Byzantium Sacred Sites Culture Victory Guide (T170 pangaea all standard)

I"m confused and probably missing something. But what do you do with Writers and Artists? You never mention building Amphitheatres. How do you get musicians if you say don't go to Ren?

lymond said:

I"m confused and probably missing something. But what do you do with Writers and Artists? You never mention building Amphitheatres. How do you get musicians if you say don't go to Ren?

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Liberty finisher and at the end your faith output is so high that you can go acoustics / printing press no problem and keep buying faith buildings.

iggymnrr said:

The whole piety tree can be removed from the game and really fast culture games are still possible. Try aiming for a fast science victory -- ~turn 210 -- on, say, prince. It's rather easy to stumble into a fast culture win instead. Ironically, turning on policy saving may avoid this. Culture is that easy. It's the new AP win from Civ IV.

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Lol move up difficulties and say that again. CV is currently by far the most AI-performance based VC. You may still catch an easy CV game randomly but just as well get an impossible game from multiple culture runaways that will win by science ages before you can even dream of catching up to their total culture output.

iggymnrr said:

The whole piety tree can be removed from the game and really fast culture games are still possible. Try aiming for a fast science victory -- ~turn 210 -- on, say, prince. It's rather easy to stumble into a fast culture win instead. Ironically, turning on policy saving may avoid this. Culture is that easy. It's the new AP win from Civ IV.

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Now that is not what i am seeing, CV is rather challenging as you got to race to the internet through archeology and produce artists/indy jones as well as keeping up in science. In GnK science was less important, you needed Louvre and broadcast towers and it was over by then, here the www is at the end of the tree.
That just for home management, this does not take into account any runaways who have a strong culture you have to overcome.

Pat

PS this does not take the strategy into account discussed in this thread, but i still believe it will be nerfed as it was clearly not intended, even if tommynt thinks it is not a problem
GOTM CV in August will be spoiled by this, as you either replicate or you lose against the awesome finish times.

Lol move up difficulties and say that again. CV is currently by far the most AI-performance based VC.

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Or a person can simply go back to G&K if he wishes to avoid a random win notification when he hasn't a clue as to what performance he executed to trigger the win. Allegedly games get tested on prince. Someone missed this.

Or as the OP indicates, move up just 2 levels and another easy CV presents itself with out performance.

Sadato said:

Liberty finisher and at the end your faith output is so high that you can go acoustics / printing press no problem and keep buying faith buildings.

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Still don't know what to do with Writers and Artists. Do you culture bomb? (Well, at least one Artist has a slot in the Palace.

I tell ya though, after trying this out, that Sacred Site thing has to be broken...ha. I mean the comparison between this approach and a more standard CV approach is a gigantic gap.

Still don't know what to do with Writers and Artists. Do you culture bomb? (Well, at least one Artist has a slot in the Palace.

I tell ya though, after trying this out, that Sacred Site thing has to be broken...ha. I mean the comparison between this approach and a more standard CV approach is a gigantic gap.

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At that pace he is probably not producing (m)any. Pardon my spelling, amphitheaters and the NE have slots. Oxford has slots. Cathedrals and Burial tombs (IIRC) have slots. There's probably other lurking slots too. I thought I was doing well with my slower approach to get out around turn 200. Overall, previous CVs required 5 trees. Now 2.5 trees, give or take, will do.

If you decide to go this way, it would be nice to have some writings in place as well since they are basically on the same path and you could, in theory, reduce the number of cities or faith bought buildings needed depending on space and happiness.

budweiser said:

If you decide to go this way, it would be nice to have some writings in place as well since they are basically on the same path and you could, in theory, reduce the number of cities or faith bought buildings needed depending on space and happiness.

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Seems to me you'd be better off popping writers for "free" policies (or almost) most of the time, gets you to the reformation belief that much faster. Not to mention you're unlikely to have many places to put them following this strategy. Artist works can go in cathedrals if a golden age doesn't seem that beneficial to you.

lymond said:

Still don't know what to do with Writers and Artists. Do you culture bomb? (Well, at least one Artist has a slot in the Palace.

I tell ya though, after trying this out, that Sacred Site thing has to be broken...ha. I mean the comparison between this approach and a more standard CV approach is a gigantic gap.

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Writter guild appears fast (drama) so you can pop 1/2 writters and and place 2 works in amphitheaters (drama) to get 4 more tourism.

Artist guild comes later (guilds) but you can get 1 and sit him in the Palace for 2 more tourism.

6 tourism is not that much but everything counts.

You will usually have reformation belief sooner than a writer so no popping needed.

I guess my confusion was you never mentioned amphis in the OP, unless I missed it, so I wasn't sure if you did something different. I actually used my GW for a load of culture since culture was coming rather slowly.

been trying this out

i've never really done the ics stuff so it took me a while to get used to

just won at turn 166

i did use my 2nd gw on culture so i could finish up liberty and snag the runaway (bismark of all people, who woulda thunk?)

anyway thanks for the guide, it's a fun way to play.

interesting. i play on king, and was trying more or less this very thing. i wasn't going wide, though. i only have 3 cities plus a puppet so far. i did go liberty first to help me beat nearby civs to the spots for my 2nd/3rd city (i had close neighbors on a standard terra map). and then i went piety. it's still relatively early going for me in this game, but maybe i should be trying to go wider. i've got happiness issues due to no one having 2nd copies of luxes to trade, so in stead of going wide i've been concentrating on trade in order to have income. ended up being needde when shaka tried to roll me, but he didn't count on my being able to rush buy dromons and bomb him from the beach.

for religion the idea was to grab cathedrals and another building (i haven't gotten my second prophet yet for that), and to take itinerant preachers (done) and later "religious texts". I usually take Tithes but I took the +1 hapiness for every 8 foreign citizens with your religio boost, because i'm hoping to be the dominant world religion and to be largely at peace during the late game. The idea is to get the tourism boost form the world religion resolution. of course it sounds like you are trying to win long before that.

i think the only way to go wide now is to take out neighbors.

