1070 culture win

Hi,

i just finished a culture game in 1070 with the following setting:
Settler, Duel, Saladin, GreatPlains, Quick

Yeah u read right. There is a wincondition where quick>mara
Several things in this game didn't go optimal, so i think a win before 1000 AD is possible. (for example i got tokugawa as random opponent, who didn't want to trade techs for a long time.)

Basic strategy is:
u get 2-3 cities with lots of food ressources and lots of hills. In the beginning they will work the hills, to build the temples and wonder. Later on they will get lots of artist specialist.

Ur cities should get at least 2 of the 3 essential ressources (stone, marble, copper).

tech-beeline-order:
1. meditation and polytheism to get all religions
2. Alphabet to get some early techs for free
3. Monotheism
4. Code Of Law and Civil Service to get caste system and burocracy.
5. Drama and Music
6. theology for sistine chappel
7. oracle to education, liberalism to nationalism
at this point we switch from research to culture
because of representation we tech further:
8. literature for national epic
9. divine right for the last religion
10. banking for mercantilism

World Wonder
1. Pantheon cause we need Great Persons and it doesnt polute GPP
2. Pyramids for Representation
3. Sistine Chappel to get the most from our Specialists
4. Oracle to sligshot to education

u can build other wonder, but be carefull to not polute ur GPPs

Civics
Representation since pyramids for the rest of the game
Burocracy when availible, Free Speech when availible
Caste System when availible (slavery is not much worth on quick and because we dont research bronze working by ourselves we wont get it much sooner than caste System anyway)
Mercantilism when availible (which can be very late)
Organized Religion when availible, switch to pacifism when u either have build enogh missionarys or have the monastarys anyway.

Great People
In my game i got 15 Great Artists. Use all GA to culture bomb in the end.


Random thoughts
In my game i got 2 very good cities (many food resources and hills) and 2 poor cities, so i culture bombed the 3rd city the whole way.
My 2 main cities were building temples, monastaries, missionaries and cathedral all game long until they produced culture the last few turns. These 2 cities got all cultur multiplier and produced about 500 cultur per turn in the end.
In the whole game i built not 1 single cottage , so switching to Universal Suffarage in the end made no sense.

Quick is the best game speed for cultural because u only have to get 1/2 of the cultur of normal in 2/3 of the turns.

If some of u try a similar tactic and have a little luck im sure we can beat 1000 AD, so that all victory conditions can be archieved before that date

If u get a third good city and an opp who will trade i think 800-900 AD should be possible.

Interesting post.

I have made several attempts after my first post, beating the current best time in HOF almost every single time (if i did´t trigger domination ), but never beating the 1070 AD. Meanwhile i come to the following conclusions:
1. Quick is the way to go. It is far supeirior on small maps with low difficiculty than marathon. (i dont know about bigger maps and/or harder difficultys yet)
2. I was lucky in that game, to only get GA. Its so sick when u dont get ur GA on a 80%+ chance.

I made several attempts to improve the stratagy which all failed:

1. Spread more Religions and build more Cathedrals
- pro: higher multiplier = more culture per turn
- con: u make the artist specialists later = less GA
- con: if ur GPPs are Polluted from Wonders u have a much higher chance to get a great engenier or Prophet

2. Cottage Spam Capital, only other cities GA-Farms
- pro: u tech faster (Liberalism about 400-500 BC instead of about 100 BC)
- con: u lose much production, so u cant build as many religous buildings
- con: u dont get culture while teching
- con: u dont get as many GAs

3. Build more cities (had only 4 in this game)
- pro: more temple = more cathedrals
- pro: u dont need to build missionaries in ur culture cities
- con: u have only about 110 turns. To lose 6 per each settler where ur culture city dont produce religios buildings and dont grow is brutal.
- con: be carefull to not trigger domination (on dual)

