The AI beats me with a Cultural Victory every time

I'm playing Civ V on Emperor. I win about 30% of the games. So far, the main reason I'm usually beat is because of a Cultural Victory. I have trouble stopping the AI from amassing so much culture.

Strangely enough, a lot of the time it is Bismarck of Germany who wins with a Cultural Victory; it probably helps that he is such an aggressive Civ that he always wipes out everyone on his continent, therefore increasing his cultural output.

I'm already trying my best to build as many Culture buildings as possible, and I'm quick to Archaeology to uncover as many Artifacts as possible. But I'm having trouble reaching a lot of Wonders, which I'm guessing is crucial for Culture generation.

When the AI is close to a Culture Victory, I'll often also attack them, but my army is usually not ready yet. Anyone have any other tips to prevent a Culture victory?

Plan attack a bit earlyer when you see a nation galoops on culture. Nuke the bastards, who would want to visit a nuked country?

I already rush to the Atomic Bomb as quickly as possible in most cases. Actually, my biggest problem in general might be generating enough Gold. I'm still trying to find a balance between Farms and Trading Posts.

Increase your focus on Science which will speed up whatever your victory type is.

(Build NC ASAP; always run all science slots; etc)

forget about Trading Posts entirely unless you're around Jungle / trying to squeeze last bit of value out of Petra/Folklore tiles

Bribe more wars. Monitor AIs progress. If the runaway is a warmonger, bribe him to Dow every other civs in the map. If the runaway can't be bribe, bribe other civs to Dow him.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

civ54lyfe said:

forget about Trading Posts entirely unless you're around Jungle / trying to squeeze last bit of value out of Petra/Folklore tiles

Click to expand...

Actually, that's very bad advice. As I have posted in a different thread, gold is everything in this game (i.e., if you have enough gold, you can do anything you want except build world wonders).

The reality is just the opposite. Specifically, you want to focus on Trading Posts about midgame or so. You want to TP all tiles around puppets, you also want to TP tiles around your owned/annexed cities once the population is where you decide it should be based on workable tiles, specialists, etc.

TPs will also gain you science and other benefits with the right social policies, of course, so they are not only for gold.

Use city-state allies to help distract and overcome AI civs, including weakening their forces (even if you are on a different land mass this can be very effective). To get and keep CS alliances, you need good gold supply/economy, at least until late game when you dominate. CS alliances with CSes that are cultural are obviously good even for VCs other than culture victory.

As for Culture Victory, it sounds like the OP is waiting too long to be aggressive and take out or weaken the AI civs who might be a problem. It isn't about building culture buildings so much as it's about removing the enemies who interfere with the culture you have. The AI gets higher and higher cheats as you go up in levels, so trying to take them out head-on becomes more and more difficult (or impossible, depending on the environment and other factors).

One thing: be sure to get World's Fair passed when you can win it, but save up Great Writers until that point so that you can burn them all at once to get enormous boosts to culture (and thus get many more SPs).

To win a cultural victory, one's Tourism have to surpass your total culture production.

Therefore if you never let them succeed at surpassing your culture, they cannot win a culture victory. Shut your borders to them. Declare war on them. Invade and hunt for artifacts in their cities and pillage them.

very good points Tenshi. i don't puppet very often at all so that part has less value in my games. that said, i like to food+hammers cities till pretty late game while at the same time don't need TP gold to be okay economically.

tips?... what tips? (an AI winning CV on EMPEROR sounds just surreal to me as they usually won't reach hotels, airports, let alone telecomm and internet unless you play on for close to 400 turns on standard... which means you were not able to win under 400 turns... which usually means you have no business playing on emperor as you still lack the basic skills to even grow your cities effectively probably)
The best way to get culture early to midgame in BNW is to ally culture CS... and culture usually begets culture (it unlocks policies which can further boost your culture)
The AI has difficulties winning CV even on deity so unless you really sucked in the game, someone will either win the UN vote or launch their spaceship first.

Callonia said:

To win a cultural victory, one's Tourism have to surpass your total culture production.

Therefore if you never let them succeed at surpassing your culture, they cannot win a culture victory. Shut your borders to them. Declare war on them. Invade and hunt for artifacts in their cities and pillage them.

Click to expand...

