I just don't understand the Cultural Victory.

Like the topic says; I simply don't understand the new cultural victory. It simply doesn't make sense to me. It's supposed to be about who has the most culture and tourism but doesn't seem so.

In my last game as Ethiopia; I had the most culture and the most tourism, yet was rising slowly with civilizations who had less culture and tourism than I did.
Why is my influence falling when I have more culture and more tourism than the AI player?

Doesn't make sense to me.

I sometimes find a sudden drop in my influence with one particular civ, but it only seems to last a turn or two, assuming my tourism is strong.

Are you saying you don't understand how cultural victory works?

You need your tourism to overcome their culture. Your culture is a defence against their tourism.

Late game multipliers such as hotels, airports and National Visiter Centre ramp up your toursim hugely. Beeline for the appropriate techs. One of the finishers in Freedom gives you +34% tourism. Internet tech doubles it.

Don't expect your tourism to look significant before late Industrial/modern era. Only when you finally get to artifact digging and ideology it will start to matter. Don't neglect the modifiers too. Open borders, your spy as diplomat in their capital, trade route between civs and shared ideology all increase the tourism to the target civilization.

You gain influential status over civilization when your total tourism accumulated toward the target civilization becomes equal to their total culture produced. Since culture is produced sooner than tourism and it's much easier to get until industrial era, it's obvious that for most of the game, it will be looking quite worthless. My advice, get open borders from other civs early. Best thing to do is not to give them your open borders in exchange, but a few leftover horses/iron instead. Civ that is friendly to you will gladly accept one spare horses for open borders. Use diplomats and trade routes against civs with greatest cultural output, the tourism screen will show who is that. If you have enough tourism, ideology will take care of itself. Freedom got, I think, biggest tourism boost.

The goal of Cultural Victory is to surprass the Culture of all the other civs so bascially the "key" here is this

Your Tourism output must be greater than the other civilizations' Culture output (and vice versa for them)

And in order to "win" the total Tourism amassed (or exerted) on other Civs must be greater than their total amassed Cultured.

So in the Cultural Victory screen overview the white bar must be bigger than the Culture bar from your point of view for ALL the other civs.

Your Culture output must be high to protect you from other civilization's ideology pressure and the Tourism output also helps with exerting ideological pressure. But for the victory, the only thing you need to worry about is amassing enough Tourism to surprass the other civs Culture output and wait until this difference starts piling up (each turn the difference between Tourism and Culture will get smaller until your total Tourism will outnumber their total Culture.

Hopefully I didn't confuse you here.

Sometimes your tourism may appear to be falling if on that turn, the AI player used a Great Writer for a culture boost...

If you are willing to do some late-game warmongering, Cultural Victory is MUCH easier...

To win Cultural Victory, YOUR accumulated tourism must overtake THEIR accumulated culture...while the peaceful method is to simply pile on more and more modifiers and raw tourism for yourself, the aggresive method allows you to do all that AND to do things that will cut THEIR culture production...take their cities that host great works, convert their cities that get massive culture from their religion, pillage ALL of their landmarks, basically target anything that generates culture for them.

Crus8r

Tourism usually starts to fall when a civilization that is getting influenced doesn't get to stay the same. A reasonable reason why that would happen is because that civilization recently captured a city with a lot of great works and maybe good wonders. Civilizations that have a good culture output later than now usually tend to make other influences from other civilizations make the tourism influence bonus fail.

maybe they finally built monuments in few cities?

Trade routes and Open Borders help your tourism. I think having a common religion does too, but I'm not sure.

I just came back to Civ after a few years' hiatus because I wanted to try out Brave New World and I just won a Cultural victory. What seemed to help was adopting Patronage after filling Liberty and then building the Forbidden Palace which enabled the World Congress. If you add to your delegate count by allying City States you can pass proposals to make you religion the world religion and your ideology the world ideology. Those both seemed to help. In addition, allying Militaristic City States provided me with plenty of good military units and that freed up production for those buildings and techs that advanced culture and tourism.

Finally, researching Archeology and building Archeologists was a huge help. Every ancient ruin you excavate can provide either a Cultural Landmark (If the ruin is within your borders) or a Tourism-building work of art to be placed in a building with an open slot. Each excavation uses up the Archeologist, but they're cheap units (About the same cost as a Work Boat).

Mahasona said:

I sometimes find a sudden drop in my influence with one particular civ, but it only seems to last a turn or two, assuming my tourism is strong.

Are you saying you don't understand how cultural victory works?

You need your tourism to overcome their culture. Your culture is a defence against their tourism.

Late game multipliers such as hotels, airports and National Visiter Centre ramp up your toursim hugely. Beeline for the appropriate techs. One of the finishers in Freedom gives you +34% tourism. Internet tech doubles it.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I'm saying I just don't understand it. I got the Hermitage religion bonus, the bonus from Freedom, an airport and a hotel in my city; plus I have the Internet. I have way more culture AND tourism then Siam; yet somehow it still takes 3 turns to rise 1%? Doesn't make sense.

noonex said:

maybe they finally built monuments in few cities?

Click to expand...

No, a monument couldn't make that much culture per turn. A new writer's guild with a pair of writers would make a lot more culture, 4 from the pair of specialist and 3 from the guild itself which makes 7 culture. That's 5 more culture than a new monument.

CivAddict2013 said:

Yeah, that's what I'm saying I just don't understand it. I got the Hermitage religion bonus, the bonus from Freedom, an airport and a hotel in my city; plus I have the Internet. I have way more culture AND tourism then Siam; yet somehow it still takes 3 turns to rise 1%? Doesn't make sense.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you're doing the right things.

In addition there's the National Visiter Centre (need hotels in all cities) along with their borders being open to you and a trade route.

And musician bombs. Save building the Musicians Guild until you get airports then fill the slots immediately. You'll get a musician out in about 5 turns with more to follow, all very strong due to their being born in a time of high culture. Go do concert tours with them.

As others have pointed out, It's sometimes neccessary to war with the culture leader and take their stuff off them. Very therapeutic.

CivAddict2013 said:

Yeah, that's what I'm saying I just don't understand it. I got the Hermitage religion bonus, the bonus from Freedom, an airport and a hotel in my city; plus I have the Internet. I have way more culture AND tourism then Siam; yet somehow it still takes 3 turns to rise 1%? Doesn't make sense.

Click to expand...

Any chance Siam built the Great Firewall? That would negate the Internet doubler...

Also, since this is Siam we're talking about, its even more important to try and alienate him from Cultural City States...buy them away if you can, send spies to rig elections/coup...if one of the other AIs is allied to several Cultural CSs, try to get him to DoW Siam (or vice versa)

Crus8r

If you're going for CV make sure no one takes The great firewall because it negates the tourism doubler from the internet. Other than that the Sydney opera house is also a good world wonder that gives good tourism.

The tourism to culture ratio grows slowly even with your high tourism because your opponents start to generate culture way earlier, than you start to generate tourism. At the point where you have like 100 tourism per turn, their culture can be around 80 per turn, but this happens around turn 200, so before turn 200 they generated roughly 10000 culture (they always start at 0). And the combined number is the one which needs to be greater, not the one per turn. Both numbers are shown in the culture victory screen. You need to place your mouse on the bars (white for your tourism and pink for their culture) to see the exact numbers.

The falling in difference is usually due to 1. your opponent has entered a golden age, and their cultural output is in this time greater by 20% or 2. they have won the World Fair project (which increases their culture output by 100% for 20 turns)