Unoficial fast culture challenge

There are many ways to victory in this game and one of them, of course, is culture victory. Many play for culture victory, in different levels, with different strategies but, how FAST can you do it? Can you do it in less than 300 turns?

So here is the challenge:
Small map standard settings, continents (absolutely) and normal speed. You can play any race, make as many cities as you like, take any policy trees you like. Win a culture victory in less than 300 turns. Difficulty level prince (easy). Hopefully we will learn which race is best for that kind of thing and also which policies.

I will now make 3 statements whithout offering any arguments.

Egyptians is the best race for that goal.

You have to play with 2 cities (one your capital plus another one). One or three, you won't make it in less than 300 turns.

Best policy trees are tradition liberty piety commerce and freedom. Take any other combo and you will fail

Prove me wrong! Or prove me right if you like

Policy order is pretty much the cookie-cutter SP build. I managed a 299 OCC with Aztecs on King, and just recently with Ethiopia with 3 cities (4k+ Faith Surplus!!!, would probably been faster had I not misjudged the potential of my own cities.). Both Games I won and managed to start a 6th tree (Honor).

One thing to take note though: Placing Landmarks remove farms. No farms = less food. Less food = less pop to work said Landmarks.

Welcome to Civ Fanatics!

First of all, there isn't such thing as best race for cultural victory. There is rather best strategy.

In a most recent game of the month, where all players play the same map towards a pre-chosen victory, few players went under 250 turns in a cultural game. You can read this thread for details, if you're interested.

There are few other threads concerning fast cultural games, you can find them.

In my own cultural games i found that optimal policy path is tradition -- piety -- freedom -- liberty -- patronage. (in general) I never won faster than 262 turns though.

Why not post a save game of a map, so everyone interested can try your challenge?

GOTM is an edited file, I am talking about standard random map etc. Also, I don't want pangea, makes it very easy with selling resourses and buying and getting more resourses and selling again. It also makes the naval techs useless.

In continents there isn't a culture CS nearby most of the times and you have to explore to meet more CS and other players.

It's a nice idea to try a specific map but I want the player to be able to chose his race and I don't know how to do it. Moriarte, if you can do that, go ahead, post a file and I will try it with my favorite Egypt.

My fastest was 299 turns small map, continents all standard settings. Anyway my main problem is how to get to the industrial age faster because constitution is the single best policy in the game for me. With all those wonders I build, I get +100 more culture. Often I complete Piety, take all the right branch of commerce and now I want to unlock Freedom but industrial age is still far away. One thing I do is use the scientist fron PT to advance science...

I have never got a cultural victory in under 350 turns.
It's the hardest to get, because while the conversion in the other ones goes like this:
Population->Research->More Research
Population->Research->Money->More Research->More Money

You have to convert population like this for cultural victory:
Population->Research->Money->Culture->More research->More money->more culture->more research->more culture, etc.

Culture victory requires the most conversions, making it harder than diplo or science.

Reverent said:

GOTM is an edited file, I am talking about standard random map etc. Also, I don't want pangea, makes it very easy with selling resourses and buying and getting more resourses and selling again. It also makes the naval techs useless.

In continents there isn't a culture CS nearby most of the times and you have to explore to meet more CS and other players.

It's a nice idea to try a specific map but I want the player to be able to chose his race and I don't know how to do it. Moriarte, if you can do that, go ahead, post a file and I will try it with my favorite Egypt.

My fastest was 299 turns small map, continents all standard settings. Anyway my main problem is how to get to the industrial age faster because constitution is the single best policy in the game for me. With all those wonders I build, I get +100 more culture. Often I complete Piety, take all the right branch of commerce and now I want to unlock Freedom but industrial age is still far away. One thing I do is use the scientist fron PT to advance science...

Click to expand...

A good way to get to industrial is: Oxford University.

I ll set up a random continents map with Egypt later today, so we can both try it (and everyone else interested too ) I ll set difficulty to prince, if you don't mind.

I saw in HOF a 180 AD Culture Victory. Not kidding here´s the link http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ5/index.php?show=size&pubID=-1&dtSc=0

All of my CVs go after T340... Can't imagine getting one before T300.

I finished a game yesterday and broke my score. Culture victory in 287 turns. Again with 2 cities prince difficulty. Then I thought I would try a king game. My starting position was terrible, not much food, no river. But I don't mind accepting a bad start. I played on and managed to make an even better score, culture victory in 286 turns. This time I played with 3 cities. First time ever that I win with 3 cities in less than 300.I used to think that 3 cities make it impossible to break the 300 turns mark. Well, it depends on the cities probably. Mine were better than the capital, both of them.

So it still remains unclear which is the optimum number of cities. And btw if there are no culture CS near your starting location it's probably impossible to make it under 300.

That game in the hof was on settler difficulty and marathon speed. Still impressive though.

