Tips for a Cultural Victory?

I'm a pretty new Civ player and the only victory I havn't been able to achieve is the Cultural one. I usually get eaten up by an Alexander or other War monger while I try. Plus, I'm really not all that great at city managment. My gaming background is from games like Empire Earth, Starcraft, Warcraft, Advance Wars, etc. So I have an understanding of the military aspect, but I'm really not that great at anything else.

I've looked for some articles here to help me, but I just can't find them. Excuse my nubbery

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Play the chinese (there UB gives plus 25% culture) or a creative leader.

I'm no expert, but here's a few tips I've gleaned. I recently won my first Cultural Victory on Vanilla, Prince Level.
1) Pick a good leader. You may want to build a lot of Wonders, so Industrious is a good trait. You may want to found some religions, so Mysticism is a good starting Tech. I won with Ghandi, but you can take your pick.
2) Found one or more religions. Religious buildings are great sources of culture. (Also, if you build the shrines, they are a nice source of cash too!)
3) Spread your religion. Not only does this increase your cashflow (if you have the shrine) but it helps make others less likely to attack you.
4) Stay strong. Keep your military fairly strong, so the bad guys won't attack. You may even have to make some pre-emptive strikes if you are adjacent to Montezuma or another warmonger.
5) Focus on those three cities. Choose which three cities you will nurture to Legendary level, and build every cultural building you can in them, as soon as you can. Let your other cities build the army.
6) Build late-game wonders. Rock-n-Roll, Hollywood and Broadway really boost your culture.
7) Use your culture slider. Whenever you can afford it, boost up your culture slider. Not only will it help your three cities, but it pushes out your borders as well. I've gained valuable tiles just by culture-creep.
8) As a semi-cheat, you can turn off the Space Race Victory option in the game setup screen. The AI always goes for a Space victory, and it sucks to be just a few turns from certain Cultural Victory only to have Mansa Musa launch his spaceship. Believe me, I know!

Nine cities, as many religoins as you can get, and as many cathedrals as you can get in your legendary cities (you need 9 cities on standard size and speed to get 3 cathedrals - one per legendary city). A GP farm for artists doesn't go amiss either, plus beeline for music (free Great Artist). Eiffel tower is great too.. +50% culture in all cities. I'm sure there's a guide in the war academy too.

Creative trait is not the best for cultural victory. If you are playing cultural, with random AI, I would take Elizabeth. She has two great traits: Philosophical and Financial. The first give you lots of Great Artists, the second a lot of money.

At cultural game you will usually stop researching and start building culture. If you put the culture slider at (or as near as possible) 100%, all your commerce goes into culture, but your research stop. You need three cultural cities. If you build culture, one, two or three of these cities must be full of cottages/gems/gold, etc. You should have a GP farm. You should farm artists and use them near the end for bombing your cities. You should build culture multipliers: cathedrals, Hermitage, etc. Many details depends on speed and level.

The best map for random AI's, I guess it is the inland sea. You have only two neighbors. If you start near a dangerous AI, just kill it up early in the game. To be safe, you can research until rifling and stop there. If you use Liz, you will have Redcoat.

The current G-Major is a Monarch cultural game.

I recommend this guide, not only for deity wins: Godotnut's Guide to Totally Peaceful Deity Cultural Victory


You may find something useful in these three threads: Introduction: Hall of Fame strategy -- Fast, peaceful culture wins (intermediate), Wonder Rush - Strategy for cultural victory and The Beginners Crash Guide To Cultural Victory. Well, you can follow my sig too.

Just don't believe when someone says you must have the Pyramids, your GP farm cannot be one of your three cultural cities, your GP farm must be one of your cultural cities. There are many ways of getting a cultural victory, as I said before, the best strategy depends on the speed and level. If you want to pick up your opponents or not. If you go to the Hall of Fame, you can download the best cultural games and you are going to see many ways to get it.

The basic jist of how I do my cultural victories is to research up to Liberalism (Nationalism as a free tech). Then go 100% culture slider. I have already decided what three cities will be my three Legendary, and have cottaged them all. A Great Artist farm has already been set up. I want to spread my religions as much as possible, build temples in my other cities (9 cities is preferable) and in my Legendary cities build the cathedrals. If your Legendary cities are hammer poor, try to get Universal Suffrage some way (either Pyramids or Democracy) and cash buy the cathedrals. I prefer using inland sea with either Gandhi or Elizabeth (Warlords). Only wonder that I absolutely MUST have is Parthenon.

Try this save if you have Warllords - I just finished a trial run, and without even trying hard and using all automated settlers, very little specialization, I wond a culture victory in 1968. My next run I will try to get it down much earlier.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=222789

Yes, it is a very unusual map, but it is legitimate (not worldbuilder edited).

Thanks guys! I really appreciate the tips I'm going to try to win this way today!

Stopping at Liberalism is best idea, as is getting exactly enough cities.

I wouldn't worry about Holywood and late improvements/wonders as the techs needed are a waste of commerce you could have used for culture

Also have a combo of cottaged cities (your main three), production and specialists (the remainder). Your GP farm can be one of the big three or not.

Stopping at Liberalism is best idea, as is getting exactly enough cities.

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Unless somone declares war on you.

Two words: Sistine Chapel.

The Navy Seal said:

Unless somone declares war on you.

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True. I'd research as far as Rifling, then builds loads and loads of Riflemen (another good reason to play as Elizabeth). Be on very good terms with all your neighbours. With luck, they'll be too busy fighting each other to bother you.

Do watch the Power graph (F9) and make sure you're near the top, or at least in the middle. Even nice neighbours will pick a fight with you if they think you're militarily weak.

