Optimal number of cities for a culture win

Martinus said:

I think the argument that you need many cities to slot the great works is overrated - the culture victory is won through multipliers and theming bonuses, and every time I won the CV so far, my capital (or, more rarely, another designated GW city) was generating over 90% of my tourism.

I believe museum is the only general building which allows you to store more than one work of art (and thus offers a theming bonus) - everything else comes from world wonders and national wonders.

The only reason why you would want more cities than one is to send food caravans to the city or cities that are running the GWAM specialists.

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There are lots of reasons to have more than one city in a cultural game.

1. You still need science if you're going to build wonders before the AI does.
2. You still need gold to maintain all of those cultural buildings and to pay for your army.
3. You can get more luxuries, which gives you more happiness, which leads to golden ages and culture.
4. You'll have more production to put into the International Games, which is insanely good for a cultural game.
5. You'll have more artifacts, which generates more Tourism.
6. And lastly, 120 Tourism is obviously better than 100 Tourism. If you can get 18 from just a Museum, why not found a city, build a Museum, and stuff it with artifacts?

Ulthwithian said:

Huh. Really. Oh... wait, is that with the Aesthetics Finisher?

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It might be. The OP of that thread has to double-check that, it seems.

There's also the question of how you wish to split up your Guilds. You obviously want to be running max specialists in your guilds for max GWAM, but you don't necessarily want to do that in your capital. That's a lot of hammers/beakers you're sinking out of what should be among your most productive cities. If you find one great food city you can fill that with guilds, but you may do better by spreading them out a little, even up to one per city. This also lets you do more internal trade routes to speed up your capital.

Obviously there's no reason to expand past 4 cities just for that reason, outside maximizing internal trade routes.

Lyoncet said:

There's also the question of how you wish to split up your Guilds. You obviously want to be running max specialists in your guilds for max GWAM, but you don't necessarily want to do that in your capital. That's a lot of hammers/beakers you're sinking out of what should be among your most productive cities. If you find one great food city you can fill that with guilds, but you may do better by spreading them out a little, even up to one per city. This also lets you do more internal trade routes to speed up your capital.

Obviously there's no reason to expand past 4 cities just for that reason, outside maximizing internal trade routes.

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France in particular does not want to slow down its Wonderspamming for the generation of GWAM that it does otherwise need.

Won a cultural vic, without Aesthetics. I even neglected cultural output since the Renaissance (I noticed that I didn't get enough SP ). I was playing with 3 cities, one annexed one and two puppets. Once I got the artists guilds and cultural buildings up running, it was a matter of excavating and theming (is that a word?) pieces.

I found three to be a pretty good number (and 3-5 a nice range). I build 3 early cities and a guild in each one, have each city specialize in a certain great person. I also never run out of room for great works with 3 cities, especially with all the wonders I build

I just won one with France on prince with four cities. The fourth one not built until the Renaissance when I starting running out of room for great works.

You need at least three to spread out the guilds. Other than that it comes down to a matter of priorities. For example, you really want the Great Library. So you rush for that straight away and it slows down your expansion. If you manage to build the Cistine Chaple, the Globe Theater, La Louvre, ect, then you don't need that many cities. If you start missing wonders, then you need more cities OR enough military to go get said wonders.

I just won a cultural victory (large, king, Venice) with only the Aesthetics opener (mostly for the Uffizi slots, I had a lot of artists/artifacts). I headed toward Archaeology (not totally beelining) and then spammed archaeologists from Venice while rush buying everything else I needed (museums in puppets, etc). I actually focused on tradition, freedom and exploration; maximizing my $$$ through trade. I also used my near infinite $$$ to buy all CS's to pass resolutions that helped tourism (world religion, world ideology, international games, arts funding etc.).

With strategic use of Great musicians to topple my cultural rivals Indonesia and Austria, I won just at the cusp of the modern era. Not the quickest win on this forum, especially on King, but it was pretty quick for me (I suck). Unfortunately since I was Venice, I can't offer anything on city #

Lyoncet said:

There's also the question of how you wish to split up your Guilds. You obviously want to be running max specialists in your guilds for max GWAM, but you don't necessarily want to do that in your capital. That's a lot of hammers/beakers you're sinking out of what should be among your most productive cities. If you find one great food city you can fill that with guilds, but you may do better by spreading them out a little, even up to one per city. This also lets you do more internal trade routes to speed up your capital.

Obviously there's no reason to expand past 4 cities just for that reason, outside maximizing internal trade routes.

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At the same time you can also run all your guilds out of your capital and just feed them with food cargo ships from your other cities... which actually makes me realize how amazing BNW is in that, unlike vanilla or G&K, it offers so many routes of achieving the same thing.

I just won with Brazil on Emperor with only 3 cities (had no space to expand further and played peacefully). More cities would have been better I feel.

Took me a long time to get the win though (turn 440 ish) due to figuring out the mechanics as I was going along. Nebby was 1 part away from finishing space ship for a while so I bribed everybody to go to war with him to slow him down. Seemed to do the trick.

