Introduction: Hall of Fame strategy -- Fast, peaceful culture wins (intermediate)

First, I do not own Warlords. I am fearful that I would refuse to eat or sleep, and go mad before I starved myself to death, were I to purchase it right now. Therefore this guide only pertains to vanilla Civ4.

As the subject indicates, this guide is intended for intermediate players. I've debated waiting to post my findings until I move up to Deity difficulty, but decided that I would have appreciated a guide like this, when I was learning to play for early culture victory. I plan to update the final section of the guide, Modifying your strategy to the Game Difficulty, from time to time, as I learn more.

To be sure, there are other good guides for cultural victory out there. This guide draws on knowledge gained from those guides, consolidates them, and updates them for the current patch (v1.61). I also draw from many other guides, and will contradict some very common strategies, at least insofar as they fail to contribute to the fastest culture victory, at easy to intermediate settings (monarch-settler).

This guide is fairly narrow in its scope, in that I will recommend game settings, and assume throughout the guide that you are using some combination of what I have recommended. One thing that might scare you off right now is that I assume throughout the guide that barbarians are disabled. However, I humbly suggest that you might learn something that applies to your barbarians-enabled games from this guide. One high level example is that, since I depend far less on cottages than most strategies do, this strategy may be well adapted to barbarian games, since pillaging of a cottage is far worse than any other fate a barbarian can bestow upon you, apart from conquering the city. Also, I encourage forests, and have adapted my strategy to account for the fact that less of my tiles are improved. Barbs cannot pillage a forest.

I point this out as an example, in the hopes that I will not get criticism for what this guide is not. I learn something new from each game I play, and I am not quite expert myself.

Game Difficulty: Settler - Monarch
The guide will be oriented toward Monarch difficulty, except where noted.

Game Speed: Quick
I don't have hard science behind this suggestion, except to point out that nearly all the top games in the Hall of Fame are quick speed games, and my own personal experience seems to indicate that marathon and epic speeds are not equally balanced for a fast culture win. It seems that the same strategy takes a longer time to accumulate the huge number of points needed for each city to achieve legendary culture.

Civilization: Gandhi (higher difficulties), Saladin? (lower difficulties)
Elizabeth is overrated for cultural victory, in my opinion, because once you have pyramids, drama, and a few monestaries, you'll be generating enough science in your main city to research all the way to liberalism, and beyond, with a zero % science slider.
Saladin is recommended at lower difficulties because it is more likely that you will be able to build the few wonders you need without the industrious trait, and the philosophical bonus to Great Person points may mean a faster victory due to the earlier generation of artists for culture bombing. As of this moment, I have not verified this, but it seems to be indicated by the current HOF rankings, and it makes good, logical sense.
At higher difficulties, you will probably need Gandhi to get your Pyramids out, and this strategy relies heavily on the Pyramids (as do most of the other guides).

Map: Great Plains
Why great plains? There are a few reasons.

• Lots of forests means more health later, meaning we can run more artist specialists
• Guaranteed Marble on the right side of the map means far fewer ugly surprises, like the AI building Oracle first.
• A super Great Person Farm is possible, due to the common likelyhood of many food resources bunched together in a group.

Opponents: While not 100% necessary, it helps to pick peaceful opponents who do not have the expansive, industrious, or aggressive traits, so that you can get the cities you want, you don't get beat to wonders, and you don't get wiped off the face of the map.

In a word, my answer to this question is an emphatic "No," at least as pertains to cultural victory.

• You want all the health you can get for the endgame
• Your first city will be your GP farm
• Your workers have better things to do
• Even a nerf tree can't be chopped very quickly with a nerf axe.
• Slavery is less of a priority, meaning bronze working is less of a priority
• Any chops before Mathematics are very wasteful

The quicker you generate great artists, the sooner you will win. You are limited by the amount of food you have, and your health. Since your first city will be your GP farm, chopping forests to get workers and settlers is a no-go. Besides, a few improved food tiles will let you pump them out in very short order. Furthermore, at higher difficulties, you will reach your happiness cap quickly, and it is very annoying to waste food, or choose substandard tiles to work, to avoid growth. Instead, with experience you will find that you can punch out some settlers and workers just in time to put your best tiles to use, just before your happiness limit increases, and afterwards continue to grow your population.

It seems to me that slavery is more effective later in the game, when you've got drama and can afford the penalty to happiness, and that it will come just in time for you to build your cathedrals, really the most expensive things you'll be building in terms of production, besides wonders, which are very tricky to effectively whip (since there is a penalty, you have to whip something else and put the overflow into the wonder, which does not incur a penalty). I don't much like that level of micro, it's not fun for me, so I developed my strategy to avoid it.

Thou shall:

1. Make your first city your GP farm
2. Make your second city your production city
3. Make your third city a financial/science city

Thou shalt not:

1. Build wonders in your GP farm that generate anything other than artists or engineers, nor shall you go crazy with the engineers
2. Be an early religion hog
3. Research bronze working first
4. Grow beyond health when running artists in your cities, unless, by doing so, you can run more artists
5. Spam cottages like a medieval fishing village

This guide is not for beginners, so I assume that you are basically familiar with city specialization. However, you will win the game before you have researched very far, so there are some modifications to make. Your ultimate goal is Liberalism. So there's not a lot of need for universities everywhere. Any techs you get beyond Liberalism are pure profit.

