About cultural victory (newbie)

Hi guys,

I was wondering how fast you can pull of a cultural victory. I'm pretty new to Civ 5, played Vanilla for ~80 hours, got bored pretty fast (in comparison to my gaming hours at Civ 4 ) and now I'm back with BNW and I really like it. But I find it very hard to get a cultural victory.

So far, I only achieved 2 domination and 2 diplomatic ones on King difficulty. Especially the diplomatic ones were pretty easy, it was all based around getting tithe, spread your religion and yeah.. that's it. Win. I struggled a bit with Domination until I found out that it's a cakewalk as soon as you have artillery. Science would have been possible a few times, but Diplomatic was always way faster.

Well, now I really want to win a cultural game. I have one active with the Aztecs, King Difficulty again, Raging Barbs, around 1850 AD and I am way ahead in Science and Culture. Everyone likes me except the Germans, but I conquered his capital with ~8 world wonders and everybody hates him anyways, denouncing him constantly. The thing is: I'm still ~400 turns away from dominating America in culture. I did everything I could:

- I build a lot of cultural wonders, since I conquered Berlin I nearly own all of them (~ 18-20 ww's)
- I completed three big theme bonusses
- I was the first with Archaelogists and I basically robbed my whole continent blind of those artifacts (that was the one time not everybody liked me )
- I am running freedom ideology, which is a slight problem (America and Spain running order).. but I took the 33% modifier for broadcast towers
- I have open borders with nearly everyone
- Unfortunately I wasn't able to keep the leading religion, so no 25% modifier for most civs
- There were no cultural city states on my continent..
- I researched and build hotels and airports asap
- I picked the cultural social policy for the 33% increase in culture and the 15% tourism

So basically, I completed like 90% of all possible cultural achievements. I guess that was possible because of the relatively low difficult level. And I am STILL miles away from a cultural victory. I will dominate Venice soon, but that's it. Well ok, Indonesia in ~50 turns. But the rest? 400+ turns at worst. Especially America seems unbeatable. At the moment, I am running 200 tourism with 5 cities. Maybe this is too low?

So my questions:
- if you play better than me, when (estimate) is it possible to achieve a cultural victory? As I said in my game it's already 1850 AD. Games in Civ 4 could be won quite easily hundreds of years earlier.
- did I miss something important in my game? A way to win faster with culture?

Cheers!

Get Internet, build National Visitor's center in the city with max tourism output, build Hotels and Airports everywhere.

So it's not really possible to win without the internet? I mean, it's one of the last techs. I usually end up winning much earlier.

DocRock said:

So it's not really possible to win without the internet? I mean, it's one of the last techs. I usually end up winning much earlier.

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Well, there are few other perks:

- World religion (improves your TPT output in the holy city by 50%)
- International games (20 turns double tourism if you win em)
- trade routes , open borders and diplomats - improve % bonus to each applying civ.
- freedom 3rd level tenet policy where broadcast towers give 33% tourism bonus.
- great musician concert tours

Internet is must on higher levels, don't know how it is on King ...

You kind of need internet. I don't know that it's absolutely, 100% required but 9 out of 10 times you're going to need it to win a Culture Victory these days. It seems as if the developers WANTED the Culture Victory to take longer to win than it used to take.

Personally, I think they have made getting a CV a big pain in the butt. I don't mind the concept of "tourism" as the mechanism for the spread of my culture. But the whole Great Work mechanic and fiddle-farting around with them, trading them, trying to get the right ones in the right buildings, etc. just feels like busy work to me.

Granted, the old system where you just hit "next turn" over and over again until you won the game wasn't great either.

If I want to play a relatively peaceful game these days I go for Diplomacy or Science.

I've been seeing Acken's times on these Science and Cultural victories, and it is amazing how playing the same map twice for both victories results in almost the exact same victory times. It's amazing how balanced they seem, at least if played well.

I've heard a few people manage to win without the internet, but they got a big lead on the civ's allowing lower tourism to overwhelm them earlier.

On king you may not need the Internet, but it will still help win faster. The bonus you get from the visitor center+internet is huge, by far the biggest multipliers in the game for tourism.

Because of this, generally you want to save up great scientists like in a science game. Save them until 8 turns after research labs are completed, then bulb away. More often than not, if you start banking scientists early, this takes you to the internet or very close.

Also: cultural city states are very important. If they are not on your continent you should prioritize exploration to meet them ASAP. For cultural victory allying all the culture CS is massively helpful, since it keeps the AI from building up large amounts of defensive culture, not to mention getting you policies much faster.

Well, You can win without Internet if you Win International games *AND* DoW / eradicate any other cultural leaders.
This is a standard Domination / Cultural approach.

JeSuisNapoleon said:

Well, You can win without Internet if you Win International games *AND* DoW / eradicate any other cultural leaders.
This is a standard Domination / Cultural approach.

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sounds more like order or autocracy then freedom approach for a CV

btw its absolutly possible to win CV with all of the 3 ideologies, it only depends on the situation.

going for CV is easier with certain culture civs like brazil, france, polynesia etc.

Alright, thanks guys. This gives me a better picture on the CV.

I am never playing 100% peacefully because I would get bored to death. It's just the difference between "conquering all" and "conquering just 1/2 of the world".

I will focus on getting the Internet and the NVC asap to finish this game.

Basically you need a high , at least for a short timeframe. Plus lots of to buy musicians. Generating them late is also helpful.
Concerts give a really huge amount of later and help you to attack the cultural leaders selectively.

If you continue to play at king you might also want to try out the religion variant with sacred sites:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=503798

I'll try the musicians, stuffed them all in my Opera houses so far.

oh..yes that is another huge part of the culture game, I thought it went without saying

try to save a lot of faith so you can buy a bunch of musicians after getting the internet/visitor center. or, wait to build your musician guild until late in the game to get more in a shorter time period (or both).

especially if you can win the international games at the same time as hitting internet/visitor center, those musicians can provide a MASSIVE amount of tourism (I've gotten over 10,000)

Thanks for your help, the Great Musicians did the trick. I popped three of them into the US territory and the counter went from 66 to 4 turns left. Even before I was able to research the NVC or the Internet. That was pretty easy after all... time to move to Emperor, I guess.