I forgot to take screens during the game, but here are three from the end:
The northern half of the empire - Djenne was a recently flipped city. Orleans up there was one Legendary city, Paris was another
The southern half, featuring the third Legendary city, Rheims.
Victory! Not a bad score for a Culture game.
MesSer told me in another thread that I needed to expand earlier, so I took his advice to heart. There was some great land to exploit in this one. My three Culture cities ended up being Paris, Orleans, which I founded just south of Mansa by some Gold, Pigs, and flood plains, and Rheims, which I founded just north of Pericles, with some Horses, Pigs, Corn, and four Gold - yes, it's a bit of a way from Paris but as soon as I scouted that territory, I knew that I had to have it. I ended up stopping at 6 cities, which is, IMHO, the "magic number" for Cultural Victory. 9 is even better, but my economy was strained enough that it wasn't feasible.
I had 4 cities by BC 1000, which is a first for me. Unfortunately that was hard on my economy so I was running at 50% science for quite a while. Fortunately it wasn't anything that a few Great Scientists couldn't solve - Mansa Musa is always a great teching buddy, and when we found the other continent, we discovered that we were lightyears ahead of them in technology.
Speaking of tech, my research strategy was simple - Beeline Lib, making a quick pit stop for Music to get that free Great Artist, the all-important Sistine Chapel, and the simply indispensable cathedrals (Music is a must-get tech for any culture game). I Libbed Nationalism (Taj Mahal good, Hermitage better) and bulbed Printing Press, then killed my science and put my culture slider between 60 and 80, depending on circumstances.
Diplomacy went surprisingly well. Mansa founded Confucianism and spread it to myself and Pericles, so we spent the whole game being all buddy-buddy. In fact, as far as I'm aware, there wasn't a single war during the course of the entire game - then again, none of the AI were terribly aggressive leaders, IIRC, and I'm a huge peacemonger.
Game strategy was simple: Take advantage of that IND to grab as many wonders as was appropriate while rushing towards Free Speech and building as many cathedrals as possible. Caste System and Pacifism are also critical civic choices. Along the way, I picked up: Pyramids (for Rep), Parthenon (for culture and GPP), Great Library (for Great Scientists), Sistine Chapel (most important wonder for Culture Victory IMHO), Notre Dame (I happened to spawn a Great Engineer the same turn I got Engineering in a trade, so I figured "Why not?"), and Taj Mahal. Note that while I was building the Sistine Chapel I was able to make a trade with Pericles for some Marble, making life much easier.
Unfortunately I only had access to two religions: Confucianism, and Taoism (which I founded). So, that sucked. But I still managed to get two cathedrals from each religion, and that was a huge help in winning the game. Once I had Pacifism and Free Speech going, it was basically: Run Artists, spawn Great Artists, build lots of buildings, win game. For this purpose, I found the Salon actually pretty helpful once I traded for Astronomy.
Comments:
CRE really isn't very helpful at all when it comes to CV. I find other traits like FIN, ORG and especially PHI much better for this type of game.
I think there were two things holding me back from an earlier victory: Not having my own source of Marble, and only having two religions available. Unfortunately I can't really do anything about either of those (I'm not going to start self-teching Polytheism, Monotheism, Meditation, etc).
My one big mistake, I think, was the city of Rheims I described above. It was a phenomenal city, but I think it was too much of a drain on the economy for too long.
) to the distant west blocked Pericles with one other city. From there, it was a matter of backfilling into that crappy jungle and the food-poor southeast.
But oh well still was a lot of fun.
