Cultural victory without Freedom?

Is this doable, or am i being insane?

I don't mean at easy difficulties either, i was thinking on Immortal or maybe Emperor.

I'd really like to finish a game where i actually get to fill out the Autocracy or Order trees, as i never have yet, and in Science victories i never have anywhere close to enough culture to get more than two trees and maybe another policy or two done.

I suppose i could also go for a Domination game where i do Piety + cultural wonders and cultural focus so i get enough to finish one of the Autocracy or Order trees?
Maybe a few of my own cities + tons of puppets?

Anyone have any experience with strats that let you have fun with those policy trees and still have a good chance of winning?

I want to do a Culture-by-Domination game with Askia next (Emperor, Standard, Pangea).

- Liberty, Honor, Piety, Patronage or Commerce, Order or Autocracy (probably piecemeal to optimize benefit of policies)
- 3 of my own cities max
- Farm barbs for culture early
- Leverage Puppets for happiness via Meritocracy, Military Caste, Professional Army, Organized Religion and culture via MPMs
- Use Askia's UA and Militarism + BigBen to be able to rush buy units instead of tying up my limited cities with unit production


I figure the hardest part will be late game warfare without any annexed cities to help with rush-buying on the front lines. Otherwise seems like a pretty fun plan.

Well you give up
+2 culture per Wonder
..extra GPP
extra culture from Landmarks.
happiness from specialists

Order gives you
Happiness.. base
extra production (for culture buildings)
reduced gold costs
finisher gives a base culture per city

So Order can be good for a Large Puppet empire Cultural win (Honor, Liberty, Piety help with the Happiness)

Autocracy can be good for Acquiring a large Puppet empire (Autocracy+Commerce +Honor+Piety+Tradition/Libertyfor rapid $ based transition from a tall civ into a puppet culture empire)

Actually going the top 5 trees (Tradition, Liberty, Honor, Piety, Patronage, can work well by itself)

But I would probably not do Autocracy, Order is better for that mass Puppet Empire.

just top 5 trees is great. you just have to work the CSs well. you can do the CS quests and certainly take and puppet a few for the ally boosts. might require lots more gold but definitely limits your need to rush eras. plus if things get late you can switch gears for a diplo vic or at the very least keep the first few votes from swinging another civ's way. but again, should require a good amount of gold late game if it goes that long.

I'm sure its doable but not optimum

Freedom only conflicts with Order & Autocracy

Going for cultural:

Freedom has faster great people, extra culture from land marks & world wonders, longer golden ages, extra happiness from specialists, and apparently puts all specialists on a diet so they'll consume less food.

It conflicts with Order which provides one happiness and cultural point per city and

Autocracy which only provides happiness to cities with a court house (which can only be built in cities already annexed unless you have some mod that allows court houses everywhere)

My own trees when going for cultural are:

1. Liberty (unless its an OCC)
2. Piety
3. Tradition
4. Freedom
5. [any thing that doesn't conflict] Decided in my current game for it to be Honor for the +2 culture per city along with the extra happiness points (puppet empire) and a spare great general for a freedom extended golden age.

Yeah i do realize Freedom is definitely ideal for a cultural win; i've done it numerous times that way.
The doubled culture from Landmarks in that tree is just amazing, and would severely cripple efforts without it, i suspect, since i usually end up spamming as many landmarks as i possibly can.

For cultural wins i've always considered Piety + Freedom mandatory, with any combination of the others working out.

I really just am looking for a feasible way to mix things up, as i've gotten a bit bored of doing the same old strats honestly.
Personally, i like trying different things to change stuff up, and i've never actually played long enough to be able to go into the Order/Autocracy trees much.

I suppose what i should have titled this thread is: How can i play in a way that i get to fill up the Order/Autocracy tree without the game being over before i get a chance to

I was thinking the only way to be assured of getting a chance to fill up those trees would be via a cultural win, but i suppose a Domination win would make more sense.

I just suspect it'll be hard to do, as it'd mean i'd have to be playing till quite a bit later than normally just to have a chance to get much filled out in that tree, which would likely mean odds of losing would be much higher.

