Cultural Victory

Sure, or you can choose never to open your borders.

In regards to culture, I'm playing wide (7 cities) and around T165...when you are going for cultural victory but you are still far away from the end of the game where you go for certain wonders (Internet/Firewall etc) what do you tend to build in your cities?

I'm unsure if I should be building bonus buildings (stables etc), growth (aqeduct), money (market), religion (temple), or culture-I already have shrines and amphitheaters and universites.

You should be building archaeologists as they can't be bought with gold. Actually if you are 165 and you haven't build aqueduct by then, something is wrong with your early game. You should really prioritize those once you have secured enough excess happiness. I usually delay temples as there are usually better things to build. Markets are always my default if I have the time. Bonus buildings such as stables are useful if they're built early and have multiple pastures. Stoneworks are always worth building for their happiness even if you only have 1 quarry.

Sclb said:

You should be building archaeologists as they can't be bought with gold. Actually if you are 165 and you haven't build aqueduct by then, something is wrong with your early game. You should really prioritize those once you have secured enough excess happiness. I usually delay temples as there are usually better things to build. Markets are always my default if I have the time. Bonus buildings such as stables are useful if they're built early and have multiple pastures. Stoneworks are always worth building for their happiness even if you only have 1 quarry.

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I did NOT have the happiness early game to support growth.
So I guess my priorities should be:

-Growth-Science-Culture-Bonus-Money until I can build archeologists?

Chum said:

Don't agree. On the higher difficulties, Order is the easiest to use for a couple of reasons.

First of all, Order double dips on Tourism tenets - 34% to other order civs, and 34% to civs with less happiness. I usually have more happiness than 5 or 6 out of the other 7 civs immediately upon taking it. Second of all, Order is the default ideology for civs, if they can't make better use of another ideology, they'll go to order. This means that the world will clump as Order, and you'll get that tourism boost as well.

I used to do Freedom CV's, but the fact is that Freedom suffers from having viable policies, and you get A LOT of policies when you're doing a CV. You can get many more useful policies in Order, and you're not stuck looking at the tree going "uhh, I don't really need any of this stuff, where should I waste policies next...?"

Freedom specialists are great and all, and obviously SoL is awesome, but I have far better empires with Order.

Disclaimer must be made that I am playing very wide these days.

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Valid points, but I disagree for a few reasons

-as Beetle mentioned, I KNOW musician bombs are affected by Media Culture, and I don't think they're affected by the Order tenets.

-probably the biggest reason: you don't win a cultural victory when you're influential with ALL the (remaining) civs, you win a culture victory when you're influential with the civ with the strongest culture. If your tourism is influential with him/her, you've implicitly become influential with everyone else. And the tourism leader is usually the runaway with tons of wonders, lots of happiness, more than you probably do, ESPECIALLY if you go wide, which Order favors and is why it's kind of self-defeating for Order to get a tourism bonus against civs that have less happiness. The point being - that the tourism bonus vs. civs with less happiness gives you a bonus that (usually) applies to the civs that you would otherwise become influential with on turns 200, 205, and 210, but does not apply to the civ that you'd become influential with at turn 350. Furthermore, I agree with you that civs select Order more frequently than the other two social policy trees. However, the civ that is the culture leader often picks Freedom, so again, the policy applies to civs that you'd pass earlier anyway, and you're still turn-clicking against the civ with the strongest tourism defense, which you have no bonuses against.

-Admittedly similar to the previous note, you're opponents might choose Order, and give you a 33% bonus against them, and you might have more happiness than they do, I dunno, Deity AI get lots o' bonuses and the culture leader usually has pretty high happiness (90+). But with Freedom, you will get a 33% bonus, provided there's a BC in every tourism generating city.

-Again referring to the second note, the last thing to happen in achieving tourism victory is overcoming the culture leader. Therefore, it's more beneficial to have a small bonus with them, than to have a big bonus that applies to many, but maybe not them. Then, having a big bonus that applies to the leader is optimal and, using that logic, Autocracy is best. Just make sure that you're always at war with a common foe (a little bribing, not too hard, and something that you can control, unlike which ideology they select) and you get a permanant 50% boost with them.


Also, I agree with you that Order has more depth to their tenets than Freedom, but I find that to be a strength of Freedom, not Order. Let's say you do a standard Tradition ->partial Aesthetics -> Ratty opener ->secularism ->humanism -> and now you have to pick ideology. You're probably going to take the free policies, switch back to finish ratty, and spend the rest of the game getting Order tenets, probably not get all the tenets you want before the game ends, and if you did it that way, you never got back to finishing aesthetics. You need to spend so many policies to get all the "good stuff" from order, which means you're not getting SP's and tree finishers. With Freedom, I get 6 policies and I'm done
(L1) - Avante Garde, Civil Society, Capitalism
(L2) - Universal Suffrage, New Deal
(L3) - Media Culture...

