Help with cultural victory?

I just lost to a time victory for the first time ever. For some reason the AI were just rubbish at pursuing victory even on King victory for me. Even with an extra 70 odd years I still couldn't win a cultural victory. I only was influential with 2 civs.

I honestly don't know what I could have done better. I had nearly maximum theming bonuses possible. All the 'artifact' wonders I got were in my capital and had all the possible tourism building boosts. I maxed out aesthetics. I used great musician bombs but they didn't seem to do much to help me out. I had most of the relevant wonders and was playing as Brazil. And with all of these things in my favor I didn't even get close to a cultural victory. I honestly don't know what else I could have done

I suppose I could have spent time capturing other civs to take their artifacts but I'd prefer a cultural victory that doesn't involve conquest. Probably my biggest mistake was not realising how important The Internet was (this was my second cultural attempt having quit the first earlier on). I had beelined to refrigeration and then researched a few other technologies before realising about The Internet. But that wouldn't have made the difference.

Did you have trade routes/open borders with qallother civs? How many were you influential with? I guess you could just be unlucky and the AI built a ton of culture. I've beenable to win bbefore the Internet in all of my culturalvictor ies but i only play prince so maybe I have an advantage

DeutschDachs said:

Did you have trade routes/open borders with qallother civs? How many were you influential with? I guess you could just be unlucky and the AI built a ton of culture. I've beenable to win bbefore the Internet in all of my culturalvictor ies but i only play prince so maybe I have an advantage

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I'm not sure who I had trade routes with. Do trade routes spread tourism? It doesn't say that when you establish the routes. I couldn't get open borders with anyone because they hated me. I had managed to sneak in a few musicians and bombed them before everyone started hating me but they didn't seem to do much. I was only influential with 2 civs by 2050. Three of the AI had been wiped out so I only had 2 civs left to become influential with.

mrwho said:

I'm not sure who I had trade routes with. Do trade routes spread tourism? It doesn't say that when you establish the routes. I couldn't get open borders with anyone because they hated me. I had managed to sneak in a few musicians and bombed them before everyone started hating me but they didn't seem to do much. I was only influential with 2 civs by 2050. Three of the AI had been wiped out so I only had 2 civs left to become influential with.

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Ah, yes they definitely do. Trade routes and open borders each give you a plus 25% modifier to tourism influence. If they share your religion, that's another 25%. Order and freedom ideologies also increase influence. It's easy to have a + 50% modifier with most civs and then culture bomb the ones which hate you. Try to be mostly friendly though. Getting over 100% influence is possible especially in order ideolog . Influence will spread quite quickly then!

DeutschDachs said:

Ah, yes they definitely do. Trade routes and open borders each give you a plus 25% modifier to tourism influence. If they share your religion, that's another 25%. Order and freedom ideologies also increase influence. It's easy to have a + 50% modifier with most civs and then culture bomb the ones which hate you. Try to be mostly friendly though. Getting over 100% influence is possible especially in order ideolog . Influence will spread quite quickly then!

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That's a lot of help. I had no idea trade routes or open borders were modifiers. I also completely ignored religion in the early game because I also didn't know about World Religion's 50% tourism in the holy city. Is it worth all the investment do you think to invest in faith to get a religion and then spread it like a madman to get that 50% boost? Next attempt I'll definitely try spreading my religion but is it worth the early investment to do my own or should I take someone elses and spread theirs?

Hopefully these modifiers I didn't know about will help me a lot.

mrwho said:

I just lost to a time victory for the first time ever. For some reason the AI were just rubbish at pursuing victory even on King victory for me. Even with an extra 70 odd years I still couldn't win a cultural victory. I only was influential with 2 civs.

I honestly don't know what I could have done better. I had nearly maximum theming bonuses possible. All the 'artifact' wonders I got were in my capital and had all the possible tourism building boosts. I maxed out aesthetics. I used great musician bombs but they didn't seem to do much to help me out. I had most of the relevant wonders and was playing as Brazil. And with all of these things in my favor I didn't even get close to a cultural victory. I honestly don't know what else I could have done

I suppose I could have spent time capturing other civs to take their artifacts but I'd prefer a cultural victory that doesn't involve conquest. Probably my biggest mistake was not realising how important The Internet was (this was my second cultural attempt having quit the first earlier on). I had beelined to refrigeration and then researched a few other technologies before realising about The Internet. But that wouldn't have made the difference.

Click to expand...

It's harder to make a theoretical plan of action with limited information, but here are some potential sources of tourism you may have missed the last time around:

1) The World Congress. Depending on the number of GP tile improvements and world wonders you have, the extra culture from Cultural Heritage Sites and Historical Landmarks can be very significant, and all of it converts to tourism via hotels, airports, and the National Visitor's Center. The big one, of course, is hosting the international games--winning that project will give you a massive, massive bonus to tourism for 20 turns, and depending on how well you can steer and block WC votes (for instance, getting it to kick in while you have the internet researched), you can really take advantage of it with...

