What am I doing wrong?

Anytime I try to start a game in which I want to win culturally, I end up getting so far behind it's just depressing.

I tried mimicking the AI, getting 3 cities up fast, growing them huge, but it didn't seem to work. I guess I kinda suck at super micromanaging. Even on King (Which I won 3 times on trying for Diplomatic or Science) It's especially bad on Emperor. (SO MANY BARBARIANS)

Any Advice for, like, starting moves, trees, etc?

Are we talking BNW? If so, everyone's trying to figure out how the new mechanics work atm.

However here's a bunch of general tips:

1. Cultural victory depends in part on your hammer production, since it involves a lot wonder building, so try and get bonuses that help production in your capital. e.g. Religious community from religion, and the Tradition policy that gives +15% wonder production.

2. Some aspect of aggressive play is an integral part of every game no matter what victory you're going for. The military game also happens to be one in which you can consistently gain a huge advantage over the AI due to their bad tactics(basically all you need to do is mass ranged units like archers and then camp one spot as the AI sends units to their doom).
Just because you're going for a cultural victory doesn't mean you don't use your military at all. Even getting a concession treaty from the AI is good to cripple them if you want to avoid taking on extra happiness costs for taking a city.

3. While 4 cities will do, you can have as many as you want as long as you project each additional city being able to produce more than 10% of your current cultural output in a reasonable amount of turns. Don't neglect good city sites just because you think you're "supposed" to have only 4 cities for a cultural victory.

4. Always be trading luxury/strategic resources with AI for gold every opportunity you get. In the same vein make as many RAs as you can manage (give gold for GPT to the AI in question if they don't have enough gold for RA). Use this gold early on for Settlers or emergency defense. Later on I usually use it to bribe city states or get key buildings in my capital if it's spending every turn pumping wonders.

5. Always have some extra military around just for doing city-state quests. City states are huge in the early-mid game and I always end up with a sizable number of allies after the first 100 turns. For culture victories maritime city-states are especially good.

6. Focus on food throughout the game in your capital. Food is a "meh" resource everywhere except your capital, where it does double duty in pumping up both science(since you're putting your NC there) and gold and later on providing you with the pop to run specialists.

7. You need to beeline for NC at some point every game no matter what victory you're going for. What I would do is settling 3 cities, getting NC up in capital and then settling 1 or 2 more if suitable sites are left.

hope that helped.

The key is to get your tourism up. Culture is for policies and defending against the AI's tourism. In reality, it's more of a tourism victory than a cultural victory. Landmarks and great person tile improvements are the best way to get tourism up. You need to get the resolution passed that adds culture to all great person and landmark tile improvements. If you want a lot of landmarks and/or artifacts, wars are the way to get more of them for your archeologists to dig up.

Wonders are nice, but you can just capture them from the AI. The only wonders I'd bother building are those that give a 1 shot bonus.

To maximize your tourism you need hotels, airports, National Visitor Center (requires hotels in all your cities) and research the internet. Try to keep the International Games from happening until you're close to finishing the internet. You also want to be able to buy musicians with faith which means completing the Aesthetics tree and saving up a lot of faith for the purchases. Unless you're trying to fill wonders for the theme bonus, don't generate any GWAMs until you're close to maxing the tourism. Especially musicians, because the power of the concert tours is based on your tourism at the time the musician is generated or bought and it'll be 10x your current tourism.

Hotels and airports both add 50% of the culture from wonders, natural wonders and improvements (great person improvements, moai stature, chateaus and landmarks). National Visitor Center adds 100% from these same sources. That's 200% of the culture from these sources added as tourism. Researching the internet doubles your tourism output. Hosting the International Games (highest contributor) doubles your tourism output for 20 turns.

If you get your tourism to 1000+ it should only take a few musicians to become influential. Just send them at whichever AI has the highest culture, because 20% of what you dump on them will also be dumped on all the others. So with 1000 tourism, the musician will generate 10,000 tourism in the civ where you perform the concert tour and 2000 will be generate with everyone else.

Because of the added culture from great person tile improvements if you get the resolution passed, you might be better off building manufactories with your GE's instead of rushing a wonder. Since you can get that resolution passed fairly early, the added culture will help you plow through the policies. Plus the added production will help finish everything faster not just a single wonder.

In order to get the tech you need to maximize your tourism output, you'll need to play like you're going for the G&K diplomatic victory, because all but the airport is on that same tech path. You only have to divert to Radar for the airport, which is only another 2 techs. In other words, tech rate is king.

When setting up your trade routes, don't just look at the gold you'll get, look at the beakers the trade route generates. Try to prioritize the trade routes that give you the most beakers, give the AI the fewest beakers, then which of those has the highest gold income. This will help you catch up if behind in techs, while also not helping the AI catch up.

I'd take a look at the tradition opener on the forums here. I found that helpful, especially for culture related progress since it only focuses on the first few cities.

