Cultural Victory: the hardest one?

I was always under the impression that if you had open borders and the CPU officially sees you have no army, they would be more likely to attack. Is this true?
 
That was true in Civ IV, at least. Until it was fixed with the addition of spies, AIs would be more passive if you refrained from open borders treaties.
 
Also, I have a 3 city civ, and I spammed archeologist but I find I don't have the room to add works to my buildings.

What should I do? Should I just let the AI get the ruines, or should I make a quick city, and start purchasing buildings to put the works in (I have the most money in the game)
 
Turn the dig sites inside your workable tiles into landmarks, and use the other artifacts for your museums/cathedrals/louvre/etc.

The landmarks will start creating tourism when you get hotels/airports, and there's a tenet that doubles their culture output, which gives more tourism as a result.

If you still have extra artifacts and can afford the happiness, then yeah, why not build another city and just buy all the buildings you need. Seems reasonable.
 
I think you really need wonders on immortal for CV

If you do not build wonders with slots and bonuses, how do you plan to produce tourism? Museums are not enough unless you have a very, very wide empire, with great production power (need to build museums everywhere to finish Hermitage, need to build expensive archaeologists..), get to archaeology first to have artifacts etc. That road for CV is much harder, since you do not have full utilization of multiplying benefits from a single hotel, airport, broadcast tower, and is much slower/ expensive.

Second problem with not going for cultural wonders is obvious. If you do not go that way, AI will. It will boost both their culture and tourism.

Problem I face with playing tall is when there are many aggressive civs around. Problems for someone not going for wonders is if there are civs that go for them (Egypt, Sweden..) or if you try to culturally overpower Brasil or France..

If you go tall, you absolutely need wonders, since you will not have place/ slots for great works, and will probably see few great persons taking a nap, until you build them opera, museum, broadcast tower..

There was a post about winning even without hotel/ airport. I find that nearly impossible, at least with my game-play :) I am playing immortal, but I think Emperor is still hard to beat without those, too..
 
Regarding open borders question, I am not sure how it reflects on AI aggressiveness when they see your puny army :)

But the thing remains, you have great boost of tourism with Open Borders, and you are going for that kind of win. If you aim for scientific or diplomatic victory, you probably should have rigorous visa system :)

My tips would be to suck up to everybody, choose prevailing ideology (Usually Order), Open Borders and do Research Agreements, be friends with CSs (Especially Maritime and in mid game. Later only if in danger of loosing diplomatically), do not pay to much attention to Religion (If you have it strong, it is better of course, but do not focus on it), beeline Internet (depending on Map you may need Destroyers, though) and go for important Wonders
 
I play both Emperor and Immortal (and occasionally Deity, rarely), and have found that there is a big jump between Emperor and Immortal for CV now:

On Emperor, I stand a reasonable chance of getting just about any cultural wonder - even sometimes via hard-building - except for the Parthenon and Great Library (it has slots for Great Works now, so it sort-of counts as cultural). Those two, I generally rule-out, though on smaller maps (with less competition for wonders due to fewer civs that can hard-build simultaneously) I sometimes can pick up the Parthenon with a GE from Liberty if there's no other pressing needs for wonders. All that said, I generally struggle to get Uffizi and Sistine Chapel, as those are on the cusp of being too early to really have caught up in techs by then, depending on the start and what not. And lastly, the AI doesn't complete other victory types quite as quickly on Emperor, so CV is still viable even without one or two key elements.

On Immortal, I usually don't get Globe Theater or Uffizi, and Uffizi in particular is one of them I think that a lot depends on. Uffizi and the Louvre are both vital for CV due to theming, and on Immortal, Uffizi seems to be a bit elusive. Worse, as others have mentioned, International Games is another key part, and on Immortal it's a pretty good bet that being the top contributor is far from guaranteed. But to cap it off, on Immortal, the AI's just complete other victories a bit too quickly (usually Space Victory) to be able to rely on teching all the way to the Internet and getting those end-game bonuses should you need them.

But the absolute worst is being France on Immortal or Deity and wanting to use the UA for something other than just the museum and maybe one wonder. Since the higher the difficulty level, the more you have to conquer wonders rather than build them, it becomes highly unlikely that you will get key wonders like the Louvre and Uffizi all in the same city, and unlikelier still that you'll get them all in your capital when playing above Emperor.
 
@ahawk

If you beeline Internet you will get there before anyone goes out of the solar system, for sure :)
If you have research Agreements and Rationalism, you would probably be a tech leader, as well. Only problem is your somewhat weaker/ smaller military..

That stands for Immortal. Deity can be very annoying, so I tend to play it only from time to time, too
 
@ahawk

If you beeline Internet you will get there before anyone goes out of the solar system, for sure :)
If you have research Agreements and Rationalism, you would probably be a tech leader, as well. Only problem is your somewhat weaker/ smaller military..

For Emperor, I agree with the bee-lining Internet part. But I would still say that on Immortal, it's not a safe-bet that if you bee-line it even that someone else won't be reasonably close to a Space Victory. Even if you bee-line it, there are some notoriously fast-teching civs that often will play spoiler and eek out the Space Victory just in time to make you lose.

But the tech-leader part I disagree with. On Immortal especially, I've often had to DoW to get Uffizi, Globe Theater, and even a few others. Which means that AIs tend to be more reluctant to DoF and/or sign RA's, though on the other hand since BNW it's been normal that almost every AI tends to have plenty of gold to use for RA's now, which does help (compared to having to give away gold for RA's in G&K).
 
in my last game, I did exactly what I suggested, in order to win CV

I did not had Porcelain Tower, but finished Rationalism. Since I was in great relations, I had RA with six out of seven civs constantly. I had the lead in science.