This, but looting third parties works almost as well.

I've never had problems with the AI getting CV's on me... it's either early domination because I under-defended, or science.

I would suggest focusing on science more. As someone already said, it means building the National College as fast as possible, beelinging Education and getting Universities running as fast as possible (and making sure your cities are working the science specialists), same for public schools and research labs. You should be able to reach a science victory before the AI wins cultural like this, and being ahead in science will really just put you in a position where you have a bunch of good options to win the game, even if you don't go for SV.

kb27787 said:

tips?... what tips? (an AI winning CV on EMPEROR sounds just surreal to me as they usually won't reach hotels, airports, let alone telecomm and internet unless you play on for close to 400 turns on standard... which means you were not able to win under 400 turns... which usually means you have no business playing on emperor as you still lack the basic skills to even grow your cities effectively probably)

Click to expand...

You're right, insulting the OP is definitely giving him what he was coming here for.

AiTenshi1 said:

Actually, that's very bad advice. As I have posted in a different thread, gold is everything in this game (i.e., if you have enough gold, you can do anything you want except build world wonders).

Click to expand...

Disagree completely. The only thing you need for CV is massive growth in your capital. And with trade routes, you still TP your tiles? You can pull in 150 gold/turn by industrial.

Try this: 3 or 4 cities, with tradition. Get your capital as big as possible as soon as possible; aim for 15 population by universities. If you can settle on the coast twice, do it. Use food cargo ships or caravans, at least your first two should send food back to your capital. Never stop growing, you'll need 30+ population by industrial for 3 guilds, a university and public school. Work scientist slots everywhere, settle the first 4 GS at your capital.

Policy wise, take full tradition, drop 1 into Aesthetics, 2 if you have no choice, then 2 into Rationalism (the opener and +2 science from specialists). Then fill in Aesthetics, open exploration for the Louvre, and go freedom.

Aim for NC with four cities by T100, earlier with less. After NC go to Civil Service, then Education. Then straight to Printing Press. Get Pisa first, pick an engineer, use him on Sistene Chapel. If you have two good production cities and you know your the first to Printing, build the Globe in you capital and Pisa there. From here, go straight up to industrialization for factories, then Scientific Theory and last Archaeology. Then on to Radio. Use engineers early, as the Rennaisance has the highest density of wonders, and the ai is closest to you. After radio you'll want hotels, the Statue of Liberty ( you're running 10 specialists in your capital), and radar for airports. Then just beeline the internet.

Pick up a religion. 15% production is nice by the time you've really got a lot to build. Also, you'll want a good amount of faith for engineers in industrial and musicians later. A NW or faith producing pantheon is nice, as are pagodas. Cathedrals are not worth it, IMO. You'll need 11 artifacts with museums, louvre and the palace, which is quite a number to get without hamstringing your other needs.

notyourtypical said:

Disagree completely. The only thing you need for CV is massive growth in your capital. And with trade routes, you still TP your tiles? You can pull in 150 gold/turn by industrial.

Try this: 3 or 4 cities, with tradition. Get your capital as big as possible as soon as possible; aim for 15 population by universities. If you can settle on the coast twice, do it. Use food cargo ships or caravans, at least your first two should send food back to your capital. Never stop growing, you'll need 30+ population by industrial for 3 guilds, a university and public school. Work scientist slots everywhere, settle the first 4 GS at your capital.

Policy wise, take full tradition, drop 1 into Aesthetics, 2 if you have no choice, then 2 into Rationalism (the opener and +2 science from specialists). Then fill in Aesthetics, open exploration for the Louvre, and go freedom.

Aim for NC with four cities by T100, earlier with less. After NC go to Civil Service, then Education. Then straight to Printing Press. Get Pisa first, pick an engineer, use him on Sistene Chapel. If you have two good production cities and you know your the first to Printing, build the Globe in you capital and Pisa there. From here, go straight up to industrialization for factories, then Scientific Theory and last Archaeology. Then on to Radio. Use engineers early, as the Rennaisance has the highest density of wonders, and the ai is closest to you. After radio you'll want hotels, the Statue of Liberty ( you're running 10 specialists in your capital), and radar for airports. Then just beeline the internet.

