India Bollywood strategy

Quick background, I've logged way too many hours on Civ V (haven't we all) and I'm starting to go through the accomplishments list. I normally play at Immortal.

I'm currently trying to win a culture victory as Ghandi with 3 cities or less. (I believe it's called the 'Bollywood' accomplishment.) I've tried five games and I just can't get it.

So, I am soliciting suggestions on how to accomplish this task. Ideal map type, social policies, 2 or 3 cities, whatever you think might help.

mikeville said:

Quick background, I've logged way too many hours on Civ V (haven't we all) and I'm starting to go through the accomplishments list. I normally play at Immortal.

I'm currently trying to win a culture victory as Ghandi with 3 cities or less. (I believe it's called the 'Bollywood' accomplishment.) I've tried five games and I just can't get it.

So, I am soliciting suggestions on how to accomplish this task. Ideal map type, social policies, 2 or 3 cities, whatever you think might help.

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When in doubt, reduce difficulty. It should solve most of your problems when the AI can't generate more than 5000 culture by the information era.

I think getting a coastal start will be an advantage since you can use cargo ships to grow like crazy. I remember getting the achievement on small continents or archipelago.
I think 3 cities is best, but you can also manage 2 and then conquer another capital. SP wise start with tradition of course, then aesthetics as filler, then at least 2 in rationalism, finish aesthetics and start on ideology (I think the best will be freedom), finish rationalism (maybe get internet with it). You can get the opener for exploration also, for Louvre.

If you can manage to delay settling a bit, get ToA it will give you nice growth and eventually a GE for another wonder. You will need Sistine Chapel to deny it to someone else, but LToP will also help a lot, and it's harder to get both of them.

Other than than it's just a classical culture game, but you are less pressured to get Archaeologists because you won't have that many slots for them (2 Louvre + 6 museums + 1 palace, and you may get another 3 from Cathedrals).

When going for the achievement, you can't ever own more than 3 cities, which means Tradition. Which is what you'd normally choose as India anyway. (For India, attaching a conquered wide empire to a tall core is much easier than self founding wide directly)

Usual culture game applies.
I'm not actually fond of constructing the Sistine Chapel for cultural victory with BNW. I instead much prefer the Uffizini that requires opening Aesthetics and so they'll be less competition for.

joncnunn said:

I'm not actually fond of constructing the Sistine Chapel for cultural victory with BNW. I instead much prefer the Uffizini that requires opening Aesthetics and so they'll be less competition for.

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The problem is that Uffizi offers three slots for 6 base tourism + 3 theming... and that's it. Sistine offers two slots for 4 base tourism + 2 theming... plus a 25% bonus to culture in all cities. Murphy's law dictates that whoever would be the hardest culture target is going to be the one who gets it. Prevent this by using the Steinbrenner's Yankees philosophy: even if they aren't good enough for the batting order, I'd rather they be sitting on our bench then to be pitching against them. My latest deity strategy for culture games (well, it's actually useful for any VC) is first Education, then fill the lower half of the tech tree and actually enter renaissance through Printing Press. Get started on LToP, which the AI usually gets a little later than some of the other Renaissance opener wonders. Use LToP's free great person for an engineer which insta-builds Sistine, giving two of the best wonders for culture games (or any game) for the price of one, and it's usually doable; at deity I only fail 1 in 10.

Of course, all this talk about wonders is somewhat detracting from the real culture victory strategy: get as much dirt culture as possible plus some artifacts from outside your borders, then hotels, NVC, internet, airports, I-games, musician bombs, and the quicker the better. Which means it's still really more of a tech game than anything else.

It's a pretty hard achievement to get in immortal/deity, since cultural victory is exponentially harder when you go up in difficulty (seriously I don't remember a deity game where I could have win culturally before any other victory condition).

My suggest would be to do the usual super focus on science to get as soon as possible to the point where you can basically snag any wonder (I know this means throwing away the sixtine, but LToP is just better for science and still strong for CV) and try to cripple the cultural leader by corrupting his neighbor in going to war against him. You start rationalism ASAP even before finishing aesthetics and later you beeline for internet.

Yes, tech game more than anything else.

I did that one in Gods and Kings. It was grueling and towards the end I was attacked by Huns who probably would have killed me dead if it wasn't on Emperor

I got this one a while back when I was playing at Prince and King level. I built 2 huge cities myself and I captured one, and went Autocracy for Futurism and Cult of Personality. Shaka was my neighbor, and I was the only one who would trade with him. I was friends with everybody (including Shaka) and gave them open borders so they could fight each other. After I got the achievement I 'just one more turn'd and I killed them all, saving Shaka for last. It was great fun but probably not optimum strategy.

I should try it again at Emperor or Immortal. Culture victory gets harder a lot faster than the other victory types when you move up.