I just wish you could utilize the Industrial Era trees sooner.
Maybe it's just how i play, but i find the game is already well on the way to being over in that era, making it impossible to really ever use those trees much.

Does playing at the slower speeds have any affect on this?

I've found it very hard to actually finish those two trees as well, usually the game is over before that for me.
The key would probably be limiting your cities to only a few (3-5) and puppeting all enemy cities to avoid increasing amounts of culture required/policy.
Larger maps take longer to finish if going for a domination victory, so that'd help as well.

Enable policy saving and try them out. Sadly, Order comes too late to make use of most of its bonuses otherwise.

Sadly, policy saving only allows one policy to be saved; slower speeds don't help much either.
So it will only help on the margins.

The only thing I can really think of to get the most out of either of those two is:

Start in the Industrial era; and make it your first tree. Since you don't have several policies already discovered it will be really quick.

joncnunn said:

Sadly, policy saving only allows one policy to be saved; slower speeds don't help much either.
So it will only help on the margins.

The only thing I can really think of to get the most out of either of those two is:

Start in the Industrial era; and make it your first tree. Since you don't have several policies already discovered it will be really quick.

Click to expand...

Are you sure? I can't remember exactly but I think I've saving more than 1 policy. The only thing it doesn't work for is for the policies that you get for free.

joncnunn said:

Sadly, policy saving only allows one policy to be saved; slower speeds don't help much either.
So it will only help on the margins.

The only thing I can really think of to get the most out of either of those two is:

Start in the Industrial era; and make it your first tree. Since you don't have several policies already discovered it will be really quick.

Click to expand...

Yeah i guess.

I actually really like the beginning of the game, but to really be able to utilize the latter policies that sounds like the only way other than just playing past winning/losing to get to them by sheer time passed eventually.

Soronery said:

Are you sure? I can't remember exactly but I think I've saving more than 1 policy. The only thing it doesn't work for is for the policies that you get for free.

Click to expand...

When you ignore the prompt to select a policy, it won't show up again until you open the policy window and select one. There's no limit to how many you can save. Your culture will just build up throughout the game. I've saved enough to get 4 policies at once.

Something that grants a free policy, like the Oracle, those you cannot save.

mitsukaikira said:

When you ignore the prompt to select a policy, it won't show up again until you open the policy window and select one. There's no limit to how many you can save. Your culture will just build up throughout the game. I've saved enough to get 4 policies at once.

Something that grants a free policy, like the Oracle, those you cannot save.

Click to expand...

Ah nice. I'll have to try a game with policy saving enabled

ense7en said:

Is this doable, or am i being insane?

I don't mean at easy difficulties either, i was thinking on Immortal or maybe Emperor.

I'd really like to finish a game where i actually get to fill out the Autocracy or Order trees, as i never have yet, and in Science victories i never have anywhere close to enough culture to get more than two trees and maybe another policy or two done.

I suppose i could also go for a Domination game where i do Piety + cultural wonders and cultural focus so i get enough to finish one of the Autocracy or Order trees?
Maybe a few of my own cities + tons of puppets?

Anyone have any experience with strats that let you have fun with those policy trees and still have a good chance of winning?

Click to expand...

Freedom used to be must-have for culture wins, but I don't find it that essential anymore since that one really big patch. It's usually my last one to fill in, actually. The population happiness one-two only really helps once you already have pretty big populations, so it's best to open that up in late game. The only direct culture boost is off wonders, and no matter how many of them you build, +2 culture each just isn't significant enough in the Renaissance to lure me away from Rationalism and finishing up Tradition.

Your map settings can make a lot of difference here. When I play my single player games, I always load it up with 22 civs and 28 CS. But playing hotseat with my son, it won't let us, so barbarians remain significant for a much longer period. You can actually score quite a few culture points by opening up honor and then hunting barbs aggressively. If you fill in Tradition and Honor, then you can build extra units and station them in your cities as combined defense, happiness, and culture buildings that cost nothing to support.