Pick up a religion. 15% production is nice by the time you've really got a lot to build. Also, you'll want a good amount of faith for engineers in industrial and musicians later. A NW or faith producing pantheon is nice, as are pagodas. Cathedrals are not worth it, IMO. You'll need 11 artifacts with museums, louvre and the palace, which is quite a number to get without hamstringing your other needs.

Click to expand...

And I'll disagree right back and say that your suggestion of a science focus for a CV is very inefficient (albeit possible since you can play however you wish). I've tested both and that is why I post the suggestions that I have posted. You can win CV your way but it isn't as optimal as my suggestion, at least in most contexts. I seldom need to go past Atomic for the win, and certainly don't need Internet.

I'd suggest you try what I have explained instead of your approach as it is far more efficient to focus on gold rather than science, at least in most cases. Just fyi, I have a couple of thousand of hours in the game. My approach is general rather than a specific path so that you can adjust due to variables. I've tried science focus like you suggest but it simply doesn't work as well in most cases.

You do not need massive growth to get CV. That may be one approach, but it's hardly the most efficient. The only reason you'd want massive growth is if you are focusing on science and that is not needed for CV.

CS allies and dominating to win are far more efficient than trying to take on the AIs culture headfirst, especially on higher difficulties. Science is not as critical as gold because gold allows you to fund everything except world wonders. However, you have to have a lot of it to be flexible (150 gpt is insufficient for maintaining CS allies plus all the other expenses related to expanding and dominating until late game and you should be done by then in most cases, or very near it).

See my original post for a more efficient general strategy rather than focusing on science (not the most fundamental element of the game compared to gold as I explained elsewhere). I'll add a couple of points. Only trade with city states from midgame onwards, including trade routes. Don't worry about artifacts too much because you won't need to since you will gain them from conquered cities, plus your goal is to eliminate competition and win rather than attempt (and usually lose or take forever) to take on the AIs head-to-head with culture vs culture. No open borders as there is no point. No DoFs, no RAs, as there is no point by midgame. Again, the goal is elimination and victory rather than culture vs culture (until the end, of course, when you are well ahead in everything). Don't worry about wonders much as you'll be taking those from AIs with conquering, too.

I would not suggest a strategy that requires a specific path as any approach must vary based on civ you wish to play, environmental variables beyond your control, etc. The approach I described is very flexible with almost any context.

You can play however you like, even inefficiently, but you should not reply to suggestions by implying that the person doesn't know what they are saying. I'm only pointing out a more efficient method that is more generally applicable. There are always exceptions, including choosing specific maps or civs to play that cater to your approach.

I think it's a question of difficulty level here. You won't win a CV on Deity without the Internet, because you get massive cultural runaways there, and you need the huge Internet boost to get past them. It is however possible that AITenshi's strategy works on lower difficulty levels.

civ54lyfe said:

I don’t puppet very often at all so that part has less value in my games.

Click to expand...

What are you doing that you don’t puppet? More often than not, it better than annexing or razing. Or are your games mostly peaceful?

kb27787 said:

tips?... what tips? (an AI winning CV on EMPEROR sounds just surreal to me as they usually won't reach hotels, airports, let alone telecomm and internet unless you play on for close to 400 turns on standard... which means you were not able to win under 400 turns... which usually means you have no business playing on emperor as you still lack the basic skills to even grow your cities effectively probably)
The best way to get culture early to midgame in BNW is to ally culture CS... and culture usually begets culture (it unlocks policies which can further boost your culture)
The AI has difficulties winning CV even on deity so unless you really sucked in the game, someone will either win the UN vote or launch their spaceship first.

Click to expand...

Tommy get out !

But he's right. I think too OP it not able to win under T400. So, it's the point.

So tech, growth (try to have +1 pop at least every 10 turn, specially in capital).
To avoid cultural victory, don't allow open borders if you don't need it. Avoid trade route unless AI had yet one with you, choose a different ideologies and increase your culture (opera house and Ermitage are enough even on Deity).
A good mark on Emperor or Immortal is Eiffel Tower. If you can't have it (no need to build just have time to build it before AI), you're late, very late. And if you're late, you need to improve your game. Look after some guide or videos on this forum.
After that, Porcelain tower will be your next mark. When you can have it 99% of time : Welcome to Immortal.