Other civs had much more cities, military power etc. One civ managed to finish one SS Booster, and two or three finished Apollo. From there to Science Victory was a long road. Once I finsihed Internet, my Tourism exploded and they had no chance. They need to go through all "lines/ levels" of technology tree to finish the race, and they were far behind, specially in the "upper" part.

If you take a closer look, upper part does not require techs from bottom, and you just face a lot of turns for the last tech (Internet) since it is pretty far. But with RAs, possible great scientists which you burn for science (in late game you do not make academies, but discover techs) it is actually surprisingly fast.

Even if you fall a bit behind, is there a tech you prefer for CV, other than Internet?

In your scenario, you are actually advocating for keeping your options for other types of victory and possible military intervention to prevent AI from winning, but it will not lead to fast Cultural Victory, at least nowhere close when compared to discovering Internet...

I agree on the point it is hard to get Uffizi, Globe and Broadway. I had Louvre (opened exploration just for that, and then stopped) Globe and Broadway, in later game Sydney Opera. I had Sistine Chapel. I didn 't had Parthenon (was beaten for few turns, just like for one more Wonder..) and Ufizzi. But I also had Hermitage, Oxford, Broadcast Tower, Opera, Museum, Amphitheater.

It is important to have different types of Wonders, since lines for earning Artist, Writer and Musician are different, unlike for Engineer, Scientist, Merchant which share the same line - meaning they are all more expensive after each "birth". When Musician is expanded it makes new one more expensive, but does not influence costs of Writer and Artist. With that in mind, I would suggest to have diversity of Wonders, rather then preferring specific (although Louvre is great, as it gives slots and bonuses for both paintings and artifacts, which are much easier to get than solely works of art/ paintings). Related to that I suggested having guilds in two, sometimes maybe even three cities (small capital), to have enough specialists producing specific works.

If you menage to do this, and I think you should in 3-4 out of 5 on Immortal, CV is almost secured. Different Ideologies and possible wars may delay things, but you would be on a good course :)
 
...If you beeline Internet you will get there before anyone goes out of the solar system, for sure :)...

I beeline computers before i beeline the internet. That way you should get the great firewall. It doesn't provide any bonuses to tourism but it prevents any other civ having a defense for your internet buffed tourism.

...Even if you fall a bit behind, is there a tech you prefer for CV, other than Internet?...
Radar for the national visitor center. Even if you are falling behind on the tourism front you can use the bombers that you now can build/upgrade to take the tourism leader's art. Also if you save the Oxford Uni, by this time you can prolly build it in 1 or 2 turns and that can get you to Rocketry and your enemies may as well just give you their art :p
 
I wrote a little guide on how to win cultural easy in another thread:

Keys to win by culture:
1) One city with River access builds Writer/Musician/Artist guild & Garden+National Epic.
2) Get at least the Aestethic opener.
3) Get the World Congress to increase Great Musician/Artist/Writer rates (most civ will also like you for this).
4) Buy Open Borders for 1-2gpt, never give open borders.
5) Have one trade route and diplomat in capital with the best culture civs (i.e. the ones with most culture/tourism).
6) Bulb your great musicians inside the cultural runaway's territory.
7) Beeline Archeo, all cities swap to producing Archeos, rob as many arties from other civs as you can (1-2 per civs are ok, more gets big diplo hit).
8) Beeline Acoustics and GE or produce S.Chapel (usually nobody beelines/builds it early)
9) Try to build Globe Teather and Eiffel Tower (start both on your 2 biggest cities).
10) Absolutely propose and win World Fair+International Games ASAP.
11) If you are SURE you can get the delegates, propose World Religion; note that this will be opposed by everyone most likely (unless you did a Pilgrimage virus early on), so only do it if you're 100% sure you can bribe enough delegates and own enough to make it pass.
12) Same as with religion, World Ideology helps if you can make it pass.
13) Try to convert other civs to your religion, but you must start early else it will be hard later.
14) If all this manages to not give you the lead somehow, buy Musicians with Faith and bomb your cultural runaway with them.
15) Get the Leaning Tower of Pisa with your GE from Liberty, since it gives +25% GP & gives you a free GP so you get ANOTHER GE for another free wonder

Should you fail even with the above (unlikely unless you're lagging behind a ton in techs) just Bomber the runaways' capital.
 
Reformation belief sacred sites (+2 tourism per faith built building) is key. I am playing on emporer with the Dutch and I really aimed for this enhancer after being able to buy pagodas and cathedrals with faith. This way I have +4 tourism per city. So it helps if you have a lot of cities. I am still in Renaissance and I am already influential with one civ and popular with most other civs.

And now I am trying to complete Aesthetics for the theming bonus enhancer although this won't work for sacred sites.
 
I beeline computers before i beeline the internet. That way you should get the great firewall. It doesn't provide any bonuses to tourism but it prevents any other civ having a defense for your internet buffed tourism.

Computers are rather "low" on the tech tree, and all other nice bonuses on the top. Even if somebody finishes Great Firewall, it is still just one Civ, which can be influenced by your Musicians' tours :)

Radar for the national visitor center. Even if you are falling behind on the tourism front you can use the bombers that you now can build/upgrade to take the tourism leader's art. Also if you save the Oxford Uni, by this time you can prolly build it in 1 or 2 turns and that can get you to Rocketry and your enemies may as well just give you their art :p

National Visitors Center is at Telecommunications, one more reason for top line.
You may consider war, of course, but is different game, and you may ruin your relationship with pretty much everybody :)
Radar is next after Internet, that is correct, since you can have airport and air defense, and is very cheap to get at that time :)
 
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