A few words about my strategy:
I unlock tradition
I unlock liberty
I take the free worker from the liberty tree (Citizenship)
I take the wonder building bonus from the tradition tree (Aristocracy)
I take representation

I take no more policies from these trees until later. Instead I take all of piety and the right branch of commerce. Here is the point I need industrial age very badly. To speed it up I use the scientist from the PT to speed up economics and use Oxford to take industrialization. Then I take all of liberty, legalism just before broadcast towers etc.

I start with scout, monument, wonder (ToA for example). I don't build any buildings but try to buy them instead, shrine first. It's a wellknown trick that you can sell your laxuries to the AI (for 240g hopefully)

I try to build ToA, Pyramids, Stonehenge. These give engineer point. If all goes well I have an engineer at about turn 80. Which can be used in many ways, for example building Petra in the second city.

What else? Oh yes never forget the CS especially if there is a culture one nearby. Build or buy an archer and send him to clear barb camps.

What I do now for culture is to unlock Liberty, get the free worker, then get Representation (+1 production to all cities). Buy one settler and build another. Build Pyramids in capital. This is especially powerful if there are stones nearby. Next, get policies in Tradition as needed. Do the Legalism trick for free Amphitheaters/Opera Houses/Wats (if Siam). Probably work on Piety in the mean time. Finish Tradition for the growth bonus and Aqueducts.

It takes a bit of set up, but it's a bit more flexible. You can also do a 3/4-city tradition start. Remember, population is key!

Also, that 180 AD victory is in Marathon. There are people who send Spaceships to Alpha Centauri at the BC's in that game speed.

My fastest CV was turn 301 on immortal as Egypt; continents map/ standard speed. General strategy was wonder whore as one city only for the first 100 or so turns.
The wonder focus was Hanging Gardens with Pyramids also important. Tech focusing to get Alhambra (very hard to do and was admittedly lucky to beat ai to this).
The all important SP order: tradition opener, followed by wonder builder policy. With these two done, I opened liberty and then took the worker, then representation. I then took the free settler, and moved it to where i wanted to build second city. Built a third settler and positioned him also, but did not build immediately. I waited till I gained my next policy granting the culture discount on new cities. Built the new cities the same turn and rush bought culture buildings in them.
Used a GE in each of the new cities to rush a wonder for each one and then just plant, plant, plant GA.
Also full time artist specialist slots... Cathedrals was really helpful for this.
The plan really was just to pump food (hence prioritise HG at the start) and then maximise specialist and planted GAs output.
Using cultural city-states makes a good difference also, and I think really Siam is probably the best civ to try and get a culture win owing to their UA.
Monty is also good for early extra culture. Getting through the early policies quickly means you can build the secondary cities sooner, which is key.

Did just finished a game were i was able to win a cultural victory on turn 283 as Siam. Did go for a 4 city start by help of building one settler, buying one and the last one come from the free settler in liberty tree.
Started liberty but went down in tradition in time for education and rushed four Wats with help from legalism. The wats gived me a nice science bonus. Then was it just to keep wonderspaming and remember to always build cultural building and use culture specialist. Tradition was finsihed just before i entered the renaissance era to get 4 free aqueducts and was followed by peity and then lastly patronage.
I think i could have dont it faster if i just found allied my cultural cs faster and managed to build petra and alahambra. I personally thinks Siam are stronger than Egypt because of Wats and all the extra bonus from cs is just really nice. I dont think it matter what the last social policy is just you opend tradition, liberty,freedom and piety.

I just played a game as Babylon, the only difference was I did standard size map. It will end on turn 297.

Budweizer, you missed Petra. It would be very nice for you. Also I think you can win a turn or two if you take engineer and make a manufactory somewhere. You did change to production focus right?

I tried Siam in my last game. I played with 2 cities, mainly because there wasn't a good site for a third one. Furthemore the one city I built was very close to Spain and I had to fight a war a couple times. Anyway, I won on turn 283 fastest score for me. It seems Siam is a really good choice.

Btw the "manage attachments" option doesn't seem to work for me. I tried to upload an image but I couldn't. Is that because I am a new member?

How can you tell from there that I missed Petra? Yes, I did miss it, but I was building other stuff like science buildings & CI at the time IIRC.

I like that I got finished in under 300. I will try again tonight for a faster finish.

There is no reason to limit your number of cities so.

Ribannah said:

There is no reason to limit your number of cities so.

Click to expand...

yes there is; more cities increase the culture required for the next policy. I believe the curve starts getting pretty steep at about 4 cities.

I can't get a sub 250 turn cultural vc unless on really specific settings, but generally had some comments on your unargued statements:
Isn't the conversation usually between 3 and 4 cities? I like to take 3 cities for most cultural games.
Egypt the quickest? maybe on prince diff small map, certainly not on higher difficulties and larger maps, far fewer opportunities to go for wonders, so you get the margin onless. Imo you've set the settings to work well for your chosen civ. My personal favourites are aztecs/siam, which work well with a little more map.
tradition piety freedom seems to be the mandatory part, with the majority also taking liberty. For the last one, I'd say it depends on the civ - e.g. siam should have patronage, and I like honour with aztecs,