Culture Victory Post Patch

Esmond · Jul 5, 2011

Hello everyone

With the decreased cost to social policies for increased cities has anyone found an optimal number of cities for culture victory. Now that the piety branch increases the culture produced by buildings is it more advantageous to have a wider empire or do people find that one city is still optimal. How about combined with representation?

Thanks

vexing · Jul 5, 2011

liberty is going to be a decent early tree for any culture victory, so we can consider the cost increase to be 10% per extra city. given that extra cities only need to produce 10% of base, it isn't too hard to make multiple cities speed up policy acquisition.

i suspect a 4 city approach, saving legalism for opera houses to get hermitage quickly may be optimal.

Roghar · Jul 5, 2011

I played a culture victory with France. Went 4 cities,
Liberty -> Piety -> Freedom -> Patronage -> Honor

Honor could have bene anything, that was more to help defend if need be than anything. Liberty enabled the quick expansion to 4 cities while keeping SPs flowing. Piety and Freedom brought in the culture, as did city states with patronage once I had that (hoarded gold to that point).

Getting lots of wonders was critical, including at least one per city.

I think having a few cities helps a lot for city-state gold, defence and research.

RealHuhn · Jul 5, 2011

I don't know if it's fixed already (I doubt it) but culture is bugged.
Policy tree finishers count as an extra SP and raise the costs for the next SPs.

Going for a fast culture victory is pretty impossible right now. At the moment, I avoid the finishers.

Montov · Jul 5, 2011

RealHuhn said:
I don't know if it's fixed already (I doubt it) but culture is bugged.
Policy tree finishers count as an extra SP and raise the costs for the next SPs.

Going for a fast culture victory is pretty impossible right now. At the moment, I avoid the finishers.

A developer stated the wrongly increaded policy costs with finishers is not an issue for a culture victory because the victory was based on those inflated culture points.

Exterminas · Jul 5, 2011

It depends somewhat.

As everyone can tell the Math seems pretty simple: Your new city will have to be able to generate at least 10% of your current culture.

The problem with that argument however is that the more cities you built the more time it will take for the city to actually reach that point. Here are some examples, as I rembember them from my last game:

I had four cities, creatgin 160 Culture. My Capital, where the landmarks went, was running around 100, the other three 20 each.

So in theory my new city had to bring in 16 culture to be worth it.
Problem: The three old cities only generated so much culture because of wold wonders I had placed there. I could not guarantee a world wonder in the new city.

In addition to that the available spot for settling wasn't that great.
So I just went with four cities and it all went fine.

This gives me the following impression:
Culture vitctory is a lot more flexible now. If you have a great spot to settle in, go for it, as long as you con't violent the 10% too much. Probably you will never end up with more than six cities.

drlucifer · Jul 5, 2011

I would guess that, at least on Emperor, two is the new minimum. The SP cost curve just gets so steep mid- to late-game that you're going to need extra culture not only from the city but also from as many CSs as you can get. Plus, more cities = faster Renaissance and Industrial eras. I would go with three if you can get 2 luxes out of it, and maybe a fourth if the site is awesome and you have the happy to make it work.

Furycrab · Jul 5, 2011

Important factor is the Broadcast tower now mostly just adds base and not nearly as much so it makes having extra wonderless/monumentless cities to be far less of a burden once you have all the culture buildings and the new piety makes it much quicker to set that up.

Can anyone confirm if the 10/15% is multiplicative or additive? If it's multiplicative than there should be a sweet spot, if it's additive... Then getting a city to produce 10% of your super culture capital is pretty easy and the more good cities you get the faster you could win.

vexing · Jul 5, 2011

it's additive

vexing · Jul 5, 2011

RealHuhn said:
I don't know if it's fixed already (I doubt it) but culture is bugged.
Policy tree finishers count as an extra SP and raise the costs for the next SPs.

Going for a fast culture victory is pretty impossible right now. At the moment, I avoid the finishers.

avoiding the finishers isn't going to speed up your victory at all - especially the piety finisher.

Martin Alvito · Jul 5, 2011

Taking Piety locks you out of Rationalism.

I am extremely interested to see how G-Minor VIII plays out. It's not yet clear to me whether you want to run through Piety immediately or put it off until after pushing through Rationalism. Solid arguments for both exist. Empirically, one approach must be right - and that's the only way to settle the question, since theory fails us.

vexing · Jul 5, 2011

Martin Alvito said:
Taking Piety locks you out of Rationalism.

