Earliest Cultural Victory

Continuing the theme of the fastest science victory and largest city threads, this one's about how to achieve the earliest cultural victory. You'd probably want to start in a coastal city next to loads of jungles and a desert tile with a mountain nearby. Then you can get the culture from jungles pantheon and build Petra, SOH, and Neuschwanstein. Playing as Siam would probably be best, with a bunch of Swedens about to speed up Great Artist generation. Allying with cultural city-states will fill have you popping policies very quickly, especially if you're only going to play with one city.

Of course there's always the method of playing a hotseat game against yourself and creating a huge empire to puppet, but that might require a bit too much time for the purpose of this experiment.

Well for me a culture victory takes the most amount of turns to win with. The Fastest I won with cultural was around 330 on immortal with siam.

I think I got my earliest one just today. It was in 1776 (turn 399 epic) with the Aztecs and only oen city (OCC). I got almost all wonders I wanted and finished before I had even researched the tech for Cristo Redentor.

The earliest i got was with Egypt at turn 298, and today i had a really good one with Siam at turn 302, BUT i missed the Oracle only by 4-5 turns and lost one policy, so it should've been a sub 300 game. The Siam game was pretty much a faceroll, i had the highest score(Augustus) and the highest everything(science, food, production,tech, only military was prolly a bit weaker. Both games played on emperor.
City placement(luxuries/terrain) was really easy in the Siam game, this fact will always help with faster times, RA's were a problem though as they usually are for me, even if i'm peaceful i'll prolly only have 2 trade partners, at best three, which slooows you down considerably.

I can generally pull off an early Industrial era cultural victory. I have never really paid attention to the number of turns played. I like the cultural and domination victory conditions because I find the science and diplomacy victory conditions to draw the game out too much. I enjoy the early game into the renaissance and early industrial eras, but find the late game to be boring. Even when going for a later game victory, the game is generally decided much earlier and playing through the late eras seems tedious to me.

T270ish is the earliest I've seen / achieved (Immortal-Emperor level)

Check this thread out
Cultural VC

Just got one at 305 as Egypt, but that was only on Prince. I could have definitely shaved some turns off of it as I'd thought I needed an to plan for some of the later wonders, when in fact I won before even needing Cristo.

If you just want fastest possible, you're obviously going to want to play on Settler.

Two directions I could see going in:

1) Siam, largish map with few (one?) AI & max CS. Explore like the wind & hope to pop as many culture ruins as possible, plus glean enough cash to get some early cultural CS allies.

2) Songhai, same setup but with raging barbarians. Each camp captured = another unit to hunt camps...all those barb kills should make up for the disparity in CS benefits, at least on the culture front.

Either way it should be achievable pretty early, maybe even BC on marathon speed.

EDIT: Played through most of a Songhai game on huge continents, max CS, 1 AI (Japan) while going with a one-city approach. Despite a less than impressive start location & absolutely horrible luck popping culture ruins, I was on track to win around 500 AD while having constructed every single world wonder to that point...the issue I was having was getting enough science going to reach the Industrial Era before I closed my 4th policy tree. With that experience, I think the overall settings are right but a 3-4 city approach would work much better. My thinking on continents vs. a pangea-type map is that this way I won't have to deal with the AI civ much (if at all) during the game & get a whole huge continent to myself for barb hunting...the drawback is that I won't meet most of the CSs until well into the Renaissance Era.

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but i just witnessed something pretty ing amazing.
It was a pretty competitive multiplayer game on pangaea, with ppl only quiting after loss of their capital (I took the cap of the 2nd biggest military in this game!!). (Quick speed, everything standard, usual mp settings) However, I should note that at turn ~100, the host quit and became a single player game, after which I just idled all my units and finished exploring the map for curiousity. Nonetheless, byzantium won a cultural victory at turn ~120 with 58 tourism; this is in the mid-medieval age, nobody had gotten to renaissance yet. Yes, 58 ing tourism in medieval age!!! Basically, byzantium went incredibly fast expansion, doing the civ 4 strategy of infinite city sprawl. byzantium got an incredibly early religion, around turn 40, and adopted piety. he then got the pagoda, mosque, etc. religious attributes and got a reformation belief that gave +2 tourism to all religious buildings purchased with faith. His cities had incredibly low population in general, the vast majority out of 10-12 were less than 4 pop, but had incredibly faith and culture generation. He got an ~800 culture social policy towards the end, to put in perspective. So yea, byzantium won a culture victory in a competitive mp game mid-medieval age!!

ah yes, that is known as "sacred sites cheese". Valid strategy on lower levels for very fast culture wins, or against unsuspecting humans

I got a victory on T166 as the Celts (Quick, of course). I even got a crappy start. I basically spent the late-game (i.e. the early industrial era ) spamming GMs in Poland

The biggest problem with narcing this thread is it clearly referred to OLD culture victory which was a race thru social polices and NOT the new tourism based culture victory.
Apples and Oranges / even without Sacred Sites.

I have achieved sacred sites spam culture vics in early renaissance. This like around 100 turns sooner than is normally achievable. This strategy however is very gimmicky and completely useless for anything except a culture vic.

Eh, it's good for everything actually as the religious buildings are awesome in their own right, especially the Pagoda as an extra +2 happiness in every city. They are the best way to generate early culture I've found and I just destroyed the policy trees ICSing with India with Mosques AND Pagodas. If you get sacred sites It also requires you to meet everyone early to win early so I'd assume you'd want Pangaea, some AI actually took it on my game. I was pretty upset. The fool didn't even HAVE any religious buildings...I had two in every city back in the classical. I'll still win cultural but there went my Industrial victory.

I haven't been able to get any quick Culture victories yet. Partially because I really don't aim for them at first.

Didn't someone put a post in the strategy forum about getting a turn 145 Sacred Sites victory with Byzantium? I.e. get Pagodas, Cathedrals and Mosques, go wide and spam them with 2 tourism for each of them from very early in the game.

Yes. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=503798

with new system, as France on Warlord. (usually play on King) turn 302 on standard. Spamming wonders, and GM into Babylon. (he really hated me and only had my capital to take for dom victory. suprising for warlord AI). i had to declare war on him to send them in.

I'm pretty certain that very fast culture wins (not using sacred sites) are possible on the lower levels, under t200.

I have done about 250 on immortal with France on a really good start.

If you favored Drama & Poetry and then went on an elimination rampage while co-opting the sacred sites religion you could win fairly early. Maybe below 200. You need Parthenon, writers, NC, HE, a garden etc. Maybe open Aesthetics. I can see it on immortal, I think. Babylon. And I wonder if the extra culture from D&P would let you take the Piety tree first? Or maybe split the tree with another one.