Should I prioritize culture buildings or faith buildings as Korea?

I played a game and got a underwhelming Science victory by turn 284. I say it is underwhelming, because it was a great start that never led to a religion for all of my cities (just my capital) and delayed SP for rationalism like crazy. I used to just play the Mayans almost exclusively, so I got a bit spoiled about having a powerful easy faith generation and religion even on higher difficulties. Should I just leave religion out of it completely and just get a pantheon if one is obviously worth going for? Should I go for a culture pantheon like sacred sites? I would like that one, but the issue I have with it is that I end up spending policies into other trees but Tradition and Rationalism as I fill tradition up really fast, dipping into the left side of Patronage mostly. And if I'm not going for an actual "culture" victory, with the tourism and everything, but just want a good amount of culture per turn to come in, should I build amphitheaters and operas? Faith will be mainly useless to me unless I can purchase GS, so it requires a good amount of culture to be present. Thanks for the tips.

There were no cultural city states in this game btw.

Before Rationalism and ideology, there should not be time for more than 3 policies in addition to the completion of Tradition. These are often best spent on patronage, where the third policy on the left side gives you science from your City State allies.

That does not mean that you can't have a religion and spread it to all your cities. A faith-generating pantheon or natural wonder, an alliance with a faith City State, the Hagia Sophia, or simply building your faith buildings - there are many opportunities.

The best source of culture is winning the World's Fair. Save some Great Writers for that occasion, because they will produce double culture, too, after 8 turns.

Ribannah said:

Before Rationalism and ideology, there should not be time for more than 3 policies in addition to the completion of Tradition. These are often best spent on patronage, where the third policy on the left side gives you science from your City State allies.

That does not mean that you can't have a religion and spread it to all your cities. A faith-generating pantheon or natural wonder, an alliance with a faith City State, the Hagia Sophia, or simply building your faith buildings - there are many opportunities.

The best source of culture is winning the World's Fair. Save some Great Writers for that occasion, because they will produce double culture, too, after 8 turns.

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Do the great writers cap out at a certain amount of culture or do they gain more culture if you don't burn them asap? Thanks.

fallout3dc said:

Do the great writers cap out at a certain amount of culture or do they gain more culture if you don't burn them asap? Thanks.

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They scale with your current culture output (unlike musicians, who keep a fixed tourism value based on the time when they were created). So if you use their ability during a period of increased cultural gain (Golden Age, World's Fair), they will generate more culture points.

If going for a science victory, I've found that I pretty much don't invest into culture in most games, outside of great writers and artists. Doing as mentioned above with the world fair will help a lot and in general, having 2 cultural CS is enough for a SV.

I have, however, ran into one game where I could not ally any cultural CS, and it just happened to be Korea. That game took until turn 252 to win, because I had to hard build my last space ship parts, as I could not make enough culture to win the way I normally do.

I'm curious as to what others do in the same position, where culture cannot be made from CS enough to get a 3rd tier ideology policy.

"There were no cultural city states in this game btw."

exactly what I put down with my game. I had absolutely none in the game. I was playing large map with 10 players, but I removed 5 city states to make diplomatic victories actually difficult. I always wondered if it was worth building the hermitage national wonder.

If it looks like Ill be getting religions with faith buildings from nearby AIs, I quite like opening piety after Tradition and then taking the +1 faith from shrines and temples.

Works well if you get the oracle as you can start building the shrines and temples at double speed in a time period (turns 80-100) you dont necessarily have anything really pressing to build.

Then you can purchase either a few or a lot (depends on your pantheon, the map etc) of religious culture giving faith buildings before they become too expensive. This also of course snowballs your faith per turn leading to more scientist / engineer purchases later too

I will also build ampitheatres, opera houses and the hermitage if my culture generation looks like its going to suck all game. Faster border pops are useful early on.

Depends on the start.

Culture will always be there. It's just a matter of putting the hammers to the buildings required.

Faith for most civs is highly dependent on the surroundings of the starting city. A faith pantheon, faith NW, or quickly allying a religious CS are the best ways to get a religion quickly and, perhaps more importantly, a religion that spreads quickly. Of course, there's the piety tree, but unless you're willing to go straight down to reformation from the start, I'd avoid it.

NukeAJS said:

Depends on the start.

Culture will always be there. It's just a matter of putting the hammers to the buildings required.

Faith for most civs is highly dependent on the surroundings of the starting city. A faith pantheon, faith NW, or quickly allying a religious CS are the best ways to get a religion quickly and, perhaps more importantly, a religion that spreads quickly. Of course, there's the piety tree, but unless you're willing to go straight down to reformation from the start, I'd avoid it.

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What about patronage left side to Secularism and just allying with the city states? Does this work well?