My first cultural victory !

Hi guys ! I just won my first victory, on Noble, and I went for the three cities with legendary status. Here are my thoughts !

1. Louis XIV is the perfect leader for that kind of victory. Creative helps tremendously, 2 culture per turn really adds up by the end of the game, and the industrious trait is a no brainer : you WILL need wonders !
2. Make sure to grab Marble and Stone as fast as possible. This will make you build your wonders even faster !
3. I completely bypassed religion. I never had a state religion. It went rather well.
4. Focus on advances that will give you cultural wonders.
5. keep your science as high as possible in the early game, then when you can adjust the cultural slider try to hit 60% science 30% culture. At the end of the game, try to rush for Electricity, Radio and Mass media, and build all the wonders associated ! They are a must for the cultural victory. Once you have researched Mass Media, aim for robotics, then put science at 10% and culture as high as possible without going broke. You will not need science anymore.
6. The reason why you should research robotics is for the mechanized infantry. Have 2-3 cities producing mech inf. only, and buff up your defenses. Generally, try to have good defense ; that way you will be able to stand up when an angry civ will declare war.
7. Your first three cities should be your 3 cultural cities. Build as much cultural buildings in them as possible. In the end game, switch them to producing pure culture when there is nothing cultural to build. You will still need to make them productive in the early game (forge, factory...) so that they will have a big fat bunch of hammers to convert into culture
8. Try to mix the wonders between your three cities, and build only those that bring culture.
9. Use specialists, artist specialists. They rock. 6 culture per turn ?
10. Great people : great artists should build their great work in each of the 3 cities for the 4,000 culture boost (duh), other great people should settle in the city because they will usually bring 2 culture per turn, plus gold, science and/or hammer bonuses.

I could easily have won that game much faster had I realized the power of the artist specialists, and the uselessness of science in the end game.

Hope this helps !

EDIT : all your other cities should focus on science and production, to pump up defensive units and to get to these cultural techs first

A few comments -

Masquerouge said:

1. Louis XIV is the perfect leader for that kind of victory. Creative helps tremendously, 2 culture per turn really adds up by the end of the game, and the industrious trait is a no brainer : you WILL need wonders !

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Louis XIV is good, but there are other very viable ways to go. Philosophical can be excellent for the faster great person production. If you focus on food production and turn the excess food into artist specialists, you can churn out a ton of base culture and great artist bonus culture.

Financial can also work well. Spread your cottages far and wide which will help keep you ahead in the tech tree (to grab the critical wonders) and give you the opportunity to turn your slider over to very high culture earlier. A flood plain with a developed cottage will produce huge culture late in the game.

3. I completely bypassed religion. I never had a state religion. It went rather well.

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I wouldn't ignore religion completely. Temples and monastaries give a not inconsiderable amount of culture on their own. But the real power is the religious cathedrals. For every 3 temples you have of a particular religion, you can build a cathedral that gives you +50% culture in the city it is built in.

So say you have 6 cities and manage to found 2 religions and a 3rd spreads to you naturally from another civ. By spreading the 3 religions to all 6 cities and buidling all 3 temples, you can now build 2 cathedrals for each of the 3 religions. So you can get +150% culture in one city, +100% culture in a second, and +50% culture in a third. What this is really great for is equalizing your cities. And you don't have to be particularly deep in the game before you can start taking advantage of this.

10. Great people : great artists should build their great work in each of the 3 cities for the 4,000 culture boost (duh), other great people should settle in the city because they will usually bring 2 culture per turn, plus gold, science and/or hammer bonuses.

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Disagree here, except for very late in the game. With all the culture bonuses (say +100% from a couple cathedrals or The Hermitage and +100% from the appropriate civic), you can easily get 50 culture points or more every turn from a great artist added to a city. At 50 points a turn you only need 80 turns to make the work of art a worse choice.

As with the cathedrals, use the artists in the cities that are lagging most.