The tall vs. wide cultural issue

I found on the course of my games (on King) that if I strive for a Science victory, I better stay tall most of the game, if not the whole game. However, when it comes to cultural victories, I unfortunately go wide almost all the time. The reason? I have to wipe the CIV that is beating me on tourism and culture per turn.

It usually happens when Brazil is around but sometimes it does happen with France and even Ethiopia. I am there, playing my game, getting my wonders and then I look and even before Archeology is researched, Brazil has +24 tourism. Egypt also does that sometimes. So I just take the capital and all the wonders from them, and march for an easier win. In fact, to avoid having to wait for my tourism to beat their culture (CIVs with high tourism also have tons of culture), I just wipe them from the game, speeding up the victory by dozens of turns, maybe more. But I don't necessarily raze all cities, as some of them might have wonders and others are in a perfect geographical location.

My points are:

1 - A cultural victory can have a very strong warmongering element to it (which is fine by me, but it is interesting to play through).
2 - I start Tradition most of the time so my capital is the best city in the planet, but I would benefit tons by having Liberty policies. By the time the game ends I have +4 or 5 cities on top of my 4 orginal ones, just because of the warmongering.

Anyone here had to do the same in other to speed up the cultural victory? Do you end up wider than you wanted?

Well I generally play nice and fortify on the rare occasions that I play the culture game, however if there's a neighbour that refuses to be friendly and has a few Great Works I could do with then bombs away!

Also a useful strategy is to pay someone like Atilla or Montezuma to invade other culture civs, because sometimes its easier to have the AI just annex territories from one another than you involving yourself.

Josh123914 said:

Well I generally play nice and fortify on the rare occasions that I play the culture game, however if there's a neighbour that refuses to be friendly and has a few Great Works I could do with then bombs away!

Also a useful strategy is to pay someone like Atilla or Montezuma to invade other culture civs, because sometimes its easier to have the AI just annex territories from one another than you involving yourself.

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That is a good point. I could pay them to wage war on my behalf. Most of the warmonger AI fall easily to a cultural victory.

So just to clarify, your issue with culture victory is that it is easier to take over enemy cultural civs instead of beating them with more tourism?

Kallowe said:

So just to clarify, your issue with culture victory is that it is easier to take over enemy cultural civs instead of beating them with more tourism?

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Not an issue, like I mentioned. But it is funny that it is so much easier this way that the cultural victory ends up being about wars. Otherwise you have to sit there and watch the bar move every turn until you win.

Sometimes another civ is just so far ahead of you culturally, if you're going for a culture victory you're going to have to invade them. (Or go for another victory.) Fortunately there's usually only one or two civs on any given map focusing heavily on culture.

Pretty sure war is an effective strat for any victory condition.

Cripple your rival for space launch with war? Yup, done that.

"acquire" new great works by using pointy sticks? Check

Break up a Civ and his cs party with a hammer? Done and done (usually just because him ruling the WC is annoying).

Basically, this world is bathed in blood regardless of how you actually win.

Dgodus said:

Basically, this world is bathed in blood regardless of how you actually win.

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That is funny and true!

It kind of makes sense considering how conquering another civilization could represent you forcefully inflicting your culture on them. Sort of like invading their country destroying all their cultural and religious, artifacts killing all the adults, and raising the children in your culture. Their culture is now indistinct from yours.

I wouldn't describe what OP is doing in cultural games (building a few cities and then conquering a lot of AI cities) as playing wide.

That is instead playing tall but attaching a wide puppet empire to his tall core. It works well for all victory conditions. (Under any form, you raze the junk cities; of course relocating any great works present while the city is building and then what you keep will carry it's weight in science)

(i play on King)

4-6 cities. Never wider. +24 tourism is barely any threat. You need somewhere in the 300-400 range to win. +24 tourism will only speed things up by around max 10 turns. Building the military needed will also take time and you could get more tourism in that time. The high culture guy might take a bit longer, but sending 5 GM will get the job done. I take Order because it has two bonuses directly to Tourism.

Am I the only one who really dislikes warmongering? I'll do it if I have to, but have been avoiding it for... 5 or 6 years now? As a 10 year old I went a bit overboard on Civ 3 with warmongering everyone and since then never enjoyed it. It's better in CiV with the much better combat (stacks of doom were painfully bad), but still completely boring to me. I'm wondering if there's anyone else like me?

As to the culture issue, you're not really going wide. Going wide would be building 6+ cities early game, normally ending up with 12 or more self-built cities; you can go peaceful wide but it's hard. You're just going tall with some warmongering on the side (which is my favourite way to warmonger at least). It's certainly doable to win the game via a culture victory on higher difficulty levels without warmongering.

This is a game I played a week or two back:

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/506947022759775867/20C39765B7FACC465C0907A082F857F6C753815A/

Not the fastest victory, 261 turns, but it was a victory on Immortal (my first actually). Ended up wining by diplomacy with about 3 turns till culture victory, but that's just because Siam got killed by Austria close to end game, and Austria wouldn't sign an open borders pact with me so I couldn't use my musician on her. It was a really peaceful game for me really, I settled two additional cities. Siam and Denmark allied, fought Carthage and Austria all game. When artillery came Carthage and Austria DoW'd me as well, just as Siam started to fall. I took a city off Carthage, demanded peace from them and they gave it to me. Later on Siam completely fell to Austria, making her quite the powerhouse. She kept on buying all her CS's though, so diplomacy was an easy win. Got a city off of her when she DoW'd to try and stop me winning, hurt her so badly she gave a city for peace.

But yeah, no warmongering, and taking no cities giving any culture at all and I won with +772 culture per turn. Definitely doable.

Rombizio said:

Not an issue, like I mentioned. But it is funny that it is so much easier this way that the cultural victory ends up being about wars. Otherwise you have to sit there and watch the bar move every turn until you win.

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A playing too low difficulty/playing AI rather than humans issue.

Arcaian said:

Am I the only one who really dislikes warmongering penalties?

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Fixed4u. You're not.

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