Some advices:
- marble is the most important ressource (u need it for Parthenon, Sistine Chappel, Oracle and Hermitage)
- on Great Plains dual maps u almost never get all three(copper, marble stone) cause copper is usually in the west side, the other 2 on the east and u cant spread ur cultur cities because of domination limit)
- u want to start on the east side cause there are generally more food ressources and marble (cities with 3-4 food ressources are not uncommon on dual)
- may be it is only in my imagination, but the density of ressources gets lower if u play on a larger map
- u can get a tempting south-western start with food ressources on floodplains, but u have 2 problems: the other cities will have no much food and u have no marble
- for the pyramids u have no choice (u will usually build it in ur capital), but wisely choose the city which builds the Oracle: do not build it in the same city with the pyramids and not in a city who runs about 2 artists, it will pollute ur GPP. Build it either in ur 4th or 5th city, which will nerver produce a great person or in a city with 4 or more Artists and hope for the best.
- although u will found all 7 religions u wont get a very high multiplier in ur cities, only about +100-200% from buildings, cause u will not have the time to spread a religion to 6 cities and build temples and u dont have the time to build that much cathedrals anyway, so the +100% from liberalsim are essential
- i think it is not possible to buy the cathedrals. Even if u cottagspam ur capital u will not generate enough money (a cottage will generat only 3-5 gold without financial). And u will have only about 30 turns with 100% culture slider anyway, so u cant lose 5-10 of those.

Conclusion:
-I find it very difficult to find the optimal balance between building enough religious buildings and running enough Artists soon enough, to generate the culture and not-poluted GPP. Maybe we can find the optimal plan together.

-Quick is MUCH quicker than marathon. We have only about 110 Turns to settle our empire, spread religions, build religious buildings and generate culture via artists.

- Quest: Produce the most Great Artists in a quick game till 1000 AD. Can u get much more than 15?

Stuff the map with AI players. At Settler they don't compete for city sites and it kicks up the resource density a lot at all levels (obvious at tiny and duel - compare tiny with 2/4 and duel with 1/2.

On the GP map, copper and stone frequently show up in the brownlands on the edge of the eastern forest. Rare but possible is to have stone in the forest. Marble is common in the east.

It's worth holding out for a special capital city. You can find a plains/hill with two deer/grassland/forest without tremendous effort, and having 50% more production out of the gate jumpstarts your city to a surprising degree. You can also get stacks of workers and settlers from huts on larger maps, but this only works on marathon - it's a long way to the Rockies on quick...

It also sometimes helps to found a satellite city on the western side - at settler the maintenance isn't that bad, and the gold/silver/dye/incense/sheep really help with the early happiness cap.

Lessons from the space race side, anyways...

thanks ohioastronomy, the tip with max opponents was very good.
In my last game, i got a city with 2 wheat, 2 cow, 2 horse, 1 gems, 1 iron = 8 ressources in the fat cross

happiness is no problem in my culture games, cause each city get a theatre and 4-7 temples anyway and i have no problem in raising the culture slider, health is usually the problem. Somtimes my cities have -5 health

Im beginning to questioning, if the pyramids are worth the trouble.
- pro: im getting about 10 turns earlier to liberalism
- pro: i can tech "for free" (=with 100% culture) to mercantilism

-con: it costs alot of turns to build, especially without stone.
-con: after i build it, my first GP gets polluted heavily, because i will not run many artists at this moment, usuall my first GP has only a 60-70% chance of beeing artist, and losing 1 Artist is horible.

Some math:
Liberalism 10 turns earlier = 1 more Artist = win 2-3 turns earlier
(200-250 base cultur when finishing lib * 10 = 2400 Culture = 2-3 * 800-1000 total culture in the end)
So losing 1 Artist is a lot worse than finishing liberalism a bit later. And that dosent even count the settler/worker u can build instead of the pyramids.

I got a perfect game and hit the culture win exactly on turn 100, which is 650 AD on quick.........

....... and triggerd domination the same turn and of course it counts as a domination win



P.S.: i tried to avoid it and gifted my 4th city to ai and build even 3 new cities and gifted the to ai but nothing helped


Edit: 1025 AD in the next try

Edit 2: 995 AD on Tiny

Interresting post bostich !
As I'm playing only the cultural way, I've played games on standard/large map with the marathon speed!
I will try the quick speed in order to check it out!
On duel map with 4 cities, you can have BIG DOMINATION LIMIT PROBLEMS!!!!!?????????????????????????????????????????

I have read both strategies from Bostich and Godotnut. Here's some thoughts:

Preferred starting techs: the wheel for road-building, mysticism for a shot at one or two early religions.

Preferred starting UU: Indian's fast worker.

