cultural victory too hard!

how do you win with the new cultural victory? i have found dozens of artifacts, have all the polices to increase culture etc yet the other civs are still ahead of me?

bladex said:

how do you win with the new cultural victory? i have found dozens of artifacts, have all the polices to increase culture etc yet the other civs are still ahead of me?

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I bet that's your flaw - you need to generate tourism, not culture.

bladex said:

how do you win with the new cultural victory? i have found dozens of artifacts, have all the polices to increase culture etc yet the other civs are still ahead of me?

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It's not hard at all if you understand the game mechanism. In BNW cultural system is divided to two parts: culture and tourism. You generate culture for new social polices but also to counter against opponents' tourism. The tourism is offensive cultural aspect. You need to gain enough tourism related to opponents' culture points in order to influence them and hence winning a cultural victory. So in short: culture is used to defense and tourism to offense

Generally speaking the early game is where you build up your culture with wonders, great works, and when Archaelogy comes around, Landmarks, which are one of the most powerful Tourism-generators. Your tourism early on will be rather low.

Then later on, you beeline towards Hotels, Airports and the National Visitors Centre, and start generating Musicians to boost your tourism with other civs.

i got like 100+ tourism but it never seems to be enough

as for the landmarks they have to be in your city radios right? most of the time the sites are always too far away and i have to dig them up instead.

bladex said:

i got like 100+ tourism but it never seems to be enough

as for the landmarks they have to be in your city radios right? most of the time the sites are always too far away and i have to dig them up instead.

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You really should take a look at civilopedia bro.

First of all, 100+ tourism is nothing.
Secondly, artifacts use same slots as great works of art, radios can only contain great works of music.

I managed to pull a cultural victory once (large map, 10 players, emperor).

Built my second city near mt. Sinai and went for full piety. I was first to start a religion (chose pagodas) and first to enhance a religion (chose cathedrals). Then i picked the reformation belief, which gives +2 tourism from all buildings purchased with faith. I had circa 15 cities, meaning 60 tourism base.

...and in the beginning of the 20th century even Ramesses himself was wearing my blue jeans and listening to my fresh sioux pop music

A few tips when doing the cultural victory condition:

1) It's generally much easier to play smaller maps and fewer civilizations to achieve this victory than any playing larger maps and larger number of civilizations. The reason for this is more relating to the fact that you need to establish easy trade routes with other civilizations and having trade routes with other civilizations is a necessity for for the Tourism boost.

2) For early game advantage, try to rush Great Library and Stonehenge. You not only get the early game advantage of the big Faith boost, but you also obtain your religion earlier than other civilizations and once you obtain your religion, spread at very aggressively to other civilizations. You'll get a large tourism boost for having the majority religion and more so if you make it a World Religion during the World Congress. The Great Library gives a nice scientific boost as well that will allow to you reach several eras much faster than other civilizations and quickly adopt an Ideology you want quicker. Any Ideology works to obtain Cultural victory, but I personally find Freedom to be the best choice as they have more perks for the cultural victory than any other Ideology.

3) You do NOT want to build a lot of cities to do cultural victory. Although it may seem a bit tempting to build a lot of cities, it's actually very detrimental on trying to build the necessary wonders where they grant you Great Artist/Musician/Writer points with the respective Great Work of Art/Music/Writing slot. Although it's possible to obtain cultural victory with a lot of cities, it's gonna have a lot detrimental effect to your empire's happiness rating.

4) For AI civilizations, choose the ones that are easy to befriend. Having the AI's "likeness to be friendly" 6 or higher makes it easy for you to obtain this. Polynesia, Dutch, Shoshone, America, Venice, India, Iroquois, and Siam are relatively easy to befriend civilizations. Likewise, having AI that has a good habit of being a warmonger (like Mongols, France, Japan, Aztecs, and Huns) or having a serious backstabbing disorder (*cough, cough* Chinese) makes it REALLY difficult to achieve cultural victory.

5) Speaking about the World Congress/United Nations and proposals, there are a lot of resolutions you can pass that can make obtaining cultural victory much easier. Arts Funding, World's Fair, and International Games are the top three proposals you should consider proposing and a lot of civilizations are very happy to vote for these resolutions. ESPECIALLY Arts Funding because from most of my playthroughs, I've saw a lot of civilizations that are pleased with me proposing Arts Funding while all of them get pissed off for me proposing Science Funding (I think you get diplomatic penalties for proposing things that will get them angry or go against their interests IIRC and can make obtaining cultural or diplomatic victories harder).

6) For social policies Adopt (in order) Piety, Tradition, and Aesthetics.

Personally, I didn't find cultural victory to be THAT hard, you just need good adjustments in your map settings and a bit of luck. In fact, I manage to obtain a cultural victory as India by only having three cities (thus obtaining the Bollywood achievement). I personally find trying to obtain Domination and Diplomatic victory to be harder (particularly the later if you are playing Venice AND trying to obtain the One City to Rule Them All achievement at the same time).

bladex said:

as for the landmarks they have to be in your city radios right? most of the time the sites are always too far away and i have to dig them up instead.

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They do, yes. I always make any dig site within a workable radius a landmark and get artefacts from other territories.

If you have a lot of a dig sites outside your land, don't forget it might be worth settling a new city or conquering one to gain access to its landmarks.

