United States Ultimate Cultural Challenge

I am not sure of where to post this, so I thought that this would be as good a place as any.

I propose a challenge to all Civ 5 players. The challenge is to win Civ 5 with the following rules:

Civilization: American
Victory: Cultural
Difficulty: Anything greater than Prince
Resources: Sparse
Barbarians: Raging
Make sure that Time victory is deselected.

It is also important that your civ maintains the following standards throughout the challenge:
You have the highest ranked military force
You are always the host of the World Congress/United Nations
You win the World's Fair, International Games, and International Space Station

Restrictions: You are limited to the following Wonders:
Broadway
Statue of Liberty
Great Firewall
Pentagon
Hubble Space Telescope
Ironworks
National College
National Epic
National Intelligence Agency
National Treasury
National Visitors Center
Artists Guild
Writers Guild
Musicians Guild

Also you are restricted to the following Social Policy Trees
Liberty
Honor
Patronage
Rationalism
You also must pick the Freedom Ideology.

and that is the challenge.

Edit: Some recommended mods for those wanting to be challenged even further.
Barbarians: Makes the Barbarians tough early on and allows them to attack your cities.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=409196

Revolutions: Increases the chance of a full civil war if happiness gets to low.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=456860'

Health and Plague:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=499037

Why would this be much of a challenge at King? How do I track the ranking of my military force? Is leading by score enough? So, no EIC? Is that the only NW you are forbidding?

You track you military force in the demographics screen. What is EIC. If I am right that you mean national wonders by NW, those things I listed are not forbidden but the only wonders you can build in this challenge, world wonders and national wonders. Basically you can't build any wonder (world or national) that isn't in the United States, since that is what this challenge is based on.

East India Company replaced National Treasury. Despite the name, I think the USA has a close analog. But I see you left off Hermitage off the list too. I don’t mind the limitation to World Wonders, but I am big fan of NW. Also, you did not explain why you think this would be hard at King. I am pretty sure I could not do it at Immortal, as I struggle with cultural victories generally.

Fairly sure this would only be a challenge on Deity I see this as a Left hand side Liberty + right hand side Honor opener then mixing in Patronage in between.

But wait, is capturing cities with the *forbidden* wonders not allowed in this challenge?

EIC = East India Company, probably

SS is not off limits, guys.

oh yeah.. I guess I figured, since this is the *historical* USA, founding a religion is not allowed. However, it takes luck to adopt a religion that has SS

stormtrooper412 said:

...since this is the *historical* USA, founding a religion is not allowed.

Click to expand...

LOL. USA has plenty of founded religions! Just not the ones named in the game. Off the top of my head: Quakers, Mormons (aka LDS), Scientology

Well.. yes... I guess I didn't think about it that way. Besides, by the time you'd normally get to Mormons, there wouldn't be any religions left to found innit

My apologies. Religion totally skipped my mind when I was formulating this challenge.

The answer to that to stay compatible with the challenge is to use Tomatekh's Christian and Protestant Denominations mod which is part of his Historical Religions's mod project.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=478532

Since I am not christian, I don't really know the origin's of those denominations (except Mormon Christianity), so use what ever feels right to you and while staying true to the theme of this challenge.

Of course you can just refrain from using religion entirely. In fact on deity founding a religion might be almost impossible unless you are very lucky.

Again, sorry about leaving religion out from the challenge.

Why bother deselecting time victory? you can win cultural victory even faster than science victory on standard map size even with the handicap of not being able to select Aesthetics.

More policy trees are available than would ever be picked before winning.
Under that restricted list, tactics would be full Liberty then open Patronage - Consulate next full Rationalism, then level 3 Freedom tenet, then more Patronage while waiting to win.

On the wonders: The guilds and National wonders list would get built, Statue of Liberty would be built, maybe Broadway, but definitely not Great Firewall nor Pentagon. The game will probably be over before getting the tech for Hubble going culturally as well.

joncnunn said:

Why bother deselecting time victory? you can win cultural victory even faster than science victory on standard map size even with the handicap of not being able to select Aesthetics.

More policy trees are available than would ever be picked before winning.
Under that restricted list, tactics would be full Liberty then open Patronage - Consulate next full Rationalism, then level 3 Freedom tenet, then more Patronage while waiting to win.

On the wonders: The guilds and National wonders list would get built, Statue of Liberty would be built, maybe Broadway, but definitely not Great Firewall nor Pentagon. The game will probably be over before getting the tech for Hubble going culturally as well.

Click to expand...

This would be enough to generate enough tourism to overpower everyone else's culture? Even without any of the tourism wonders except for Broadway? On which difficulty?

LoneRebel said:

This would be enough to generate enough tourism to overpower everyone else's culture? Even without any of the tourism wonders except for Broadway? On which difficulty?

Click to expand...

Up to and including Deity no world wonders at all needed to win cultural victory, in fact even war is unlikely to be needed at Standard map size and below. For large and especially huge maps on Deity, it will probably be needed to capture the capital of whichever AI built the most themining world wonders combined with eliminating from the game the AIs with the most culture.

I agree 100%

The basic gameplan for a cultural win is:

1. Win the World Fair so that nobody else does
2. Be quick in finding Artifacts
3. Get to Internet quickly enough by bulbing GS, and get National Visitor Center in the meantime
4. Win International Games
5. Start producing musicians

Good info. I do the same things on Prince and win with plenty of time to spare, but I didn't think that would work on higher difficulties, especially without the tourism wonders.

me neither, but turns out, it works on Deity quite nicely, because the whole point of a culture win is not to build up your tourism and wait it out, as that kinda takes forever, but rather to time your Internet + NVC + Airports + IG with your great musicians so you can bomb them at their highest. That means DO NOT BUILD THE MUSICIANS GUILD until you can time them well, because the first one is spawned very quickly in the late game, what with all those great people modifiers you will have, and even an unworked guild will contribute points, which you won't need. Also it's always a good idea to save up enough faith to buy a couple, usually you will have enough for 2 which, with 2-3 generated from guilds, is enough. If you have a religious civ with Piety down and some Holy Sites up, even better in that regard