Its definitely doable to get a culture victory without freedom but it'll be much slower. The only reason why you wouldn't take freedom is if your strategy was a warmongering culture game. Even then often times I would still take freedom for those games since I normally pick civs with high pop advantages (Siam, Monty, Gandhi) so the puppet states will at least have a chance to place merchant specialists to help with the happiness issues associated with those games.

For warmongering culture games without freedom, I think the policies you would need is tradition, liberty, honor, piety and order. Evidently the hardest part of a warmongering culture game is happiness and you'd have to pick your policies wisely since annexing would really slow down any attempt at a culture game.

ezbutton said:

Its definitely doable to get a culture victory without freedom but it'll be much slower. The only reason why you wouldn't take freedom is if your strategy was a warmongering culture game. Even then often times I would still take freedom for those games since I normally pick civs with high pop advantages (Siam, Monty, Gandhi) so the puppet states will at least have a chance to place merchant specialists to help with the happiness issues associated with those games.

For warmongering culture games without freedom, I think the policies you would need is tradition, liberty, honor, piety and order. Evidently the hardest part of a warmongering culture game is happiness and you'd have to pick your policies wisely since annexing would really slow down any attempt at a culture game.

Click to expand...

And
Oligarchy (tradition) +Warrior Caste (Honor) provides good happy+culture
combine with Meritocracy (liberty)
Professional Army (honor)
and
Organized Religion (piety)

for good puppet happiness.. Then Order to finish off the excess happiness, and production for the buildings.

You would want to focus on science somewhat to get miltary techs and get to industrial.

Order might be a good tree in a challenge game like win all victory conditions (on same turn or within x turns) with highest score as the tie-breaker. I'm guessing fastest time would probably still favor Freedom.

Edit: After giving it two full minutes of consideration, Order would obviously be a good tree for any high-score challenge. ...this horse was DOA, yet I kicked it anyway.

Helmling said:

The only direct culture boost is off wonders, and no matter how many of them you build, +2 culture each just isn't significant enough in the Renaissance to lure me away from Rationalism and finishing up Tradition.

Click to expand...

No it's not. Finishing Freedom also doubles the bonus from landmarks, which is another +6 culture. The opener means another +25% to GPP, so you get at least another great artist or two to build more landmarks. Couple this with the right side of the tree and you can run more artists with the same amount of food and less unhappiness.

If this city has the Sistine Chapel, Hermitage and a broadcast tower with the Piety tree also finished, you're looking at +141%. All other cities having at least a broadcast tower for +91% makes the +2 from each WW equal to +4.82 and +3.82 respectively, and the +6 from each landmark +14.46 and +11.46 respectively. This starts to add up rather quickly.

Let's say you went with 4 cities so Legalism gives you 4 museums and all 4 cities have at least 1 WW to get the +33% bonus from Piety, that's at least +16.28 with all the multipliers in place, or the equivalent of running an additional artist in each of these 4 cities.

You'll probably pop at least 4 artists, plus the 2 from the Louvre for at least 6 landmarks built around the Hermitage city to maximize the bonus. That's an additional 36 culture with the freedom finisher before the multipliers or 86.76 with all the multipliers.

Even without the +33% from broadcast towers, since they're fairly late, that's still +108% in the hermitage city and +58% in the other cities. So that +2 per WW and +6 from landmarks is still equal to +4.16 and +12.48 in the hermitage city and +3.16 and 9.48 in the others. So those same 6 landmarks in the hermitage city come to an additional 74.88, just because you finished Freedom.

Therefore, if you started Tradition and Liberty, then finished Piety as soon as it unlocked and finished Freedom as soon as Piety is finished, with using the 2 free policies from Piety to open Freedom and take the +2 per WW immediately, you'd finish Tradition, Liberty and your 5th tree a lot faster. Since this combo only allows Honor, Patronage and Commerce as the choice for the 5th tree, I'd likely got for Honor and lots of puppets since it's the only one of those 3 that adds more culture by way of the Military Caste policy which is, "Each City with a garrison increases empire Happiness by 1 and Culture by 2."

Yeah Freedom finisher is filled with win.

This is from my last culture win (Emperor).
Did four cities, with a tons of puppets.

You can see i have a "few" Landmarks there
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/256/2011120500008.jpg/