the following are (very many) examples of my knowledge about the cultural victory and its aspects. keep in mind i play on huge maps on emperor difficulty (and win the occasional few).
I expect people to understand this article at the point where they have learned to win prince difficulty games, on larger then standard maps with default settings.
some notes:
Buildings will double the amount of culture they generate per turn, after 1000 years
Marathon speed:
total turns: 1200
One turn is
20 Years, untill 2000 BC (100 turns)
10 Years, untill 1 AD (200 turns)
5 Years, untill 1000 AD (200 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
2 Years, untill 1700 AD (350 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD (350 turns) -> time victory condition
Epic speed:
Total turns: 660 turns.
One turn is
40 Years, untill 2000 BC (50 turns)
25 Years, untill 1000 BC (40 turns)
20 Years, untill 200 AD (60 turns)
10 Years, untill 1000 AD (80 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
5 Years, untill 1650 AD (130 turns)
2 Years, untill 1850 AD (100 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD, (200 turns) - > time victory condition
Normal speed:
Total turns: 460
One turn is
40 Years, untill 1000 BC (75 turns)
25 Years, untill 500 AD (60 turns)
20 Years, untill 1000 AD (25 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
10 Years, untill 1500 AD (50 turns)
5 Years, untill 1800 AD (60 turns)
2 Years, untill 1920 AD (60 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD (130 turns) -> time victory condition
Quick speed:
Total turns: 320 turns:
One turn is
50 Years, untill 1000 BC (60 turns)
40 Years, untill 1000 AD (50 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
25 Years, untill 1500 AD (20 turns)
10 Years, untill 1650 AD (15 turns)
5 Years, untill 1900 AD (50 turns)
2 Years, untill 1950 AD (25 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD (100 turns) -> time victory condition
I expect people to understand this article at the point where they have learned to win prince difficulty games, on larger then standard maps with default settings.
some notes:
- once you switch your cultural slider to 100%, you will no longer have to worry about happyness, therefor try to maximize the size of your citys for more artist specialists
- at 100% culture funding you can choose to trade your happyness resources for health ones or money (to pay for the expenses that force your culture slider down below 100%). try to spread the trades equelly between leaders so all of the suspicious (backstabbing) leaders will loose a trading deal when declaring war against you.
- defensive pacts dont appear to increase your diplomatical backup at the point where other civs decide to or not to declare war you, they do however give you some confidence that you wont be alone when facing war.
- do not use free religion civic when turning the culture slider to 100%, the happyness bonus is negated by the happyness you get from your theaters (+10 happy faces atleast). i suggest you use pacifism and caste system.
- [new]the emancipation civic has a heavy prereq, in addition the "bonus" it gives can be ignored once you flip the culture switch. if you really run low on happyness, build a colosseum.
- [new]when facing the choice of building wonders in the 1ad-800ad era you must considder that every turn that it takes longer to finish the wonder will mean that it will take up to 10 turns longer to double its base culture in the future!
- the apparantly insignificant cultural structures like obelisks and temples can matter very much, as they double the culture they produce quite quickly (as the years pass quickly in the early game). they will also generate a compareatively large amount of culture for their cost, because they will have generated culture since ancient times.
- cultural buildings will generate more culture almost exponantially the earlyer they are build, because they will generate culture for longer and will also double their culture/turn earlyer (compared to turns instead of years)
- altough you wont be warmongering (i preassume) you will want a lot of military units, once you turn your cultural slider to over 80% your enemys will get better military techs. discourage them from taking you over. defensive units arent enough, a war of attrition (pillaging of your improvements) can easily ruin you.
- altough taking a state religion is usefull, this will negate the effect of other religions (not their buildings). and will also make heathens more likely to attack you
- once culture is generated, nothing can multiply it, unlike in civIII. if an enemy takes your city however a portion is lost.
- Normal speed requires 3 citys with 50K culture, epic 75K, marathon 150K and quick speed requires 3 with 25K.
- you can try to calculate how much more culture/turn you need in a city, by sharing the total of amount of remaining required culture by the remaining amount of turns untill the deadline (2049AD is to late!!!!), i only suggest this method for making raw estimates.
- cathedrals are great, build as many as you can but dont let them cost you. they cost 10 times the cost of obelisks and require multiple temples per cathedral
- Preserving forests is for the late warmongers or space ship constructors, you want a lot of cottages and the occasional mine for production.
- for the cultural victory, there are (usually) 2 phases of your civilization, the development phase and the cocoon phase where ya grow into a butterfly. Phase1: build everything that turns up your culture/turn like wonders cathedrals but also the free speech civic (this generates a small portion of the total culture) and phase2: turn into cocoon, defend your riches and turn your cultural slider 100% generate as much culture as fast as possible, save up the last artists to help your 3rd city over the culture edge,
- dont do overkill, divide all of your culture equelly inbetween citys, the group (of 3) is only as fast as its slowest member.
Buildings will double the amount of culture they generate per turn, after 1000 years
Marathon speed:
total turns: 1200
One turn is
20 Years, untill 2000 BC (100 turns)
10 Years, untill 1 AD (200 turns)
5 Years, untill 1000 AD (200 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
2 Years, untill 1700 AD (350 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD (350 turns) -> time victory condition
Epic speed:
Total turns: 660 turns.
One turn is
40 Years, untill 2000 BC (50 turns)
25 Years, untill 1000 BC (40 turns)
20 Years, untill 200 AD (60 turns)
10 Years, untill 1000 AD (80 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
5 Years, untill 1650 AD (130 turns)
2 Years, untill 1850 AD (100 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD, (200 turns) - > time victory condition
Normal speed:
Total turns: 460
One turn is
40 Years, untill 1000 BC (75 turns)
25 Years, untill 500 AD (60 turns)
20 Years, untill 1000 AD (25 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
10 Years, untill 1500 AD (50 turns)
5 Years, untill 1800 AD (60 turns)
2 Years, untill 1920 AD (60 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD (130 turns) -> time victory condition
Quick speed:
Total turns: 320 turns:
One turn is
50 Years, untill 1000 BC (60 turns)
40 Years, untill 1000 AD (50 turns)
any culture buildings after this point will not generate extra culture/turn, before a realistic deadline
25 Years, untill 1500 AD (20 turns)
10 Years, untill 1650 AD (15 turns)
5 Years, untill 1900 AD (50 turns)
2 Years, untill 1950 AD (25 turns)
1 Years, untill 2050 AD (100 turns) -> time victory condition