Cultural Victory Tier List?(Deity)

So lataley I've been obssesed with only trying to win with cultural victory, I would like to ask for top civs that can in your opinion achive cultural victory fastest.
Also please tell which Ideology is best paired with x Civilization.

every civ which is good at fast teching - proly polands best

Celts

France, Brazil and Polynesia each have UI's that enable a fast tourism win.
Celts, Maya and Ethiopia can work their early religion combined with Piety to get Sacred Sites tourism victories.
Byzantium and Egypt can do something alike that, though they are a bit more of a gamble.
India has an UB that grants them extra tourism, which helps.
Poland can get the needed social policies much faster, making them a good choice as well.
Sweden can use their DOF into Great Persons to get a lot more great writers/artists/musicians than other civs.
Likewise, Austria also gets a boost to GP Generation, probably not as big as Sweden though.

I think that's all the civs that have bonuses to Tourism in one direct way or another.

Fastest has got to be Babylon/Korea
Highest peak tourism (and hence certainty of victory if you survive early game) has got to be Brazil/Polynesia/France (these civs do not need any of the world theming wonders and can still crank their tourism up to levels which is winnable on deity)
Easiest is Maya/Poland (and other faith civs which allows purchase of musicians come late game)

Civs that are strong at going tall in general like Aztecs or Incas are pretty good too. The only civs that would suck are the war-based civs like Zulu or Ottomans, Mongols, etc.

Maya and Poland are the easiest to achieve consistent results with.

Poland are very powerful. They have the easiest time getting full Trad, full Aesthetics, full Rationalism, the Exploration opener and 6 in Freedom.

for more or less peaceful culture victories, just take the deity tier list, keep all the top-tier civs on the top, make then take Tourism production civs Brazil/France/Poly in the order they're on that list, then take the GP production civs in the order they're in Austria/Sweden, then take Faith production civs in the order they're in Celts/Ethiopia/Siam/Indonesia, then India, then everything else in the original order.

for military-cultural victories, the above also applies, but add in mid-game and later military-based civs before faith-based civs (so, yes Mongolia, no Huns).

Haven't tried for Cultural win as Assyria, but seems like Royal Libraries should give them an edge, as an extra culture/tourism building. Your puppets build them as well. Would be an early warmonger strategy, playing as a fast-teching well-defended but peaceful empire by the industrial era.

I'm actually liking Assyria on Deity, but it's not so much their Royal Libraries as it is their tech stealing. Royal Libraries just helps you not miss the Great Library. I mean why get the free tech from GL when you can just let someone else build it and you steal theirs...

I think you'd have a tough time beating Polynesia on Archipelago. Easy to get to 900+ Tourism, even on Deity (well, easy for Deity), with a standard 4-city tradition build, no warfare. That's with Internet but without winning International Games. And without Sistene or any early/mid-game wonders.

I think you'd have a damned tough time getting a CV with any other civ unless you went to war, or were up against a bunch of chumps, or were super-expert-awesome at getting the AI to war with each other the whole game.

LONG LIVE THE HEADS!

EDIT: As far as Ideology, I prefer Freedom because reasons but since the AI tends to lean towards Order, and because +25% science is always good, I generally go with Order if I have any doubts about my victory chances.

Freedom could be good with cultural civilizations, autocracy military or order... Most of these ids are better than the other at something else.

Got to say brazil if you can survive the early game or polynesia on island type maps (settling on different continents and beaches for Easter island statue things), France is good because of chateus (probably spelt wrong ) and Egypt because of the faster wonders.
This all kind of relies on avoiding warmongerers(kahn,Attila,Japanese guy,forgot his name
Except Brazil might be able to defend in modern era with prachnia in jungles but honestly i don't know which is best, don't play many culture games

I just won an Autocracy CV using India, on Immortal, lousy start. I will call it the Clausewitz CV strategy. ;-)

CV (or even diplomatic victory, for that matter) doesn't necessarily mean peaceful. Frankly, all of the victory conditions kind of run together. For CV I actually recommend gun it to science victory, but instead of spaceship parts build archaeologists (and build them early). Beeline for an ideology, then beeline for Satellites (just as you would for SV), build the Hubble, then use it to beeline to Internet. The internet is the big boy in all this, and that's science.

Warmongering is necessary for securing archaeological digs and for knocking off the cultural frontrunners. Internet may give you 100% boost, but you need to have something to boost, and that comes from archaeology.

My first CV was with Sweden, who frankly, I suspect would top the specific tier list you are thinking about if it was studied mathematically.

I doubt I got as many GS as Babylon, but I got several before the Arts Funding resolution was passed.

By the time we reached Ideologies I was so far ahead in tech and gold that I knew it would only be a case of musician bombing the other culture civs. I had stored up some faith but honestly I had several just standing around because I had been given them as patronage finishers by some of the CS, ALL who were allied to me.

