Anyone understand Cultural Victory?

I'm playing my first game of BNW and am trying to understand how to win a cultural victory, but it's confusing. Belatedly, I fear, I've begun signing Open Borders with my opponents and sending Archeologist en masse to dig up any artifacts on their territory that I can.

Several questions:

1) When I dig up an artifact outside my borders, I'm given the choice to excavate an opposing civ's piece or a barbarian piece. Is my assumption correct that you want to gather as many pieces of art from the civ you're hoping to influence? Or is one great work as good as another? I just dug up a piece from the French, and notice they are willing to trade for it. Should I? Highly confusing. There's an in-game setup to trade great works across all civs. When and why should we be doing this?

2) How can I see my progress towards cultural victory? There is a Cultural Victory tab under the cultural overview, but it doesn't clear anything up. I have more than double the tourism of each remaining civ, yet under the Influential heading I am still 0 out of 4. How can I tell how my tourism is influencing each civ?

Simply this for me, someone.

I won my first game with a culture victory but, i didn't actually understand everything that was going on. I agree that the this victory is complicated and I still don't really get how it works. This is all I know.

Its all about tourism. You want to generate huge amounts of tourism to become influential with other civs. To do this your going to want a lot of great artists/musicians to create great works. You put these great works in your buildings that you have created and you'll begin generating tourism. Putting them in the correct order to each building/wonder is important as well for getting bonus numbers!

I haven't really noticed a huge impact that archeology has brought to the culture victory. I only had two sites dug up in my own territory when I had won. They didn't really seem like that big of a factor during my game. Maybe they become more important during very close cultural games though.

So yea, pretty much I have no idea how exactly the numbers add up, but this is a start i guess.
I'd like someone to help answer your question as well because I am also unclear how this all works.

What do you mean correct order to get bonus numbers? When I generate an artist, I click him to assign him and the cpu does this for me automatically, placing him in a free slot somewhere. Please explain what you mean about assigning him in order to gain a bonus.

Okay, I'm learning a bit more. To the right of the Cultural Victory Tab is the Influence by Player tab. Clicking that will reveal how much influence your society has on your opponents based upon your tourism. The bottom line is that an opponent with a huge culture isn't going to be easily overcome. I have tons of cultural artifacts and artists, and I'm easily winning this game, yet I've not met the 50% threshold of any of the remaining civs.

+25% bonus for having Open Borders with a civ.
+25% bonus for having a spy stationed as a diplomat.
+25% bonus for having a trade route with that civ.
+xx% bonus for having the same religion (25%?)
+34% bonus for having a happier civ (Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a lvl 3 tenet purchased under the Order Ideology).
-34% penalty for having different ideologies.

Clearly, one can't simply gather tourism and expect to win a cultural victory. It's going to take the synergy of a concentrated effort to plant diplomats, sign open borders, targeted trade caravans, identical religions, etc. to bring it off. Even then, it's going to be hard because you have to do this with every civ in the game. Ugh. Anybody pulled it off, yet?

I've pulled it off, but it took much longer than the pre-BNW culture victory. About 400 turns on standard speed. Used to get the old culture victory in around 260 turns. Hah.

try playing brazil for a quick culture victory, i won my emperor culture victory on large islands in about 300 turns (right about when i reached atomic era ) make sure you stay friendly with every civ - have at least 1 trade route with each one , BUY open borders from them , dont sell them open borders, spread your religion (if possible) to them , and spam those research agreements. if u keep friendship with at least 5 out of 7 civs , those are 5 research agreements you get and others get at most 2-3. beeline archeology , snatch tradition aesthetics as fast as u can , and keep your happy up for those carnivals ... timing is of the essence if u want to win really quickly , with international games + carnival + great musician pop

Genghis_Sean said:

What do you mean correct order to get bonus numbers? When I generate an artist, I click him to assign him and the cpu does this for me automatically, placing him in a free slot somewhere. Please explain what you mean about assigning him in order to gain a bonus.

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If you click on your culture window you can see where your works of art, music and literature are being displayed. Some wonders like the Louvre, the Sistine Chapel and the Sidney Opera House give bonuses if you place the right works there. There is a "+0" sign on the right side that shows what you can do to get the bonuses, for example, the Sistine Chapel gives extra bonuses if you place to works from the same era and same civ. The Louvre, on the other hand, requires 2 works and 2 artifacts, all from different eras and civs. To maximize your bonuses, swap with other civs and don't dig more artifacts that you need, or you will end up filling a slot that could give you bonuses for a work of art that you might get but don't have the place to put it.

About the cultural victory, it's all about tourism. You have to generate more tourism than the other civs are generating culture. Getting the world congress leadership helps a lot because you can propose world fair and world games, lead them and have a tourism boost. Also, build hotels, airports and the national vistors center. Open borders, trade routes and shared religion give you tourism bonuses with other civs, and sending your musicians to perform tours also generates a lot of tourism output with a specific civ. On the influence box, you can see where your influence is rising and, if rising, how many turns until you become influential.