I like to start scout > granary (when pottery finishes) > shrine (if writing still isn't done) > library (when writing finishes) > rush for national college
Obviously if you are on king and you can get the great library that's great - especially with those great works slots it has now, and you can use it's free tech to give you Philosophy and you can get more techs for your luxuries.

I always get my first lux and sell it for a settler, but now I'm going to have to build it since the lump sum gold trading has been tampered with.

Unfortunately I'm pretty confused with the tourism/culture, offence/defence thing I'll have to figure that out as I play some games with that victory in mind.

Most of us are still trying to figure out the best strategies, but here's what i've found from the few culture games i've played

1. Have at least three cities each with a guild in them and run specialists in those guilds

2. Any wonder that has a free great work or great artist/write/musician go for those (and the others with great work slots if you can)

3. Make sure you try and get your culture started early (building the Parthenon helps, and rush to the culture buildings). Becoming influential on a civ all depends on your tourism compared to their culture, and they start getting culture from the beginning. The longer you wait to start generating tourism, the more of a head start the AI have with their culture

4. Theme bonuses are critical

5. Don't ignore faith and make sure you rush aesthetics as soon as it becomes available. I get a good 6-7 great works from religion in my games

6. The Tradition policy that allows +15% production on wonders is a huge help, i would consider going tradition just for that

Probably nothing groundbreaking in there, but this is whats helped me win all my games so far (for the record, they have been on prince and one on king)

Artists, writers and musicians all have their own counter just like prophets. Generating a bunch of artists doesn't slow down the generation of writers or musicians.

• Artists can either create a great work of art or generate a golden age.
• Writers can either create a great work of literature or give you a 1 time boost to your culture, but I'm not sure exactly how much. It's either half the cost of the next policy or a multiple of your current culture output. I keep forgetting to check when I generate one.
• Musicians can either compose a great musical piece, or perform a concert tour in foreign lands for a 1 time boost tourism boost with that civ and 20% of that amount with every other civ. The amount of tourism generated with the concert is 10 times your tourism output at the time the musician is born.

Since each has its own counter, if you avoid generating musicians, obtaining them "free" from completing a wonder or the liberty finisher, or buying them with faith until you have hotels and airports everywhere, national visitor center built, researched the internet and hosted the International Games, you can have several very powerful concert tours to win. This means keeping the International games proposal from passing until you're at least close to finishing the research for the internet, ie just the few turns it takes to add production to the international games.

In my first culture victory of BNW, I hosted the international games 18 turns before I finished the internet. Then didn't have the faith to buy another musician until the last turn of the IG's boost. I had generated a bunch of them earlier to fill great music slots, so the next one I could generate still had 27 turns. The previous one I generated was during the 20 turns of the IG's boost, but I didn't have all the hotels, airports nor NVC finished and was still researching towards the Internet, so he was fairly weak.

At the time I was able to buy that musician I was generating 1337 tourism, so my musician's concert tour dumped 13370 tourism into the target civ and 2674 into every other civ. So my musician was a super leet, super leet, he was super leety, yeah.

You generate tourism in several ways.

1. Buildings/wonders that that either provide tourism itself or have a slot for a great work that you've filled.
2. Hotels and Airports each add 50% of the culture from wonders, natural wonders and tile improvement as tourism. The National Visitor Center, which requires hotels in every city, does the same thing, except it adds 100% of the culture from those same sources.
3. Hosting the international Games, ie. highest contributor, gives a 100% boost to tourism for 20 turns.
4. Researching the Internet gives a permanent 100% boost
5. Taking the reformation belief that adds tourism to faith bought buildings and having at least 1 if not both your follower beliefs as pagoda, cathedral, mosque or monastery.
6. Performing concert tours. (detailed in the first list)

Items 2, 3 & 4 are additive for a total boost of +400% for 20 turns. So if you raise the great person counter for musicians or buy a lot of them with faith before hitting this 400% boost, you won't be able to have very many super powered concerts.
A

The best way to maximize #2 is having wonders that produce culture, landmarks created from archeological digs, or lots of great person tile improvements provided you can get the resolution passed that adds culture to them.

Of the great person tile improvements, holy sites with the Piety tree completed are probably the best, because they generate 3 gold and 3 culture without the resolution, 5 culture with it and they're on a separate counter from all the other great people.. All that extra gold makes the other civs want to send trade routes to that city, because every increase in your BPT from buildings, wonders or tile improvements equals a higher yield from all trade routes to and from that city. If you founded your own religion and took cheaper prophets as your enhancer, or as the Byzantines taking it as your bonus belief to get the 2nd prophet sooner, you'll likely generated several of them before reaching the industrial era, unless you spend your faith on missionaries or buildings.

If ya'll haven't noticed yet, you can't swap great musical scores with the other civs like you can with writing, art and artifacts.