So, I've been giving this a try on Emperor level (pangaea/standard/standard). I've had some trouble with getting sacred sites and the tenets of my choice, so I've been working on a more reliable version of this strategy that might, however, be a bit slower.

I think Ethiopia is the best civ for this as the Stele provides 2 additional faith, which both helps getting the tenets you want and amps up total faith output for the building purchase phase. Starting with liberty, except for the opener perhaps, slows down your culture too much so you get reformation too late. Going for piety first seems like the safer option, especially considering that, until turn 100 or so, I was mostly faith-limited rather than being limited by the number of available cities to buy stuff in. This also allows you to use the GP from the finisher for your religion enhancement, which means you can buy two additional faith buildings in your cities by saving 300 faith points you'd otherwise have had to spend on the prophet.

Scouting seems absolutely crucial as you need to discover everyone ideally before you get reformation, and you want to discover cultural CS so you can buy them off if anybody allies them. I got three scouts in my last game to achieve this. This also means the strategy only really works on pangaea, at least for such fast finish dates.

If a single AI has a high culture output, it might be advisable to wage war and take their best culture city. Since ICS generally has a high production, you should easily be able to pull that off.

I finished in turn 176, but I actually don't think finish date is a very good indicator for how well you are doing, because it depends too much on what the AI does. Total tourism output seems like a better benchmark number. I had a total of about 3500 tourism in Germany, who were the last to flip, producing 80 tourism per turn at the end.

A last remark: The whole culture victory doesn't seem to be implemented very well, even though I like the basic idea behind it.

I just won T75 culture with shostone. on settler

ruins can give settler, culture and faith, found 2 religious CS for desert panteon, culture costs are halved. nuff said

no wonder, worker, army, or anything required

Yeah, trying this on Emperor, continents, with Byzantine and takes way too long to go through the culture trees. I have no idea if sacred sites is going to be there or not. Two civs have already gotten a reformation belief. Thinking poland might be the way to go with this one, even if you only get two religious buildings. I did a prior game with shoshone, using same strategy (from a different post) and ended up getting diplo victory on accident as some of the civs just had too much culture. I'm gonna keep tweaking it, but I'd like to know, if you're winning before turn 200, where you're getting the culture to get through nine social policies, even if you do get oracle.
UPDATE: Ok, I got sacred sites, thank god. This was kind of a map. Had a lot of tundra, no desert or jungle, so I went with the tundra pantheon. then the ocean I thought my capital was on was really just an inland sea, so my droman is just going around in circles.

Tabarnak said:

Only domination so far. It's the first time of the serie that a victory can be achieved before the turn 200 without any difficulty at least from chieftain to immortal.

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'Without any difficulty' is too subjective. There was plenty of sub 200 victories in diety games. Those victories came from cooked settings, which meant 'easy' games.

northernscribe said:

Yeah, trying this on Emperor, continents, with Byzantine and takes way too long to go through the culture trees. I have no idea if sacred sites is going to be there or not. Two civs have already gotten a reformation belief. Thinking poland might be the way to go with this one, even if you only get two religious buildings. I did a prior game with shoshone, using same strategy (from a different post) and ended up getting diplo victory on accident as some of the civs just had too much culture. I'm gonna keep tweaking it, but I'd like to know, if you're winning before turn 200, where you're getting the culture to get through nine social policies, even if you do get oracle.
UPDATE: Ok, I got sacred sites, thank god. This was kind of a map. Had a lot of tundra, no desert or jungle, so I went with the tundra pantheon. then the ocean I thought my capital was on was really just an inland sea, so my droman is just going around in circles.

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Well you have to play it right. Expand fast and in places with faith tiles from your pantheon or natural wonders (even far away, you have to be aggresive planting cities), build monuments fast and build Oracle. Once you start buying pagodas/mosques your culture production rises a lot so you can get reformation soon.

It is easier to do with Maya, Ethiopia or Celts for the additional faith, with Poland for the 2 free policies or with Egypt for the happiness. You just need 33% more cities than with Byzantium to get the same tourism. Shoshone besides the faith/culture ruins gets no bonus to do this and the huge tiles expansion I guess will piss the AI more.

Sadato said:

Well you have to play it right. Expand fast and in places with faith tiles from your pantheon or natural wonders (even far away, you have to be aggresive planting cities), build monuments fast and build Oracle. Once you start buying pagodas/mosques your culture production rises a lot so you can get reformation soon.

It is easier to do with Maya, Ethiopia or Celts for the additional faith, with Poland for the 2 free policies or with Egypt for the happiness. You just need 33% more cities than with Byzantium to get the same tourism. Shoshone besides the faith/culture ruins gets no bonus to do this and the huge tiles expansion I guess will piss the AI more.

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Maybe Askia is a good option to check out, as well? He gets maintenance free temples that provide culture. Two birds with a stone and so on. Also some additional early game gold.

Having serious gpt issues. Here I am on Turn 86 (Quick), shortly after getting sacred sites.

Also, should I be hitting "Avoid Growth" to keep cities on size 1 and the cap at size 3 (and if so, when do I let them go to 5 for the cap and 3 for the outriggers?)? Or just leave them focused on production, and if they grow, they grow?

..

Also, what happens if you can't find a civ and thus aren't able to influence them with your early Tourism until much later? Is there a nice transition out somehow or are you screwed?