Preferred leader traits: Financial is the best (+1 gold for every square with 2 golds), followed by anything but organized and aggressive. Among which I prefer spiritual for no-anarchy revolution and cheap temples. Philosophical is not that great actually due to increased cost for Great Peoples. (Explanation: if you can build 15 G-men with a philosophical leader, then you probably can get 11 without that trait. Each G-man worths less than 2 times the culture out for 3 cities at the last culture rush phase. This means each G-man saves you less than 2 turns, for a total of about 5-7 turns. With another trait you can easily get these 5-7 turns from somewhere else).

Nobody has them all, so there are several candidates for the starting civ/leader. Bostich picked Saladin: he has both starting techs, but does not have the financial trait. Godotnut picked Liz: she does not have either preferred starting tech, but is financial and philosophical. I would pick a leader with financial trait and mystism, which was the 2nd choice of Godotnut: the Incan leader (forgot his name). He has a good starting UU for better defense, but his other trait is aggressive, not so useful other a less chance of getting agressive civs as your neighbor since you got one of them.

Civilization is all about rush-building. In civ2 it was very hard to find something that cannot be built or researched in one turn. Everything could be rush-built, that was the key element for winning a high difficulty level. In civ4 I think there are 4 ways to rush-build: chop trees, pop-rush, gold buying (require pyramid to start early), and G-man rush. The 2nd and the 3rd of them can be used on regular basis. We need to have them both open!

Let me repeat: I think the best way to get things rolling is to keep both pop-rush and gold-buying open.

Now get to the playing part. Bostich used mining to get shields up for fast building speed. Godotnut used cottages to get money for rush-buying. I prefer the latter since cottages grow all the way to town while mines don't grow. Places that chould be mined usually have less food thus have negative impact on growing (and pop-rushing). Besides, at the last culture-rush stage, towns rule! That said, any city should have at least some shield production, otherwise it'll be too costly to either rush-buy or pop-rush the buildings.

Another difference between their strategies is that Bostich went after religious techs (trying to get the religions by oneself) while Godotnut went after masonry then alphabet. I think they can be combined: poly -> masonry -> mono -> priesthold -> writing -> alphabet. Poly and Mono both give a religion if you find them first. Or even better: meditation -> masonry -> priesthold -> writing -> alphabet -> code of laws. Meditation and COL both give a religion if you find them first, also if somebody else gets poly and mono, it is very likely to spread to you early (since they were found early). The only important tech skipped here is pottery. However since you are building the pyramid, there is no time for granary yet. When you get alphabet you are all good.

I just came back to civ and haven't yet finished one game. So there can be many mistakes in my post. Thanks.

@lesphinx: I prefer to play GreatPlains for max food ressources, which is a very small map by its type. Basicially, if one of ur 3 culture cities is in the center of the map, u will trigger domination at least with the last culture border expansion. On Settler the ai will not have build many cities by itself at this point and its cities will not produce much culture.

@Xin Yu:

- founding religions vs. not founding is not a matter of strategy, but of difficulty. Godonuts strategy is for deity, mine for settler. Im sure every culture strategy will have to found all or almost all religions itself on settler, because the ai will tech much too slow, on the other hand u have no chance to found many religions on deity, so if u adapt my strategy to deity, u will need the ai to spread religions to u.

- lets assume we want a finish date around 1000 AD, so on quick we have 110 turns to get 25k culture and on marathon we have 420 turns to get 150k, so on quick u need only 2/3 of the culture per turn.

- towns are good, but very slow. Cottages become towns after 30+60+120 = 210 turns on marathon. So u will get most towns not before Turn 300 (even including free speech). At this time all but the very last buildings should be built anyways and u should be running 100% culture at this time, so the production from towns will not be worth much.

- On Quick its even worse: 51 Turns to become towns means u´ll have not many towns before turn 90.

- any kind of rushbuilding is in quick a lot worse than in marathon. temples, missionaries and monasteries will be build in 1-2 turns anyway, so no need to buy them. And to whip 2 people away to get that library 3 turns sooner doesnt make much sense either (there are exeptions: i had cities that would grow every 1-2 turns on quick. i whipped my hands bloody in these at the beginning of the game). Cathedrals take 4-6 tunrs to build in most times, i even had cities which build them in 2 turns.

- in my best games i build no single cottage so financial is not much usefull for my strategy, that leaves 2 very good traits: spi, phi. (exp and ind may be good too, but inferior to the other 2 in my opinion.

How about Warlords version Gandhi then... he has Spi, Phi and the Fast Worker. Dunno if his starting techs changed in WL though...

spi + phi + fast workers sounds great to me

...and if Gandhi still starts with Mysticism then he would perfect for this.