Also, I tend to avoid building forges. For one thing, metal casting is pretty expensive in the early game. In the late game, they seem less necessary to me. To top it off, they detract from health, meaning that in most cases, that's one less artist I can run, so it's a difficult equation to compute. I tend to favor the side of no forge.

This is why I recommend Gandhi. You can switch back and forth between slavery and organized religion to build stuff, or caste system, pacifism, and free speech to max culture/GP points. In the late midgame, leading into the endgame, you won't be hurting for happiness (regardless of difficulty), and you'll have a lot of farms. You should have a theater in every city, and you'll be running drama at 100%, and still doing a fair amount of research, meaning you would really have to abuse that whip to do yourself any harm at all.

Furthermore, your capital/GP farm/super science city will do fine to get you the techs you need. People rely far too much on the financial trait. I say this, because I was once one of those people. A few cottages will work like little gold mines. Chopping a tree to get a cottage is sacrificing your late game to help your early game. That might be a good idea if you were going for a domination win, or a spaceship win. For a cultural victory, you only absolutely need 3 cities to win, and you don't have to research very far down the tech tree. The icing on the cake is that your specialists will double as scientists, as long as you run representation.

Wonders for your capital/GP farm:

1. Pyramids (absolutely essential)
2. Parthenon (very very good, nearly essential)
3. National Epic (100% non-optional)
4. Sistine Chapel (very very nice)
5. Hanging Gardens (optional, but good)
6. Taj Majal (very optional)
7. Notre Dame (very optional)

Wonders for your production city:

1. Stonehenge (optional)
2. Oracle (a key ingredient)

Wonders for your financial/science city

1. Great Library
2. Hermitage

Pyramids

The Pyramids are the foundation block of your cultural empire. Representation gives you an early boost to happiness, which is good by itself. Further, it gives you a boost to science in the late game when you are running artists. This can help you to reach guilds, giving you those extra health points from groceries. Every health point you can back up with 2 food means one more artist, and that many more great artists.

Build it in your capital for the great engineer points. Each great engineer is another wonder you can beat the AI to. With luck, and eventual experience and skill, you can generate every single great person in your capital, and it will be a pure mix of artists and engineers.

Even wonders that don't help much for your culture win give you a fair amount of culture points, and when multiplied by cathedrals, The Hermitage, and/or Free Speech, will help you win that much faster.

Parthenon, National Epic

Do I really have to explain this one? +150% Great People. Done. National Epic goes in the capital, your GP farm.

Hanging Gardens

Happiness is not a problem once you have drama. Anything that gives you health is good, and Hanging Gardens gives you even more great engineer points. It's a real winner.

Sistine Chapel

Every artist will generate 2 more culture points? cha-CHING!

Taj Mahal

Great artist points mean this one belongs in the capital. If you can time it just right, you can build a bunch of temples and cathedrals and monestaries in the Golden Age.

Stonehenge

This one is strictly optional, and is only appropriate when you either have a really good reason to build it, or you just have hammers to go around. Never build it in your capital, or you will continue to get great prophets in the late game, which is really annoying.

Oracle

The Oracle is pretty darn good, and I go for it all the time. You want to complete the Oracle and finish researching Code of Laws on the same turn. This will usually get you a religion for going after it so early, and it allows you to choose civil service as your bonus technology. Now you can run beaurocracy, and you'll get some extra food from a few of your farms, allowing you more citizens.

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This is the final section of the guide. I will fill up the guide within about a week. Feel free to post after this section, as I go along.

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capital/GP farm

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When I see this I always immediately think "oh no, bureaucracy will be useless!"

I don't know if that's a standard reaction, but if it is, maybe you could explain relatively early that bureaucracy won't be a priority, or something.

Good luck on the guide!

part of why quick gives higher HoF scores is that GAs give bigger culture bombs relative to the total you need for legendary on quick than on any other speed, leading to earlier victory dates. on quick they give 2680 and you need 25k, on epic they give 6k and you need 75k. on quick it's easier to "earn" more culture in just one city, and bomb up most of two cities, than it in on epic, where you pretty much have to earn a majority of the culture in two cities, and depend on bombs to do it for you in only one.

that's of course related to your point about "Saladin ... the philosophical bonus to Great Person points may mean a faster victory due to the earlier generation of artists for culture bombing."

this isn't criticism for what your guide isn't, or a vote that your guide won't be useful! i'm just pointing out a reason why quick works out to be quicker is all, since you hadn't noticed that one.

RemoWilliams said:

Wonders for your financial/science city

1. Great Library
2. Hermitage

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As I see it, adding Oxford Univ. to the financial/science city and running some Scientist Specialists there would be beneficial. Any Great Scientists generated could be used to build Academies in the three cultural cities, or to quickly pick up some key techs. Would this fit in with your overall strategy?