Warmonger Cultural Victory

I've been wanting to play a 'puppet everything' game with an eye towards Cultural Victory, and looking for some strategy discussion.

Currently my thinking is a 4-city REX while heading to Steel reasonably quick. This should give enough time for my neighbors to expand towards me, settling future puppets for me.

After getting a Longsword/Crossbow army together, gather up 6-8 puppets and then head to a Culture Victory. Possibly with another Industrial Era expansion wave to burn through Order.

I don't expect this strategy to be *fast*, more looking for a fun style of play. I don't particularly like playing real wide empires so I figure puppets will take some of the micro out of the equation and the Cultural Victory will eliminate the late game domination slog. I don't particularly like Science Victories as they are really boring, much more fun to open a bunch of policies, IMO.

Currently thinking of trying this with Russia on a Standard size/speed Emperor game, unless someone has a better idea.

And yes, I'm bored at work

it won't be that fast but is fun. Good thing about puppet empire for culture is you can afford more city states with the extra income. But you don't want to be over-focused on military hurting your culture...it's important to get the culture flowing early in your core. Don't completely ignore wonders in favor of military...you'll want the Oracle at least.

Regarding puppets, it's great that they don't add to the policy cost, but still, culture from puppets will be pretty small compared to your other cities. Banking on them to carry you in culture is not a great plan. But to use the extra income and buy more city states, that is a good plan.

So, Greece/Siam are both pretty good for this approach. I don't think Russia is particularly well suited. Egypt would be great of course, especially if you are going for 4 cities. Aztecs & Rome also come to mind.

Done this play style many times.

France is also good if you have early conquests, especially with military caste, granting a total of 4 per city base, 5 with liberty starter

I'm doing a similar warmongering diplomacy victory and it's anything but fast. Problem was that I chose a wrong map (Continents) to play on. I would imagine a cultural victory on the same map would play out similarly.

any civ can do this, you'll probably want to get ironworks and hermitage built before you puppet everything.

Thanks for the tips. Didn't occur to me to leverage puppet gold for cultural CS, obvious now after I've been told.

Sounds like I want to turtle somewhat until Renaissance, though. Siam seems easiest because I can get free Wats with Legalism, more culture from CS allies and a good UU to leverage when I go conquering.

I've never yet beaten Emperor either (always play Pangea) so that will be a challenge in itself.

Vexing: I don't think puppet states affect building national wonders.

Thresian said:

Vexing: I don't think puppet states affect building national wonders.

Click to expand...

the puppets don't need to have the buildings built, but they still increase the cost by 30 hammers per city

Yeah i've been close to doing this with Greece, but ended up doing diplo win because it was coming a bit faster than Utopia.

You'll want to spam trading posts on the puppets to get them pumping out gold for buying out all the Cultural city-states and if needed, to eventually to kill their growth from getting too out of hand (replace their farms w/ trading posts).

Aztec is good for Cultural Conquest.

Your troops earn Culture in the field (especial for killing Barbarians), and then generate Culture and Happiness when fortifying cities from the Honor tree.

This is the main way that i play. Its not very effective but its alot of fun!
My main civ is Egypt and Legalism with this strategy is really nice. Plus at that level, the Wonder building bonus helps out.
Try a War Chariot rush. It actually works rather nicely

I think I will give this a try this weekend. It sounds like fun.

Having a good time on my first try doing this, although really haven't executed on the warmonger part yet. Drew Sulemein and was hemmed in by Japan and Greece. They are settling future puppets for me no problem, but the lay of the land has prohibited more than defensive warring until Cannon, most likely. Just popped gunpowder so working on some Jannisaries. Wonder whored in my capital and brought 3 cities total up in a slow science/growth buildup. Looks like the game is about to get a lot more interesting.

I like Spain for this strategy. Early natural wonder shopping, then Statue of Zeus + Conquistadors for some puppeting, I've had some pretty good success with this in the past. The only problem I've run into is doing too much warmongering too early and getting all the other Civs ganging up on me. I may play one of these this weekend for fun

I'm playing a Co-Op style MP game as Catherine. A friend and me versus the world, pretty much-- with him playing as Arabia.

We started the game in the Renaissance period, Epic speed. Emperor difficulty. Picked Piety from the get-go and just finished up Honor. While I'm not going for a strict culture victory, being able to start with Piety has been a big bonus not to mention having plenty of early units for defense and an extra settler I don't have to build. First thing we researched was Gunpowder and I immediately begin churning out Musketmen and then Cannons once that was researched next. Turned out to be a good move when China, my neighbour, DoW'd me. I made quick work of her and puppeted two of her cities while annexing her capital.

Research speed is very good and I'm swimming in ~30 happiness with only a little trading from my teammate. Earning 100 gpt, have lots of Wonders, good science and culture (new policies in under 20 turns a piece on Epic speed is solid). We just hit Industrial Era so my first new policy is to pick up Order, after I finished Honor.

Starting in a later period seems to help if you want to go for a "domination" flavored Culture win. You will start with units you can upgrade and more than one city.

I played as France and had a blast with this strategy. The only problem I had we temporary happiness problems as I puppeted several AI cities. I say temporary, because the puppets would build some happiness buildings themselves and the gold generated from the puppets was sufficient for me to buy happiness buildings in my core cities if it was really necessary (more than 10 unhappiness).

It dawned on me that this game really combined the best of tall and wide strategies. The core cities were built tall (more than 20 population, several wonders, and almost every building available) while the puppet empire (about 2/3 of the world) were smaller and less developed like a typical wide empire.

It almost felt like an exploit. The puppets generate culture and happiness like a normal city (but without the micromanagement) and the cost of social policies does not increase.

But I would say that's the reward of conquest.

I played out my Ottomans game and the culture was coming so slow I ended up with a science victory anyway!

Part of the problem was I went Rationalism, partly out of habit, partly out of fear I'd fall behind. The result was 29 policies, 20 puppets, 3 core cities + 1 late game annex on another continent and a fun, endless war across three eras.

Overall one of my favorite games so far. Will probably try again with Piety instead.