Also, there is a World Congress proposal that gives culture for all Great People tile improvements, (which is very strong with the Piety tree culture boost for Great Sites), and a Freedom Tenet, New Deal, which boosts culture of landmarks significantly.

My main reasoning is that tile culture is the best way of generating Tourism from Hotels, Airports and the National Visitors Centre. It's why the Moai, Chateaux, and Brazilwood Camps are so useful for culture victories.

bladex said:

i got like 100+ tourism but it never seems to be enough

as for the landmarks they have to be in your city radios right? most of the time the sites are always too far away and i have to dig them up instead.

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100 ain't jack, bro. Need at least 600, might even want 800, then get open borders, trade route, and diplomat in every civ. if one civ is too strong to influence, faith buy a few musicians and send them on tour in his lands. If many civs are too strong, conquer the strongest and musician the rest.

You have hotels? Airports? National visitor center? Need those bare minimum.

Vidszhite said:

You have hotels? Airports? National visitor center? Need those bare minimum.

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yes i always build them

You definitely need more than 100 tourism. I managed to get an Emperor win at turn 321 with 542 tourism (pre-airports, pre-internet) as France. Was pretty hard fought too with two other high culture civs, but it's definitely doable.

so when you get musicians you don't get them to create great works instead send them to other civs and do it there?

bladex said:

so when you get musicians you don't get them to create great works instead send them to other civs and do it there?

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Once your base tourism is high enough (the musician is worth 10 turns of your tourism when they were spawned)

bladex said:

so when you get musicians you don't get them to create great works instead send them to other civs and do it there?

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Not initially. It's generally only worthwhile to use Great Musicians to bomb other civilizations pretty late into the game when you have a lot of tourism, as their strength is equal to 10 times the current tourism value when they spawned. Use them as great works for the majority of the game.

bladex said:

yes i always build them

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Wait, so you've got Hotels, Airports and the National Visitor Center and your tourism is 100? That's extremely low. Have you filled up all your guilds with specialists, with buildings to spawn great people faster? Are you taking notice of theming bonuses? Are you building wonders and buildings for the great work slots? I know these are very basic things but I just don't get how your tourism can be that low if you're doing all of that and you have the buildings you say you do.

1,000 tourism per turn is a good target for the end game (emperor/immortal level), so you are off by a factor of 10.

All the multipliers are important but you need some base tourism too...that means great works and/or artifacts, ideally with theming bonuses. I personally like to get the tourism wonders like Globe Theatre, Sistine Chapel, Broadway and Eiffel Tower all in my capital. That way the visitor center will have a huge impact. Another approach is to go for more artifacts and less wonders, which also works because there is only 1 key tech to beeline that way (archaeology).

Science is super important too, you want to time it so that the Internet is completed before or during your 20-turn reward period from the international games.

Stockpiling faith and purchasing a couple great musicians when you are at your peak (internet + visitor center + international games) usually seals the deal.

chazzycat said:

1,000 tourism per turn is a good target for the end game (emperor/immortal level), so you are off by a factor of 10.

All the multipliers are important but you need some base tourism too...that means great works and/or artifacts, ideally with theming bonuses. I personally like to get the tourism wonders like Globe Theatre, Sistine Chapel, Broadway and Eiffel Tower all in my capital. That way the visitor center will have a huge impact. Another approach is to go for more artifacts and less wonders, which also works because there is only 1 key tech to beeline that way (archaeology).

Science is super important too, you want to time it so that the Internet is completed before or during your 20-turn reward period from the international games.

Stockpiling faith and purchasing a couple great musicians when you are at your peak (internet + visitor center + international games) usually seals the deal.

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How do you manage to get both the Sistine Chapel and the Globe Theatre on Immortal? I'm lucky if I get one.

the way I've been doing it:

- beeline printing press after education, then acoustics
- prepare by building ironworks in 2nd best production city
- immediately build Globe in capital once printing press is done
- immediately build Tower of Pisa in 2nd city as well
- use free GE from Pisa to rush Sistine in capital

Before that point it's mainly focusing on food and the NC.

chazzycat said:

the way I've been doing it:

- beeline printing press after education, then acoustics
- prepare by building ironworks in 2nd best production city
- immediately build Globe in capital once printing press is done
- immediately build Tower of Pisa in 2nd city as well
- use free GE from Pisa to rush Sistine in capital

Before that point it's mainly focusing on food and the NC.

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Weird, usually for me I can't even get to Printing Press before the Tower of Pisa goes. The AI seem to love it. I could get the NC earlier but not without hemorrhaging early expansion and losing out on good prime city locations. Even when I go straight to acoustics and ignore Printing Press I'm not guaranteed Sistine Chapel, which is what I tend to do so I can get Uffizi, which is a stronger wonder anyway (larger theming bonus).

Yeah you really have to push food in the early game, that's the key thing IMO. Send a food trade route to the cap as soon as settlers are done by building a granary first in your second city, that helps me a lot. Around the time NC is getting built the population in your NC should be skyrocketing.

Oracle for early consulates is really good too. That food from maritimes will have kicked in by the time you are building those wonders if you get consulates by turn ~115, which is only possible with Oracle (or delaying tradition finisher which would be worse).