I had good land and was able to build 3 coastal cities and grow them with cargo ships until I needed to send the ships off to give me tourism modifiers, but I think Sweden could do well even given troublesome dirt. And you can comfortably bail as diplo not long after the time you would be bombing anyway, if you have difficulties.

I'm no expert, and I wish I had collected more data on my great people, but I just remember that it felt silly at the time how many I was getting and I had to keep checking I was playing on Deity.

So I don't know if I'm right and Sweden are right in the top tier, but all I know is all the guides (like the Zigaziggy things on the Steam community) seriously underrate Sweden's CV potential, by a long way. DiploV may be easier but CV is quicker, if that matters to you.

Moriarte said:

Maya and Poland are the easiest to achieve consistent results with.

Click to expand...

Moriarte have you made any VidLPs of a cultural victory? If not, could I be cheeky and request one?

havent people won deity CVs pre-Internet with Musician bombs? I kind of thought that was the real ticket to fastest wins since SS isnt viable. delay them all til Modern era and keep relations peaceful for OB (or DoW and escort -- or even use cheese like settling city, donating and bombing). i'd guess you need to normally pressure 2 of them then Music bomb the other 4-5 (4 in case someone was eliminated altogether).

Also, could the conquer-CV be fastest since those crazy Chariot Archer times popped up. Delay the Dom vic to get the sub200 CV? Egypt sounds best for this.

2 questions as I havent played any non-SS CVs in a while (or any deity CV):

1) Do you prefer to settle the Archeologists (for Airport/Hotel bonuses) or place the great works in slots? Ive done both with them but i hate when Antiquity sites are on premium tiles already. Those end up becoming works so I can change the tile back.

2) Hotel/Airport bonuses say 'Improvement' and then cite Landmarks, Chateau, Maoi but what about pantheons granting Plantations culture or even more confusing, culture from Jungles but later you improve them with Trading Posts. Do you get the Tourism bonus for those?

Hey Rabbi. I was putting Sweden forward as the best non-cheese Civ. I think there are many ways you could get much quicker than internet victories. But if you play straightforward, I think (haven't done the math, but it's an intuitive guess) that Sweden gives you the most great people and if you have too many of one kind you can give them for influence which gives you more very soon. I seriously had to keep checking it was Deity and everything was setup OK because I was getting people almost constantly. I might do a video and try to recreate and count it. They have the best way of making use of early/unwanted people and a fairly consistent way of getting a strong religion with Holy General (on the right map).

As for your questions, I only ever dig with the archaeologists in other people's lands, so that for Louvre and other museums, I get a really good range of civs and eras.

Not sure about the landmarks, sorry.

Btw, I consider Sacred Sites ICS to be borderline cheese and not falling into the category of straightforward. That said, I do love alternate strategies, and am always keen to learn about and try them.

thanks, consentient. i forgot about the antiquity sites in AI lands. i usually did it in CSs for those because there were some diplo hits for taking AIs. i also settled one in a CS when I had no slots to fill it with and got a boost to friend status. this was a surprise because I didnt see any quests requesting that (didnt see how much but i wasnt friends and it got me to over 40, iirc). ive never seen a quest asking for an archeologist to do anything or settle a landmark. im not sure what other quests it could have sufficed but that is now a potential use for me in future games regardless of VC if it indeed worked that way.

i guess i'll have to try to experiment myself about question 2. that'll take some late game efforts for me to check the math. i dunno if I want to take an entire game to test it but I need to work on CV timings anyway.

The diplo hit on digging up their stuff is only if a) it's inside their culture borders, and b) you do it twice (like spying)

The best way to avoid a problem altogether is to dig a site that's near to their borders, so it's likely to be a site where they won/lost a battle or found a ruin, and therefore be 'their' artefact, but not actually within their borders. It's best cuz you may not even have to get OB, and if you've tech'ed well and hit archaeology nice and early, then there will be lots of land still not subsumed into culture borders.

If you do it once, and then send the next dude into another realm, that's the 2nd best strategy, although it is POSSIBLE (I haven't tested this yet) that they might still class it as 'theirs' if it was THEIR battle/ruin, just in someone else's border.

Kinda like promise you won't spy on them anymore, so you move the spy, but then they think (glitch/bug) that the spy is still there, right?

Realistically, for Deity CV you only need 6 total artefacts. Chances are you will have enough matches of era that the theme in the museum will give you a bonus, and at the same time have enough variety that you can get the bonus from the Louvre, if you got it. And I rarely see the AI take exploration unless THEY are the tech runaway (in which case the chances of winning by CV are low anyway haha).

My 40 or so games on Deity have taught me 3 things about victory conditions:

1. The order of difficulty - in reverse order = Science, Diplo, Culture, Domination
2. How much fun I get from playing them = None, Little, Some, Lots (respectively)
3. How many of the best players in the world actively seek them out = Some, None, Little, Lots

And I champion the Swedes as a surprising dark horse for all-round wins. Very strong.