Cultural Victory... What am I doing wrong?

Hey guys. I played a game as France and tried to go for a Cultural Victory. But by the end of the game; I noticed that I've only influenced 4 out of 10 Civs. I'm about half influential over the 6.

I was generating about 467 tourism and 507 culture by the end.

Strangely I noticed Germany who had about 188 tourism had influenced about the same number of Civs.

Egypt was generating about 447; but was influental over 6.

When I researched Tourism, it was around 2000 AD. I was generating 400 and Egypt was generating about 100 but had more culture per turn.

Admittedly, I had all my Great Work slots filled in the capital. I had Theming Bonuses for the Sistine Chapel, the Hermitage, Oxford University and Broadway. But outside my capital, slots weren't really filled.

Egypt was the runaway with this game. How do I deal with him?

Should I focus more on getting a lot of culture per turn; more than getting a lot of tourism?

What am I doing wrong?

A couple of thoughts. First, raw tourism is just the start -- you also need to focus on tourism multipliers, such as open borders (you want the AI to open its borders, but you want to keep your borders closed -- well worth the 2 gpt cost), shared religion, etc. Spend some quality time exploring the tooltips in the culture victory and influence by player screens to see where you can boost your tourism multipliers.

Second, don't underestimate the power of cumulation of tourism and culture. Meeting civs early and getting started with tourism, and tourism multipliers, early is important. Germany may have focused on tourism multipiers earlier than you did.

Third, a culture victory still requires that you aggressively pursue key techs, which means keep your science up. Researching the Internet (you said Tourism, but I suspect you meant Internet) by 2000 AD is late -- as you see, one or more AIs may be a cultural powerhouse by that point. Get to key tourism and culture techs more quickly.

For this situation, where Egypt is a cultural runaway, you will need to perform a bunch of concert tours in Egypt to catch up. You may also need to invade Egypt to take their stuff. Many a culture victory requires some conquering. (Which is pretty historical for France, when you consider how many artifacts and works of art that now reside in the Louvre and other major French museums came from conquest (most famously Napoleon's campaign in Egypt).)

I am new to BNW and I have only tried for CV once, but with Brazil. I was not close at all, but I was kind of lazy about it. My experience was much like OP's. I have lost by CV a couple times to the AI, so I am surprised that it seems so nuanced.

My impression is that CV will really takes focused play, and is something I will have to study up on before I try again. I am still working my way through the BNW civs, so CV can wait. Venice was also an exercise in frustration for me. FWIW, I am saving Shaka for last, but he's on deck before I try and master CV.

One of the key points of a an early CV is also the ability to assemble a large band of musicians quickly, both by building/filling the guild late and buying them with faith.
Getting ~5 musicians by guild/faith after researching internet should win most CV games if you built up enough base tourism.

Yeah, I am not clear on the whole bulbing musician mechanic. I understand that a popular finisher is to gift a city then bomb it. But I am not really worried about an early CV so much as getting a CV at all. Responses to the other concurrent thread have been very illuminating to me.

I would say that out of the four VCs, Culture Victory requires the most “complete” empire. You need excellent science to research Hotels, Airports, NVC, and Internet in reasonable periods of time. You need excellent culture output to plow through a host of extra policies that other VCs don’t need - Piety, Aesthetics, and Exploration all have things to offer, and you still need Tradition to grow, Rationalism to research, and ideology later on. You need excellent production to be able to power out Museums, BTs, and hordes of Archaeologists *in addition* to all of the Food/Hammer/Gold/Beaker structures you already need to build, and your capital needs to be strong enough to churn out wonders in 7-9 turns apiece. And you need to have enough income to bribe as many CS as possible.

All of that is tied to early fundamentals. Stealing workers, huts & exploration gold, CS quests, chopping forests, getting your resources upgraded & sold, DoFs and loans from the AI, connect up, and grow grow grow. National College by T90 and World Congress by T140 are reasonable goals. If you aren’t hitting those benchmarks, that’s what you need to work on.

I find peaceful CV victories on Deity to be almost impossible without Polynesia. The AI is just a culture-machine. Obviously with a great civ and/or OP start and excellent play it's possible on the right map, but in general it's just damned tough to catch up to the AI, which can be chucking out 300+ culture a turn by turn 200.

One answer, of course, is to not play Deity, or not go peaceful.

On Immortal and lower you should generally not have too much of a problem, main thing is to pump the science lead you should get and build all the late wonders/beeline Internet/etc. I suppose some conquest may still be necessary if there is an AI that has been a World Wonder runaway.

