warmongering and complete wipes = cultural VC?

kamikazees

Warlord
Joined
Jul 5, 2012
Messages
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I am no expert at the new cultural VC, but I have been practicing and just got my fastest win yet on emperor. I got the win by a ton of war. I got the cultural VC about T265. Most of my peaceful cultural vics have come about T300, sometimes more. Is this how it's supposed to be?

I was playing as Byzantium on a continents map. Sweden, Japan, Siam and Ethiopa were on my continent. Siam and Japan hated me. Sweden (for the first time ever) loved me. Siam and Ethiopa were pushing culture from the start, so I decided to try "culture by crusade."

I Dow'd Siam about T90. I took his cap and left him with a tiny city in the corner. To get to Ethiopa I had to go through Japan or Sweden. I chose Japan and Dow'd him about T100. I took 1 city, had to burn it, then took his cap. Settled for peace leaving him with 2 cities.

I then turned to Ethiopia. He was surrounded by CS allies, so I had to bribe/coup my way in. He was also ahead of me in tech with favorable terrain, so it was a long war. Finally took 1 city and his cap, both full of wonders (yum!). Left him with 2 junky cities.

During my war with Ethiopia (which lasted through the Renaissance), I found Assyria, Mongolia and the Huns on the other continent. As might be expected, they were engaged in intercontinental war. Kinda funny. None except Assyria had done anything with culture.

So I sat back a few turns and watched my tourism overtake Japan (first), then Sweden, the Huns, Siam and Mongolia. Assyria was coming, but Ethiopa was a holdout. Although he was not producing any culture, he had *thousands* from before our war. Doing the math with my tourism vs. his culture, it was going to be at least another 50 turns before I would get him.

So I Dow'd him again. Completely wiped poor Ethiopia with muskets and cannons. 3 turns later I become influential over Assyria and win.

Is it strange that I wanted to leave the warmongers alive (easy cultural VC), but smash all the peaceful ones?
 
Yep, you don't necessarily have to play peaceful to win a Cultural Victory now. Even the Autocracy Ideology has culture boosts in it. So basically, never neglect your culture no matter what your play style or intended victory is.
 
It does seem to be one of the easier ways to a culture victory. Not only does it remove the need to bypass that civ through tourism influence, but conquering great works should end up in more overall total. Everyone is stuck on the same three guilds and six specialist slots, so short of free GWAM's through wonders and policies, the number is going to be roughly divided. Take some by force and you have a way to get more great works than your competition.

Although not too much different than other victories. Crush the world around you during the Renaissance and no one will be getting to spaceship any time soon.
 
Yep, you don't necessarily have to play peaceful to win a Cultural Victory now. Even the Autocracy Ideology has culture boosts in it. So basically, never neglect your culture no matter what your play style or intended victory is.

Indeed. I actually find it easier to win Culture through warmongering than peace now, especially on high difficulty, so Autocracy Culture is my favorite way to win. Obviously, you need to build your own culture too and take full Aesthetics, just like you would with any culture victory, but since you're going to need to conquer your rivals anyway, why not also have the best army? Since you're going to need a war partner to legitimize the invasion, why not have a way to influence them?
 
This was my favorite way to win when i was doing culture achievements- i called it domi-cult victory,where you basically kill all civs except one or few,and then win with culture (since is much faster then)
 
it's definitely a new way of looking at the game. it just seemed counter-intuitive that the guy I wanted to kill the most was the guy who was building amphitheatres! if I had spawned next to Ethiopia I imagined I could have won the game 50 turns faster by killing him at the start
 
If I go for a domination victory, just to have a post BNW domination victory in the hall of fame, I might disable cultural victory, in order to not "accidentally" the cutural victory befor the killing is done.
 
I've only got one culture win so far, did the maths and realised Egypt's capital had to be annexed as he was producing tonnes of culture and tourism. I think a culture win needs a bit of both unless you bag virtually every great work holding wonder which isn't going to happen on anything other than total beginner difficulty.
 
If I go for a domination victory, just to have a post BNW domination victory in the hall of fame, I might disable cultural victory, in order to not "accidentally" the cutural victory befor the killing is done.
I've been doing this myself lately, yeah. Sometimes you just want to play an "Annex ALL the cities!" game, and the Culture victory comes along well before that's accomplished.
 
I've only got one culture win so far, did the maths and realised Egypt's capital had to be annexed as he was producing tonnes of culture and tourism. I think a culture win needs a bit of both unless you bag virtually every great work holding wonder which isn't going to happen on anything other than total beginner difficulty.

I won a Culture victory with Venice that wasn't based on War at all. In fact, I only fought two wars total, both early, and the second one was purely defense (I didn't even take an enemy city). The trick was forcing everyone to adopt my Ideology, and using Faith to spam-purchase Great Musicians to overcome the larger cultural civs.
 
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