Winning a cultural victory before hotels

Is it possible to do this? Has anyone tried for a speedy culture victory yet? If so, what is the speed record like?

Even as Brazil (huge Culture bonuses) I did not come close to winning before Hotels. Mind you, the expansion is brand new, so it can probably be done, but I had a great start and did not come close.

Seems to me all VCs (except Domination) now take quite a bit longer.

Play on pangaea and beat them all to within an inch of their lives and you can. Not sure why you'd bother, though. You effectively just won domination, anyway.

I find i need atleast Internet tech to win a culture, but i play on immortal/standard. Could be easier on smaller maps with less chance of getting a culture rival civ.

I played a Cultural Victory as France, on Prince. I didn't get to finish before Hotels, but it was close. I could easily have won without the Hotel bonus, I think by the time I bought the Hotel in Paris I only needed to dominate one last civ, and while the Hotel did cut the time down from something like 15 turns to 9 turns, it was not a make it or break it. Never got the Airport. I did have some pretty wicket theming bonuses in Paris:

kaspergm said:

I played a Cultural Victory as France, on Prince. I didn't get to finish before Hotels, but it was close. I could easily have won without the Hotel bonus, I think by the time I bought the Hotel in Paris I only needed to dominate one last civ, and while the Hotel did cut the time down from something like 15 turns to 9 turns, it was not a make it or break it. Never got the Airport. I did have some pretty wicket theming bonuses in Paris:

Spoiler :

Click to expand...

Time for emperor difficulty for you, I think.

I suggest this:
Settler difficulty, Industrial Era start

Get 3 factories and Autocracy-Futurism. Pump out Great W/A/M, GG!

Culture win is riduculous. I was not able to win it even before the end of game, just as diplo victory. To be fair, I was only 2-5 turns away from both victories. But not being able to win at all while investing ALL my resources into tourism is ridiculous.

I realise that since I has not win I obviously did something wrong and it can be better, but not THAT much better.

- I played Brazil,
- had all tourism wonders,
- prioritized tourism techs,
- won olympics,
- filled all slots with art in capital,
- adopted all needed UN resolutions

All other civs were not close even to 50% towards any other civ in tourism...

Meanwhile I did not aim for diplo VC, but could easily be an ally of all remaining CS (7) - which is more than half, but I still was 8 votes short when World leader elections started, and 3 votes short when I researched globalisation which was barely enough for me to win (3 diplomats)


Conclusion: Cultural and Diplo victory are still slightly different types of Scientific victory. You will DEFINETELY need internet and you will most likely need globalisation (as well as going to modern age quick) to win these. The difference is that space victory requires you to spend slightly more science and then production, while cultural and diplo require culture/artwork management and money respectively.


I'm gonna try good old science victory right now. In vanilla Civ I was able to get it within first 200 turns (quick speed)

Don't forget you are playing as Napoleon who recieved a 100% increase in both Museums and World Wonders Themeing Bonus in his Capital, and you probably adopted the Aestethics Finisher so..

kaspergm said:

I played a Cultural Victory as France, on Prince. I didn't get to finish before Hotels, but it was close. I could easily have won without the Hotel bonus, I think by the time I bought the Hotel in Paris I only needed to dominate one last civ, and while the Hotel did cut the time down from something like 15 turns to 9 turns, it was not a make it or break it. Never got the Airport. I did have some pretty wicket theming bonuses in Paris:

Spoiler :

Click to expand...

can you give me your save please? i want to check a few things.

Looks like I should have played france... I forgot it has changed...

Rinnero said:

- I played Brazil,
- had all tourism wonders,
- prioritized tourism techs,
- won olympics,
- filled all slots with art in capital,
- adopted all needed UN resolutions

Click to expand...

Musicians are tourism bombs. You can win with a high, banked faith pool, internet and half of that other stuff.

As pedro specifically, though, save aesthetics tree for late-game. +100% tourism free golden age when you're actually adding +% to something, free artist for another popped carnivale, and buying out musicians with faith make a ton more sense in the information age with hotels, airports and internet.

Just won a tourism victory myself. It can actually be fairly effectively combined with domination - in my case, I spent my time with my armies culling high-culture weaker civs, creating fewer competitors and allowing my tourism to overwhelm weaker (culturally) civs. One advantage of this is that claiming cities with great works in them gets you those great works, which can rapidly diversify your art portfolio for certain themes that require great works from a lot of different civs. Still wasn't before hotels, but was relatively quick despite not playing one of the Tourism/Culture focused civs.

i achieved a peaceful culture victory in the demo, while waiting for BNW to finally unlock in the rest of the world as the demo would automatically end after the player enters the industrial era, i teched as slow as possible and tried to maximize my tourism output as soon as possible with all stuff i had available at the time. the reformation belief which gives +2 tourism for faith buildings was very nice combined with monasteries and cathedrals and having the world religion also helped alot. i did it on warlord, though (usually play emperor to deity) and the demo is locked at a small continents map.

Rinnero said:

Conclusion: Cultural and Diplo victory are still slightly different types of Scientific victory. You will DEFINETELY need internet and you will most likely need globalisation (as well as going to modern age quick) to win these. The difference is that space victory requires you to spend slightly more science and then production, while cultural and diplo require culture/artwork management and money respectively.

Click to expand...

Disagree. Culture victory is easy and fast. The only way I was able to complete a science victory was with culture and diplomatic disabled.

Tech rate is important in cultral victory. All the wonder planning and GAWM era is important for the theme bonus. Just finish an immortal cultral victory with Portugal, but finish turn is about 320.

i think it really depends on the difficulty you play at. once you get to emperor , there's a good chance some AI is going to spam wonders and beat you to most if not all of the cultural based wonders, at which you point you really don't have much choice but to take them by force, effectively making the cultural victory a domination-type style of gameplay.

Internet is needed

stargunner said:

i think it really depends on the difficulty you play at. once you get to emperor , there's a good chance some AI is going to spam wonders and beat you to most if not all of the cultural based wonders, at which you point you really don't have much choice but to take them by force, effectively making the cultural victory a domination-type style of gameplay.

Click to expand...

You sometimes have to stop going for a culture victory because a other Ai has more culture than you and you can't beat them.

apocalypse105 said:

You sometimes have to stop going for a culture victory because a other Ai has more culture than you and you can't beat them.

Click to expand...

A mixed domination/culture victory isn't so bad. Stolen great works and the elimination of high-culture nations moves the goal posts down. You don't necessarily need to be the fastest runner in the race if you just kneecap everyone else.

It looks like turn 250-275 for a quick game on prince and lower. No real need to leave industrial era but radio is nice. A decent religion spam will speed things up with tourism.