2) Proper great musician use. The concert tours of great musicians spread tourism based on the output of your civ the turn the musician was created. Generally, your tourism goes up, rather than down, as the game goes on, so it's seldom a good idea to hold musicians in reserve. There are exceptions, of course--musicians created during the International Games bonus period will have that 100% tourism bonus factored into their concert strength, so they can be pretty effective tourism bombs even later. What also works very well for a final push is to finish Aesthetics, bank up all the faith you can, and once your tourism output hits its peak (i.e. internet, most/all relevant wonders/buildings, International Games if possible), faith-buy as many great musicians as you can.

3) Policies and ideologies. Depending on your relative level of happiness and political clout, Order and Freedom can both offer you a strong path to tourism generation. Autocracy's tourism-booster is a bit too situational for global effectiveness, especially if you want to win the game peacefully, but Media Culture (Freedom) gives a straight +33% tourism boost to any city with a broadcast tower (which you should obviously have if you're going for a cultural win), and the twin tenets of Cultural Revolution (+33% to other Order civs) and Dictatorship of the Proletariat (+33% to civs with less happiness than you) can really help spread your influence if you have a lot of political finesse.

4) Little things: Sharing a religion, having trade routes, and having open borders all increase your tourism output with another player. Getting a World Religion passed at the WC will increase the holy city's tourism output as well, which can help if you have your own religion. If another civilization follows a different ideology than you, you'll take a penalty to your tourism spread, but you can mitigate that by sticking a spy in their capital as a diplomat to broadcast propaganda for you.

Hope all of this helps.

Brassnbricks said:

Hope all of this helps.

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It does - thanks.

mrwho said:

That's a lot of help. I had no idea trade routes or open borders were modifiers. I also completely ignored religion in the early game because I also didn't know about World Religion's 50% tourism in the holy city. Is it worth all the investment do you think to invest in faith to get a religion and then spread it like a madman to get that 50% boost? Next attempt I'll definitely try spreading my religion but is it worth the early investment to do my own or should I take someone elses and spread theirs?

Hopefully these modifiers I didn't know about will help me a lot.

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Possibly, perhaps it depends on the civ. I was poland and Indonesia, both of which are great for pumping out faith due to polands ability to power throughthe piety tree and Indonesia'scandis. Piety is actually a great option for tourism because it helps to create a large supply of faith with which you can convert other civs, get the reformation belief which gives tourism fromreligious buildings and eeventuallystraight up buy great artists and musicians to really push your influ ence. If you want to go straight cculture, investing in religion early gives you a massive bonus

mrwho said:

That's a lot of help. I had no idea trade routes or open borders were modifiers. I also completely ignored religion in the early game because I also didn't know about World Religion's 50% tourism in the holy city. Is it worth all the investment do you think to invest in faith to get a religion and then spread it like a madman to get that 50% boost? Next attempt I'll definitely try spreading my religion but is it worth the early investment to do my own or should I take someone elses and spread theirs?

Hopefully these modifiers I didn't know about will help me a lot.

Click to expand...

Had a heck of a time with this myself, but managed to pull it off with Indonesia. Some tips amassed through experience:

1) In the culture window, you cans see the victory progress as a series of bars that compare your total tourism output to their total culture output. You'll also see a multiplier that will total all the factors that apply (trade routes, open borders, shared religion, opposed ideology penalty). Hover over it to see if you're missing one of those. Then you'll know where to start sending cargo ships and who you need to bribe just to get an open borders agreement. Getting as many multipliers as you can are vital to cultural victory, just as much as filling buildings with great works.

2) You should be in the faith-generation racket whether or not you have your own religion, another civ's religion, or no religion at all, just so you can buy up great persons through Aesthetics and Tradition.

3) The gerat musicians are your aggressive weapon against those holdout civ's that seem to defy conversion, and they're probably more valauble for that than for great works (although you don't want to get theme bonuses for Broadway and Sydney Opera House if possible). It took probably a half-dozen for me to finally close the gap on Babylon.

4) Also, try to make sure you have a river city so that you can have a garden in the city with your guilds. Of course, you also need to support that extra 6 population to work those guilds.

5) Send your diplomats to the holdout civ's. This also helps, although I'm not sure to what degree. Wish it showed up in the culture window, but doesn't appear to.

6) Aggressively block other civ's from acquiring supplemental culture. This means, for instance, trying to lock down cultural CS's, and also not letting culture-boosting proposals pass in the WC. Cultural Heritage Sites, National Heritage Sites, and Historical Landmarks might all sound like wonderful things for achieving a cultural victory, but they actually do nothing for boosting your tourism and in fact make other civ's more resistant. Try hard to win the International Games, and make a strong effort at the World's Fair. And above all, get World Ideology passed in favor of your ideology, and not another's.

7) All ideologies can help secure cultural victory. Be aware that if you go against the flow of ideology, you are penalizing your cultural output. Of course, your high tourism will probably create dissidents in their ranks, and cause some defection.

8) Send out archaeologists. Scour the map. Be sure to build plenty of museums first though.

9) Oh, and take note that it is actually possible to run out of great works to produce. At that point, I deleted my guild.