If I had known all this for my first cultural victory, I would have only kept the musician slots filled until I had 1 turn left to generate the first one until I hit the max +400% bonus. Coupled with the Aesthetics tree and the resolution that boosts GWAM generation, I could have generated several super leet musicians and likely have won about 30 turns sooner.

Idleray said:

7. You need to beeline for NC at some point every game no matter what victory you're going for. What I would do is settling 3 cities, getting NC up in capital and then settling 1 or 2 more if suitable sites are left.

hope that helped.

Click to expand...

Do you mean finishing the NC before settling any cities?

Here's an order of things I do in my culture games, which give results:

1. Settle as usual, kick out 3-4 cities, use the NC start as you would in a Science game, because Science is believe it or not, more important. However...

2. ...try to get Oracle, one free policy early on is VERY good. It could even allow you to switch between Tradition and Liberty and get the best of both worlds. In my opinion, a free GE as a Liberty finisher trumps Tradition finisher in the early going. Aesthetics opener is nice for after you got your Guilds up, it works well with Gardens and National Epic, all of which should be available before you...

3. ... beeline to Education, as you normally would. Get Unis up and fill the specialist slots. Plant 2 GSs, save the rest for later. Your cities should be at least pop 10. Keep them growing because more often than not...

(At any point, if opportunity presents itself for you to found a religion, do it. If you're Ethiopia or Celts, definitely do it. Watch out for warmongers, pay them off to go stab someone else. But use composite bows to defend. Religion is *not* essential, but helpful. If you go for a religion, opening Piety is a good advice. But don't finish that tree just yet.)

4. ...there are two options to go from here, and it depends on the state of other players tbh: You either punch into Renaissance, get Sistine Chapel (with the saved GE if needed) and open Rationalism for more beakers, OR swing back down the tech tree and grab Pisa for a boost of GPP and (hopefully) one more GE. Sometimes you will have enough time to do both.

5. Stop! Are you happy? Why not? You should aim to be really happy at this point, double digits happy...

6. ... because there's no point in going further Aesthetics when you're not really happy. A free Golden Age isn't really important in general at this point either...

7. Time to go Freedom, which means more great people points, less food needed to feed them and ultimately more happiness. Do you have Hermitage? You should by now. You could also use either or more of the following: Louvre, Sistine Chapel, Uffizi, Globe Theater

8. Do you have Archeologists running across the map. Museums? That's good, the more the better. Remember, if your cities can reach it, Landmark. Otherwise, Artifact. Show respect for the cultural heritage of other nations. By not ninja-ing ALL of the artifacts

9. Landmarks plenty, theming bonuses online. Time to finish Aesthetics and get to Freedom lvl3, and get Hotels up everywhere. Oxford? Yeah it should be quick now, get it, fill it with two great works of writing, thank them for the free tech (Radio).

10. If you didn't burn the GEs, use them now if you want, one for Eiffel Tower, other for Statue of Liberty later on. If I remember correctly, that's all of the wonders you essentially need.

11. Saved up enough GSs? Good, use all of them to get Internet. In the meantime, build National Visitors Center, and finally start making great musicians.

As a rule of thumb, get Open Borders from everyone, don't allow Open Borders to anyone. It could be considered an illogical hax but it's for the best.

12. By this time, most of the map should be under your influence. Open Borders from everyone and shared trade routes all add up nicely. Diplomatic propaganda is unlikely if you played well, because if you went Freedom first, everyone else will be forced to go Freedom for the sake of public opinion. Which you control.

13. The ones that are a bit more ahead, use Great Musicians. If you got any Great Musicians before all of this, well, you'd be wiser to get more great works from them. Otherwise, if they popped after the Internet/National Center they're more likely to do really good.

Some more notes: Arts Funding is generally well accepted as a resolution, you *should* delay Cultural Heritage Sites because most of the early game wonders belong to someone else and Historical Monuments are also a good thing to have if you have Landmarks and Academies around (and Holy Sites). World Fair is something you *can* do without, i.e. you'd be better off if it never happens because more important than you winning it is that SOMEONE ELSE DOESN'T. Otherwise, you'd have a culture runaway and those are bad news. International Games, yeah why not, you generally have a good shot at winning that, but more often that not, that is proposed too late to be really important.

I think that about covers it

Everyone has given good advice so far.

Just to make clear, as you are complaining about getting "so far behind", I wonder if you are simply giving up too soon.

The cultural victory is about laying the ground work earlier (mainly in the renaissance, and industrial eras), and then getting the tourism multiplier techs in the modern+ eras.

Especially on higher levels, you will not be gaining on all other Civs until at least building hotels - with Refrigeration in the Modern era, and likely not until the tourist info center and internet in the Information Era.

So, it can really look like you have no way of winning - you won't dominate for hundreds of turns - and then you get the tourist info center and the internet and you'll dominate them in 20 turns.