Bump
Just finished my second peaceful cultured attempt on huge map (continents). Played completely peaceful with Boadicea. If you want to know what i exactly did, read on.
Started in land, but walked to the coast, across the river since i could see it from turn 0. Found a culture ruin on turn 12. Tradition.
While building two scouts and a granary i received a free pantheon. It was decided in favor of goddess of the hunt. I founded a religion later, and never managed to enhance it, since fpt was abysmal, so i just settled my second prophet. I would have settled the first one too, in similar situation, but pantheon and 15%
bonus were too useful to give up.
Next, i've hard built three archers and sent them away to do some quests. On his quest for fortune, one scout encountered William, who gave up his "randomly running away from a barb" worker. Then, another worker was stolen, two more bought (later) and two more hard built by chopping the woods. Followed by three settlers in cap and by turn 55 the empire was set. NC --> t.79. Cargo ship towards capital started sailing on turn 90, when tradition was done.
I finished three quests, and from that time i have been friends/allied with four city states: cultural, maritime, faith and later came mercantile from a coup.
Initial path ingnored military completely, and i did my best to befriend everyone, even bowing submissively to CS harassments. Which worked out quite well. I was only denounced twice by Netherlands and Korea, mostly because by that time they have denounced everyone else, and i was, indeed, falling in with criminals in their eyes. So, they informed other criminals about my wickedness. Around t.200.
After Philosophy, Drama was a most obvious target, followed by education, guilds, workshop tech., acoustics and astronomy. Two triremes and two promoted scouts went exploring and found everything there was to find by t.199.
During the game, my science wasn't anywhere near stellar, but given few trapping resources i was able to finance 7 or 8 research agreements. The money were falling from the skies like rain and i prioritized markets, banks and cargo ships to sustain a solid GPT.
My economy was based on: 10 iron, 2 horse, 4 truffles, Sugar, Silk, Ivory, 7 coal, 8 oil and 8 aluminium.
There were wonders: Oracle, Sistine, Ufizzi, Eiffel and Statue of Liberty.
After universities the path was tricky. I went for workshops and then acoustics while picking two policies in aesthetics. (cheap cultural buildings) I stole printing press (from Korea, btw) and went for architecture to snag a fast hermitage and Ufizzi. Next, followed public schools, fertilizer (i really needed it), archaeologists, factories and research labs.
Around turn 180 i Oxford'ed Radio and picked Freedom. Around t.215 freedom was finished, yet it took a long while after that to get broadcast towers up, since there were other important builds (hotels, labs). Rushed one lab in the Capital city. Filled Aesthetics and rationalism from then on.
Tough times came, when William denounced me on t.200. I hastily started to upgrade my military and build more units, yet the alert was false.
On t.240 Internet was on line and 12 turns later came airports.
5 Scientists were bulbed, 2 settled. Eventually, i took 4 policies in rationalism, but last two came round about ecology.
2 musicians were produced (screwed them up, royally, could have done 3), 3 bought with faith. Which was just enough to win.
The reason i am showcasing this game, is that a lot of stuff was missing and same can probably be done with a regular civ. (which Celts are) There were no international games, i've lost world's fair, no world religion, just three landmarks and i had to literally cross half the map to get most other artifacts from American, Indian and the Ottoman lands, because runaways Hiawatha, Sejong and Pachacuti dug out everything before i even discovered archaeology.
Before modifiers my tourism was 460.
After all modifiers i pressured runaways at an actual rate of 700-800 tourism. No way they could keep up in culture.
I am planning to do a France game next and see if i can do better. Same settings.
Anyway, Deau has pretty darn good cultural guide here, most of things i did similarly, i guess. The only thing i do differently is internet before radar.
P.S. By the looks of it, Hiawatha was planning to win by science during next 15-20 turns.