I'm really not used to Quick. Is it a waste of (non-fast) worker turns to move to a forest for chopping alone and is it better to just build a straight cottage/farm/mine on a forest than to click chop then queue the improvement?

I've extended your method to Noble, and it works well; it should be extendable to higher levels if you chose the right (nonspiritual/nonindustrius) opponents. You will typically lose one religion to the AIs at Tiny/4 opponents, and can get all of the religions in a Duel map most of the time at Noble. Below 1400 should be doable at Noble - I keep getting crummy luck with specialists and should probably avoid Hanging Gardens and Great Library - these two cost me 4 great artists in my last run, setting me back 6 turns for a Tiny Noble finish with 500 culture/run. I do have trouble avoiding a plague of Great Prophets, getting 4-6 from the Oracle and Stonehenge. You can do a duel map without any cottages, which is interesting...does seem to run a bit faster if you drop a couple of early cottages outside the big three cities to keep your culture percentage up. Pyramids is worth it if you can pull it off - lets you switch to culture after Liberalism.

Ghandi doesn't start with Mysticism in Warlords.

Very fascinating stuff guys. I have been played several Deul Settler HOF Cultural attempts and can't seem to get lower with late 1600's. I grab all the religions and have 2 in two cities and 3 in a third city. If I have room on the GP map I build a fourth so I can spread religions and build more catherdrals. Often I have an AI civ revolt to join me anyway, so sometimes wait for that.

Here are the things I have been doing:

0. Build only cultural, no armies. Buildings which lead to wonders or improve building speed, ie. Aquaduct, Forge. Markets and Granaries if no cultural buliding available.

1. Found all religions, use free missionaires to spread religion to newest cities to help with culture. I try to have my 3 cities with all 7 religions. Takes a lot of missionaries, so I only build missionaries when there is nothing else to build or once my city has reached Legendary Culture.

2. Do not select a state religion, keep the 5 culture for the founding cities of all religions, plus 1 culture for every other religion.

3. After Poly, Mediation and Mono, beeline for Drama for the GA, Drama, then other religions. On longer games, I then head for Mass Media, and trade to fill in the gaps.

4. Build Stonehenge after Monuments build in three cities (is that redundant?) and Pyramids and Sistine Chapel ASAP. Parthenon and Oracle too, taking the most expensive tech once I have the Oracle. On longer games I build all the cultural wonders such as Hollywood, Eiffel Tower, Rock n' Roll, Hermitage, etc., but with Quick games, never make it that far.

5. Build order for cities is: Monument, Monasteries for science boost unless I have Libraries to build, Temples for happiness unless I have Drama and can adjust the slider but that only works with Theatres so switch to build them ASAP, universities ASAP as well. If no other culture building exist I build walls and then Castles (+1 culture)



On longer games, in between Wonders, produce Culture. On shorters games there is an endless supply of wonders to be built. I have experimented with Temples and Monasteries and Cathedrals first, then Wonders and vice versa. Nearly had a double slingshot (Settler) one time with Liberalism and Oracle, but AI beat me to Oracle because I waited too long. It seemed trying not to pollute the GPP worked for me somewhat (6-8 GAs) but I was no where near the 1100AD mark.

Usually, I use Stonehenge and other GP wonders to farm GP to build the special buildings of the religions which help the spreading of religions (less missionaries) and give culture. They can tech you to other religions as well. I also like farming GS to build their +4 culture producing academies in my cities.

If we had a culture calculator like Civ3 had it might be easier to see, but I figured that the longer Wonders are around, the better. Does culture from a wonder double if it is really old? I trade off build time with culture points. For example, I build Monasteries before any Temples if I can because they are cheaper and give more culture (EDIT:non-spiritual civs). If temples and theatres take the same time to build I go with theatres because they give more culture.

I have tried a few games with civs that have culture producing Unique Buildings, like the Incas Terrance, which is a culture producing granary or Saladin's Madrassa which produces 4 culture and it really hasn't made a difference.

Does switching to a state religion to get the 25% building production increase outweigh the cultural bonus each turn of not selecting a state religion?