IMO, the cultural victory now is a game-inside-the-game. I just finished my 1st game in BNW, winning culturally as Portugal. In G&K, the cultural victory was much faster, but kind of boring. In this last game, I won culturally, but would have won diplomatically in 10 more turns or with science with just a little more than that. SP finishers are not as important as they were before, since the "utopia project" ceased to exist. You can pick up the SPs you really need and just go for the finishers if they are really useful for the kind of victory you are trying to achieve. I ended the game making more that 1k CPT with only 3 cities, so I had liberty, patronage, rationalism, aesthetics and exploration, plus the complete freedom ideology tree filled by that time (not exactly in this order)

Alright, I've tried 4 or so times on 5 difficulty and I can't seem to win the culture victory. Everything is going well when one civ will attack. One time I tried to be aggressive and attacked other civs as China, that didn't work, I got ganged up on at the end and killed. The second time as Brazil I was nice and friendly and traded with everyone and Poland still attacked me behind my back despite being 'friendly'. Whats the secret to keeping people from attacking you?

Thanks

Genghis_Sean said:

+25% bonus for having Open Borders with a civ.
+25% bonus for having a spy stationed as a diplomat.
+25% bonus for having a trade route with that civ.
+xx% bonus for having the same religion (25%?)
+34% bonus for having a happier civ (Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a lvl 3 tenet purchased under the Order Ideology).
-34% penalty for having different ideologies.

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A few corrections and clarifications:

+25% for having a diplomat only applies if you have different ideologies. It's like propaganda to overcome that -34% modifier.

+25% for having the same religion, like you guessed.

There are other Tourism-boosting tenets apart from DotP, like Cult of Personality (L3 Autocracy, +50% tourism against leader are at war with someone you're at war with)

thetall0ne said:

Alright, I've tried 4 or so times on 5 difficulty and I can't seem to win the culture victory. Everything is going well when one civ will attack. One time I tried to be aggressive and attacked other civs as China, that didn't work, I got ganged up on at the end and killed. The second time as Brazil I was nice and friendly and traded with everyone and Poland still attacked me behind my back despite being 'friendly'. Whats the secret to keeping people from attacking you?

Thanks

Click to expand...

sometimes if you sniff that someone is going to backstab you, just pay them to war someone else. this will probably focus their attention on them. usually backstabbers can be paid to DoW anyone. after that denounce them to be safe if u declare war on them so you dont get a diplo penalty.but winning a culture victory isnt about conquering anyway cause you kinda still need a low number of cities so you can spam the policies faster to get super happiness for your cities thus influence on ideology thus tourism

What spellfire above said, plus it helps having a huge army... on level 5 and below, the AI will hardly DOW you if you are leading the demographics screen in soldiers.

To my understanding each turn you will generate tourism based on your tourism score with each civ you are in contact with .
Your Tourism score with each Civ can be modified by various factors as discussed above .
Tourism builds up each turn . When you have more accumulated Tourism with a civ than they have culture you become influential with them .
When you have become influential with all civs you win a cultural "blue jeans" victory.

Near the end of the race you will likely want to start using your great musicians to gain huge influence by performing tours in the other cultural power houses .

Some Civs will fall quickly to your tourism , others that are going for the culture victory themselves will likely have huge culture themselves . these guys will need to be toured to get over the large culture they have .

Getting to internet technology first is also a pretty good insta-win tech .

Is the blue jeans message same for everyone? I thought "blue jeans" and "pop music" was Freedom specific, and there would be different messages for becoming influential with other ideologies. I wouldn't know, having not become influential with any other ideology though.

I usually go freeedom but i think I went autocracy first time and still got blue jeans message

Heh, it would've been nice touch to have something else if the dominant culture was Order or Autocracy.

Yeah I think its a bit of a rush job with little care given to it . Would be nice for different leaders to say different things to you when you beat them in a similir way to each civ when defeated by military means

I don't really mind, although it would've been a nice touch.

I find that the best way to win Culture games is to actually be quite aggressive, taking over Civilizations which have too much culture for you to try to take over. I've only played Culture 2 or 3 times though, on Prince even, with Egypt.

I appreciate all the advice. I tried again last night as Brazil, and got pissed at India because they kept spamming missionaries every 3 or 4 turns and sending them into my territories. I asked him to stop and he told me to f- myself (which was hilarious). I denounced him, then declared war on him and he kicked my ass. Why? Because I wasn't upgrading my military. Also, someone mentioned it was important for tourism and thus a culture victory if you had a holy city for a world religion. Is is absolutely necessary?

This is the part I'm still struggling with. When going for a culture victory, is it not important to rush the culture trees and get to archeology? How are you supposed to maintain any kind of useful army?

Also, I've never been able to pay anyone to declare war, what is the threshold you have to be with a CIV to be able to pay them to declare war? I always ask "what would make this work" and the answer is always 'nothing'. I need clever ways of keeping aggressive Civs from attacking me out of jealously of land, etc.

Also, anyone have any advice on optimum number of cities for a culture win? I've bounced between 4 and 5... obviously with no luck.

thetall0ne said:

Also, someone mentioned it was important for tourism and thus a culture victory if you had a holy city for a world religion. Is is absolutely necessary?

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Not necessary, but you get some powerful boons for that. Directly the bonus is +50% tourism in the Holy City. Indirectly you get the 25% tourism modifier with anyone who shares your religion in a majority of their cities - you can also get this one by adopting someone else's religion, but with the World Religion bonus it's easier to spread your own so why not?