Stopping at Liberalism is best idea, as is getting exactly enough cities.

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I find its much more productive to head for liberalism, get everything below it on the tree, then beeline for Mass Media, trading for Rifling along the way. Biology might be useful as well along with Caste System for late game artist farms. Going all the way to Mass Media allows to defend yourself for those last few critical turns and Hollywood+Rock-n'-Roll+Broadway+3 cathedrals in every city and the free broadcast towers from the Eiffel Tower is 250% culture on whatever your city is producing, plus whatever the culture slider is set too.

Artist specialists are great as a source of culture; each on provides +12 culture, and with some particularly fertile spots you can easily have 6-7 Artists in each city as soon as you get the culture slider+coliseums.

GrandSultan said:

Going all the way to Mass Media allows to defend yourself for those last few critical turns and Hollywood+Rock-n'-Roll+Broadway+3 cathedrals in every city and the free broadcast towers from the Eiffel Tower is 250% culture on whatever your city is producing, plus whatever the culture slider is set too.

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i try to win early enough that broadcast towers wouldn't speed things up. the time spent researching rather than the culture slider would slow things down. i do plan to try for cultural victory without depending on the culture slider, and there i'm definitely planning to research farther on the tech tree . and i try to manage diplomacy so that i don't have to defend myself much . it all depends on playstyle.

GrandSultan said:

Artist specialists are great as a source of culture; each on provides +12 culture, and with some particularly fertile spots you can easily have 6-7 Artists in each city as soon as you get the culture slider+coliseums.

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artist specialists don't provide +12 culture (without multipliers). settled Great Artists do. whether it's better to save your GAs for great works or settle them depends on how soon you think you'll win.

coliseums? theatres are the building that let you run artists, and even they only let you run two. to get 7 you'd need caste system. i suppose theatre/globe theatre/broadcast tower would let one city run 7 late in the game.

coliseums? theatres are the building that let you run artists, and even they only let you run two. to get 7 you'd need caste system. i suppose theatre/globe theatre/broadcast tower would let one city run 7 late in the game.

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Coliseum keeps your city happy enough to grow large enough for mutliple Caste System specialists and counteracts the unhappiness from other civs switching ot Emancipation. Had that all in my head, but didn't type it out My bad on the artists though.

I generally (on Monarch) am able to research Mass Media by the late 1700's early 1800's and once I do I win very shortly afterwards, with the help of a couple Engineers I saved to rush the Eiffel Tower/Hollywood. I never have much of a problem with people attakcing me either, but then, thats probably because I try and keep current with military techs.

GrandSultan said:

with the help of a couple Engineers I saved to rush the Eiffel Tower/Hollywood.

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you actually *want* GEs?!?!?! i can't stop laughing how differently we all do it. sometimes my way works for me (latest try, monarch win 1738). sometimes it doesn't (my try before that ... gandhi launched his space ship in 1756, a few turns before my last 2 GAs were due, and i didn't have the tech for spies to slow him down. he'd built the UN and passed emancipation, so i couldn't run caste system any more, otherwise i'd have already won. he was lucky i didn't have nukes *grumble*)

OscarWildebeest said:

Do watch the Power graph (F9) and make sure you're near the top, or at least in the middle. Even nice neighbours will pick a fight with you if they think you're militarily weak.

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sometimes i go the wimp route and handpick peaceful neighbors for culture games, and i just completely ignore the power graph, trusting my diplomacy. in the spoiler box is something i posted in the funny screenshots thread about that. but yeah, checking power every once in a while if you have random opponents is a very good idea *giggle*.

I never went for a cultural win, so I am a little confused. Seems to me I would want to make my 3 legendary cities productions cities to be able to pump out wonders and my other 6 cities commerce cities. Why do you guys say cottage spam the 3 culture cities?

I think I would aim to found 3 religions and make the 3 holy cities my culture cities. When I was not building culture buildings or wonders, I would build gold multiplying buildings in them.

I would pick Huyana Capac for the win. (industrious, financial, +2 early UB). Plus UU might help pick up some early cities with out getting any diplomatic demerits.

cottage spamming your 3 legendaries is so that when you turn science off and the culture slider up to 100%, your culture there goes from i dunno, 200 cpt that it would be at 0% to 700-900 cpt instantly. grabbed numbers out of thin air, my last game i was actually really commerce-poor so checking the save wouldn't help.

the way i play culture games, research isn't even close to as big a priority as it is in normal games. my capital does just about all of the work there, and artist specialists when i get constitution. my other cities are there pretty much just to build the temples i need for cathedrals in the big 3, and to make great artists. so i build them where i can get the most food by working the least tiles, and assign as many specialists as i can. often i don't have any cottages at all except at 2 of the big 3 cities (the third city in those cases is the main GA farm) .

edit: *giggle* Maydrock i love the Mac truck comment! i'm going to try (with a group of other people all playing the same save) a game where we're not allowed to run the culture slider above 20% ever, but we have to win by culture. that will be very different for me, i want to see how it turns out

HC's UB is one of my favorites. and it's completely overpowered, since you so often capture granaries with a city and they turn into terraces and you get culture right away. and if they're old granaries, you get +2 instead of +4, even tho it wasn't you that built them 1000 years ago . killing people before they have a chance to make any friends is an excellent plan (altho a bit bloodthirsty, i have to say).

I got cha. Not much use in switching the sliders if your not producing any commerce in those cities. Good thing that concept wasn't a Mac truck.

If going for a cultural victory, which one is better use for Great Artists: plant them as super specialists, or launch one-time culture bombs?