This is a great strategy. I saw bostich's score on the board and had a look at the game to see what was going on ... missed this thread but it was pretty clear from the logs

Anyway, I've played a variant - I *like* forges (being a Gandhi-lover) so I go for metal casting early (if you're going to do it, you might as well lose the turns early and get the advantage over most of the game). You need cathedrals, and they're slow to build. It also enables me to build the Pyramids, without stone, outside the capital. So no pollution. And in fact, the odd engineer is ok, as long as it's only one or two.

I play two opponents, both creative for max territory expansion, since they build few cities. But if I get a chance, I take one out before 3770. You keep the city, but have to worry more about domination.

Health is always the major problem.

Getting 2 of 3 strategic resources is luck of the draw but probably essential.

My last game was 890 AD - and far from perfect. So there's room for improvement

Thanks bostich.

in the last weeks i didnt have time to play culture/settler games (i had to work for quattromaster ), but in the next weeks i will try again.

I think wins about 600 AD are very possible (see my post about 650AD-win-but-trigger-domination)

One Question Misotu, how may great Persons / Great Artist did u get? If u get only 1-2 less than with saladin, ghandi may be indeed the better choice. With Saladin i get 14-16 Great Persons, usually all Artists.

Bostich, I know I should pay more attention, but I can't recall how many artists I get with Gandhi. On the 890 game with Saladin, I think I had 15 artists & 1 engineer, plus the merchant for economics. 1 artist came too late to use.

Gandhi does do well on building wonders, but this is so fast I think the philosophical attribute is better than industrial. I don't think I get more than 8 artists or so with Gandhi. I still think it's worth building forges with Saladin in some games, where there's good production & you can get the tech early, esp in the capital with bureaucracy.

I'm trying to avoid Quattromaster ... I have to spend *some* time away from the PC

Recently started another settler small quick game as Saladin. Did not finish though -- no marble so wonder building was too slow.

Several observations:

Capital would have two religions (Meditation and Poly), the 2nd city would have two religions as well (Mono, COL). The 3rd city would again have two (Philosophy, Theology). The last religions (divine rights) is likely be found on a 4th city. Not sure if this is the best arrangement.

Early GA is very powerful in flipping an AI city. Therefore if possible, put your 2nd and 3rd city 3 spaces away from AI possible city sites. When the AIs put down a city and finish some work, use a GA to culture-bomb it. You'll need two early GAs for this tactic, one from the Music tech. Culture bomb should not be used before your 3rd city has found two religions.

Building the Pyramid directly with a stone is cheaper than metal casting - GE route.

With proper wonders, Pacifism, philosophy leader and 4 specialists you can get GAs popping up very quickly. At this stage your happiness cap is around 9-10, so 4 specialists is about right.

I'll give this a go as my first Hof attempt using th OP's settings!

Have played more early turns (never finished), trying to make some improvements. Here are some thoughts:

Five cities is, in my opinion, the optimal number under small/quick speed. First, if you only have 4 cities it takes a long time to get all of them having all the religions. If you have 6 cities it may trigger domination and also you can't take the full advantages of it since it takes even longer to get all religions to all 6 cities. 5 cities gives you more room to get 4 temples for each religion. Second, with 5 theatres you can build the global theatre, which allows you 3 extra artists. In addtion to the theatre, you can have 5 artists without switching to caste system -- thus taking the advangtages of another civic.

You'll likely only have one of stone or marble, but not both resources. You'll likely get copper. Most useful wonders have double speed under marble. Assume that you have marble and copper, then for religions you probably can consider not persueing Judaism (mono) and Christianity (theology). These two religions need stone for double speed. Why bother to spread them, knowing that another religion will allow you to build the expensive cathedrals twice as fast? I'm not saying to avoid them, just that you should not actively persueing them. Save your ministery for other religions!

Let's calculate the buildings you want to build in each city:
All cities: granary, theatre, temples
Capital (also GP farm since you build wonders faster in this city with bureaucracy): library, academy, monasteries (your science outputs are most from this city, so build them to get more science), cathedralx2, then the following wonders: global theatre, national epic, panthenon, hemitage, sistine chapel, (optional) barracks+a unit then Heroic epic.
Two other cities (cultural): cathedralx4, oracle, stonehedge (cheap wonder). Build them in different cities so that they don't produce a GP of the wrong type.
Make a plan, calculate how many hammers do you need for these buildings, how many trees can you chop, etc. so you can have a better idea for the later game. In non-culture cities, build workers and missionaries (don't need the cities to grow so you can whip out the units fast; also you can build a forge since you don't need to worry about health).