...Then I'm done. Go back and finish Aesthetics earlier, maybe squeeze in Exploration opener for Loevre, there's more options available because you don't have to fill in every tenet. This is because Freedom has fewer good policies, but is more consolidated because of it. Happiness is a prime example. Let's say you want your ideology to give you 6 more happiness per city. What's the minimum number of policies you need to pick up in Order to get 6 happiness per city? 3 policies, which otherwise would be half of an entire SP tree. How many policies do you need from Autocracy to get 6 happiness per city? One. How many policies do you need from Freedom to get 6 happiness per city? One - and you get a free chicken pizza wonder included in the same policy.

maddskillz said:

I still don't understand how this works. Moreso the tourism aspect of it and how you influence other cultures. It seems a great musician doesn't really generate that much influence when used in another civs territory, so is it better to make a great work of music?

This is my first go at winning cultural, I have never played with Morocco before and think they are a good fit for this type of win. I am on emperor and usually get conquest victory or science.

I also don't really understand diplo victory, but that's another thread.

Any help or advice on what to do would be appreciated. I know I must build the culture buildings and but am not sure which wonders are best or techs I should rush as this level is tough for me and I can't get them all.

Thanks!

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As other said, you want GM late, after internet tech or after your tourism output is maxed. A way to do that is to build up a lot of faith (~5000), then buy them. I don't work the musicians guild until late.

Make sure to rush archaeology at some point also. Open boarders, trade routes and having a diplomat in Civs with a different ideology than yours increases your tourism over them. Also, open the exploration tree for the Louvre wonder.

From the early to mid-game, your tourism output will be minimal. That's normal.

rover6695 said:

Am I right-that you can wait until late game to open borders?

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Better to just pay them 1 GPT to open up their borders early on.

OB is worth 2gpt most times. It doesn't really matter until after you have archaeology or hotels.

sugerdady87 said:

Better to just pay them 1 GPT to open up their borders early on.

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Having open borders I thought before late game really didn't help much, otherwise
-You have to pay them for a long long time or any influence you gain is lost once the deal expires if not renewed.

Hence, I skipped this until very late, what about you?

Few random things:

1) I'm playing for a culture win, standard map, king. It's well into the mid 400s and I still have not won, I'm having trouble with Spain and Sweeden. I still haven't discovered stealth bombers...now since this was culture not science, I did not until far far later choose any rationalism policies.
I did tradition>aethtics then choose a few mix of exploration/patronage than ideology and only then back to rationalism.

I'm wondering if this was my mistake....if you should ALWAYS take rationalsim as soon as you finish tradition or it is available.

2) Is Sweeden always a warmongering pain in the ass bully? I would have warred with him sooner but I did not want it strain my resources, so instead he took over one Civ (Iceland) on his continent, settled on the west side of my continent and took over most of Russia.
Again, I stayed out of it as my miliatary is 3rd best and wanted to focus on other things. Mistake?

beetle said:

You make excellent points. I have more trouble with Order because the tourism boost from happiness I never find applicable. But at lower difficulties, it would work quite well! Nothing wrong with Order for CV, for all the reasons you list. I still think Freedom CV is more straightforward.

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Perhaps that`s because you don`t have enough cities from Tradition to make Order worthwhile. Order tourism tenets tend to profit from more cities because of the extra happiness should you choose your other tenets wisely.

My CV plan from start that does not include warmongering is build artist and writers guild in the capital where national epic is constructed. Grab some early wonder with GE production so I can generate one pre PP to get LToP and use another GE to grab Sistine Chapel or Ufizzi, depends if I had hard built Sistine then it goes for Ufizzi. After that I beeline Radio (usually just use Oxford for it) to get ideology and Eiffel tower going, then go for Archeology. I might even use purchased with faith GE for Broadway. Next stop by is Radar then just all the way to Internet.

I build all these wonders in my capital so it can get a max boost from National visitor center. Resolutions I pursue in World Congress are cultural heritage sites so my wonders can generate tourism, arts funding and international games.

Tenets from Order that I use:

- Hero of the People and Socialist Realism are first I adopt.

Then in the next order (most of the time)

- Young Pioneers
- Cultural Revolution
- Academy of Sciences
- Dictatorship of the Proletariat
- Universal Healthcare
- Party Leadership
- Iron Curtain