his trait is perfect for growing a few massive cities. I built the 3 cities very spread out (6 tiles) to maximize coverage - which you can easily fill with cultural (and the wonder that reduces culture tile cost by 75% ;). The one puppet I had I got going to war vs persia on wu's behest - popped the city before she could - it blocked my border to her right between to city states so it was an ideal grab (even though I didn't want puppets). Ok UB for culture but costly (4 gold for walls + UB, = culture).

Second was OCC as Siam/Ramwhatever. The strat guide recommends OCC cultural as Siam so I figured I'd give it a shot. The Siam ability is nice - you get double food and culture from city states. Once I got patronage rolling I started investing. Problem was, there was only 1 cultural CS on my continent that kept getting wailed on (there were a few small islands loaded with city states way out in the middle of nowhere). Decent UB for culture - university replacement UB with +2 culture.

OCC on pangea-like maps...is...ouch...

This one was traumatic since Darius systematically took out everyone else one by one. By 1900 he had the entire continent conquered except my one city. I could not figure out why he would not attack me and was my buddy, except that during the exploration phase I freed 3-4 workers of his and returned them to him (didn't need them myself with just 1 city). This must build up extraordinary good favor. I was sitting with 4-5 riflemen and 3 artillery - all I could afford without too much negative income - popping golden ages constantly to stay in gold. Watch mobile sam, rocket artillery, mech inf, etc lined up all along my extensive border (so much culture it was pushed out 5 or more tile sin every direction). I was expecting to get crushed any second. About the time he popped the last AI he was getting over 300gpt, had 15k gold in reserve - I couldn't believe it and got open borders and scouted to see wtf he was doing (all trading posts, a few lumber mills). I thought the game was glitching. About the time that I won Darius had 25 more techs than me. :lol:

Was fairly disappointed in how easy it was to achieve a cultural victory.

Well, yeah, picking a map suited to hiding out with a small empire would make things a little easier. I've seen the AI build navy and use embarkation but I've yet to see a coordinated naval/amphibious assault across any measureable water yet.

Personally I don't see much point in playing on higher difficulty levels if you're going to tweak the odds in your.
 
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.

But if you can use Free Religion to buy Freedom and Constitution, or Constitution and Free Speech, that's way better than holding off until later.
 
Greece and Siam are indeed shoe-in's for a cultural approach. Greece is a "fire and forget" type of approach since they have longer to build up gold for bribing city states, but my money is on Siam. You have to focus more on gold with Siam obviously, but I think it is just enough better than Greece to use for a culture victory.

In the Medieval age you get +6 culture from an Ally. I've got four of them I'm working that brings in over half of my culture. While Greece may indeed be able to bribe more city states due to the money build up, they face a much lower hard cap if the are able to bribe all those states. Given a strong enough economy (and luxuries to sell gained from city states), Siam wins the fight. If you are having financial troubles though then go with Greece. Finally, with Greece's two military units being their uniques the Wat is just icing on the cake since it's a lowish maintenance and adds culture as well as science.
 
I have played Civ IV for three years, ONLY for culture victory and ONLY with Gandhi ! Tried others but never pursued seriously. I was able to win consistently at monarch.

For this reason, I went through this thread very carefully. I do not have the game yet but played the demo to get a feel of Civ V.

Some news here are truly great for me:

1. Gandhi seems to be one of the, if not THE best civ for culture victory.

2. Still better, with Gandhi, you need max 3 cities for culture victory. Not that you need, you SHOULD have 3 huge cities and no more. This because I ALWAYS struggled in Civ IV with getting boxed in by other civs. The main struggle for me was to get at least 8 cities on standard map so I could get enough temples for enough cathedrals in the three main cities.

Looks like in Civ V I am going to be relieved of this need to quickly churn out settlers, send them out with warriors and found cities and then quickly build courthouses to keep the economy's head above the water.

I would always have far preferred smaller and huge cities. Many times in Civ IV I found myself wishing I could do it. I get that in Civ V now.

3. While I will miss fast worker, military UU is also not bad. So often in Civ IV I would get attacked because of being weaker militarily. Hopefully in Civ V, elephants will discourage early attacks from aggressive civs.

4. While it is still Civ, I can see the vastly changed game mechanisms so while the format is civ like, it is not really a souped up version of Civ IV but a new game itself within the basic format. One great thing about Civ is it's slow and ever rising learning curve. I can see I will get that in Civ V too.

What I still hate (playing demo) is the color scheme in the interface. I wish the icons were better contrasted like in Civ IV (I am slightly color blind too) and the game (as it appears reading the posts) would be perfect for me.

Hopefully by the time I purchase it, that issue would have been addressed.

Sanjay
 
Hey Hey Hey, what about Polynesia on a island map?
 
I like to use Gandhi or Ramesses.

Although most of the time, I find I can win diplo anyway by the time I finish 5 policies.
 
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