CivAddict2013 said:

Hey guys. I played a game as France and tried to go for a Cultural Victory. But by the end of the game; I noticed that I've only influenced 4 out of 10 Civs. I'm about half influential over the 6.

I was generating about 467 tourism and 507 culture by the end.

Strangely I noticed Germany who had about 188 tourism had influenced about the same number of Civs.

Egypt was generating about 447; but was influental over 6.

When I researched Tourism, it was around 2000 AD. I was generating 400 and Egypt was generating about 100 but had more culture per turn.

Admittedly, I had all my Great Work slots filled in the capital. I had Theming Bonuses for the Sistine Chapel, the Hermitage, Oxford University and Broadway. But outside my capital, slots weren't really filled.

Egypt was the runaway with this game. How do I deal with him?

Should I focus more on getting a lot of culture per turn; more than getting a lot of tourism?

What am I doing wrong?

Click to expand...

On your world wonder list, Eiffel Tower is missing. It doesn't have theming bonuses but actually generates more tourism than Broadway.

Also, you should host the World Games (double bonus) and research the Internet (also double)

In addition you didn't mention if you have National Visitor Center (also doubles tourism in the capital) and/or Hotels and Airports everywhere.

There's two approaches to runway cultural variety:
1. Push harder (if Egypt didn't adopt your ideology then add a diplomat) . Concert tours while hosting the Olympics and/or after the Internet are extremely effective.

2. OR build a military and joint attack the cultural leader. If you succeed not only will his culture output fall like a rock, but his great works will become yours.

CivAddict2013 said:

When I researched Tourism, it was around 2000 AD.

What am I doing wrong?

Click to expand...

This. This is what you're doing wrong. The fact your game even went to 2000 means you had a very, very slow game. As such, my advice would be to forget about asking for specific tips for the cultural victory. Instead, you should try to improve your gameplay overall. Read up on some of the strategy posts here or just ask around, there are some very talented players on this board. You don't need to be able to compete with some of the very fast finishing times some players here can present to win a cultural victory on an intermediate difficulty level but when you get better at the game you can win the game well before year 2000 by whichever victory condition you choose, include cultural.

Best of luck!

just because france has the double theming bonus in capital doesn't mean you can just fill paris and be done with it. Museums with full aesthetics are also important esp when you have sistine chapel. you should be grabbing as many artifacts as you can when you hit archaeology at aroung T200.

Along with airports, hotels, NVC, and the internet you should be getting close to 800 tourism. Then faith buy 3 musicians and time it with your next naturally born musician if necessary and go end it. As others mentioned, getting open borders from AI is really valuable, and so is sending a diplomat.

What difficulty are you playing? As an example you could probably win as early as turn 100-120 or so with a CV on Settler difficulty just by doing ICS and Sacred Sites.

I'm starting to think that war might be the best way to win a Cultural Victory.

I started a game; emphasized culture, got tons of Theming Bonuses, but then I realized, I just can't compete with runaway Poland in culture or Tourism.

If he has bad Culture, all he has to do is steamroll a Civ with more culture.

^ this
yeah, if I need some great works, just take them from others.

actually, I was wondering if anyone here actually completed the exploration tree and got hidden sites for CV? Is it worth it?

Done it. Interesting to do once. Not worth doing again.

Sessy said:

actually, I was wondering if anyone here actually completed the exploration tree and got hidden sites for CV? Is it worth it?

Click to expand...

Browd said:

Done it. Interesting to do once. Not worth doing again.

Click to expand...

I am not quite getting the CV game, but I don’t see how collecting a bunch of hidden antiquity sites would make or break your game. Maybe if you went wide? With four cities, the regular antiquity sites have been enough for me to get thumbing bonus in at least three.

Hmm, I played another game as France and almost got a OCC Cultural Victory. By 2050 AD I was influential over 5 Civs and 90% influential on even the runaways.

To me, it seems like I'm getting a lot of Tourism, too late.

Perhaps I should build the Hermitage earlier?

Or should I get the Internet sooner?

CivAddict2013 said:

To me, it seems like I'm getting a lot of Tourism, too late.

Perhaps I should build the Hermitage earlier?

Or should I get the Internet sooner?

Click to expand...

Both, the same tech unlocking Hermitage is one of the many prereqs to Internet so not exclusive at all.

The key is bombing with musicians (and buying them with faith). Without it a peaceful culture victory is somewhere around impossible.