Optimal Late-game Freedom Culture Victories

No it's not quickspeed. I had a pretty good start where I got GL. Played that game mostly for fun, else I prob wouldn't even have gone for GL and also I would not build the parthenon just wanted to see how it works out. I def should've not gone for wonders. I went against what I always preach, that wonders are garbage.

Kinda lost that game(Did not lose but I went kinda deep on the american and then got attacked by 3 others and CS), forgot how garbage Piety is(Played/Watched too much NQ) and didn't feel like finishing.
That prob would've been like ~220-230 finishtime.

So just finished a game, haven't played that strat for a while so I made a ton of mistakes, but I'm quite confident that you prob will get sub 250 wins the majority of the time.

Build is :

4x Pathfinder, Ruins are : Weapons --> Citizen(Sometimes wait till your pop hits 2 so you go from 2->3) ->Culture -Weapons.

You should be able to buy a 5th Pathfinder. After finding the needed ruins, your priority is to steal workers from the opponent and afterwards to take a capital or normal city. The trick is, to attack a barbcamp and get your Pathfinder damaged, then heal it up as much as you can without it reaching full health. Or if the target has other units you can get your pathfinder damaged against them.

The city will prioritze the damaged pathfinder and it should be relatively easy to take the city with the 2 archers. Make sure to plunder everything, if you stole a worker, repair the plundered tiles and plunder them again. That gives a decent amount of money. If you are unlucky the opponent build early walls, they will usually pay you a decent amount for peace. You also can sell your improved stuff for lump gold instead of GPT as part of the Capitulation.

Also make sure to not scout around too much, if possible you don't want to find any other civs, to not take any diplohits for your aggressive playstyle. If one opponent has walls go to the next one and try to take whatever he has.

Wonders you probably should skip most and aim for a fast internet, don't plant your GS I don't think it's worth it.

As far as policies go, I think the most optimal way is to go for Rationalism rather than Aesthatitcs, safe up the last rationalism for Internet and oxford for Telecommunications.

Your musiciansguild, you have to time the last musician that comes out for when you have the highest tourismoutput(So after Internet). With Faith I prob would buy GE's.

Obviously every game is different, here in the game that is screenshotted I actually had the possibilty to go full Tradition,Aesthatics, Rationalism and T3 of Freedom(Order is good too).

Digging up this old thread to get some advice. I've been working on my Liberty game (especially early game) and I decided to play, among others, ICL #13. I'd seen Acken's LP and decided to take some notes and try it out myself. I would've loved to have Acken's LP on another screen while playing but that's not possible for me.

Aside from early differences described in this post, our games were very similar but with some key differences: Other than the AI being a bit slower in my game compared to Acken's (which allowed me to get more wonders), I was also the third(?) to get a religion and he got beaten to the last one by a few turns in his game. FWIR, the Shoshone were the last to found a religion when I'd already enhanced my own, which is quite surprising. Sadly, even if I was third, all the faith buildings were gone and after a lot of undecidedness, I took Choral Music and later Religious Community + Religious Texts. Midway through the game Memphis adopted the Celts' religion, which had Monasteries and Mosques + Sacred Sites. I later captured 2 of her missionaries to spread to Elephantine for some early tourism... it took ages for my religion to become dominant over it, even with RT.



Forwards to the end game. I bulbed Replaceable Parts instead of Plastics (Acken) because I thought I'd be very late for SoL compared to him and I thought that I might be able to catch up this way. I still had 5 GS and one more was coming in 6 turns. Also, at this point, Pocatello was the one with the most culture with around 9k. Not a lot.



As I was taking Acken's LP as a reference I went for Plastics but, was that the right choice? After SoL was done I found myself with nothing "essential" to build in my cap while I was waiting for Plastics. My GS where only worth ~4k beakers so that would've definitely not be enough to reach the Internet and, if I'd waited for them to bulb them after rushing some labs, I think I could've won by then, or close to. So, it's T226, Siam is the 2nd to pick an Ideology. A GM would be born on the next turn so I faith-bought 2 more and game is over next turn.



I am reasonably confident that I could've won earlier seeing how the 3rd musician was almost overkill but, how? What should I've done after I bulbed RP? Bulb Refrigeration (Hotels) as well and then, whatever? In the end I had 4 GS unused. Clearly this is not meant to happen? What would be the best route if, like in this case, the AIs don't really have that much culture to overcome?

I think the optimal endgame tech order for cultural victory is considered to be ST electricity oxford radio archaeology, hotels if you can end the game with them, plastics, national visitor center, internet, airports otherwise.

If you aren't necessarily going freedom, consider autocracy futurism cheesing (which should only need archaeology and hotels)

If you have extra GS at the end, you should have bulbed some science techs or bulbed more on your way to tourism techs
By the way, your endgame science seems a little low. Did you get secularism/are you working all specialist slots for science?

Take all of this with a grain of salt, I don't play CV

Don't really know, man. I am working as many specialists as possible without starving the cities. I think one of my cities is missing a lab but not too sure. I just checked and Acken also had around the same bpt. I do remember him saying that his science was really low and that going for more wonders "hadn't really paid off" or something along those lines. I don't know what he means tbh, he mistimed a few things at the end but other than that I can hardly imagine how he would've done better.

I will replay from the turn after I got SoL and ET (maybe a bit sooner even) and forget about labs and bulb Refrigeration to rush some Hotels. In the end it doesn't really matter tbh but I am trying to improve my finishing times and this is by far the fastest CV I've done, all thanks to Acken. It'll be interesting to see how I fare from now on. I learned a lot from this. After I get a few more CVs under my belt I may try that ICL map with Austria which had awful dirt fwiread but he still got an early CV.

phryxolydian said:

In the end I had 4 GS unused. Clearly this is not meant to happen?

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It seems to me then that your CV could have been ~20 turns sooner. But you are getting a CV well before Internet. Is that not good enough?

Well, it's enough for the purpose of that game alone but it's not enough in the sense that, if I want to improve as a player, I want to be able to recognize the distinct possibility to win well before I'd plan and act accordingly. What I mean is, I won in this way almost by accident and I would like to have recognized the possibility to win just with hotels + WF far earlier than I did (only a few turns before doing it) and adapt my strategy on that.

Maybe you are right and I could've won 20 turns faster. Maybe I should have bulbed towards Refrigeration once I finished Archaeology, instead of researching all the techs required to get Plastics because, one wonder (even a very good one), shouldn't make that much of a difference? Thinking about it, another key thing in this game (compared to Acken's) was that he didn't go for Alhambra and, in the end, he had to overcome ~5k more culture than me. Or not... I don't even know anymore, I'm tired. Tomorrow I'll replay the last stretch to see if I can get a significantly better time. We'll see. For now, I'll get some sleep.

beetle said:

It seems to me then that your CV could have been ~20 turns sooner. But you are getting a CV well before Internet. Is that not good enough?

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You were totally right, man. I cut it down to a turn 210 victory. I started replaying from a save from T190 where I was 6 turns away from Radio. Bulbed that, then bulbed Refrigeration and insta-bought a Hotel in the cap and then another one in Memphis a few turns later. I bombed Pocatello on T207, which was the turn WF begun, and only had to wait a couple of turns to influence Siam and Spain. Very happy with this win and very instructive.