Culture questions - Prince level

Hi everyone, I've recently been enjoying playing for culture victories, but I have a few questions. I still consider myself a noob so bear with me.

I'm just going to number my questions to keep things simple.

1. I seem to always be in the middle of the 6 civs on the scoreboard. I can't understand how the civ in 1st place got there so quickly. I mean there is only so much production available early on, and I'm grabbing all I can. Yet my score is 700 and 1st place score is 950. How is this civ doing this?

2. What buildings do you recommend, from turn 1, for a good culture start?

3. If I get a trade screen from another civ offering me iron and horses for my pearls, will trading my pearls lower my culture/luxury - since it is a luxury. Sometimes I take the trade, but I always feel like I might be getting burned because I don't fully understand the ramifications of trading my luxuries - I just know every civ want's them.

4. Ummm, also if I send +4 food from my capital to one of my other cities, does it get added right away, or on the next turn? And does my city get the full +4 food?

Ok that's all my questions for now. Thanks for any help.

1. Don't worry so much about the raw score, worry about your surroundings and resources especially before the age of ideology.

2. Monument and certain social policies from the get go. Tradition and Liberty are the best culture growers but pick them according to the environment (this is from the onset, Aesthetics later on will boost your culture once available.)

3. Only trade luxury resources you have more than one of, if you trade your last source you lose happiness, and happiness is essential to culture growth because you lose production if you are in the negative.

4. Right away and yes. Just make sure you need to do so.

Always pick Tradition for culture victory. Liberty can work but it's more advanced due to happiness issue when playing wide. Also tradition is better for growth and you need a big capital for culture to be able to put out the necessary production for wonders. Also having a religion helps, so your build order should be scout, scout, monument, shrine. Next should be workers or settlers or archers depending on map.

Newbstep said:

3. Only trade luxury resources you have more than one of, if you trade your last source you lose happiness, and happiness is essential to culture growth because you lose production if you are in the negative.

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Awesome thanks everyone! Newbstep, can you teach me how to see how many a certain luxury I DO have so I will not sell the last one. I definitely don't want to lose happiness because I've seen what that can do. Don't want to lose production either - and I did not know happiness would affect that, so thanks.

If you go to the drop down menu on the top left of the screen (which normally shows what tech you are researching), one of the options is Resources. That shows you how many of each type of resource (luxury and strategic) you have developed, how many you are importing, how many you are exporting and, in the case of strategics, how many you re using (to build units that require that resource).

Prozac1964 said:

Awesome thanks everyone! Newbstep, can you teach me how to see how many a certain luxury I DO have so I will not sell the last one. I definitely don't want to lose happiness because I've seen what that can do. Don't want to lose production either - and I did not know happiness would affect that, so thanks.

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You can see what you have under the "Resources" tab in the Info panel. Just be careful though, if you already had a deal with another civ and right after it expires you trade your other copy to someone else, if it is in the same turn it will still show another available and the previous civ that had that deal may come back and say "This deal has faded in our eyes" and tries to renew it it still may say there is one available when really you are down to your last resource. Just try to keep track mentally to avoid those situations.

2. Focus on science first when going for a cultural victory. You're going to want to hit Internet as soon as possible. Beyond that, build your guilds, work them, and make sure you have slots for great works. Hermitage is a good way to get some early art slots. And you don't NEED world wonders: http://redd.it/3gt3rl

3. If you have multiples of a luxury, are already selling all but one off, and a civ is willing to trade your last one for a unique luxury they have, go for it. Your happiness won't go up immediately, but once one of your copies comes back, you'll have happiness from both.

If you have EUI, you can just hover over your happiness icon and it will show you all your resources, where they're coming from, if you're importing/exporting them, for how long, etc. VERY handy.

Browd said:

If you go to the drop down menu on the top left of the screen (which normally shows what tech you are researching), one of the options is Resources. That shows you how many of each type of resource (luxury and strategic) you have developed, how many you are importing, how many you are exporting and, in the case of strategics, how many you re using (to build units that require that resource).

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Awesome tip Browd! I'll have a look. Great help from everyone, I really appreciate it.

Sclb said:

Always pick Tradition for culture victory. Liberty can work but it's more advanced due to happiness issue when playing wide. Also tradition is better for growth and you need a big capital for culture to be able to put out the necessary production for wonders. Also having a religion helps, so your build order should be scout, scout, monument, shrine. Next should be workers or settlers or archers depending on map.

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Just to be sure, are you advocating building a monument and running tradition? If this is common practice, can someone please explain why?

Finnagain said:

Just to be sure, are you advocating building a monument and running tradition? If this is common practice, can someone please explain why?

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- If you're going for a CV, you will need Amphitheatres anyway, so a free one is nice.
- Not building a monument delays policies a lot if you're going full Tradition, especially the ones after Legalism. (Landed Elite/Monarchy/Finisher)

Like most people, I play Tradition about 75% of the time and I have never regretted hard building monuments. I think before the change to Tradition, most people went Scout x2 and used Legalism for a monument, but now the vast majority hard build.

Turn 1 is always scout. Other players' score is so high because they get free culture/money/faith/population/tech from ruins and city-states.

As others said, the scoreboard doesn't really say anything about how well you are doing. But if you want to know where the difference in score comes from, you can hover over the score with the mouse to get a rundown of where all the points are coming from. One major contributor is religion; if you haven't founded one, you'll often be behind those who have.