I am extremely interested to see how G-Minor VIII plays out. It's not yet clear to me whether you want to run through Piety immediately or put it off until after pushing through Rationalism. Solid arguments for both exist. Empirically, one approach must be right - and that's the only way to settle the question, since theory fails us.

i hope you're going to be testing the rationalism approach, because i can't imagine many others will.

Furycrab · Jul 5, 2011

vexing said:
it's additive

Well that confirms my feeling in my current game... Getting more than 10% of your best cities culture with an extra city is actually fairly easy, especially with the Broadcast Tower change.

Damn you Martin! You're delaying me finishing my Persian game to try something out for the Minor!

vexing · Jul 5, 2011

Furycrab said:
Well that confirms my feeling in my current game... Getting more than 10% of your best cities culture with an extra city is actually fairly easy, especially with the Broadcast Tower change.

it's 10% of base culture, which i'd define as culture in capital + city states + puppets + some of excess happiness, ie all culture but that which your excess cities are producing. surprisingly in my first attempt at the gminor, in the end my excess cities were barely over that mark. given the other benefits of having more cities it seems pretty clear that you'll want at least a couple.

Furycrab · Jul 5, 2011

vexing said:
it's 10% of base culture, which i'd define as culture in capital + city states + puppets + some of excess happiness, ie all culture but that which your excess cities are producing. surprisingly in my first attempt at the gminor, in the end my excess cities were barely over that mark. given the other benefits of having more cities it seems pretty clear that you'll want at least a couple.

My thoughts exactly. You have to factor that getting CS allies/puppets is much easier with a extra cities.... Damn it... here I am again plotting a mass murdering culture victory.

Wish I had more experience on quick speed.

Martin Alvito · Jul 5, 2011

vexing said:
i hope you're going to be testing the rationalism approach, because i can't imagine many others will.

I do believe that you just asked the tech whore if he's going to tech whore!

Yes, I plan to act as though the Piety tree doesn't exist. My theory is that getting the Artist slots and the Broadcast Tower earlier will make up for delaying the finisher. I think it will be close.

This is dictated by both preference and self-interest; I'd like to prove correct my pre-patch argument that an early Porcelain Tower and Rationalism dominate all other peaceful strategies in this patch.

aimlessgun · Jul 5, 2011

You're giving up quite a lot not taking Piety though. Other than the free policy and 10% on costs, you've got what is essentially a guaranteed +33% culture in your cap, and hopefully in at least one other city, as well as +2 culture per city from Temple/Monument (alright so that's probably totally inconsequential).

I'm not sure if the 10% gold is all that important, but could be for buying Unis/Museums/Opera Houses.

Would definitely love to hear how it turns out though.

Martin Alvito · Jul 5, 2011

By delaying Piety, you sacrifice the 10% :c5culture:

return to push your way through the tech tree faster. Eventually you eat the anarchy and run through Piety, then finish out the "bad" policies in trees.

The idea is that by getting an extra GA out faster and getting up to Broadcast Towers faster, you end up with more total :c5culture:

faster than you would by running through Piety immediately.

vexing · Jul 5, 2011

Martin Alvito said:
By delaying Piety, you sacrifice the 10% return to push your way through the tech tree faster. Eventually you eat the anarchy and run through Piety, then finish out the "bad" policies in trees.

The idea is that by getting an extra GA out faster and getting up to Broadcast Towers faster, you end up with more total faster than you would by running through Piety immediately.

i can't imagine it working for a few reasons:
it probably won't significantly speed up opera house acquisition, and museums are still rough,
the piety wonder policy is just as effective as the broadcast towers, so you're going to be losing there (a lot more turns without the +33% by going rationalism)
it significantly delays working on/finishing the freedom branch (which doubles landmark effectiveness and speeds up artists, as well as +2 per culture per wonder policy)

Martin Alvito · Jul 5, 2011

The last point is not valid.

Rather than running through Piety, you run through Freedom after taking the Rationalism opener. That accelerates the speed with which you get the Freedom policies.

Then you run through Rationalism for the techs to push the Broadcast Tower ASAP.

You bulb Museums with GS. I don't see any way around that.

There are good and solid reasons to question the strategy, which is why I consider this an empirical question.

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