If you want to 'go wide' and do culture, you need to use the landmarks, rather than museum theming bonuses.

an artifact gives 2 tourism, 2 culture. pair it with another and you can get an extra +4 from the museum theming bonus. So that's 8 tourism and 4 culture (ignoring culture boosters) from a museum/Aesthetics finisher. Top up with Hotels/Airports and you're getting 12 tourism.

OR

You can landmark both sites for culture early (and boost with WC resolution) then get Hotels/Airports. You will get at least 8 culture from the tile (depending on the era of the artifact) which 100% converts to tourism. 2 of those and you've got 16 tourism -- more than the museum bonus for the same 2 artifacts.

Basically, a general rule of thumb is that if the site is in range of your city, make it a landmark. If it's elsewhere, make it an artifact.

The only hitch to the above is the National Visitors center. That city should be maxed on all GW slots but preferably also have landmarks around it (seemingly less likely if it's your capital).

Martinus said:

At the same time you can also run all your guilds out of your capital and just feed them with food cargo ships from your other cities... which actually makes me realize how amazing BNW is in that, unlike vanilla or G&K, it offers so many routes of achieving the same thing.

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Absolutely! I was just pointing out that the extra cities are useful, either as Guild cities or as food pumps. My Emperor Poland win (well it was a science win, but I built to achieve either that or culture and ended up only a few % from winning culture) I had great success with Tradition, 4 cities, and just food-spamming Warsaw and putting all the guilds there for max National Epic bonus. Even though Warsaw was my only landlocked city so I was oh getting 50% of the food I could have.

Although when I was gifted a Merchant of Venice in early Modern, it turned into a 5-city game.

I also don't think high population can make up for another city. I am playing as Venice and I am losing against the Maya. I outstrip them 10 times in culture but I neglected faith and even my early-to mid-game tech-lead didn't make up for the Mayas well established relations through religion, their central position on the map (lots of trade, open borders) and having three cities pumping artists. I was too much in G&K mode and thought that playing on a lower difficulty (King) would make culture victory easy with only 1-2 cities, but looking at how well the Maya have done considering I built all the important wonders is just astonishing. Quite embarrassed to loose on King now :s

It doesn't matter how many cities you have.

Tourism victory comes down to 2 or 3 OF your cities with stacked tourism bonuses, hotels, airports, internet, and visitor center bonus in your best one...

...then manage your +/- graph, assigning diplomats, open borders, trade routes, etc.

If you make everyone mad at you, you'll have a hard time getting open borders for that +%.

If you're at war with someone, you'll have a hard time keeping cargo ships for that +%.

If you can fix world ideology early, you have a better chance for the +% of shared ideology.

If you can spread your religion early you have a better chance for the +% of shared religion.

There are many ways to do it, but optimally you want to top out at or above 550 tourism (including all bonuses) and nurture the above bonuses. That's like, 6 wonders (including national wonders) with stacked bonuses in the right places.

Buying musicians outright requires either full aesthetics tree or the reformation belief to buy any great person.If you want it done faster, buy musicians outright, in the information age, when you feel your tourism is maxed out for their greatest effect at tourism bombing. It's not even necessary, though, if for example, you can stack brazil's carnivale on top of everything for 1000+ tourism + graph bonuses, or if you can, early on, build enough stackable wonders for 700+ tourism etc etc

So my point is, you don't "need" specifically this wonder, or this policy, or this number of cities. It all comes down to stackable bonuses and the +/- graph when you're maxed.

edit: incidentally, this is from my experience at emp or imm difficulty. I have the achievements for cultural wins with all 3 ideologies, and have for several days now.

This discussion is fascinating.

I'm going to experiment with a culture victory in OCC mode. It seems like I would have to get an absolutely HUGE pop so that tiles could be worked along with specialists. It should be interesting to see what happens.

The optimal number of cities for a CV is simply however many it takes to make sure you have slots for all of your great works with theme bonuses. Setting up any cities past this is basically wasting resources as they will not contribute in any meaningful way to your CV. The actual number will depend on how many of the culture wonders you build and how many archaeology sites you are able to snag. The exception would be for civs with tourism tile improvements. Then you would have to determine what setting up the city will really cost you and if it is worth the tourism the extra tile improvements will give you.

In the 2 culture games I have played so far (Immortal) the answer has been 4 cities.

marlowe221 said:

This discussion is fascinating.

I'm going to experiment with a culture victory in OCC mode. It seems like I would have to get an absolutely HUGE pop so that tiles could be worked along with specialists. It should be interesting to see what happens.

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my current CV game has been working well... as Poland, I managed to build the Hanging Gardens in my Capital City. population there is booming.

otherwise, I have my port city that I use for trade routes, my defensive city that I accidentally settled 4 tiles away from Mongolia's capital city (but it has a +culture world wonder), and a production-focused city that sends hammers to my capital.